Post by Pacelli on Aug 21, 2017 15:20:42 GMT -5
(Note: I post the words of Archishop Lefebvre who correctly identified the problem in the 1970's. He recognized the emerging false and schismatic Church. I do not, however, agree with his practical reaction to the the facts of what he was witnessing.)
Excerpts taken from Sermon of Archbsihop Lefebvre, August 29, 1976 at Lille:
(Apologia Pro Marcle Lefebvre, Davies, Vol. 1, Chapter 13; posted on SSPX ASIA, linked HERE )
Excerpts taken from Sermon of Archbsihop Lefebvre, August 29, 1976 at Lille:
(Apologia Pro Marcle Lefebvre, Davies, Vol. 1, Chapter 13; posted on SSPX ASIA, linked HERE )
My Dear Brethren,
Before addressing a few words of exhortation to you, I should like first to dispel some misunderstandings. And to begin with, about this very gathering.
You can see from the simplicity of this ceremony that we made no preparations for a ceremony which would have gathered a crowd like the one in this hall. I thought I should be saying Holy Mass on the 29 August as it had been arranged, before a few hundreds of the faithful of the Lille region, as I have done often in France, Europe, and even America, with no fuss.
Yet all of a sudden this date, 29 August, through press, radio and television, has become a kind of demonstration, resembling, so they say, a challenge. Not at an: this demonstration is not a challenge. This demonstration is what you wanted, dear Catholic brethren, who have come from long distances. Why? To manifest your Catholic faith; to manifest your belief; to manifest your desire to pray and to sanctify yourselves as did your fathers in faith, as did generations and generations before you. That is the real object of this ceremony, during which we desire to pray, pray with all our heart, adore Our Lord Jesus Christ Who in a few moments will come down on this altar and will renew the sacrifice of the Cross which we so much need.
I should like also to dispel another misunderstanding. Here I beg your pardon, but I have to say it: it was not I who called myself head of the traditionalists. You know who did that not long ago in solemn and memorable circumstances in Rome. Mgr. Lefebvre was said to be the head of the traditionalists. I do not want to be head of the traditionalists, nor am I. Why? Because I also am a simple Catholic. A priest and a bishop, certainly; but in the very conditions in which you find yourselves, reacting in the same way to the destruction of the Church, to the destruction of our faith, to the ruins piling up before our eyes.
Having the same reaction, I thought it my duty to form priests, the true priests that the Church needs. I formed those priests in a "Saint Pius X Society," which was recognized by the Church. All I was doing was what all bishops have done for centuries and centuries. That is all I did -something I have been doing for thirty years of my priestly life. It was on that account that I was made a bishop, an Apostolic Delegate in Africa, a member of the central pre-conciliar commission, an assistant at the papal throne. What better proof could I have wanted that Rome considered my work profitable for the Church and for the good of souls? And now when I am doing the same thing, a work exactly like what I have been doing for thirty years, all of a sudden I am suspended a divinis, and perhaps I shall soon be excommunicated, separated from the Church, a renegade, or what have you! How can that be? Is what I have been doing for thirty years liable also to suspension a divinis?
I think, on the contrary, that if then I had been forming seminarians as they are being formed now in the new seminaries I should have been excommunicated. If then I had taught the catechism which is being taught in the schools I should have been called a heretic. And if I had said Mass as it is now said I should have been called suspect of heresy and out of the Church. It is beyond my understanding. It means something has changed in the Church; and it is about that that I wish to speak.
Before addressing a few words of exhortation to you, I should like first to dispel some misunderstandings. And to begin with, about this very gathering.
You can see from the simplicity of this ceremony that we made no preparations for a ceremony which would have gathered a crowd like the one in this hall. I thought I should be saying Holy Mass on the 29 August as it had been arranged, before a few hundreds of the faithful of the Lille region, as I have done often in France, Europe, and even America, with no fuss.
Yet all of a sudden this date, 29 August, through press, radio and television, has become a kind of demonstration, resembling, so they say, a challenge. Not at an: this demonstration is not a challenge. This demonstration is what you wanted, dear Catholic brethren, who have come from long distances. Why? To manifest your Catholic faith; to manifest your belief; to manifest your desire to pray and to sanctify yourselves as did your fathers in faith, as did generations and generations before you. That is the real object of this ceremony, during which we desire to pray, pray with all our heart, adore Our Lord Jesus Christ Who in a few moments will come down on this altar and will renew the sacrifice of the Cross which we so much need.
I should like also to dispel another misunderstanding. Here I beg your pardon, but I have to say it: it was not I who called myself head of the traditionalists. You know who did that not long ago in solemn and memorable circumstances in Rome. Mgr. Lefebvre was said to be the head of the traditionalists. I do not want to be head of the traditionalists, nor am I. Why? Because I also am a simple Catholic. A priest and a bishop, certainly; but in the very conditions in which you find yourselves, reacting in the same way to the destruction of the Church, to the destruction of our faith, to the ruins piling up before our eyes.
Having the same reaction, I thought it my duty to form priests, the true priests that the Church needs. I formed those priests in a "Saint Pius X Society," which was recognized by the Church. All I was doing was what all bishops have done for centuries and centuries. That is all I did -something I have been doing for thirty years of my priestly life. It was on that account that I was made a bishop, an Apostolic Delegate in Africa, a member of the central pre-conciliar commission, an assistant at the papal throne. What better proof could I have wanted that Rome considered my work profitable for the Church and for the good of souls? And now when I am doing the same thing, a work exactly like what I have been doing for thirty years, all of a sudden I am suspended a divinis, and perhaps I shall soon be excommunicated, separated from the Church, a renegade, or what have you! How can that be? Is what I have been doing for thirty years liable also to suspension a divinis?
I think, on the contrary, that if then I had been forming seminarians as they are being formed now in the new seminaries I should have been excommunicated. If then I had taught the catechism which is being taught in the schools I should have been called a heretic. And if I had said Mass as it is now said I should have been called suspect of heresy and out of the Church. It is beyond my understanding. It means something has changed in the Church; and it is about that that I wish to speak.
The union desired by these Liberal Catholics, a union between the Church and the Revolution and subversion is, for the Church, an adulterous union, adulterous. And that adulterous union can produce only bastards. And who are those bastards? They are our rites: the rite of Mass is a bastard rite, the sacraments are bastard sacraments-we no longer know if they are sacraments which give grace or which do not give grace. We no longer know if this Mass gives the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ or if it does not give them. The priests coming out of the seminaries do not themselves know what they are. In Rome it was the Archbishop of Cincinnati who said: "Why are there no more vocations? Because the Church no longer knows what a priest is." How then can She still form priests if She does not know what a priest is? The priests coming out of the seminaries are bastard priests. They do not know what they are. They do not know that they were made to go up to the altar to offer the sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to give Jesus Christ to souls, and to call souls to Jesus Christ. That is what a priest is. Our young men here know that very well. Their whole life is going to be consecrated to that, to love, adore, and serve Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
The adulterous union of the Church with the Revolution is consolidated with dialogue. When the Church entered into dialogue it was to convert. Our Lord said: "Go, teach all nations, convert them." But He did not say to hold dialogue with them so as not to convert them, so as to try to put us on the same footing with them.
Error and truth are not compatible. We must see if we have charity towards others, as the Gospel says: he who has charity is one who serves others. But those who have charity should give Our Lord, they should give the riches they possess to others and not just converse with them and enter into dialogue on an equal footing. Truth and error are not on the same footing. That would be putting God and the Devil on the same footing, for the Devil is the father of lies, the father of error.
We must therefore be missionaries.
We must preach the Gospel, convert souls to Jesus Christ and not engage in dialogue with them in an effort to adopt their principles. That is what this bastard Mass and these bastard rites are doing to us, for we wanted dialogue with the Protestants and the Protestants said to us: "We will not have your Mass; we will not have it because it contains things incompatible with our Protestant faith. So change the Mass and we shall be able to pray with you. We can have intercommunion. We can receive your sacraments. You can come to our churches and we can come to yours; then it will be all finished and we shall have unity." We shall have unity in confusion, in bastardy. That we do not want. The Church has never wanted it. We love the Protestants; we want to convert them. But it is not loving them to let them think they have the same religion as the Catholic religion.
The adulterous union of the Church with the Revolution is consolidated with dialogue. When the Church entered into dialogue it was to convert. Our Lord said: "Go, teach all nations, convert them." But He did not say to hold dialogue with them so as not to convert them, so as to try to put us on the same footing with them.
Error and truth are not compatible. We must see if we have charity towards others, as the Gospel says: he who has charity is one who serves others. But those who have charity should give Our Lord, they should give the riches they possess to others and not just converse with them and enter into dialogue on an equal footing. Truth and error are not on the same footing. That would be putting God and the Devil on the same footing, for the Devil is the father of lies, the father of error.
We must therefore be missionaries.
We must preach the Gospel, convert souls to Jesus Christ and not engage in dialogue with them in an effort to adopt their principles. That is what this bastard Mass and these bastard rites are doing to us, for we wanted dialogue with the Protestants and the Protestants said to us: "We will not have your Mass; we will not have it because it contains things incompatible with our Protestant faith. So change the Mass and we shall be able to pray with you. We can have intercommunion. We can receive your sacraments. You can come to our churches and we can come to yours; then it will be all finished and we shall have unity." We shall have unity in confusion, in bastardy. That we do not want. The Church has never wanted it. We love the Protestants; we want to convert them. But it is not loving them to let them think they have the same religion as the Catholic religion.
We are against no one. We are not commandos. We wish nobody harm.
All we want is to be allowed to profess our faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, for that reason, we are driven from our churches. The poor priests are driven out for saying the Old Mass by which all our saints were sanctified: Saint Jeanne d'Arc, the holy Cure of Ars, the little Therese of the Child Jesus were sanctified by this Mass; and now priests are driven brutally, cruelly, from their parishes because they say the Mass which has sanctified saints for centuries. It is crazy. I would almost say it is a story of madmen. I ask myself if I am dreaming. How can this Mass have become some kind of horror for our bishops and for those who should preserve our faith? But we will keep the Mass of Saint Pius V because the Mass of Saint Pius V is the Mass of twenty centuries. It is the Mass of all time, not just the Mass of Saint Pius V; and it represents our faith, it is a bulwark of our faith, and we need that bulwark.
We shall be told that we are making it a question of Latin and soutanes. Obviously it is easy that way to discredit those you disagree with. But Latin has its importance; and when I was in Africa it was marvellous to see those crowds of Africans of different languages -we sometimes had five or six different tribes who did not understand one another - who could assist at Mass in our churches and sing the Latin chants with extraordinary fervor. Go and see them now : they quarrel in the churches because Mass is being said in a language other than theirs, so they are displeased and they want a Mass in their own language. The confusion is total, where before there was perfect unity. That is just one example, You have just heard the epistle and gospel read in French -I see no difficulty in that; and if more prayers in French were added, to be said all together, I still see no difficulty. But it still seems to me that the body of the Mass, which runs from the offertory to the priest's Communion, should remain in a unique language so that all men of all nations can assist together at Mass and can feel unity in that unity of faith, in that unity of prayer. So we ask, indeed we address an appeal to the bishops and to Rome: will they, please, take into consideration our desire to pray as our ancestors did, to keep the Catholic faith, our desire to adore Our Lord Jesus Christ and to want His reign. That is what I said in my last letter to the Holy Father-and I thought it really was the last, because I did not think the Holy Father would have written to me again.
All we want is to be allowed to profess our faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, for that reason, we are driven from our churches. The poor priests are driven out for saying the Old Mass by which all our saints were sanctified: Saint Jeanne d'Arc, the holy Cure of Ars, the little Therese of the Child Jesus were sanctified by this Mass; and now priests are driven brutally, cruelly, from their parishes because they say the Mass which has sanctified saints for centuries. It is crazy. I would almost say it is a story of madmen. I ask myself if I am dreaming. How can this Mass have become some kind of horror for our bishops and for those who should preserve our faith? But we will keep the Mass of Saint Pius V because the Mass of Saint Pius V is the Mass of twenty centuries. It is the Mass of all time, not just the Mass of Saint Pius V; and it represents our faith, it is a bulwark of our faith, and we need that bulwark.
We shall be told that we are making it a question of Latin and soutanes. Obviously it is easy that way to discredit those you disagree with. But Latin has its importance; and when I was in Africa it was marvellous to see those crowds of Africans of different languages -we sometimes had five or six different tribes who did not understand one another - who could assist at Mass in our churches and sing the Latin chants with extraordinary fervor. Go and see them now : they quarrel in the churches because Mass is being said in a language other than theirs, so they are displeased and they want a Mass in their own language. The confusion is total, where before there was perfect unity. That is just one example, You have just heard the epistle and gospel read in French -I see no difficulty in that; and if more prayers in French were added, to be said all together, I still see no difficulty. But it still seems to me that the body of the Mass, which runs from the offertory to the priest's Communion, should remain in a unique language so that all men of all nations can assist together at Mass and can feel unity in that unity of faith, in that unity of prayer. So we ask, indeed we address an appeal to the bishops and to Rome: will they, please, take into consideration our desire to pray as our ancestors did, to keep the Catholic faith, our desire to adore Our Lord Jesus Christ and to want His reign. That is what I said in my last letter to the Holy Father-and I thought it really was the last, because I did not think the Holy Father would have written to me again.