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FR. BARBARA'S LETTER TO POPE PAUL VI
11 November 1970
Feast of St. Martin of Tours
Most Holy Father,
This letter is addressed to you by those among your subjects who venerate in you the successor of Peter. It is a letter written in utter humility and sorrow by those who wish to go on obeying you, but whose faith and common sense have been through such an ordeal and suffered such a series of attacks that they can no longer endure in silence.
These are the reasons for their having asked me to write to you, asking on their behalf those questions to which answers are urgently needed if their faith, their intelligence and their ability to continue to obey you with an untroubled conscience, are not to be destroyed. Without such answers they can only drift further into incomprehension.
Holy Father, do there still exist today within the Church truth, dogma, untouchable faith?
Your admirable statement of faith, your Credo, reassured us, but we cannot help wondering how it can be reconciled with all the new catechisms that omit all its basic statements, and call in doubt a great number of other dogmas it contains. You are guardian and protector of our faith: how then can you allow the publication and distribution of these catechisms(1) which falsify the true concept of salvation as taught by the Gospels and Tradition? How can contradictory dogmas be allowed to co-exist?
Holy Father, explain to us how we can accept your Credo while in the liturgy, the Mass and the administration of the Sacraments, all the ascetical side of Christian life derived from the reality of original sin, is deliberately left out? Again, this omission goes against what we are taught by the Gospels and Tradition. What is the reason behind the contradiction between what you declare to be true in public, and what you put your signature to in the Vatican? Have not such contradictions been singled out for condemnation by Our Lord Himself?
Holy Father, can your creed be a true one if what your legate, Cardinal Willebrand, said at the Lutheran assemblies, particularly the one held at Evian, was approved by you?
Could there really be a close link between the aims of Luther and those of the Second Vatican Council, as your legate declared, presumably with your consent since he was appointed by you?
We beg you to enlighten us because we genuinely do not know what to think about all these events.
Holy Father, must your creed always be believed by the Catholic faithful, upheld and defended to the death:
- while you greet and receive in audience Communist executioners, whose hands are stained with the blood of thousands if not millions of martyred Catholics, faithful to your Credo and the Church of Rome whose Chief Shepherd you are?
- while you deny anybody who dares raise his voice in the Church to ask that these slaughterers of our brethren should be condemned - as witness the 540 bishops attending the Council who asked for just such a condemnation?
Please be good enough to explain these contradictions.
Holy Father, we acclaimed your defence of conjugal morality in Humanae Vitae. But entire hierarchies have acted clean counter to the teaching of this encyclical without your speaking a word in its defence. What is more, some hierarchies have actively persecuted the clergy and faithful under their jurisdiction who attempted to put its teaching into practice and, you have allowed this, even encouraged such persecution, while at Rome such priests are treated as troublemakers. What explanation can you offer for facts like these which are utterly beyond our understanding?
Holy Father, all your priests who have remained faithful to the vows they took on receiving the sub-diaconate, welcomed with joy your encyclical, Sacerdotalis coelibatus, which re-affirmed that "the Church in the West cannot weaken its faithful adherence to the ancient tradition she upholds." Many Christian households felt that they were once again receiving powerful aid and support in coping with the problems of conjugal fidelity, from priests who were themselves faithful to their own vow of celibacy.
How can it be explained to such as these that you yourself, in a letter to your own Secretary of State, once again called in question the principle of priestly celibacy by envisaging the possible ordination of married men?
How can husbands and wives who have been betrayed in their marriages have explained to them that the marriage bond cannot be dissolved, when you are so lenient in dispensing unfaithful priests from their sacred obligations?
Holy Father, you speak out very strongly in praise of the Mass of St. Pius V, acknowledging that it incorporates elements dating back to apostolic times, while you order it to be replaced and, in addition, allow the replacement to be imposed improperly on the faithful by some local hierarchies, or impose it yourself on others?
This new Mass which has replaced the old is, even if only because of its construction, innumerable different schemas, countless prefaces, at the mercy of each individual celebrant's fancy, and very soon provokes indifference or complete lapsing on the part of the faithful.
And what regard can we have for a reformed rite which is, in part, the work of six Protestant ministers whom you received when that work was done, allowing yourself to be photographed with them as a token of your gratitude for their labours? Was it to make it apparent that heretics were now allowed to lay hands on the most precious treasure bequeathed the Church by Jesus Christ, nothing less than the perpetual renewal of His Sacred Passion on the altars of His Church?
How can these things be explained to those who possess the true faith? We implore you to provide such an explanation.
Holy Father, you speak in praise of Latin and Gregorian Chant. You entrusted the Benedictines specifically with the task of preserving these treasures for the Church. And yet, just one month after saying this, you authorised the suppression of Latin and plainchant in the monasteries.
Holy Father, you make a special point of requesting the bishops to retain the custom of giving Holy Communion on the tongue, spending considerable time explaining and defining your reasons and yet, in the very same instruction, you contradict yourself and authorise communion in the hand. Tell us what it means.
Holy Father, you lament the fact that your own authority is respected less and less in the Church, but tell us, for pity's sake, who took off the tiara that symbolises papal authority so that - to the stupefaction of the bishops who witnessed your uncrowning yourself - it could be put up for auction?
Holy Father, you have deplored the intercommunion that has taken place in Holland, at Medellin and in Paris in the Rue de Vaugirard. But who was it that allowed Barbara Olson, a convinced Presbyterian, and three heretical ministers attending the Bogota Eucharistic congress, to receive Holy Communion?
How are we to explain your recognising, in practice, the episcopal status of Michael Ramsay, then leader of the Church of England, to whom you personally gave your own ring and whom you requested to give his blessing to the crowd, when according to Leo XIII's Bull, Apostolicae Curæ, a bull he confirmed as being irrevocable ("perpetuo ratam, firmam, irrevocabilem"), "ordinations conferred under the Anglican rite are totally null and invalid"?
We truly no longer understand, and we beg you to give us an explanation of what appears to be outright scandal.
Holy Father, you deplore the growth of atheism and irreligion generally, but who gave orders to take down all the crucifixes from the walls of the Vatican Secretariat of State, thus effectively laicising your own territory?
Who went to make his obeisance in the Masonic cult room in New York, at the Assembly of the United Nations?
Who places innumerable difficulties in the way of the few remaining Catholic governments, either by appointing bishops sympathetic to Marxism, or by showing public sympathy for and lending aid to revolutionaries, both lay and clerical? And who at the same time is all cordiality towards Communist regimes and those sympathetic to them?
Could all this be the result of the declaration on religious freedom made at the Second Vatican Council? But if so, was that Council worth a great deal?
Holy Father, you never cease telling us that the Church is going through a painful period of crisis, but who is it that numbers among his closest associates the principal begetters of this crisis?
Who nominated Cardinal Lercaro and Cardinal Suenens as moderators at the Council?
Who appointed those now surrounding you, who are busy playing the same game as the Church's enemies?
Who sacked the real supporters of the Church from key posts in the Curia?
Who requested the president of the most important among the episcopal assemblies to resign?
Who has done all he can to prevent the only secretary at the Council who has not been made a cardinal, from being elected president of his national episcopal assembly, and failed in the attempt?
Why is it that you complain endlessly about this crisis, and yet refuse to apply the remedy that lies in your own hands?
There is a multitude of such mysteries for which we can find no solution. We beg you to help us to find one.
Holy Father, you declare your attachment to tradition and to the faith of the Church, but you destroy both when you embrace all these who have fought against the Church in the past, and who are still fighting her today: heretics, Communists, Freemasons. And together with them, those within the Church who link themselves adulterously with these ideologies. Yet the same embrace is steadfastly refused to the Church's faithful servants.
Holy Father, it must be said, although saying it greatly distresses us: your behaviour reminds us of nothing so much as Solomon living off his inheritance from David, and using it to embroil himself with foreign women and with their alien gods and alien beliefs. Like him, we cannot avoid seeing it: you are ruining the Kingdom of Israel, the Holy, Roman, Catholic, Church.
We are disciples of Jesus. Like Our Lord we prefer the truth of actions to that of words, and so we make bold to ask you: "Quid dicis de teipso? Quis est tu?" What say you of yourself? How do you plead?
Father Noël BARBARA
ENDNOTE:
(1) The Dutch Catechism has since been translated into Italian and distributed even in the diocese of Rome.
-----------------------------------------------------------
A Reply to Fr. Barbara:
Archbishopric of Algiers 30 November 1970
My dear Father,
It is not because I have forgotten you that I avoided burdening you with too many letters. I cherish the warmest memories of you and I remember your family with great affection in my prayers.
The reason for my writing to you now is your open letter to His Holiness Pope Paul VI, which reached me only yesterday. It caused me the utmost distress. This abuse of the Pope, who defends the faith of holy mother Church with such courage, seems to be totally alien to you as I remember you.
Precisely because I do feel a genuine regard and fondness for you I am writing to ask you to write an apology to Cardinal Villot, and to stop attacking the hierarchy: priests should be a help to their bishops not seek bring them into disrepute by unwarranted attacks of this kind.
I send you my very best wishes for Christmas, your birthday's falling on Christmas Day makes it a very special feast for you, and a happy new year.
With warmest regards and a special blessing,
+ Leo Etienne Duval
Cardinal Archbishop of Algiers
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Fr. Barbara Responds to Cardinal Duval:
MY ANSWER TO CARDINAL DUVAL'S LETTER
5 December 1970
Your Eminence,
It was a great pleasure to receive your letter of November 30 this morning. I was particularly touched by your assuring me your prayers for me and my family. Please accept my sincere thanks, and the assurance in return of my own prayers for your Eminence.
Nevertheless, I must say (since your letter gives me leave to speak completely frankly) that its purpose amazed me.
I am sure you will understand when I say that I scarcely need to stress, that publication of my letter to the Holy Father was not undertaken lightly.
God has given me the grace of faith and the fear of Him, and it was in the awareness that all our actions are known to Him and that He will one day be my judge, that I made the decision to write to the Pope and to make my letter public. I can assure you that I thought about it and prayed about it for a whole year, besides taking pains to seek the advice of theologians and bishops whose orthodoxy seemed beyond question.
I agree wholeheartedly with your Eminence that "priests should be a help to their bishops", but you will, I am sure, agree that such cannot be the case when those selfsame bishops seem bent on destroying the Church and changing our very faith.
And isn't this what we see going on all around us? Your Eminence can hardly fail to be aware that there is not a dogma of the Church which has not been called in doubt, not a moral tenet that has not been challenged. And by whom? By those very bishops.
Your Eminence, because you have had the charity to write to me I shall make no attempt to disguise my innermost feelings. You are a bishop: I a priest. On Christmas Day, later this month, I shall be sixty. For thirty-two years of my life I have offered the Holy Sacrifice at the altar.
As God is my witness, I have never once regretted having dedicated my life to God and to serving His Church. In spite of many trials and setbacks, I would, were I to have to begin my life over again knowing what I know today, not hesitate for a second in following Christ. Without the slightest conceit I can say with the Apostle: "Scio qui credidi, et certus sum . . ."
With the help of God's grace I try, despite considerable hardship, to live my faith, and my love for the Church is inseparable from my love of God. I am Catholic and Roman to the very core of my being.
But ever since the promulgation of the new Ordo Missæ I have lost all confidence in Paul VI, and I cannot pretend that I hold anybody but him primarily responsible for the self-destruction of the Church.
I am fully aware of the gravity of admitting to a thought of this kind, and of the even greater gravity of making it known to others. But I thank God for having enabled me to emerge from an ordeal which has purified my faith, and I firmly believe that I should be aiding and abetting the furtherance of evil if I persisted in denying the evidence.
Until the new mass appeared I had tried to convince myself that the Church's self-destruction was the consequence of disobedience on the part of theologians, bishops and even various hierarchies (do not forget the way some of them reacted to Humanae Vitae when it was published), and that the Pope was in no way responsible.
But since the appearance of the new Ordo Missæ this position is no longer tenable.
It is Pope Paul VI who has played a leading, and from certain points of view, an exclusive role in the self-destruction of the Church.
The Missa Normativa was rejected by a large majority of your fellow bishops when it was submitted to the first Synod. Who then did advocate the new mass? Nobody. It is entirely the work of Pope Paul VI.
The new mass is in itself ambiguous; it favours heresy and abounds in sacrileges - anybody would have to be totally blind not to see this clearly. And, if you will forgive my bluntness, what scandalises and astonishes me most of all, is that you bishops failed to give any sign of acknowledging these facts.
Our forefathers in the faith died rather than give up their statues and holy pictures, and yet we today accept that the Mass should be changed, and that we should be forced to accept a new rite which increases the number of occasions of sacrilege and invalid celebrations under the pretext of greater pastoral efficacy.
Your Eminence will almost certainly have seen a copy of the Christmas number of Paris-Match which appeared a few years ago. It carried an illustrated report by Robert Serrou on the eucharistic experiments that were being tried out in Holland: masses celebrated in the vernacular with no vestments, no altar stone, in private houses on dining tables covered with the same cloth that was used every day, with ordinary household loaves and bottles of rough red wine, with household glasses instead of chalices, baskets instead of ciboria, and communion given in the hand to everybody present, whether Catholic or not, sometimes even handed out by girls in mini-skirts, etc. I am sure that you, like every other genuine Christian, must have been outraged by these irreverent, exaggerated and sacrilegious performances. And, your Eminence, please do not forget that the indignation of the faithful was reported by the world press, before the L'Osservatore Romano got round to publishing an official protest against the Dutch innovations.
I must admit that I was naive enough to believe that this protest from Rome was genuine. It was not until the new Ordo Missæ was promulgated that I really accepted that we had been systematically deceived from the very start.
Your Eminence, let me put it to you in the form of a straight question: why didn't the Vatican intervene sooner to put a stop to the sacrilegious experiments in Holland? Is anybody going to believe that Rome knew nothing about them until the article appeared in Paris-Match? Hardly!
And was Paul VI aware of what was going on? Obviously he was, and if he allowed these experiments to develop and spread throughout the Church it was because he wanted them to. And like it or not, we cannot ignore the fact that the same practices which scandalised us then have now been forced on all Catholics by Paul VI himself.
So it was that I was led inescapably - bearing in mind all the innovations that were destroying the Church from within - to the conclusion that they would never have been possible without, at the very least, the consent of the Pope.
A Pope who is openly a heretic cannot do the Church a great deal of damage. There would be an outcry from the faithful which would lead to his being deposed. But Paul VI, a Pope who proclaims the faith while always taking care to leave a tiny area of uncertainty even when he is pronouncing the truth, is in practical terms destroying the Church, or allowing what he teaches to be destroyed - a pope of this kind can only be a master of double-dealing.
What can be the explanation behind such an abomination?
I cannot answer for sure, but perhaps it is not too far-fetched to see in the blindness of the Church's supreme authority a divine response to the blasphemous address to the United Nations Assembly on 4 October 1965: "It is as an expert on humanity that we bring to this Assembly the support of our immediate predecessors, of the entire episcopate of the Catholic Church and our own, convinced as we are that THIS ORGANISATION (UNO) EMBODIES THE INEVITABLE PATH OF MODERN CIVILISATION AND WORLD PEACE . . . We make our voice the voice of the poor, the deprived, the unfortunate, those who yearn for justice, for human dignity, for freedom, for a better life, for progress. The peoples of the world turn to the United Nations as THE LAST HOPE for peace and harmony: WE MAKE BOLD to bring here their and our own tribute of honour and of HOPE."
Your Eminence, the hypothesis of a heretical or schismatic pope is discussed in every manual of Catholic theology, even in the most recent one by Cardinal Journet.
Because the possibility is admitted to exist, there can be nothing damaging to the papacy in seeing if there is not amongst the present confusion some evidence that it has in fact occurred, in conjunction with the particular characteristic of the modernist heresy which is never to show its hand openly.
My letter had no aim other than that of forcing Paul VI to rise to the responsibilities of his office by confirming our faith and condemning the heresy-mongers. What harm can there be in that?
Moreover, publication of my letter has brought me daily letters of support from many priests and theologians.
If the facts as indicated by me are a misrepesentation, why is there such a delay in pointing out how wrong I am? If the facts are true, is it not a Christian duty to place the blame for them where it is due?
After all, it is not Paul VI's personal honour that is at stake, but the honour of God and Holy Mother Church.
Your Eminence, your rank allows you direct access to the Pope. May I in my turn plead with you and beg you to make the Holy Father aware of the way I feel, and to assure him that these feelings are shared by an immense number of priests and faithful.
If Cardinal Villot has kept my letter from him, please could you hand it to him yourself.
Tell him that we pray for him constantly and that we beg him to return to the true faith. He should not see anything offensive in this express wish of his children, but rather an overwhelming charity which urges them to recall to him the words of Our Lord (Luke 22, 32), charging Simon with his task as Peter, the rock. Show him that in actual fact it is Montini, and the outlook of Montini, which leads him to contradict his predecessors and prevent him from confirming his brethren.
Your Eminence, the special intention of my prayers at present is that God may grant you his help in taking the steps I have begged of you.
May I also take this opportunity of wishing you a Holy and a Happy Christmas.
Asking a blessing, I am Your Eminence's most humble and obedient child.
Fr. Noël BARBARA
37150 Bléré - France
signed 11 November 1970
Feast of St. Martin of Tours
(Fortes in Fides, No. 5, Vol. 1)
FR. BARBARA'S LETTER TO POPE PAUL VI
11 November 1970
Feast of St. Martin of Tours
Most Holy Father,
This letter is addressed to you by those among your subjects who venerate in you the successor of Peter. It is a letter written in utter humility and sorrow by those who wish to go on obeying you, but whose faith and common sense have been through such an ordeal and suffered such a series of attacks that they can no longer endure in silence.
These are the reasons for their having asked me to write to you, asking on their behalf those questions to which answers are urgently needed if their faith, their intelligence and their ability to continue to obey you with an untroubled conscience, are not to be destroyed. Without such answers they can only drift further into incomprehension.
Holy Father, do there still exist today within the Church truth, dogma, untouchable faith?
Your admirable statement of faith, your Credo, reassured us, but we cannot help wondering how it can be reconciled with all the new catechisms that omit all its basic statements, and call in doubt a great number of other dogmas it contains. You are guardian and protector of our faith: how then can you allow the publication and distribution of these catechisms(1) which falsify the true concept of salvation as taught by the Gospels and Tradition? How can contradictory dogmas be allowed to co-exist?
Holy Father, explain to us how we can accept your Credo while in the liturgy, the Mass and the administration of the Sacraments, all the ascetical side of Christian life derived from the reality of original sin, is deliberately left out? Again, this omission goes against what we are taught by the Gospels and Tradition. What is the reason behind the contradiction between what you declare to be true in public, and what you put your signature to in the Vatican? Have not such contradictions been singled out for condemnation by Our Lord Himself?
Holy Father, can your creed be a true one if what your legate, Cardinal Willebrand, said at the Lutheran assemblies, particularly the one held at Evian, was approved by you?
Could there really be a close link between the aims of Luther and those of the Second Vatican Council, as your legate declared, presumably with your consent since he was appointed by you?
We beg you to enlighten us because we genuinely do not know what to think about all these events.
Holy Father, must your creed always be believed by the Catholic faithful, upheld and defended to the death:
- while you greet and receive in audience Communist executioners, whose hands are stained with the blood of thousands if not millions of martyred Catholics, faithful to your Credo and the Church of Rome whose Chief Shepherd you are?
- while you deny anybody who dares raise his voice in the Church to ask that these slaughterers of our brethren should be condemned - as witness the 540 bishops attending the Council who asked for just such a condemnation?
Please be good enough to explain these contradictions.
Holy Father, we acclaimed your defence of conjugal morality in Humanae Vitae. But entire hierarchies have acted clean counter to the teaching of this encyclical without your speaking a word in its defence. What is more, some hierarchies have actively persecuted the clergy and faithful under their jurisdiction who attempted to put its teaching into practice and, you have allowed this, even encouraged such persecution, while at Rome such priests are treated as troublemakers. What explanation can you offer for facts like these which are utterly beyond our understanding?
Holy Father, all your priests who have remained faithful to the vows they took on receiving the sub-diaconate, welcomed with joy your encyclical, Sacerdotalis coelibatus, which re-affirmed that "the Church in the West cannot weaken its faithful adherence to the ancient tradition she upholds." Many Christian households felt that they were once again receiving powerful aid and support in coping with the problems of conjugal fidelity, from priests who were themselves faithful to their own vow of celibacy.
How can it be explained to such as these that you yourself, in a letter to your own Secretary of State, once again called in question the principle of priestly celibacy by envisaging the possible ordination of married men?
How can husbands and wives who have been betrayed in their marriages have explained to them that the marriage bond cannot be dissolved, when you are so lenient in dispensing unfaithful priests from their sacred obligations?
Holy Father, you speak out very strongly in praise of the Mass of St. Pius V, acknowledging that it incorporates elements dating back to apostolic times, while you order it to be replaced and, in addition, allow the replacement to be imposed improperly on the faithful by some local hierarchies, or impose it yourself on others?
This new Mass which has replaced the old is, even if only because of its construction, innumerable different schemas, countless prefaces, at the mercy of each individual celebrant's fancy, and very soon provokes indifference or complete lapsing on the part of the faithful.
And what regard can we have for a reformed rite which is, in part, the work of six Protestant ministers whom you received when that work was done, allowing yourself to be photographed with them as a token of your gratitude for their labours? Was it to make it apparent that heretics were now allowed to lay hands on the most precious treasure bequeathed the Church by Jesus Christ, nothing less than the perpetual renewal of His Sacred Passion on the altars of His Church?
How can these things be explained to those who possess the true faith? We implore you to provide such an explanation.
Holy Father, you speak in praise of Latin and Gregorian Chant. You entrusted the Benedictines specifically with the task of preserving these treasures for the Church. And yet, just one month after saying this, you authorised the suppression of Latin and plainchant in the monasteries.
Holy Father, you make a special point of requesting the bishops to retain the custom of giving Holy Communion on the tongue, spending considerable time explaining and defining your reasons and yet, in the very same instruction, you contradict yourself and authorise communion in the hand. Tell us what it means.
Holy Father, you lament the fact that your own authority is respected less and less in the Church, but tell us, for pity's sake, who took off the tiara that symbolises papal authority so that - to the stupefaction of the bishops who witnessed your uncrowning yourself - it could be put up for auction?
Holy Father, you have deplored the intercommunion that has taken place in Holland, at Medellin and in Paris in the Rue de Vaugirard. But who was it that allowed Barbara Olson, a convinced Presbyterian, and three heretical ministers attending the Bogota Eucharistic congress, to receive Holy Communion?
How are we to explain your recognising, in practice, the episcopal status of Michael Ramsay, then leader of the Church of England, to whom you personally gave your own ring and whom you requested to give his blessing to the crowd, when according to Leo XIII's Bull, Apostolicae Curæ, a bull he confirmed as being irrevocable ("perpetuo ratam, firmam, irrevocabilem"), "ordinations conferred under the Anglican rite are totally null and invalid"?
We truly no longer understand, and we beg you to give us an explanation of what appears to be outright scandal.
Holy Father, you deplore the growth of atheism and irreligion generally, but who gave orders to take down all the crucifixes from the walls of the Vatican Secretariat of State, thus effectively laicising your own territory?
Who went to make his obeisance in the Masonic cult room in New York, at the Assembly of the United Nations?
Who places innumerable difficulties in the way of the few remaining Catholic governments, either by appointing bishops sympathetic to Marxism, or by showing public sympathy for and lending aid to revolutionaries, both lay and clerical? And who at the same time is all cordiality towards Communist regimes and those sympathetic to them?
Could all this be the result of the declaration on religious freedom made at the Second Vatican Council? But if so, was that Council worth a great deal?
Holy Father, you never cease telling us that the Church is going through a painful period of crisis, but who is it that numbers among his closest associates the principal begetters of this crisis?
Who nominated Cardinal Lercaro and Cardinal Suenens as moderators at the Council?
Who appointed those now surrounding you, who are busy playing the same game as the Church's enemies?
Who sacked the real supporters of the Church from key posts in the Curia?
Who requested the president of the most important among the episcopal assemblies to resign?
Who has done all he can to prevent the only secretary at the Council who has not been made a cardinal, from being elected president of his national episcopal assembly, and failed in the attempt?
Why is it that you complain endlessly about this crisis, and yet refuse to apply the remedy that lies in your own hands?
There is a multitude of such mysteries for which we can find no solution. We beg you to help us to find one.
Holy Father, you declare your attachment to tradition and to the faith of the Church, but you destroy both when you embrace all these who have fought against the Church in the past, and who are still fighting her today: heretics, Communists, Freemasons. And together with them, those within the Church who link themselves adulterously with these ideologies. Yet the same embrace is steadfastly refused to the Church's faithful servants.
Holy Father, it must be said, although saying it greatly distresses us: your behaviour reminds us of nothing so much as Solomon living off his inheritance from David, and using it to embroil himself with foreign women and with their alien gods and alien beliefs. Like him, we cannot avoid seeing it: you are ruining the Kingdom of Israel, the Holy, Roman, Catholic, Church.
We are disciples of Jesus. Like Our Lord we prefer the truth of actions to that of words, and so we make bold to ask you: "Quid dicis de teipso? Quis est tu?" What say you of yourself? How do you plead?
Father Noël BARBARA
ENDNOTE:
(1) The Dutch Catechism has since been translated into Italian and distributed even in the diocese of Rome.
-----------------------------------------------------------
A Reply to Fr. Barbara:
Archbishopric of Algiers 30 November 1970
My dear Father,
It is not because I have forgotten you that I avoided burdening you with too many letters. I cherish the warmest memories of you and I remember your family with great affection in my prayers.
The reason for my writing to you now is your open letter to His Holiness Pope Paul VI, which reached me only yesterday. It caused me the utmost distress. This abuse of the Pope, who defends the faith of holy mother Church with such courage, seems to be totally alien to you as I remember you.
Precisely because I do feel a genuine regard and fondness for you I am writing to ask you to write an apology to Cardinal Villot, and to stop attacking the hierarchy: priests should be a help to their bishops not seek bring them into disrepute by unwarranted attacks of this kind.
I send you my very best wishes for Christmas, your birthday's falling on Christmas Day makes it a very special feast for you, and a happy new year.
With warmest regards and a special blessing,
+ Leo Etienne Duval
Cardinal Archbishop of Algiers
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Fr. Barbara Responds to Cardinal Duval:
MY ANSWER TO CARDINAL DUVAL'S LETTER
5 December 1970
Your Eminence,
It was a great pleasure to receive your letter of November 30 this morning. I was particularly touched by your assuring me your prayers for me and my family. Please accept my sincere thanks, and the assurance in return of my own prayers for your Eminence.
Nevertheless, I must say (since your letter gives me leave to speak completely frankly) that its purpose amazed me.
I am sure you will understand when I say that I scarcely need to stress, that publication of my letter to the Holy Father was not undertaken lightly.
God has given me the grace of faith and the fear of Him, and it was in the awareness that all our actions are known to Him and that He will one day be my judge, that I made the decision to write to the Pope and to make my letter public. I can assure you that I thought about it and prayed about it for a whole year, besides taking pains to seek the advice of theologians and bishops whose orthodoxy seemed beyond question.
I agree wholeheartedly with your Eminence that "priests should be a help to their bishops", but you will, I am sure, agree that such cannot be the case when those selfsame bishops seem bent on destroying the Church and changing our very faith.
And isn't this what we see going on all around us? Your Eminence can hardly fail to be aware that there is not a dogma of the Church which has not been called in doubt, not a moral tenet that has not been challenged. And by whom? By those very bishops.
Your Eminence, because you have had the charity to write to me I shall make no attempt to disguise my innermost feelings. You are a bishop: I a priest. On Christmas Day, later this month, I shall be sixty. For thirty-two years of my life I have offered the Holy Sacrifice at the altar.
As God is my witness, I have never once regretted having dedicated my life to God and to serving His Church. In spite of many trials and setbacks, I would, were I to have to begin my life over again knowing what I know today, not hesitate for a second in following Christ. Without the slightest conceit I can say with the Apostle: "Scio qui credidi, et certus sum . . ."
With the help of God's grace I try, despite considerable hardship, to live my faith, and my love for the Church is inseparable from my love of God. I am Catholic and Roman to the very core of my being.
But ever since the promulgation of the new Ordo Missæ I have lost all confidence in Paul VI, and I cannot pretend that I hold anybody but him primarily responsible for the self-destruction of the Church.
I am fully aware of the gravity of admitting to a thought of this kind, and of the even greater gravity of making it known to others. But I thank God for having enabled me to emerge from an ordeal which has purified my faith, and I firmly believe that I should be aiding and abetting the furtherance of evil if I persisted in denying the evidence.
Until the new mass appeared I had tried to convince myself that the Church's self-destruction was the consequence of disobedience on the part of theologians, bishops and even various hierarchies (do not forget the way some of them reacted to Humanae Vitae when it was published), and that the Pope was in no way responsible.
But since the appearance of the new Ordo Missæ this position is no longer tenable.
It is Pope Paul VI who has played a leading, and from certain points of view, an exclusive role in the self-destruction of the Church.
The Missa Normativa was rejected by a large majority of your fellow bishops when it was submitted to the first Synod. Who then did advocate the new mass? Nobody. It is entirely the work of Pope Paul VI.
The new mass is in itself ambiguous; it favours heresy and abounds in sacrileges - anybody would have to be totally blind not to see this clearly. And, if you will forgive my bluntness, what scandalises and astonishes me most of all, is that you bishops failed to give any sign of acknowledging these facts.
Our forefathers in the faith died rather than give up their statues and holy pictures, and yet we today accept that the Mass should be changed, and that we should be forced to accept a new rite which increases the number of occasions of sacrilege and invalid celebrations under the pretext of greater pastoral efficacy.
Your Eminence will almost certainly have seen a copy of the Christmas number of Paris-Match which appeared a few years ago. It carried an illustrated report by Robert Serrou on the eucharistic experiments that were being tried out in Holland: masses celebrated in the vernacular with no vestments, no altar stone, in private houses on dining tables covered with the same cloth that was used every day, with ordinary household loaves and bottles of rough red wine, with household glasses instead of chalices, baskets instead of ciboria, and communion given in the hand to everybody present, whether Catholic or not, sometimes even handed out by girls in mini-skirts, etc. I am sure that you, like every other genuine Christian, must have been outraged by these irreverent, exaggerated and sacrilegious performances. And, your Eminence, please do not forget that the indignation of the faithful was reported by the world press, before the L'Osservatore Romano got round to publishing an official protest against the Dutch innovations.
I must admit that I was naive enough to believe that this protest from Rome was genuine. It was not until the new Ordo Missæ was promulgated that I really accepted that we had been systematically deceived from the very start.
Your Eminence, let me put it to you in the form of a straight question: why didn't the Vatican intervene sooner to put a stop to the sacrilegious experiments in Holland? Is anybody going to believe that Rome knew nothing about them until the article appeared in Paris-Match? Hardly!
And was Paul VI aware of what was going on? Obviously he was, and if he allowed these experiments to develop and spread throughout the Church it was because he wanted them to. And like it or not, we cannot ignore the fact that the same practices which scandalised us then have now been forced on all Catholics by Paul VI himself.
So it was that I was led inescapably - bearing in mind all the innovations that were destroying the Church from within - to the conclusion that they would never have been possible without, at the very least, the consent of the Pope.
A Pope who is openly a heretic cannot do the Church a great deal of damage. There would be an outcry from the faithful which would lead to his being deposed. But Paul VI, a Pope who proclaims the faith while always taking care to leave a tiny area of uncertainty even when he is pronouncing the truth, is in practical terms destroying the Church, or allowing what he teaches to be destroyed - a pope of this kind can only be a master of double-dealing.
What can be the explanation behind such an abomination?
I cannot answer for sure, but perhaps it is not too far-fetched to see in the blindness of the Church's supreme authority a divine response to the blasphemous address to the United Nations Assembly on 4 October 1965: "It is as an expert on humanity that we bring to this Assembly the support of our immediate predecessors, of the entire episcopate of the Catholic Church and our own, convinced as we are that THIS ORGANISATION (UNO) EMBODIES THE INEVITABLE PATH OF MODERN CIVILISATION AND WORLD PEACE . . . We make our voice the voice of the poor, the deprived, the unfortunate, those who yearn for justice, for human dignity, for freedom, for a better life, for progress. The peoples of the world turn to the United Nations as THE LAST HOPE for peace and harmony: WE MAKE BOLD to bring here their and our own tribute of honour and of HOPE."
Your Eminence, the hypothesis of a heretical or schismatic pope is discussed in every manual of Catholic theology, even in the most recent one by Cardinal Journet.
Because the possibility is admitted to exist, there can be nothing damaging to the papacy in seeing if there is not amongst the present confusion some evidence that it has in fact occurred, in conjunction with the particular characteristic of the modernist heresy which is never to show its hand openly.
My letter had no aim other than that of forcing Paul VI to rise to the responsibilities of his office by confirming our faith and condemning the heresy-mongers. What harm can there be in that?
Moreover, publication of my letter has brought me daily letters of support from many priests and theologians.
If the facts as indicated by me are a misrepesentation, why is there such a delay in pointing out how wrong I am? If the facts are true, is it not a Christian duty to place the blame for them where it is due?
After all, it is not Paul VI's personal honour that is at stake, but the honour of God and Holy Mother Church.
Your Eminence, your rank allows you direct access to the Pope. May I in my turn plead with you and beg you to make the Holy Father aware of the way I feel, and to assure him that these feelings are shared by an immense number of priests and faithful.
If Cardinal Villot has kept my letter from him, please could you hand it to him yourself.
Tell him that we pray for him constantly and that we beg him to return to the true faith. He should not see anything offensive in this express wish of his children, but rather an overwhelming charity which urges them to recall to him the words of Our Lord (Luke 22, 32), charging Simon with his task as Peter, the rock. Show him that in actual fact it is Montini, and the outlook of Montini, which leads him to contradict his predecessors and prevent him from confirming his brethren.
Your Eminence, the special intention of my prayers at present is that God may grant you his help in taking the steps I have begged of you.
May I also take this opportunity of wishing you a Holy and a Happy Christmas.
Asking a blessing, I am Your Eminence's most humble and obedient child.
Fr. Noël BARBARA
37150 Bléré - France
signed 11 November 1970
Feast of St. Martin of Tours
(Fortes in Fides, No. 5, Vol. 1)