Quote:

Outside of Which Church?
by Jean Madiran

As a reaction to the papal allocution of 24 May 1976, Jean Madiran wrote the following article which first appeared in the Supplément-Voltigeur of Itinéraires of 15 June 1976. The following translation was made by Father Urban Synder and appeared in The Remnant of 21 July 1976.

"In his allocution to the Consistory of 24 May 1976, where he mentions Archbishop Lefebvre several times by name, Paul VI seems to cut him off and yet he doesn't. He accuses the Archbishop of 'putting himself outside the Church.' But which Church? There are two. And Paul VI has not renounced being the Pope of these two Churches sirnultaneously. Under such conditions, 'outside the Church' is equivocal and does not cut off anything.

That there are now two Churches, with one and the same Paul VI at the head of both, is not our doing, we are not making it up, but simply stating the way things are.

Many episcopates, which declare themselves to be in communion with the Pope, and whom the Pope does not reject from his communion, are objectively outside the Catholic communion.

The episcopate of Holland, in an official document, has explicitly called into doubt the virginal conception of Our Lord, but they have not been summoned by the Pope to retract or to resign. On the contrary-they have spread through-out the whole world their 'Dutch Catechism' which doesn't contain the things necessary to know for salvation, and which inspires all the new catechisms.

The French episcopate since 1969 subjects the faithful, 'as a reminder of faith,' to the false teaching that in the Mass 'there is question simply of a memorial.' None of our protestations or supplications has succeeded in bringing them to deny or even explain this. It is in the name of the Council, of the Pope, and of the bishops in communion with him that now, for ten years or more, and without any efficacious denial, there is imposed on us all the discourses and, decisions which install the immanent apostasy, the permanent auto-demolition, the capitulation before the world, the cult of man, the opening to Communism. There is no question here of some handful of marginal dissidents, as the Pope insinuates in his allocution. There is question of the greater part of the actual holders of the apostolic succession. Legitimate holders? Yes, but prevaricators, deserters, impostors. Paul VI remains at their head without either disavowing or correcting them. He keeps them in his communion, he presides over their Church also.

Archbishop Lefebvre is not in his present situation through any fault of his own. He didn't innovate anything, he didn't invent anything, he didn't overturn anything; he has simply preserved and transmitted the deposit which he received. He has kept the promises of his baptism, the doctrine of his catechism, the Mass of his ordination, the dogmas defined by Popes and Councils, the theology and the traditional ecclesiology of the Church of Rome. Just by his existence, by his very being, and without having willed it, he is thus the witness of a crisis which is not of his making, but that of an uncertain Pope at the head of two Churches at the same time.

Cardinal Suenens declared in 1969: 'We could draw up an impressive list of theses, taught in Rome yesterday and before yesterday as sole truths (seules valables), and which were eliminated by the Council Fathers.’ A formidable doctrinal revolution! Cardinal Suenens is happy about it. The greater part of the actual holders of the apostolic succession think and speak on this point like Cardinal Suenens. Neither he nor they are disavowed. Paul VI remains at their head and keeps them in his communion; a communion where they profess that the Church, yesterday and before yesterday, was mistaken. But on all these points where they teach that the Church was mistaken, who or what can guarantee to us that it is not they themselves who, today, are mistaken and are misleading us?

It doesn't help at all to reassure us that the Council is badly interpreted and the Pope badly understood. If the Council has been constantly interpreted the way it has, it is with the active or passive consent of the bishops in communion with the Pope. Thus there is established a Conciliar Church, different from the Catholic Church. And no bishop, however scandalous his post-conciliar excesses, has received from Paul VI the severe public rebukes which he has reserved for Archbishop Lefebvre alone, and for the sole reason that the Archbishop remains unshakeably faithful to the Catholic religion such as it was until 1958.

If the Catholic religion, such as it was in 1958 at the death of Pius XII, contained some things optional, variable, which (let us suppose) have become anachronistic in 1976, to remain attached to them does not, all the same, constitute a crime. Anachronism is not necessarily in itself something which puts you 'outside the Church.' If we are going to talk about anachronisms, pure, simple, and unlimited, they are in the new catechisms from which the things necessary for salvation have been excised; they are in the vernacular Masses, accompanied by Marxist chants and erotic dances; they are in the falsification of Scripture imposed by the episcopate, such as where a (French) liturgical reading proclaims that 'to live holily it is necessary to marry'; they are in all the other infamous things of like kind of which none, for the past ten years, has been either retracted by those guilty , or condemned by higher authority. There are indeed crimes really going on in the Church, those just mentioned, but they are considered less criminal than preserving the Catholic religion such as it was in 1958 at the death of Pius XII.

All this presupposes a new religion, another ecclesial community, which nevertheless is installed in the posts of command of Church administration, and boasts of communion with Pope Paul, having at the same time, to put it mildly, the consent of Pope Paul.

Archbishop Lefebvre 'outside the Church'? Out of the one just mentioned, certainly. But it surpasses belief that a person 'puts himself outside' the Catholic Church, without budging, or by simply remaining in the Catholic religion such as it was at the death of Pius XII in 1958.

There are two Churches under Paul VI. Not to see that there are two, or not to see that they are strangers the one to the other, or not to see that Paul VI thus far is presiding over both, partakes of blindness and in some cases perhaps of invincible blindness. But when one has once seen it, not to say it would be to add complicity by silence to an enormous monstrosity.

Gustave Corcao in the review Itineraires for November, 1975, and then Father Bruckberger in L' Aurore for 18 March 1976, remarked in print:

Quote:The religious crisis is not like that in the 14th century, when you had, for one single Church, two or three Popes simultaneously; today, rather, there is question of one single Pope for two Churches, the Catholic and the post-conciliar.

But to belong simultaneously to two such contrary Churches is impossible. It is impossible even for a Pope, by the very definition of his office. If Paul VI doesn't disengage himself, there is going to be an inevitable blow-up (choc en retour) as a result."