8 hours ago
Not necessarily a bona fide 'Question & Answer' article but the following, taken from The Recusant Easter 2025 issue, once again clarifies and expands on how to traditionally view the issue of Faith above the Sacraments:
Pages 32-40:
This may seem obvious to you, but believe it or not there exist many Catholics out there, Traditional Catholics included, who struggle to understand the basic fact that the Catholic Faith comes first, before all else. The mistaken notion that validity, “valid sacraments,” attending Mass every Sunday come-what-may, access to a priest, a chapel, a school, or whatever else, are somehow the sine qua non of saving your soul. It is not true, and like all bad ideas, the potential consequences are hair-raising.
As I say, it might seem obvious to you and I, but since it is as well to spell out the obvious every once in a while, let us begin by quoting the old SSPX. Here, for instance, is Bishop Williamson, back in the days when he still spoke like a Traditional Catholic:
That last sentence might have been a rhetorical flourish, perhaps he didn’t mean it in the literal sense. For the record, the sacraments do matter: yes, they are wonderful in themselves, they are an important aid, they can make a huge difference and those early Traditionalists in the 1970s (and many SSPX faithful prior to 2012) who drove long distances just for a Sunday Mass had the right idea, absolutely. The sacraments are very important, they matter a great deal. But the Catholic Faith matters more.
The Catholic Faith is the only way we are going to save our soul. It is absolutely certainly the sine qua non of getting to heaven. It is the first of the three theological virtues, but like the other two it does not exist in a vacuum; it has an object. And that object is Catholic doctrine. It is not enough merely to say that I believe: it matters what I believe. Even the Church herself is an object of the Catholic Faith, as is clear from the Nicaean Creed, as this excellent passage from Mitre and Crook reminds us:
So the Faith comes before even the Church. By the way, please do not take this one quote as an unqualified endorsement of the whole book. Its late author, Fr. Bryan Houghton, was one of those 1950s parish priest who refused the New Mass when it came out and continued offering the Traditional Mass. He does, it is true, end up looking a somewhat ambiguous Traditionalist by the end of the first chapter, although we must remember that it was written in the 1970s and despite its sometimes naïve tone, it does contain some real gems. And he does go out of his way to defend Archbishop Lefebvre, despite having not altogether agreed with him. Hmm, Archbishop Lefebvre. There’s a thought. What does he have to say on the question?
Note the last bit - the Archbishop more than once invited his seminarians, priests and people to abandon him if he every changed his teaching or his adherence to Tradition in the least way. Hence it cannot have been “valid sacraments” which mattered most. But what about the consecrations in June 1988, surely if anything was all about valid sacraments, it was that?
Notice, the Archbishop explains his actions on that day by saying that he is merely a bishop who is continuing to transmit - what? Valid sacraments? Likewise, what he says about his own priests: they are resisting the apostasy by giving what to the faithful? Valid sacraments? And what is it that he can hear the previous Popes beseeching him to transmit? What exactly is ‘this treasure which we have given you’ - is it their holy orders? One year later, we see Archbishop Lefebvre repeating the same idea. Pay attention to exactly what is at stake, in his words:
Very well, though perhaps someone will object that this is all the peculiar view or idiosyncratic emphasis of Archbishop Lefebvre and no one else. But wait, there was another bishop present on that famous day at Écône as co-consecrator! Who remembers the sermon in which Bishop de Castro Mayer said that he felt a duty to be present in order to ensure valid sacraments? Isn’t that what he said? Let’s take a look:
Archbishop Lefebvre was not alone in his view then, it seems. And Archbishop Lefebvre was consistent on this point, it wasn’t only when he was speaking to the SSPX that he used to say these things. Here he is relating a conversation he once had with Cardinal Oddi and “four more -or-less Traditional Cardinals”:
Well, well. It is not a question of the liturgy, it is a question of the Faith. Imagine that. And what’s all this talk about waging the same fight as that of Cardinal Pie and Bishop Freppel? What was their view of things, I wonder? And what was their fight, was is a fight for valid sacraments, or was it rather a fight for sound, uncompromising doctrine?
Hold on a moment, so the greatest calamity isn’t the unavailability of Tridentine Masses, or valid sacraments or whatever? It is to abandon or even diminish the truth. Also, notice that whatever else happens, all is not lost as long as what remain standing in their integrity? That sounds a lot like “The gravest questions are always the questions of doctrine!” doesn’t it?
Sorry Cardinal Pie, pardon me, would you mind repeating that last sentence again, please - what is it that’s the only chance for the restoration of order in the world..? And how interesting that he should say that our imperative duty is professing the Faith publicly, and especially when and where it is undermined or threatened. That sounds very similar to Bishop de Castro Mayer going to Écône for the 1988 consecrations because of his duty to profess the Faith in front of the whole Church. Are we beginning to see a recurring theme? Here is Cardinal Pie again:
And here he is again:
We could go on like this all day. Very well, but what about canon law, I hear someone ask. Surely some clever person out there will be able to find a quote from canon law regarding sacraments, validity, the right to go to Mass wherever and whenever one pleases, and so forth? Here is Archbishop Lefebvre again:
It’s just common sense really, isn’t it? The law is at the service of the Faith, and not vice-versa, obviously. As usual, Archbishop Lefebvre brings a clarity and simplicity which leaves you thinking that you knew all along but couldn’t have put it as simply as that. Any argument from canon law doesn’t work, because any law presupposes something which comes first, it presupposes a set of circumstances which today very often no longer exist, such as the important fact that your valid Mass isn’t one which is founded on compromise, or allowed by kind permission of the enemy, one which displeases God in other words. Like any human law, canon law is a secondary thing at the service of the Faith. That is why the supreme law is the salvation of souls: if any other ecclesiastical law, due to the circumstances, risks interfering with or hampering that goal, even slightly, then it is not serving its purpose and does not apply.
There are plenty of other things we could quote too - but how many quotes are necessary? You can either see it or you can’t, you either understand it or you don’t. The reason you should be convinced that the Faith comes first, before all else, even sacraments, should be because your reason tells you so based on all the information which your mind has been able to grasp, and not because this or that person says so, even if we are talking about Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinal Pie. The reliance on experts, on this-famous-person-said, on the argument from authority in other words, is a human weakness but it is especially a plague on our times. These quotes can perhaps help people to see, but they shouldn’t really be why you are convinced of it: that honour belongs to your reason. The fact of the matter is that doctrine, which is to say the objectively knowable content of the Catholic Faith, has to come first, before all else. Bishop Williamson was right all those years ago. The gravest questions really are questions of doctrine. That is the first point to grasp.
Questions of doctrine come first, before all else, including one’s own desire to attend Mass every week, including which Mass is valid and which doubtful, including (yes, this happens too) who else will be there at this or that Mass, who I want to ‘hang out with’ or to be seen hanging out with. Those who say otherwise are mistaken. As to those who are forced to admit the truth of this, in order to maintain their “Sacraments First” position, logically they are left with two options. They must either hold that there are no doctrinal differences between various priests and Masses (Indult, SSPX, Fake Resistance, Sedevacantist and so forth); or they must
say that those doctrinal differences do not really matter. Either way, what has become of sound doctrine, what has become of the Faith? It is because of the danger to sound doctrine and the duty to confess Christ before men that we are not free simply to attend any “valid Mass”.
Again, let us quote Bishop Williamson from the days when he still sounded like Archbishop Lefebvre. Remember that there was a time when he still had a sound grasp of Catholic thought:
The old SSPX used to say the same:
Those words were written in concerning the New Mass, but we can honestly ask ourselves: are Indult / Ecclesia Dei Masses pleasing to God? Is the Mass of a priest who should be, and originally was, suspended for crimes against the Sixth Commandment with minors pleasing to God? What about the Mass of the bishop responsible for obstinately promoting his public ministry? We could go on: you get the point, or you don’t. What is pleasing to God should concern me first and foremost, not where can I go that is convenient for me as long it’s valid.
Let us follow the logic of Fr. Scott’s explanation above. What matters more - that I find and receive as many sacraments as possible, wherever they are from, provided only that they are valid? Or rather, that I am careful to do only what I think will be pleasing to Our Lord and to put the Faith first? Interestingly enough, Fr Scott said the same about going to confession to a Novus Ordo priest: even if you are somehow certain that it is valid, you still shouldn’t go. The reasons given sound slightly different because we are talking about a different sacrament, but the reasoning is the same:
As above, the question was about a Novus Ordo priest, but we could ask the same of other priests too. Can one have confidence in the judgement of a priest who, for instance, accepts all of Vatican II’s teaching along with all the dubious moral teaching of the conciliar church, who accepts the legitimacy and orthodoxy of the New Mass but says the Traditional Mass (or as he probably calls it, “the Extraordinary Form”) with the permission of the modernist hierarchy? Is that really someone to whom we ought to look as a judge, teacher and physician? Or are our souls too precious to take such a risk? What about a bishop who obstinately promotes the
aforementioned hypothetical priest suspended for unnatural crimes, are his judgement, his instruction or his remedies to be depended on? What about one who has spent the last several years trying to convince Traditional Catholics that the New Mass isn’t as bad as they thought and that, sometimes, it can even be good? No. To quote Fr Scott again: “Manifestly it is not possible to have confidence in the guidance of a priest who compromises with modernism.”
Whether it be a question of what is pleasing to God (as with the Mass, which is the official, public worship of God) or a question of what is wise, what is prudent (as with confession, a sacrament which takes place in private, but where we have to be docile and place our soul, as it were, into the hands of the priest, treating his every word as though it were Our Lord himself talking), the answer is the same and for the same reason. No! And why? Because sacraments do not matter enough to risk endangering the your soul. Clearly then, there is more to saving your soul that merely the reception of sacraments regardless of the how, the when, or the where. It is the Faith which will save our soul, not sacraments-at-any-price. Mass and Confession are a great help in getting to heaven, provided they can be obtained without offending Our Lord. But they are hardly sine qua non, as those Saints who attained heaven without them attest. If there is one sacrament which could be said to be essential, non-negotiable, a sine qua non for getting to heaven it is surely baptism. Almost all of us have seen or been present at a Traditional baptism. Here is how the ceremony begins:
Notice that the answer to ‘What are you asking from the Church?’ is not: ‘Valid sacraments.’ It is not even ‘Baptism,’ as one might expect. It is the Faith. Why might that be, other than for the same reasons discussed above? It is the Faith which will communicate life everlasting to us, not the sacraments as such.
The Catholics of the early Church surely understood this far better than we do today. Even the sacrament of baptism is not something which one can risk betraying Our Lord in order to obtain. A catechumen due to be baptised might very easily be swept up with others in a mass arrest and told to offer incense to an idol. If he does so, he lives; if he refuses, he dies. Put yourself in his shoes. You are due to be baptised next week. If you offer incense, you get to live long enough to receive the sacrament; if you refuse, you will die without it. And yet to offer the incense is not only the wrong thing to do, one such action is so serious an act of betrayal that it can lead to you totally losing the Faith once and for all (Martin Scorsese’s film Silence got that right at least). The right thing to do is to refuse and die a martyr. You will be baptised by blood in any case, we know that and today we can formulate it in those terms, thanks to the work of far greater men in previous centuries. A Roman martyr would perhaps have expressed his conviction that he was doing the right thing in a less formulaic way. But even so, what mattered most to these early martyrs was not the ability to receive sacraments, even the sacrament of baptism, but rather the profession of the Faith “before men”.
He who confesses Me before men...
That is the final point which we must grasp concerning the Faith vs. “valid sacraments” debate. It is not enough merely to believe: you must also say that you believe, you must admit that you believe before others, even when you know it will be received in a hostile way, even at the risk of your own life. This act of admitting what we believe, of saying it loud and clear before others, including those who are hostile, is called profession or confession. That is why there are Saints who were not martyrs but whom we call confessors: they were witnesses for the Catholic Faith before others, albeit not with their blood. If I believe Catholic teaching but keep it to myself and hide the light under a bushel, I won’t save my soul and in all likelihood I won’t persevere. “Keep the Faith!” is a misleading statement - yes, you have to keep the Faith, obviously, but you have also to try to spread it, you have to profess it.
Everyone has a right to hear the truth, even those who don’t want to hear it and will react violently against it. Archbishop Lefebvre famously said that the devil’s masterstroke was to get people to leave Tradition through “obedience.” In reality this means taking something good in itself (obedience) and placing it above an even higher good. Well, in our day this is the equivalent.
In 2025, the devil’s latest master-stroke, it seems, is to get Catholics (“Traditional” Catholics!) to compromise on a level of doctrine, to compromise their profession of the Faith, in order to obtain “valid sacraments”; to place the good of sacraments above the higher good of the Faith and its profession, in other words. Even ten or fifteen years ago this was still not all that common. Today, with modernist Rome’s slippery snare of the Indult Mass and encouraged by Bishop Williamson, it is now springing up everywhere.
Pages 32-40:
Faith > Sacraments
This may seem obvious to you, but believe it or not there exist many Catholics out there, Traditional Catholics included, who struggle to understand the basic fact that the Catholic Faith comes first, before all else. The mistaken notion that validity, “valid sacraments,” attending Mass every Sunday come-what-may, access to a priest, a chapel, a school, or whatever else, are somehow the sine qua non of saving your soul. It is not true, and like all bad ideas, the potential consequences are hair-raising.
As I say, it might seem obvious to you and I, but since it is as well to spell out the obvious every once in a while, let us begin by quoting the old SSPX. Here, for instance, is Bishop Williamson, back in the days when he still spoke like a Traditional Catholic:
Quote:“...The gravest questions are always, always questions of doctrine! Just like for engineers, the gravest questions are not has he got a nice tie, has he got a sweet wife - you can have an S.O.B. of an engineer, but if he knows his business that’s the one you employ. […] The modern mind thinks ideas don’t matter, it’s only what’s practical that matters. And you’ve seen the same thing with Cardinal Castrillon. ‘Look, dear Society of St. Pius X, let’s not worry about doctrine, let’s just get together and be friends!’ *kiss* *kiss* *kiss* … ‘Eminence, We’ve got two religions which are fighting it out to the death.’ And of course that’s the truth of the matter. It’s doctrine. And we’ve to get down to the questions of doctrine. If I want to get to heaven, I’ve got to be filled with the truth, I need the truth, I’m not going to get to heaven without the truth. The rest doesn’t matter.” [Emphasis in the original]
(“The Original Tribute” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWoWispv08s)
That last sentence might have been a rhetorical flourish, perhaps he didn’t mean it in the literal sense. For the record, the sacraments do matter: yes, they are wonderful in themselves, they are an important aid, they can make a huge difference and those early Traditionalists in the 1970s (and many SSPX faithful prior to 2012) who drove long distances just for a Sunday Mass had the right idea, absolutely. The sacraments are very important, they matter a great deal. But the Catholic Faith matters more.
The Catholic Faith is the only way we are going to save our soul. It is absolutely certainly the sine qua non of getting to heaven. It is the first of the three theological virtues, but like the other two it does not exist in a vacuum; it has an object. And that object is Catholic doctrine. It is not enough merely to say that I believe: it matters what I believe. Even the Church herself is an object of the Catholic Faith, as is clear from the Nicaean Creed, as this excellent passage from Mitre and Crook reminds us:
Quote:“… One gets the impression that Faith as a supernatural gift merely empowers a person to believe what the Church teaches and the objects of Faith are provided by the Church. It is therefore the Church which justifies the Faith and not the Faith which justifies the Church. Hence the Church must be obeyed in all things, even if she is quite clearly hiding her light under a bushel. It automatically becomes right and proper that the light should be so shaded because legitimate authority in the Church has said so. I do not think that that is an unfair or distorted representation of the case, is it? But surely it is evident that such an argument is tautological or a vicious circle? I am to know what God has revealed by the authority of the Church. And how am I to know that the Church has such authority? Because the Church says that God has revealed it. It is patently nonsense. […] The Church is the guardian of God’s revelation but not its source. She herself is one of the objects of Faith: I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
(Bryan Houghton, Mitre and Crook p.186 ff.)
So the Faith comes before even the Church. By the way, please do not take this one quote as an unqualified endorsement of the whole book. Its late author, Fr. Bryan Houghton, was one of those 1950s parish priest who refused the New Mass when it came out and continued offering the Traditional Mass. He does, it is true, end up looking a somewhat ambiguous Traditionalist by the end of the first chapter, although we must remember that it was written in the 1970s and despite its sometimes naïve tone, it does contain some real gems. And he does go out of his way to defend Archbishop Lefebvre, despite having not altogether agreed with him. Hmm, Archbishop Lefebvre. There’s a thought. What does he have to say on the question?
Quote:“In a moment of terror, in a moment of confusion, in a moment of destruction of the Church, what should we do but hold fast to what Jesus has taught us and what His Church has taught us as being Truth forever, defined forever? One cannot change what has been defined once and for all by the Sovereign Pontiffs with their infallibility. It is not changeable. We cannot change the truth written forever in our holy books. Because this immutability of Truth corresponds to the Immutability of God. It is a communication of the Immutability of God to the immutability of our truths. To change our truths would be tantamount to changing the Immutability of God. We say it every day in the Office of None: “Immotus in Se permanens - God remaining immutable in Himself” forever. So we must attach ourselves to this truth which has been taught in a permanent way, and not let ourselves be troubled by the disorder we witness today. Consequently we must know, at some point, not to obey, in order to obey. This is it. Indeed, this Virtue of Almighty God of which I was speaking not long ago, the Good Lord has willed that it be transmitted to us somehow by men who participate in His authority.
That is why St. Paul himself says: “If an angel from heaven or I myself” - remember it is the great St. Paul himself who is speaking – “If an angel from heaven or I myself were to teach you a truth contrary to what has been taught to you originally, do not listen to us!” That is it. Today we are faced with this reality. I tell you myself, very willingly, my dear friends, I repeat these words very willingly: If it were to happen that I teach you something contrary to what the whole Tradition of the Church has taught, do not listen to me!”
(Archbishop Lefebvre, sermon of Dec. 8th 1976)
Note the last bit - the Archbishop more than once invited his seminarians, priests and people to abandon him if he every changed his teaching or his adherence to Tradition in the least way. Hence it cannot have been “valid sacraments” which mattered most. But what about the consecrations in June 1988, surely if anything was all about valid sacraments, it was that?
Quote: “I am simply a bishop of the Catholic Church who is continuing to transmit Catholic doctrine. I think, and this will certainly not be too far off, that you will be able to engrave on my tombstone these words of St. Paul: “Tradidi quod et accepi - I have transmitted to you what I have received,” nothing else. I am just the postman bringing you a letter. I did not write the letter, the message, this Word of God. God Himself wrote it; Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself gave it to us. As for us, we just handed it down, through these dear priests here present and through all those who have chosen to resist this wave of apostasy in the Church, by keeping the Eternal Faith and giving it to the faithful. […] It seems to me, my dear brethren, that I am hearing the voices of all these Popes - since Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII - telling us: ‘Please, we beseech you, what are you going to do with our teachings, with our predications, with the Catholic Faith? Are you going to abandon it? Are you going to let it disappear from this earth? Please, please, continue to keep this treasure which we have given you.’ ”
(Abp. Lefebvre, consecrations sermon, 30th June, 1988)
Notice, the Archbishop explains his actions on that day by saying that he is merely a bishop who is continuing to transmit - what? Valid sacraments? Likewise, what he says about his own priests: they are resisting the apostasy by giving what to the faithful? Valid sacraments? And what is it that he can hear the previous Popes beseeching him to transmit? What exactly is ‘this treasure which we have given you’ - is it their holy orders? One year later, we see Archbishop Lefebvre repeating the same idea. Pay attention to exactly what is at stake, in his words:
Quote:“Since there was no other way for us to go, I am very happy that we are now assured of having bishops who keep Catholic Tradition and who maintain the Faith. Because it is the Faith that is at stake. It’s not a little matter. It’s not a matter of a few trifles.”
(Abp. Lefebvre, One Year after the Consecrations, July 1989)
Very well, though perhaps someone will object that this is all the peculiar view or idiosyncratic emphasis of Archbishop Lefebvre and no one else. But wait, there was another bishop present on that famous day at Écône as co-consecrator! Who remembers the sermon in which Bishop de Castro Mayer said that he felt a duty to be present in order to ensure valid sacraments? Isn’t that what he said? Let’s take a look:
Quote:“My presence here at this ceremony is a matter of conscience: it is the duty of a profession of the Catholic Faith before the entire Church... St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that there is no obligation to make a public profession of Faith in every circumstance, but when the Faith is in danger it is urgent to profess it, even at the risk of one’s life. This is the situation in which we find ourselves.”
(Bp. de Castro Mayer, 30th June 1988)
Archbishop Lefebvre was not alone in his view then, it seems. And Archbishop Lefebvre was consistent on this point, it wasn’t only when he was speaking to the SSPX that he used to say these things. Here he is relating a conversation he once had with Cardinal Oddi and “four more -or-less Traditional Cardinals”:
Quote:“ ‘You must change, come back to Tradition. It is not a question of the Liturgy, it is a question of the Faith.’
... Meanwhile the problem remains grave, very, very grave. We absolutely must not minimize it ... It is striking to see how our fight now is exactly the same fight as was being fought then by the great Catholics of the 19th century... We stand exactly where Cardinal Pie, Bishop Freppel, Louis Vueillot stood.”
(Abp. Lefebvre, 6th Sept 1990)
Well, well. It is not a question of the liturgy, it is a question of the Faith. Imagine that. And what’s all this talk about waging the same fight as that of Cardinal Pie and Bishop Freppel? What was their view of things, I wonder? And what was their fight, was is a fight for valid sacraments, or was it rather a fight for sound, uncompromising doctrine?
Quote:“The greatest misery, for a century or for a country, is to abandon or to diminish the truth. We can get over everything else; we never get over the sacrifice of principles. Characters may give in at given times and public morality receive some breach from vice or bad examples, but nothing is lost as long as the true doctrines remain standing in their integrity. With them everything is remade sooner or later, men and institutions, because we are always able to come back to the good when we have not left truth. To give up the principles, outside which nothing can be built that is strong and lasting would take away even the very hope of salvation. So the greatest service a man can render to his kinsmen, in the times when everything is failing and growing dim, is to assert the truth without fear even though no one listens to him; because it is a furrow of light which he opens through the intellects, and if his voice cannot manage to dominate the noises of the time, at least it will be received as the messenger of salvation in the future.”
(Mgr. Charles-Emile Freppel, Bishop of Angers)
Hold on a moment, so the greatest calamity isn’t the unavailability of Tridentine Masses, or valid sacraments or whatever? It is to abandon or even diminish the truth. Also, notice that whatever else happens, all is not lost as long as what remain standing in their integrity? That sounds a lot like “The gravest questions are always the questions of doctrine!” doesn’t it?
Quote:“The imperative duty and the noble custom of holy Church is to pay homage especially to the truth when it is ignored, to profess it when it is threatened. There is a mediocre merit to claim to be its apostle and its supporter when all acknowledge and adhere to it. To make so much of the human state of the truth and to love it so little for itself that we deny it as soon as it is no longer popular, as soon as it does not have number, authority, preponderance, success: would that not be a new way of doing our duty, and of understanding honour? Let it be known: the good remains good, and must continue to be called as such, even when “nobody does it” (Ps. XIII, 3). Furthermore, a small number of persons putting forth claims is sufficient to save the integrity of the doctrines. And the integrity of doctrine is the only chance for the restoration of order in the world.”
(Cardinal Pie, Bishop of Poitiers)
Sorry Cardinal Pie, pardon me, would you mind repeating that last sentence again, please - what is it that’s the only chance for the restoration of order in the world..? And how interesting that he should say that our imperative duty is professing the Faith publicly, and especially when and where it is undermined or threatened. That sounds very similar to Bishop de Castro Mayer going to Écône for the 1988 consecrations because of his duty to profess the Faith in front of the whole Church. Are we beginning to see a recurring theme? Here is Cardinal Pie again:
Quote:“The battle is mainly a battle of doctrines. Your resistance, dear brothers, consists therefore in being firm in your minds against the seduction of false and misleading principles. […] When I ask the wise men of this era to identify the worst hardship of modern society, they reply unanimously that mankind is becoming weak and soft. This reply has even become cliché. However, we must go further, and ask the ultimate question. […] Where does this weakness come from? Isn’t it the natural and inevitable consequence of doctrinal weakness, weakness in belief, and, to be more exact, weakness in the Faith? After all, courage has no reason to exist if it isn’t at the service of a conviction.” (Ibid.)
And here he is again:
Quote:“Battles are won or lost at the level of principles. To wait until we see the consequences of false principles before we react, is to be too late. For at that point, the battle is already lost.”
We could go on like this all day. Very well, but what about canon law, I hear someone ask. Surely some clever person out there will be able to find a quote from canon law regarding sacraments, validity, the right to go to Mass wherever and whenever one pleases, and so forth? Here is Archbishop Lefebvre again:
Quote:“Why does the Church have this legislation? It is to help us in the practice of the First Commandment, which is that we have to profess the Catholic Faith.”
(Abp. Lefebvre, Easter 1986 sermon, Écône.)
It’s just common sense really, isn’t it? The law is at the service of the Faith, and not vice-versa, obviously. As usual, Archbishop Lefebvre brings a clarity and simplicity which leaves you thinking that you knew all along but couldn’t have put it as simply as that. Any argument from canon law doesn’t work, because any law presupposes something which comes first, it presupposes a set of circumstances which today very often no longer exist, such as the important fact that your valid Mass isn’t one which is founded on compromise, or allowed by kind permission of the enemy, one which displeases God in other words. Like any human law, canon law is a secondary thing at the service of the Faith. That is why the supreme law is the salvation of souls: if any other ecclesiastical law, due to the circumstances, risks interfering with or hampering that goal, even slightly, then it is not serving its purpose and does not apply.
There are plenty of other things we could quote too - but how many quotes are necessary? You can either see it or you can’t, you either understand it or you don’t. The reason you should be convinced that the Faith comes first, before all else, even sacraments, should be because your reason tells you so based on all the information which your mind has been able to grasp, and not because this or that person says so, even if we are talking about Archbishop Lefebvre and Cardinal Pie. The reliance on experts, on this-famous-person-said, on the argument from authority in other words, is a human weakness but it is especially a plague on our times. These quotes can perhaps help people to see, but they shouldn’t really be why you are convinced of it: that honour belongs to your reason. The fact of the matter is that doctrine, which is to say the objectively knowable content of the Catholic Faith, has to come first, before all else. Bishop Williamson was right all those years ago. The gravest questions really are questions of doctrine. That is the first point to grasp.
Questions of doctrine come first, before all else, including one’s own desire to attend Mass every week, including which Mass is valid and which doubtful, including (yes, this happens too) who else will be there at this or that Mass, who I want to ‘hang out with’ or to be seen hanging out with. Those who say otherwise are mistaken. As to those who are forced to admit the truth of this, in order to maintain their “Sacraments First” position, logically they are left with two options. They must either hold that there are no doctrinal differences between various priests and Masses (Indult, SSPX, Fake Resistance, Sedevacantist and so forth); or they must
say that those doctrinal differences do not really matter. Either way, what has become of sound doctrine, what has become of the Faith? It is because of the danger to sound doctrine and the duty to confess Christ before men that we are not free simply to attend any “valid Mass”.
Again, let us quote Bishop Williamson from the days when he still sounded like Archbishop Lefebvre. Remember that there was a time when he still had a sound grasp of Catholic thought:
Quote:“If the New Mass is valid but illicit, may I attend? No! The fact that it’s valid does not mean it’s ok to attend.”
(Transcribed from the audio available here.)
The old SSPX used to say the same:
Quote:“However, even if we could be certain of the validity of the Novus Ordo Masses celebrated in today’s Conciliar churches, it does not follow that they are pleasing to God. … Furthermore, it is never permitted to knowingly and willingly participate in an evil or sinful thing, even if it is only venially sinful. For the end does not justify the means. Consequently, although it is a good thing to want to assist at Mass and satisfy one’s Sunday obligation, it is never permitted to use a sinful means to do this.”
(‘Questions and Answers with Fr Peter Scott’ - ‘Is the Novus Ordo Mass invalid, or sacrilegious, and should I assist at it when I have no alternative?’ archived here)
Those words were written in concerning the New Mass, but we can honestly ask ourselves: are Indult / Ecclesia Dei Masses pleasing to God? Is the Mass of a priest who should be, and originally was, suspended for crimes against the Sixth Commandment with minors pleasing to God? What about the Mass of the bishop responsible for obstinately promoting his public ministry? We could go on: you get the point, or you don’t. What is pleasing to God should concern me first and foremost, not where can I go that is convenient for me as long it’s valid.
Let us follow the logic of Fr. Scott’s explanation above. What matters more - that I find and receive as many sacraments as possible, wherever they are from, provided only that they are valid? Or rather, that I am careful to do only what I think will be pleasing to Our Lord and to put the Faith first? Interestingly enough, Fr Scott said the same about going to confession to a Novus Ordo priest: even if you are somehow certain that it is valid, you still shouldn’t go. The reasons given sound slightly different because we are talking about a different sacrament, but the reasoning is the same:
Quote: “I do not hesitate to strongly recommend against going to confession to such a priest, even when there is an assurance of a valid absolution. A penitent does not go to confession simply to receive the absolution of his sins. He has the desire to receive all the effects of the sacrament, including the direction, and if need be reprimand of the confessor, growth in the love of God and in sanctifying grace, a firmer purpose of amendment and the satisfaction of the temporal punishment due to his sins. All this is only possible if he sees in the confessor a judge, a teacher, and a physician. It is to guarantee these full effects of the sacrament of Penance that the Church supplies jurisdiction so that the faithful can ask any priest to hear their confessions, for any just reason (canon 2261, §2, 1917 Code and canon 1335 of the 1983 Code).
Manifestly it is not possible to have confidence in the guidance of a priest who compromises with modernism by celebrating the New Mass, even if he otherwise appears orthodox. Neither his judgment as to the reality of our contrition, nor his instruction as to the gravity of our sins, nor his remedies for the ills of our sins can be depended upon. [...] Our souls are much too precious to place in the hands of those who lack conviction. Consequently, outside case of danger of death, it is preferable to make an act of perfect contrition, and to wait until one can open one’s soul to a traditional priest that can be trusted.”
(Ibid.)
As above, the question was about a Novus Ordo priest, but we could ask the same of other priests too. Can one have confidence in the judgement of a priest who, for instance, accepts all of Vatican II’s teaching along with all the dubious moral teaching of the conciliar church, who accepts the legitimacy and orthodoxy of the New Mass but says the Traditional Mass (or as he probably calls it, “the Extraordinary Form”) with the permission of the modernist hierarchy? Is that really someone to whom we ought to look as a judge, teacher and physician? Or are our souls too precious to take such a risk? What about a bishop who obstinately promotes the
aforementioned hypothetical priest suspended for unnatural crimes, are his judgement, his instruction or his remedies to be depended on? What about one who has spent the last several years trying to convince Traditional Catholics that the New Mass isn’t as bad as they thought and that, sometimes, it can even be good? No. To quote Fr Scott again: “Manifestly it is not possible to have confidence in the guidance of a priest who compromises with modernism.”
Whether it be a question of what is pleasing to God (as with the Mass, which is the official, public worship of God) or a question of what is wise, what is prudent (as with confession, a sacrament which takes place in private, but where we have to be docile and place our soul, as it were, into the hands of the priest, treating his every word as though it were Our Lord himself talking), the answer is the same and for the same reason. No! And why? Because sacraments do not matter enough to risk endangering the your soul. Clearly then, there is more to saving your soul that merely the reception of sacraments regardless of the how, the when, or the where. It is the Faith which will save our soul, not sacraments-at-any-price. Mass and Confession are a great help in getting to heaven, provided they can be obtained without offending Our Lord. But they are hardly sine qua non, as those Saints who attained heaven without them attest. If there is one sacrament which could be said to be essential, non-negotiable, a sine qua non for getting to heaven it is surely baptism. Almost all of us have seen or been present at a Traditional baptism. Here is how the ceremony begins:
Quote:“Priest: What are you asking of God’s Church?
Sponsors: Faith.
Priest: What does the Faith hold out to you?
Sponsors: Everlasting life.
[Quid petis ab Ecclesia Dei?
- Fidem.
Fides, quid tibi praestat?
- Vitam aeternam.] ”
(Rituale Romanum: Baptism)]
Notice that the answer to ‘What are you asking from the Church?’ is not: ‘Valid sacraments.’ It is not even ‘Baptism,’ as one might expect. It is the Faith. Why might that be, other than for the same reasons discussed above? It is the Faith which will communicate life everlasting to us, not the sacraments as such.
The Catholics of the early Church surely understood this far better than we do today. Even the sacrament of baptism is not something which one can risk betraying Our Lord in order to obtain. A catechumen due to be baptised might very easily be swept up with others in a mass arrest and told to offer incense to an idol. If he does so, he lives; if he refuses, he dies. Put yourself in his shoes. You are due to be baptised next week. If you offer incense, you get to live long enough to receive the sacrament; if you refuse, you will die without it. And yet to offer the incense is not only the wrong thing to do, one such action is so serious an act of betrayal that it can lead to you totally losing the Faith once and for all (Martin Scorsese’s film Silence got that right at least). The right thing to do is to refuse and die a martyr. You will be baptised by blood in any case, we know that and today we can formulate it in those terms, thanks to the work of far greater men in previous centuries. A Roman martyr would perhaps have expressed his conviction that he was doing the right thing in a less formulaic way. But even so, what mattered most to these early martyrs was not the ability to receive sacraments, even the sacrament of baptism, but rather the profession of the Faith “before men”.
He who confesses Me before men...
That is the final point which we must grasp concerning the Faith vs. “valid sacraments” debate. It is not enough merely to believe: you must also say that you believe, you must admit that you believe before others, even when you know it will be received in a hostile way, even at the risk of your own life. This act of admitting what we believe, of saying it loud and clear before others, including those who are hostile, is called profession or confession. That is why there are Saints who were not martyrs but whom we call confessors: they were witnesses for the Catholic Faith before others, albeit not with their blood. If I believe Catholic teaching but keep it to myself and hide the light under a bushel, I won’t save my soul and in all likelihood I won’t persevere. “Keep the Faith!” is a misleading statement - yes, you have to keep the Faith, obviously, but you have also to try to spread it, you have to profess it.
Everyone has a right to hear the truth, even those who don’t want to hear it and will react violently against it. Archbishop Lefebvre famously said that the devil’s masterstroke was to get people to leave Tradition through “obedience.” In reality this means taking something good in itself (obedience) and placing it above an even higher good. Well, in our day this is the equivalent.
In 2025, the devil’s latest master-stroke, it seems, is to get Catholics (“Traditional” Catholics!) to compromise on a level of doctrine, to compromise their profession of the Faith, in order to obtain “valid sacraments”; to place the good of sacraments above the higher good of the Faith and its profession, in other words. Even ten or fifteen years ago this was still not all that common. Today, with modernist Rome’s slippery snare of the Indult Mass and encouraged by Bishop Williamson, it is now springing up everywhere.
- “Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.”
- Matt. 10: 32-33
- “Certainly the question of the liturgy and the sacraments is very important, but it is not the most important. The most important is that of the Faith.”
- Archbishop Lefebvre, Fideliter interview, Jan/Feb 1991
- “Today more than ever – and let it be understood rightly – society needs strong and consistent doctrines. Even though ideas are falling apart everywhere, asserting the truth can still be done in society, provided that this assertion of truth be firm, substantial, and without compromise. […] There is a grace attached to the full and entire confession of the Faith. This grace, according to Saint Paul, is the salvation of those who accomplish this confession; and experience shows that such a confession is also the salvation of those who witness it. Be Catholic and nothing other than Catholic.”
- Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Christian Meaning of History
- “Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer and assembled in the deserts, a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid most profuse rains and snowstorms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To this they submit because they will have no part of the wicked Arian leaven [i.e. the valid Mass said by Arian priests and bishops].”
- St. Basil the Great; Epistulae 242, 376 AD
- “Certainly the question of the liturgy and the sacraments is very important, but it is not the most important. The most
important is that of the Faith.”
- Fideliter interview, Jan/Feb 1991
- “We understand quite well what troubles you may experience in the circumstances in which you are living, without a good Mass … In fact, in such a case Monseigneur Lefebvre recommends rather to stay at home and pray the rosary in the family and to read the old Mass in the missal…”
- Reply to a personal letter to Archbishop Lefebvre, 27th April 1980 (see Recusant 40 p.10)
- “We are convinced of this, it is they who are wrong, who have changed course, who have broken with the Tradition of the Church, who have rushed into novelties, we are convinced of this. That is why we do not rejoin them and why we cannot work with them; we cannot collaborate with the people who depart from the spirit of the Church, from the Tradition of the Church.”
- Archbishop Lefebvre, interview with Minute, 29th July 1976
- “I am not what you think I am. Many speak of me but few know me. I am not Freemasonry, nor rioting, nor the changing of the monarchy into a republic, not the substitution of one dynasty for another, not temporary disturbance of public order. I am not the shouts of Jacobins, nor the fury of the Montagne, nor the fighting on the barricades, nor pillage, nor arson, nor the agricultural law, nor the guillotine, nor the drownings. I am neither Marat nor Robespierre, nor Babeuf nor Mazzini nor Kossuth. These men are my sons but they are not me. These things are my works but they are not me. These men and these things are passing objects but I am a permanent state... I am the hatred of all order not established by man and in which he himself is not both king and god.”
- Bishop Gaume, quoted by Abp. Lefebvre in An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, Ch.13
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre