<![CDATA[The Catacombs - In Defense of Tradition]]> https://thecatacombs.org/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 03:23:52 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[Jean Madiran [1980]: Interesting Revelation Concerning John XXIII]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=8199 Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:46:02 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=8199 Interesting Revelation Concerning John XXIII, Jean Madiran – ITINÉRAIRES November 1980

La Porte Latine [Machine translated from the French - emphasis mine]


Despite a few contrary appearances he had generously cultivated, notably when he was nuncio in Paris, John XXIII was in reality an admirer of Marc Sangnier and a disciple of the Sillon.

A revelation? Yes. As Henri Rambaud used to say, the true "unpublished" is… the printed word — that which went unnoticed at the time of its publication.

The letter from Nuncio Roncalli reproduced below had already been published in 1965 in Ernest Pezet's book: Chrétiens au service de la cité, de Léon XIII au Sillon et au MRP (NEL). It had passed unnoticed, at least by us. It has now been republished in L'âme populaire, the still-living organ of the "Catholic Sillon" founded by Robert Pigelet in 1920, in its 60th year, issue 571, August–September 1980.

This letter was addressed by Nuncio Roncalli to Mme Marc Sangnier on June 6, 1950, on the occasion of Marc Sangnier's death. Its content and significance far exceed a simple message of condolence, as will be seen:

Quote:"Paris, June 6, 1950

Madame,

I had heard Marc Sangnier speak for the first time in Rome around 1903 or 1904, at a meeting of Catholic Youth. The powerful fascination of his words, of his soul, had enchanted me, and I keep of his person and his political and social activity the most vivid memory of my entire priestly youth.

His noble and great humility in accepting later, in 1910, the admonition — moreover quite affectionate and benevolent — of the Holy Pope Pius X, gives in my eyes the measure of his true greatness.

Souls capable of remaining as faithful and respectful as his of the Gospel and of the Holy Church are made for the highest ascents that secure earthly glory before contemporaries and posterity, to whom the example of Marc Sangnier will remain as a teaching and an encouragement.

On the occasion of his death, my spirit was greatly comforted to see that the most authoritative voices to speak in the name of official France came together, unanimously, to wrap Marc Sangnier as in a mantle of honor, in the Sermon on the Mount. No more eloquent tribute and praise could be rendered to the memory of this distinguished Frenchman, whose contemporaries knew how to appreciate the clarity of a profoundly Christian soul and the noble sincerity of his heart."

By the magical effect of a kind of implicit "reinterpretation" of texts — which foreshadows the marvels that the conciliar evolution would achieve in this domain — Marc Sangnier and his Sillon thus received from the "holy Pope Pius X" nothing other than a "quite affectionate and benevolent admonition"; no memory remains of any error that had been condemned, of any teaching that had been formulated against the Sillon. The only "teaching" that the future John XXIII recalls in this connection is that of… Marc Sangnier himself!

No doubt Saint Pius X recognized in the leaders of the Sillon "elevated souls, superior to vulgar passions and animated by the noblest enthusiasm for the good"; but he also declared: "We have had the sorrow of seeing our warnings and reproaches glide off their elusive souls." The people of the Sillon are "swept along a path as false as it is dangerous." The Sillon "builds its city on a theory contrary to Catholic truth and distorts the essential and fundamental notions that govern social relations"; it "sows erroneous and pernicious ideas"; it has "a false idea of human dignity"; "its spirit is dangerous and its education harmful"; and henceforth "it forms nothing more than a miserable tributary of the great movement of apostasy organized in all countries."

Who would suspect this, reading Roncalli's soothing reinterpretation? Who could suppose that in reality, in his Letter on the Sillon, Saint Pius X had doctrinally defined and denounced that RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY which, half a century later, through the so-called CONCILIAR EVOLUTION, would draw ecclesiastical society into IMMANENT APOSTASY?

Moreover, in 1950 Nuncio Roncalli enjoyed recalling that he had been "fascinated" and "enchanted" by Marc Sangnier: a memory that remains "the most vivid of his entire priestly youth."

The same Nuncio Roncalli, with other interlocutors, managed to pass himself off rather as an admirer and disciple of Cardinal Pie — we have precise testimony of this. Unhappy John XXIII, of whom Abbé Berto had said that terrible thing: "He is a skeptic."

A skeptic, yes; but not, for that reason, impartial between doctrines, or indifferent before them. Like all skeptics by temperament, he actively inclined toward the anti-dogmatic; the modernists; the Sillonists. His admiration for Cardinal Pie was a pretense — or let us say: a protocolar respect, which he played skillfully. His heart was with the Sillon.

Most striking is the calm audacity with which Nuncio Roncalli allowed himself to speak of Saint Pius X's letter on the Sillon, "reinterpreting" it in such a way as to strip it of all its moral and doctrinal significance. Let one reread that letter Notre charge apostolique of August 25, 1910, and one will immediately perceive to what extent the manner in which Nuncio Roncalli speaks of it manifests a total effrontery.

In 1950, the substitute Jean-Baptiste Montini treated the encyclical Humani generis of Pius XII in exactly the same way: an account of this is found in one and the other of the two books Jean Guitton devoted to Paul VI. I had analyzed this phenomenon in detail on the occasion of the first volume: in issue 128 of ITINÉRAIRES, December 1968, pages 154 to 159. I did not name Montini; I examined his remarks and characterized them by understatement as "inattention to texts" and "gratuitous reverie," judging that my commentary "would currently change nothing at all and would find its natural place in its own time, with hindsight and in an already historical perspective."

Since Montini's name did not appear, my analysis attracted little attention. One may refer to it today, after Jean Guitton's second work on Paul VI, which has confirmed the authentic tenor and brazen audacity of Montini's remarks from 1950.

That was September 8. Roncalli, June 6 of the same year. The occasion of the one and the other text was different. The substance, the intellectual method, was identical. Such, then, were the hands into which the Church Militant had fallen.]]> Interesting Revelation Concerning John XXIII, Jean Madiran – ITINÉRAIRES November 1980

La Porte Latine [Machine translated from the French - emphasis mine]


Despite a few contrary appearances he had generously cultivated, notably when he was nuncio in Paris, John XXIII was in reality an admirer of Marc Sangnier and a disciple of the Sillon.

A revelation? Yes. As Henri Rambaud used to say, the true "unpublished" is… the printed word — that which went unnoticed at the time of its publication.

The letter from Nuncio Roncalli reproduced below had already been published in 1965 in Ernest Pezet's book: Chrétiens au service de la cité, de Léon XIII au Sillon et au MRP (NEL). It had passed unnoticed, at least by us. It has now been republished in L'âme populaire, the still-living organ of the "Catholic Sillon" founded by Robert Pigelet in 1920, in its 60th year, issue 571, August–September 1980.

This letter was addressed by Nuncio Roncalli to Mme Marc Sangnier on June 6, 1950, on the occasion of Marc Sangnier's death. Its content and significance far exceed a simple message of condolence, as will be seen:

Quote:"Paris, June 6, 1950

Madame,

I had heard Marc Sangnier speak for the first time in Rome around 1903 or 1904, at a meeting of Catholic Youth. The powerful fascination of his words, of his soul, had enchanted me, and I keep of his person and his political and social activity the most vivid memory of my entire priestly youth.

His noble and great humility in accepting later, in 1910, the admonition — moreover quite affectionate and benevolent — of the Holy Pope Pius X, gives in my eyes the measure of his true greatness.

Souls capable of remaining as faithful and respectful as his of the Gospel and of the Holy Church are made for the highest ascents that secure earthly glory before contemporaries and posterity, to whom the example of Marc Sangnier will remain as a teaching and an encouragement.

On the occasion of his death, my spirit was greatly comforted to see that the most authoritative voices to speak in the name of official France came together, unanimously, to wrap Marc Sangnier as in a mantle of honor, in the Sermon on the Mount. No more eloquent tribute and praise could be rendered to the memory of this distinguished Frenchman, whose contemporaries knew how to appreciate the clarity of a profoundly Christian soul and the noble sincerity of his heart."

By the magical effect of a kind of implicit "reinterpretation" of texts — which foreshadows the marvels that the conciliar evolution would achieve in this domain — Marc Sangnier and his Sillon thus received from the "holy Pope Pius X" nothing other than a "quite affectionate and benevolent admonition"; no memory remains of any error that had been condemned, of any teaching that had been formulated against the Sillon. The only "teaching" that the future John XXIII recalls in this connection is that of… Marc Sangnier himself!

No doubt Saint Pius X recognized in the leaders of the Sillon "elevated souls, superior to vulgar passions and animated by the noblest enthusiasm for the good"; but he also declared: "We have had the sorrow of seeing our warnings and reproaches glide off their elusive souls." The people of the Sillon are "swept along a path as false as it is dangerous." The Sillon "builds its city on a theory contrary to Catholic truth and distorts the essential and fundamental notions that govern social relations"; it "sows erroneous and pernicious ideas"; it has "a false idea of human dignity"; "its spirit is dangerous and its education harmful"; and henceforth "it forms nothing more than a miserable tributary of the great movement of apostasy organized in all countries."

Who would suspect this, reading Roncalli's soothing reinterpretation? Who could suppose that in reality, in his Letter on the Sillon, Saint Pius X had doctrinally defined and denounced that RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY which, half a century later, through the so-called CONCILIAR EVOLUTION, would draw ecclesiastical society into IMMANENT APOSTASY?

Moreover, in 1950 Nuncio Roncalli enjoyed recalling that he had been "fascinated" and "enchanted" by Marc Sangnier: a memory that remains "the most vivid of his entire priestly youth."

The same Nuncio Roncalli, with other interlocutors, managed to pass himself off rather as an admirer and disciple of Cardinal Pie — we have precise testimony of this. Unhappy John XXIII, of whom Abbé Berto had said that terrible thing: "He is a skeptic."

A skeptic, yes; but not, for that reason, impartial between doctrines, or indifferent before them. Like all skeptics by temperament, he actively inclined toward the anti-dogmatic; the modernists; the Sillonists. His admiration for Cardinal Pie was a pretense — or let us say: a protocolar respect, which he played skillfully. His heart was with the Sillon.

Most striking is the calm audacity with which Nuncio Roncalli allowed himself to speak of Saint Pius X's letter on the Sillon, "reinterpreting" it in such a way as to strip it of all its moral and doctrinal significance. Let one reread that letter Notre charge apostolique of August 25, 1910, and one will immediately perceive to what extent the manner in which Nuncio Roncalli speaks of it manifests a total effrontery.

In 1950, the substitute Jean-Baptiste Montini treated the encyclical Humani generis of Pius XII in exactly the same way: an account of this is found in one and the other of the two books Jean Guitton devoted to Paul VI. I had analyzed this phenomenon in detail on the occasion of the first volume: in issue 128 of ITINÉRAIRES, December 1968, pages 154 to 159. I did not name Montini; I examined his remarks and characterized them by understatement as "inattention to texts" and "gratuitous reverie," judging that my commentary "would currently change nothing at all and would find its natural place in its own time, with hindsight and in an already historical perspective."

Since Montini's name did not appear, my analysis attracted little attention. One may refer to it today, after Jean Guitton's second work on Paul VI, which has confirmed the authentic tenor and brazen audacity of Montini's remarks from 1950.

That was September 8. Roncalli, June 6 of the same year. The occasion of the one and the other text was different. The substance, the intellectual method, was identical. Such, then, were the hands into which the Church Militant had fallen.]]> <![CDATA[The Recusant: Is John Henry Newman a Saint? Is He a Doctor of the Church?]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=7416 Thu, 28 Aug 2025 11:41:14 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=7416 The Recusant [slightly adapted and reformatted]:


Is John Henry Newman a Saint?
Is He a Doctor of the Church?


The short answer is, no. There is enough to be wary of with Newman, enough to at least give any sensible Catholic pause for thought and in any case, Novus Ordo conciliar canonisations aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. These modern canonisations are proposed to us by men who don’t believe in real Saints, just as the miracles which confirm them are not real miracles and are proposed to us by men who don’t believe in real miracles. John Henry Newman is as much a Saint as Paul VI or John Paul II. The first part of this article will deal with the question of real Saints and conciliar “Saints”; the second part with Newman himself.


Part 1: When is a Saint not a Saint?

Remember that [the] Novus Ordo calendar removed many genuine Saints as though they no longer existed and were therefore no longer to be venerated. Take, for instance, the Fourteen Holy Helpers: few modern Catholics have even heard of them today, although they were venerated for centuries and were the object of widespread popular devotion across Christendom. Their feast was removed from the calendar and some of them lost individual feast days too and became in effect “un-canonised,” including some very popular Saints. That did not stop modernist Rome casting doubt on whether they had ever even existed to begin with, declaring that the stories about them were mere fables, not really worthy of belief in other words. Here, for instance, is what Paul VI’s Rome had to say concerning St. Barbara:
Quote:“Memoria S. Barbarae, Saeculo XII in Calendario romano ascripta, deletur: acta S. Barbarae sunt omnino fabulosa et etiam de loco ubi passa sit summa inter peritos est dissentio.”
[“The feast of St. Barbara, added to the Roman Calendar in the Twelfth Century, is to be removed. The life of St. Barbara is totally legendary and even the place of her martyrdom is not agreed-upon by experts.”] (Calendarium Romanum, 1969, p.147).

And similarly, concerning St. Catherine of Alexandria:
Quote:“Memoria S. Catharinae, saeculo XII in Calendario romano ascripta, deletur: non solum Passio S. Catharinae est omnino fabulosa, sed de ipsa persona Catharinae nihil certum affirmari potest.”
[“The feast of St. Catherine, added to the Roman Calendar in the Twelfth Century, is to be removed. Not only is the martyrdom of St. Catherine entirely legendary, but nothing certain can be asserted about the person of Catherine herself.”] (Ibid.)

By the way, it is difficult to appreciate what is conveyed by those words “omnino fabulosa” which keep cropping up. A total fable. A complete fairytale. Not in any way true, in other words, not just an exaggeration, but a total, utter fabrication. And it is not just St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Barbara who are treated his way: St. Christopher is another example of a very popular Saint who was nonetheless removed completely from the calendar, as well as St. Dorothy, St. Pius I, and many more besides. Others, such as St. George and St. Valentine, were demoted to a commemoration in certain local places only, which had much the same effect as removing them altogether. In the motu proprio presenting his new calendar (Mysterii Paschalis, 1969), Paul VI cites - you’ve guessed it! - Vatican II as his justification, quoting the following passage from Sacrosanctum Concilium, §111:
Quote:“Lest the feasts of the saints should take precedence over the feasts which commemorate the very mysteries of salvation, many of them should be left to be celebrated by a particular Church or nation or family of religious; only those should be extended to the universal Church which commemorate saints who are truly of universal importance.”

Even the secular media has picked up on this from time to time. Here, for instance, is a 2014 article from ABC News:
Quote:“The Catholic Church removed 93 saints from the universal calendar and revoked their feast days in 1969 when Pope Paul VI revised the canon of saints and determined that some of the names had only ever been alive as legends or not enough was known about them to determine their status. […] Among Catholicism’s most popular saints, Christopher was listed as a martyr. […] But there wasn’t enough historical evidence the man ever existed, so Pope Paul VI dropped him.” (‘Once a Saint, Always a Saint? Kind Of - Unless You're Demoted’ - here)

Another remarkable victim of the modernists is St. Philomena. One of the most popular Saints of the last two centuries, the Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney, had a particularly strong devotion to her. She was not only removed from the calendar, but modern Rome since then has cast doubt on whether she even existed at all to being with! And yet, like St. Christopher, St. Barbara and the others she still has her own following and devotion to her is still alive and well today, despite her attempted assassination and un-canonisation by modernist unbelievers. One of the important proofs of Sainthood is a cultus, a following, and an enduring
one.

John Paul II had plenty of flatterers and sycophants while he was still alive, and he died adored and praised by the world. Not a good sign! Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were among those who attended his requiem. Hence there was no shortage of people who wanted him declared a Saint immediately (“Santo Subito!” - remember?). But a mere twenty years on, how often does one hear his name mentioned? Outside of Polish Novus Ordo Catholic parishes, is he not all-but forgotten already? And who has ever had a devotion to Paul VI or John XXIII..!? The very idea is absurd! Those men never had a cultus and never will! And yet we are asked to believe that they are Saints, by the very same modernists who tell us that St. Christopher, St. Catherine, St Philomena and others not only aren’t Saints, but weren’t even real people…? Does that sound reasonable to you? The men who openly admit that they don’t believe in real Saints are nonetheless going to tell us who is to be regarded as a Saint from now on! And whom do they propose for our veneration? Men such as John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II…! No thanks. You can keep your bogus, conciliar “Saints” - I’ll stick with the real ones, the ones which generations of our forefathers venerated for hundreds of years, thank you very much!

Regarding the details of the removal of Saints from the calendar and general “de-canonisation” which went on in the 1960s (some of which was already happening on the eve of Vatican II in the Tridentine calendar!) a great deal more could be said, but we shall not spend too long on it since it was not really meant to be the focus of this article, fascinating and horrifying though it is.

Suffice it to say that the usual suspects are not very hard to find. An article from late 2020 by one Peter Kwasniewski which appeared on the website of the conservative / novus “New Liturgical Movement” provides some interesting and useful insight on this question and is perhaps worth quoting from here briefly. Among other things, the article identifies more than 300 Saints who were removed or demoted and provides tables showing which changes were made on which days of the year. And just see how long it takes before you spot the name which you knew all along was going to pop up!

Quote:“That the thinning out of the sanctoral cycle had long been on Bugnini’s mind is evident from his 1949 article in Ephemerides Liturgicae, “Per una riforma liturgica generale” (“Towards a General Liturgical Reform”). Bugnini pressed the need for “a reduction of the Sanctoral . . . which requires not only a reduction of the present calendar, but also fixed and prescriptive norms to prevent new Saints’ days from piling up again.”

Yves Chiron summarizes:
Quote:‘A list of thirteen saints or groups of saints was already drawn up for elimination from the universal calendar, with no justification for any of them (Saint Martin for example), whereas the calendar was supposed to abbinare (“pair together”) fourteen more Saints “because their life and work were alike or close to it,” for example Saint Thomas Becket and Saint Stanislaus or Saint Peter Canisius and Saint Robert Bellarmine.’ (Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy, p.34)”
(https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/20...moval.html)

By the way, next time you visit continental Europe keep an eye out for St. Martin: you see his name everywhere. France is covered with hundreds, if not thousands of churches, chapels and shrines to him and there are dozens of villages and towns named after him in Southern Germany and Austria. In that part of the world at least, it is hard to imagine a Saint who is more deeply embedded within Catholic culture! But then, this is the infamous Fr. Annibale Bugnini and his friends whom we are talking about, so it probably shouldn’t surprise us that much…

The same article quotes the memoires of the well-known “liturgical reformer” Fr. Louis Bouyer, who was nonetheless horrified to see just how far some on his own side were taking things (also found in the excellent article by Dr Carol Byrne, here):
Quote:“I prefer to say nothing, or little, about the new calendar, the handiwork of a trio of maniacs who suppressed, with no good reason, Septuagesima and the Octave of Pentecost and who scattered three quarters of the Saints higgledypiggledy, all based on notions of their own devising! Because these three hotheads obstinately refused to change anything in their work and because the pope wanted to finish up quickly to avoid letting the chaos get out of hand, their project, however insane, was accepted!” (Ibid.)


What is Canonisation?

Behind all this, underlying the question, is something which it is difficult to put one’s finger on, an attitude which itself is wrong. There is more than a whiff of the “because I say so” type of argument which reeks of voluntarism and nominalism. Let us remind ourselves: it is the Saint that makes the canonisation, not the canonisation which makes the Saint. Let that sink in for just a moment. Is a Saint a Saint because Rome says he’s a Saint? Or does Rome say he’s a Saint because he is one? Which comes first, the reality, or the word, the pronouncement, the description of the reality? In previous centuries canonisation was simply a matter of popular acclamation; then it was done more formally, at a diocesan level by the local bishop; in the middle ages it became something reserved to the Holy See.

Over time, the requirements understandably became stricter. The process which emerged in the modern era was something resembling a court case. The soul in question had to be proven a Saint beyond all doubt and was regarded almost as though guilty until proven innocent: not a Saint until proven a Saint. The prosecution, so to speak, was the famous advocatus diaboli. But that was not all. Several other criteria had to be met which were regarded as sine qua non, the first of which was a popular cultus among the faithful; another was some miracles. These things, if they exist, are facts. The canonisation itself was nothing more than a formal recognition of those already-existing facts.

Therefore, the real Saints are the ones who have a real following, who have worked real miracles, whom Divine Providence allows to become known and prayed-to all over the world and to become a central part of Catholic life and culture. The old, recently-removed Saints, in whom modern Rome appears no longer to believe, all pass the test with flying colours. Despite the machinations of the modernists, Catholics all over the world still give their children names such as Catherine, Philomena or Christopher; many people still pray to them, still wear their sacramentals and ask them for aid. Schools and parishes all over the world still bear their names, some of the finest artwork ever created depicts their lives and deaths and in some cases even whole nations, states or cities are under their patronage or have been named after them.

And there is no shortage of modern-day miracles either: as mentioned above, the Curé of Ars alone procured many miracles through the intercession of St. Philomena. More than eleven years ago, these pages (“On Recent Canonisations” - Recusant 16, May 2014) cast doubt on the supposed canonisations of the late popes John XXIII and John Paul II.

It was pointed out that the lives of these men were very far from being that of a Saint and that they were each a very bad example to follow. It was further pointed out that several ominous “coincidences” (if such they be) had accompanied the “canonisation” of John Paul II. The ugly bent-forwards crucifix which stood atop a hill as a memorial of his visit had suddenly collapsed, killing a man who was praying to him beneath it; that when his relics visited Lourdes, the sanctuary was soon underwater following the worst flooding in its history.

The same article suggested good reasons why one cannot simply say, “Canonisations are infallible!” and leave it at that - far from it. The object of infallibility is doctrine, that is, things to be believed by us, and necessary for our salvation. A canonisation on the other hand, is not a matter of doctrine necessary for our salvation: it is a saying that someone is a Saint, which means not only that the person in question is in heaven, but that he or she is an example which you or I can follow and learn from as a means of achieving heaven ourselves. That is why not one single baptised infant has ever been canonised, despite there being presumably tens– or even hundreds-of-thousands of candidates (newly baptised babies die all the time, there is even one in our family). They are certainly in heaven, you can pray to them, but they are never canonised, no statues of them will ever be seen in churches, no feast days in the calendar. Why? Because there is no life to follow: they died too young to give an example for anyone to follow. That is also why it is such a scandal for even the conciliar church to claim that Paul VI or John Paul II are Saints.

If that were true, then we can get to heaven is by kissing the koran, inviting pagans and devilworshippers into a Catholic church to pray to their false gods, putting statues of Buddha on top of tabernacles; punishing good men such as Marcel Lefebvre while simultaneously promoting sexual predators like Marcial Maciel or MarieDominique Philippe; suppressing the true Mass which nourished countless true Saints, and giving everyone a Masonic, Protestant communion service with a Jewish offertory prayer… we could go on. The very thought is monstrous.

So on the question of a cultus, a genuine following and devotion among the faithful, the real, old-fashioned Saints win hands down, despite the disadvantage of their having been removed from calendars, their demotion and all the rest. The conciliar Vatican II “Saints” usually have little or no cultus, despite the fact that it always used to be regarded as a sine qua non, an essential prerequisite to becoming a Saint.

Likewise, on the question of leading a life of heroic virtue, a life which is such a good example that if followed by you and I it will lead us to heaven too, we see the same thing. Many of these the conciliar “Saints” (the conciliar Popes, Faustina, Escriva, et al.) fail spectacularly. Their lives were such that they would never, could never have been canonised before Vatican II. The real Saints, by contrast, led such exemplary lives that many today find it hard to believe and doubt is cast not only on their lives and deaths, but even on their very existence.

The soundness of their teaching is something which will no doubt be at the forefront of the minds of many readers, and so it should be. Unsound teaching, let alone actual heresy, is something which in saner times meant that an investigation into the candidate’s life could not go ahead, never mind the beatification or canonisation itself, as the John Vennari article makes clear elsewhere in these pages. Strictly speaking, the false teaching of these bogus “Saints” is itself enough to say with certainty that they are not Saints. But since many of our acquaintance will not accept that, and since many of us will at some point experience doubt or scruples, let us continue to spell it out in detail. Miracles are the last thing to consider.

A real canonisation in the old days used to require two miracles, after all the other criteria had been met. Two genuine miracles. The new, bogus “canonisations” require only one, and often it is a “miracle” of highly dubious quality. Again, refer to the John Vennari article elsewhere in these pages to see details of the “miracle” used for Mother Theresa: it was as dodgy as a nine-bob note, the doctors involved and even the lady’s husband said it wasn’t a miracle!

In previous years, these pages have contained a close-up look into other conciliar “miracles”- long-time readers might recall our examination of the Buenos Aires “eucharistic miracle” from the 1990s (in Recusant 34, p.26) and that it most certainly did not stand up to close scrutiny! We have neither the time, nor the resources, nor even the patience to examine each and every so-called “miracle” approved by the conciliar authorities, but should it be necessary? How many definitely bogus “miracles” do we need to see until we decide to treat them all with extreme caution? Finally let us consider this. The men approving these “miracles” don’t believe in actual real miracles, even when they are contained in Sacred Scripture! The feeding of the five-thousand? No, you see, what the gospel-writer wished to emphasise in telling this story was that the real miracle was when everyone learned to share. The crossing of the Red Sea? No, you see it was really called the “Reed Sea” because it was like a marsh… Those are things I have heard from conciliar priests with my own ears (as have many of you too, no doubt). We could go on. The point to bear in mind here is this. Just as we are being asked to accept new “Saints” from men who don’t believe in real Saints, we also are being asked to believe in bogus “miracles” by men who cast doubt on real miracles.

In case all of that is all a bit much to remember, below is a handy table for ease of reference! It is of course worth remembering that the other scandal regarding conciliar “canonisations” is the sheer number. John Paul II earned a reputation as a veritable “Saint factory,” canonising hundreds in one go. His successors are no better. Not only does this practice severely damage the prestige and credibility of the Church in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, it also defeats the very point of a canonisation: how can you possibly have a devotion to these new “Saints” when it would take forever just to read their names, never mind learn a bit about
them? The whole point of Saints is that they are held out to us as an example to follow; you can’t hold out a couple of hundred examples in one go and expect to be taken seriously.

The Recusant patent “How-Bogus-Is-My-Saint?” Calculator

[Image: Capture2.png]

But beyond that, it has yet another unfortunate side-effect, in that it means that many genuine Saints may well be mixed in with the conciliar “Saints.” The first canonisation done by Pope Francis, for instance, was of more than 800 people in one go. They were the inhabitants of Otranto who were killed by the Turks in 1480 for refusing to convert to Islam: martyrs. At a cursory glance, it may well be that some or all of them really are martyrs, and therefore Saints.

But can we be certain? And which ones? Does anyone have the time or patience to try to find out? To take one more example, in 2001 John Paul II canonised a group of 233 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Again, there were many Catholics who died for the Faith at the hands of the communists at that time, so it is not inconceivable that at least some of them, many of them even, are genuine Saints and martyrs. But again, doesn’t it just leave one frustrated and demoralised? How certain can anyone be that there wasn’t the odd semi-degenerate “rightwinger” whom the reds rounded up with a load of Catholics into the same firing-squad and buried in the same pit? So the answer is it is probably a mixture, but very difficult to say.

And then there are men such as Padre Pio. Well, they couldn’t very well not canonise him, could they? They know full well that his presence in amongst all those other conciliar “Saints” will lend them credibility. And what about the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales? Well, they were of course martyrs at the hands of the English Protestant regime, they were beatified in 1929 and most of the work for their canonisations was surely done before the Council, so despite the fact that the actual canonisation wasn’t done until 1970, surely one can take them as being genuine Saints who were always going to be canonised, even had Vatican II and the crisis in the Church never happened.

We could go on, but all this really means is that the conciliar “Saints” are a bit of a mixed bag, to put it mildly. Some unmistakably genuine Saints have probably been given a conciliar “canonisation” (what an insult to them - they’ll need to be given a real canonisation when the crisis is over!). Then there are others who may well have been Saints. Then there are a lot of highly dubious “Saints” and finally there are those who are definitely not Saints. So a conciliar canonisation doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is a Saint. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t a Saint either. What a mess.


Where does Newman fit into all this?

All of which is by way of demonstrating that just because the conciliar church says that Newman is a Saint, that doesn’t really mean anything. It means is that he is somewhere on the spectrum of conciliar Saints, somewhere between Padre Pio at one end and Paul VI at the other. Newman may not be a Paul VI, but he may not necessarily be a Padre Pio either. So what are we to make of him? It doesn’t help that he has long been someone whom all sides seem to be trying to claim. The liberals and modernists claim that he is one of them. The “conservatives” of various sorts say that the liberals are twisting things and that really, Newman is on their side. Readers of a certain age who made their way out of the Novus Ordo to Tradition may well be reminded of similar debates which used to surround John Paul II and Benedict XVI while they were alive and on the papal throne. In the 1980s, 90s and early-2000s, John Paul II’s encyclicals would have the more orthodox soundbites quoted by people who were still trying to remain faithful inside the Novus Ordo (a shrinking constituency which has now all-but disappeared in this country); whereas out-and-out modernists and politically correct semiMarxists could quote other passages from the very same encyclical. Many conservative Novus Ordo people became Traditionalists after realising that the liberals and modernists actually had a point: John Paul II really was a modernist and a liberal, and not the conservative they had always thought him to be. Well, is it possible that something similar is going on with John Henry Newman? With that in mind, let us briefly look at some of the criteria mentioned above.

1. An Exemplary Life of Heroic Virtue

Compared to many of the worst conciliar “Saints” Newman comes out looking pretty good here. He certainly didn’t have the love of luxury, or outbursts of bad temper of a Josemaria Escriva, for instance. But then, he was a Victorian, who lived (1801-1890) a good three generations before the latter, so that is as one might expect: people back then knew far better how to behave. Nor does one find in his writing the shameless self-praise of a “Saint” Faustina, whose fake apparition made her sound more exulted than even the Blessed Virgin Mary. That is as it should be, too; but then, we are setting the bar rather low, aren’t we?

One thing which does need mentioning here is the accusations of some kind of latent homosexuality. A not very flattering picture of him was painted by Geoffrey Faber, the nephew of Newman’s colleague Fr. Frederick Faber. Since then, all sorts of “gay rights” people (Peter Tatchell, for instance) have tried to claim Newman as one of their own. Critics point to his friendship with Fr. Ambrose St. John, one of his disciples who together with him left the Anglican religion, entered the Catholic Church and became an Oratorian priest. They often point to the fact that Newman asked to be buried in his friend’s grave. His defenders say that it was a passionate friendship and nothing more. Well, it is true that there can be such a thing as a passionate friendship and it is also true that we shouldn’t always go to the lowest common denominator and assume something sexual which might have been nothing of the sort. The Victorian era, an age not that long past and yet unimaginably more innocent than our own, understood this far better than we do today: only a degenerate age such as our own will automatically equate love with lust. And it is true that the endorsement of “gay rights” activists such as Tatchell means very little. And Geoffrey Faber, by the way, was a non-Catholic who seems to have been a disciple of Sigmund Freud; furthermore, one of the things he seems to have a problem with, in common with many Anglicans of Newman’s day (Charles Kinglsley, for instance), is the very idea itself of clerical celibacy. So we can probably take what he says with a pinch of salt.

All of which is to say that Newman is almost certainly not guilty of this particular charge, but in passing we should perhaps add that it would have been nice to known for certain, and that had there been a proper, thorough investigation of his life and morals, with a Devil’s Advocate and all the rest, greater certainty might have been possible. As things stand, however, since the modern Vatican changed the entire process, the matter won’t have been looked-into as it once would have been, effectively robbing the man himself of a proper defence.

Other than that, the main points of Newman’s life seem to be what one would expect. He sacrificed his position in the establishment of his day, and undoubtedly lost friends and family connections when he converted. This is what one would expect and is what happened to all English converts in those days, but it is still something which counts in his favour. There are others who point to the fact that he had already got himself into trouble within the (so-called) Church of England due to his position within the Oxford Movement and Tract 90 in particular, and that therefore he didn’t give up as much as, say, Henry (later Cardinal) Manning who had been at the height of his popularity when he left the Anglican religion and became a Catholic. There is doubtless some truth in that, too.

Finally, it is perhaps worth mentioning that for the life of a Saint, although one expects to find controversy, one does not expect to find quite so much and with all the wrong people. It has been said of Newman that during the latter (Catholic) part of his life, his friends and admirers were all liberals and his enemies anti-liberals. There is some truth to that. And having read some of his correspondence with Fr. Faber (more about whom later), the tone and content of many of his letters is not edifying and betrays a petulance bordering on selfpity which somehow one cannot imagine witnessing from the pen of a genuine Saint. That is, however, only my opinion - the reader may take it or leave it as he wishes.


2. A Popular [u]Cultus[/u]

Even Newman’s promoters have admitted that it is alarming how little devotion to him there is or has ever been in his own country. I have heard it said that he has more of a following in the USA, which is interesting: perhaps a case of a prophet never being accepted in his own home? But it still ought to be a concern to anyone interested, and ought to have been of great interest and great concern to anyone involved in his cause for canonisation. It is not merely that he didn’t have much of a following in England: he had none at all! Nobody was praying to him, nobody had a devotion to him. In this aspect at least, he appears to be more in the Paul VI camp and all the other definitely bogus conciliar “Saints”. And since, as mentioned above, this one really is (or used to be and ought still to be) the first pre-requisite, that ought to concern us all the more. (Perhaps we ought to have made this number 1, instead of 2..?)

What popularity or respect Newman does have today, as in his own day, seems to some degree to arise from the prestige which he brought with him into the Church. Imagine: at a time when Catholics were still a vanishingly small minority in England (maybe two percent, and most of those were Irish immigrant labourers, unskilled and largely un-educated, who had come over for work), and before the steady flow of converts which would follow his own conversion, he was one of the first “big catches” for a Catholic Church which was only just being re-established in England. One can understand and sympathise with an English Catholic in those days who might be pleased and proud of such a well-known, high-profile academic leaving it all behind to enter the Catholic Church. But that doesn’t really help us. In the late-19th and early 20th Centuries, there was no suggestion that Newman had been a Saint and no devotion to him anywhere, from what we can see. What very little exists in recent years appears to have been drummed up by conciliar liberals in the wake of Vatican II.

In summary then: in the old days, before the Vatican II revolution, the lack of a cultus would have meant that Newman would not even have been considered for beatification or canonisation in the first place. And in the days before Vatican II, he had no cultus at all. Therefore, he ought never to have been considered to begin with and on these grounds alone there is good cause to doubt whether he is a real Saint, even if he is a conciliar “Saint.”


3. Genuine Miracles

Oh dear. Have you ever noticed how all the bogus conciliar “Saints” always seem to work medical “miracles”? Both miracles allegedly worked by Paul VI, for instance, involved an unborn child: the doctors predicted it would have a defect but in the end it was born healthy.

Anyone with any experience of these things will tell you that doctors continually make dire predictions about unborn babies which turn out not to be true, especially when they are using it to push the mother into getting an abortion (as was the case here). I have even known it within my own immediate family circle, as I am sure many of you will have too. That the baby is then born perfectly fine and healthy does not in any way mean that a miracle has taken place: it means you can’t trust modern doctors! In a similar vein there is the medical “miracle” allegedly worked by Mother Theresa, details of which are given in the John Vennari article found elsewhere in these pages.

Regrettably, Newman’s “miracles” do appear to be of a similar kind: more of these medical miracles which seem to take place whenever a conciliar “Saint” is made. His beatification miracle was curing a Novus Ordo married deacon of a spinal condition. But details of this supposed “miracle” are surprisingly hard to find in both Catholic and secular press and even the official Oratorian website (https://www.newmancanonisation.com/newmans-miracle) which gives a detailed account of his canonisation “miracle” is silent regarding the prior “miracle” used to beatify him. Why might that be? Well, our suspicions, it seems, are wellfounded and we can be grateful to SSPX priest Fr. Paul Kimball for including them in the introduction to his 2019 book on Newman:
Quote:“On July 3, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI recognised the healing of Deacon Jack Sullivan in 2001 as a miracle for Newman’s beatification, which occurred on September 19, 2010. Now, Mr. Sullivan underwent the operation of ‘...a laminectomy to remove part of the spinal bones that was causing the problem… Although successfully performed in August 2001, this operation left Jack Sullivan in immense pain and he was warned a full recovery might take months. With the new term approaching, Mr. Sullivan was becoming increasingly anxious about returning to class, and just a few days after his operation he tried to get out of bed. Having taken an excruciating few minutes, with a nurse’s help, to get his feet on the floor, he said he leant on his forearms and recited his prayer to Newman. Michael Powell, a consultant neurosurgeon at London’s University College Hospital, said a typical laminectomy took ‘about 40 minutes, and most patients … walk out happy at two days.’ ’ ” (Michael Hirst, Papal Visit: Cardinal Newman’s ‘miracle cure,’ BBC News, September 13, 2010)

Furthermore, the directive de Canonizatione of Prospero Cardinal Lambertini, who was later crowned Benedict XIV, spelt out the rules for working out if a healing was really a miracle from heaven. It is astounding that this miracle has been approved, for it directly violates the third rule of Benedict XIV for the verification of miracles during the process of canonization of Saints, namely, ‘The patient should not be getting medical treatment around the time of the cure.’ (Doctrina de servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, lib. 4, p.1, c.7, n.1-2.).”
(Cardinal Newman: Trojan Horse in the Church, Fr. Paul Kimball)

This alone was used by the enemies of the Church to pour scorn and ridicule. John Cornwell, author of “Hitler’s Pope,” wrote an article for The Times spelling out in great detail how this miracle did not abide by the Vatican’s own rules and making it look totally ridiculous. Though far too long to quote here, it is well worth a read and we encourage the reader to take a look. The author is a well-known antiCatholic but the worst thing is, he isn’t being dishonest and has clearly done his homework. As to Michael Powell, the London consultant neurosurgeon mentioned above, in 2010 he appeared in a brief segment during a BBC documentary. About 7 minutes in, he can be seen telling Ann Widdecombe:
Quote:“The events that occurred in Jack Sullivan’s case are all explicable, perhaps not so frequently that it would be commonplace, but certainly all of them perfectly reasonable. … To us British neurosurgeons, these are events that don’t at all sound [so] surprising or un-commonplace that it should be considered miraculous.”

Newman’s canonisation miracle appears to be not much better and, like that of Paul VI, it involves a pregnant lady and her unborn child. In this case the mother suffered bleeding during the pregnancy. She stopped bleeding after she prayed to him, and although the doctors said there was a chance that the baby would be born premature, in the end it was born at the right time and was healthy. As Fr. Kimball points out, this too violates the old rules for canonisation miracles, namely the sixth rule, that: “The cure must not come at a time when some natural cause could make the patient think he is cured or which stimulates a cure.”

There is also the fact that at least one of the doctors who lent his name to this “miracle” is a Novus Ordo Catholic who gave a gushing interview to the Novus Ordo press in which he described his deposition in favour of the miracle as a “spiritual experience”:
Quote:“The true spiritual experience was in the stages of the depositions. I literally cried when we were deposing her. It struck to my very heart…”
(https://www.archbalt.org/illinois-doctor...periences/)

Yuck. Now, it might be objected that all this still doesn’t mean that it definitely wasn’t a miracle, that despite all those less-than-encouraging circumstances, it might still have been a miracle anyway. But that would be missing the point: what is required is not a “might-havebeen-a” miracle but an absolutely bullet-proof miracle, one which cannot be explained any other way, since the credibility of the entire process and with it the credibility of the Church (or in this case, the conciliar church) is at stake. And besides which, given all that we have already seen from the conciliar church, do we not have, at the very least, the right, or even the duty, to be a little sceptical? Let us just say that it is a very great shame that these miracle couldn’t have been a little more… unimpeachable. Ah well.


4. Sound doctrine

Newman’s canonisation is almost certainly due to the fact that the modernists recognise in him a man whose thinking paved the way for Vatican II. As mentioned above, “conservative” Novus Ordo Catholics and even some Traditionalists say that he is being misrepresented and “claimed,” in much the same way as the “gay rights” lobby claim him for themselves. On the other hand, that is not the whole story. Despite what his supporters say, there undoubtedly is something not quite right with his teaching, but this is so important that it is worth examining at some length.]]> The Recusant [slightly adapted and reformatted]:


Is John Henry Newman a Saint?
Is He a Doctor of the Church?


The short answer is, no. There is enough to be wary of with Newman, enough to at least give any sensible Catholic pause for thought and in any case, Novus Ordo conciliar canonisations aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. These modern canonisations are proposed to us by men who don’t believe in real Saints, just as the miracles which confirm them are not real miracles and are proposed to us by men who don’t believe in real miracles. John Henry Newman is as much a Saint as Paul VI or John Paul II. The first part of this article will deal with the question of real Saints and conciliar “Saints”; the second part with Newman himself.


Part 1: When is a Saint not a Saint?

Remember that [the] Novus Ordo calendar removed many genuine Saints as though they no longer existed and were therefore no longer to be venerated. Take, for instance, the Fourteen Holy Helpers: few modern Catholics have even heard of them today, although they were venerated for centuries and were the object of widespread popular devotion across Christendom. Their feast was removed from the calendar and some of them lost individual feast days too and became in effect “un-canonised,” including some very popular Saints. That did not stop modernist Rome casting doubt on whether they had ever even existed to begin with, declaring that the stories about them were mere fables, not really worthy of belief in other words. Here, for instance, is what Paul VI’s Rome had to say concerning St. Barbara:
Quote:“Memoria S. Barbarae, Saeculo XII in Calendario romano ascripta, deletur: acta S. Barbarae sunt omnino fabulosa et etiam de loco ubi passa sit summa inter peritos est dissentio.”
[“The feast of St. Barbara, added to the Roman Calendar in the Twelfth Century, is to be removed. The life of St. Barbara is totally legendary and even the place of her martyrdom is not agreed-upon by experts.”] (Calendarium Romanum, 1969, p.147).

And similarly, concerning St. Catherine of Alexandria:
Quote:“Memoria S. Catharinae, saeculo XII in Calendario romano ascripta, deletur: non solum Passio S. Catharinae est omnino fabulosa, sed de ipsa persona Catharinae nihil certum affirmari potest.”
[“The feast of St. Catherine, added to the Roman Calendar in the Twelfth Century, is to be removed. Not only is the martyrdom of St. Catherine entirely legendary, but nothing certain can be asserted about the person of Catherine herself.”] (Ibid.)

By the way, it is difficult to appreciate what is conveyed by those words “omnino fabulosa” which keep cropping up. A total fable. A complete fairytale. Not in any way true, in other words, not just an exaggeration, but a total, utter fabrication. And it is not just St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Barbara who are treated his way: St. Christopher is another example of a very popular Saint who was nonetheless removed completely from the calendar, as well as St. Dorothy, St. Pius I, and many more besides. Others, such as St. George and St. Valentine, were demoted to a commemoration in certain local places only, which had much the same effect as removing them altogether. In the motu proprio presenting his new calendar (Mysterii Paschalis, 1969), Paul VI cites - you’ve guessed it! - Vatican II as his justification, quoting the following passage from Sacrosanctum Concilium, §111:
Quote:“Lest the feasts of the saints should take precedence over the feasts which commemorate the very mysteries of salvation, many of them should be left to be celebrated by a particular Church or nation or family of religious; only those should be extended to the universal Church which commemorate saints who are truly of universal importance.”

Even the secular media has picked up on this from time to time. Here, for instance, is a 2014 article from ABC News:
Quote:“The Catholic Church removed 93 saints from the universal calendar and revoked their feast days in 1969 when Pope Paul VI revised the canon of saints and determined that some of the names had only ever been alive as legends or not enough was known about them to determine their status. […] Among Catholicism’s most popular saints, Christopher was listed as a martyr. […] But there wasn’t enough historical evidence the man ever existed, so Pope Paul VI dropped him.” (‘Once a Saint, Always a Saint? Kind Of - Unless You're Demoted’ - here)

Another remarkable victim of the modernists is St. Philomena. One of the most popular Saints of the last two centuries, the Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney, had a particularly strong devotion to her. She was not only removed from the calendar, but modern Rome since then has cast doubt on whether she even existed at all to being with! And yet, like St. Christopher, St. Barbara and the others she still has her own following and devotion to her is still alive and well today, despite her attempted assassination and un-canonisation by modernist unbelievers. One of the important proofs of Sainthood is a cultus, a following, and an enduring
one.

John Paul II had plenty of flatterers and sycophants while he was still alive, and he died adored and praised by the world. Not a good sign! Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were among those who attended his requiem. Hence there was no shortage of people who wanted him declared a Saint immediately (“Santo Subito!” - remember?). But a mere twenty years on, how often does one hear his name mentioned? Outside of Polish Novus Ordo Catholic parishes, is he not all-but forgotten already? And who has ever had a devotion to Paul VI or John XXIII..!? The very idea is absurd! Those men never had a cultus and never will! And yet we are asked to believe that they are Saints, by the very same modernists who tell us that St. Christopher, St. Catherine, St Philomena and others not only aren’t Saints, but weren’t even real people…? Does that sound reasonable to you? The men who openly admit that they don’t believe in real Saints are nonetheless going to tell us who is to be regarded as a Saint from now on! And whom do they propose for our veneration? Men such as John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II…! No thanks. You can keep your bogus, conciliar “Saints” - I’ll stick with the real ones, the ones which generations of our forefathers venerated for hundreds of years, thank you very much!

Regarding the details of the removal of Saints from the calendar and general “de-canonisation” which went on in the 1960s (some of which was already happening on the eve of Vatican II in the Tridentine calendar!) a great deal more could be said, but we shall not spend too long on it since it was not really meant to be the focus of this article, fascinating and horrifying though it is.

Suffice it to say that the usual suspects are not very hard to find. An article from late 2020 by one Peter Kwasniewski which appeared on the website of the conservative / novus “New Liturgical Movement” provides some interesting and useful insight on this question and is perhaps worth quoting from here briefly. Among other things, the article identifies more than 300 Saints who were removed or demoted and provides tables showing which changes were made on which days of the year. And just see how long it takes before you spot the name which you knew all along was going to pop up!

Quote:“That the thinning out of the sanctoral cycle had long been on Bugnini’s mind is evident from his 1949 article in Ephemerides Liturgicae, “Per una riforma liturgica generale” (“Towards a General Liturgical Reform”). Bugnini pressed the need for “a reduction of the Sanctoral . . . which requires not only a reduction of the present calendar, but also fixed and prescriptive norms to prevent new Saints’ days from piling up again.”

Yves Chiron summarizes:
Quote:‘A list of thirteen saints or groups of saints was already drawn up for elimination from the universal calendar, with no justification for any of them (Saint Martin for example), whereas the calendar was supposed to abbinare (“pair together”) fourteen more Saints “because their life and work were alike or close to it,” for example Saint Thomas Becket and Saint Stanislaus or Saint Peter Canisius and Saint Robert Bellarmine.’ (Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy, p.34)”
(https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/20...moval.html)

By the way, next time you visit continental Europe keep an eye out for St. Martin: you see his name everywhere. France is covered with hundreds, if not thousands of churches, chapels and shrines to him and there are dozens of villages and towns named after him in Southern Germany and Austria. In that part of the world at least, it is hard to imagine a Saint who is more deeply embedded within Catholic culture! But then, this is the infamous Fr. Annibale Bugnini and his friends whom we are talking about, so it probably shouldn’t surprise us that much…

The same article quotes the memoires of the well-known “liturgical reformer” Fr. Louis Bouyer, who was nonetheless horrified to see just how far some on his own side were taking things (also found in the excellent article by Dr Carol Byrne, here):
Quote:“I prefer to say nothing, or little, about the new calendar, the handiwork of a trio of maniacs who suppressed, with no good reason, Septuagesima and the Octave of Pentecost and who scattered three quarters of the Saints higgledypiggledy, all based on notions of their own devising! Because these three hotheads obstinately refused to change anything in their work and because the pope wanted to finish up quickly to avoid letting the chaos get out of hand, their project, however insane, was accepted!” (Ibid.)


What is Canonisation?

Behind all this, underlying the question, is something which it is difficult to put one’s finger on, an attitude which itself is wrong. There is more than a whiff of the “because I say so” type of argument which reeks of voluntarism and nominalism. Let us remind ourselves: it is the Saint that makes the canonisation, not the canonisation which makes the Saint. Let that sink in for just a moment. Is a Saint a Saint because Rome says he’s a Saint? Or does Rome say he’s a Saint because he is one? Which comes first, the reality, or the word, the pronouncement, the description of the reality? In previous centuries canonisation was simply a matter of popular acclamation; then it was done more formally, at a diocesan level by the local bishop; in the middle ages it became something reserved to the Holy See.

Over time, the requirements understandably became stricter. The process which emerged in the modern era was something resembling a court case. The soul in question had to be proven a Saint beyond all doubt and was regarded almost as though guilty until proven innocent: not a Saint until proven a Saint. The prosecution, so to speak, was the famous advocatus diaboli. But that was not all. Several other criteria had to be met which were regarded as sine qua non, the first of which was a popular cultus among the faithful; another was some miracles. These things, if they exist, are facts. The canonisation itself was nothing more than a formal recognition of those already-existing facts.

Therefore, the real Saints are the ones who have a real following, who have worked real miracles, whom Divine Providence allows to become known and prayed-to all over the world and to become a central part of Catholic life and culture. The old, recently-removed Saints, in whom modern Rome appears no longer to believe, all pass the test with flying colours. Despite the machinations of the modernists, Catholics all over the world still give their children names such as Catherine, Philomena or Christopher; many people still pray to them, still wear their sacramentals and ask them for aid. Schools and parishes all over the world still bear their names, some of the finest artwork ever created depicts their lives and deaths and in some cases even whole nations, states or cities are under their patronage or have been named after them.

And there is no shortage of modern-day miracles either: as mentioned above, the Curé of Ars alone procured many miracles through the intercession of St. Philomena. More than eleven years ago, these pages (“On Recent Canonisations” - Recusant 16, May 2014) cast doubt on the supposed canonisations of the late popes John XXIII and John Paul II.

It was pointed out that the lives of these men were very far from being that of a Saint and that they were each a very bad example to follow. It was further pointed out that several ominous “coincidences” (if such they be) had accompanied the “canonisation” of John Paul II. The ugly bent-forwards crucifix which stood atop a hill as a memorial of his visit had suddenly collapsed, killing a man who was praying to him beneath it; that when his relics visited Lourdes, the sanctuary was soon underwater following the worst flooding in its history.

The same article suggested good reasons why one cannot simply say, “Canonisations are infallible!” and leave it at that - far from it. The object of infallibility is doctrine, that is, things to be believed by us, and necessary for our salvation. A canonisation on the other hand, is not a matter of doctrine necessary for our salvation: it is a saying that someone is a Saint, which means not only that the person in question is in heaven, but that he or she is an example which you or I can follow and learn from as a means of achieving heaven ourselves. That is why not one single baptised infant has ever been canonised, despite there being presumably tens– or even hundreds-of-thousands of candidates (newly baptised babies die all the time, there is even one in our family). They are certainly in heaven, you can pray to them, but they are never canonised, no statues of them will ever be seen in churches, no feast days in the calendar. Why? Because there is no life to follow: they died too young to give an example for anyone to follow. That is also why it is such a scandal for even the conciliar church to claim that Paul VI or John Paul II are Saints.

If that were true, then we can get to heaven is by kissing the koran, inviting pagans and devilworshippers into a Catholic church to pray to their false gods, putting statues of Buddha on top of tabernacles; punishing good men such as Marcel Lefebvre while simultaneously promoting sexual predators like Marcial Maciel or MarieDominique Philippe; suppressing the true Mass which nourished countless true Saints, and giving everyone a Masonic, Protestant communion service with a Jewish offertory prayer… we could go on. The very thought is monstrous.

So on the question of a cultus, a genuine following and devotion among the faithful, the real, old-fashioned Saints win hands down, despite the disadvantage of their having been removed from calendars, their demotion and all the rest. The conciliar Vatican II “Saints” usually have little or no cultus, despite the fact that it always used to be regarded as a sine qua non, an essential prerequisite to becoming a Saint.

Likewise, on the question of leading a life of heroic virtue, a life which is such a good example that if followed by you and I it will lead us to heaven too, we see the same thing. Many of these the conciliar “Saints” (the conciliar Popes, Faustina, Escriva, et al.) fail spectacularly. Their lives were such that they would never, could never have been canonised before Vatican II. The real Saints, by contrast, led such exemplary lives that many today find it hard to believe and doubt is cast not only on their lives and deaths, but even on their very existence.

The soundness of their teaching is something which will no doubt be at the forefront of the minds of many readers, and so it should be. Unsound teaching, let alone actual heresy, is something which in saner times meant that an investigation into the candidate’s life could not go ahead, never mind the beatification or canonisation itself, as the John Vennari article makes clear elsewhere in these pages. Strictly speaking, the false teaching of these bogus “Saints” is itself enough to say with certainty that they are not Saints. But since many of our acquaintance will not accept that, and since many of us will at some point experience doubt or scruples, let us continue to spell it out in detail. Miracles are the last thing to consider.

A real canonisation in the old days used to require two miracles, after all the other criteria had been met. Two genuine miracles. The new, bogus “canonisations” require only one, and often it is a “miracle” of highly dubious quality. Again, refer to the John Vennari article elsewhere in these pages to see details of the “miracle” used for Mother Theresa: it was as dodgy as a nine-bob note, the doctors involved and even the lady’s husband said it wasn’t a miracle!

In previous years, these pages have contained a close-up look into other conciliar “miracles”- long-time readers might recall our examination of the Buenos Aires “eucharistic miracle” from the 1990s (in Recusant 34, p.26) and that it most certainly did not stand up to close scrutiny! We have neither the time, nor the resources, nor even the patience to examine each and every so-called “miracle” approved by the conciliar authorities, but should it be necessary? How many definitely bogus “miracles” do we need to see until we decide to treat them all with extreme caution? Finally let us consider this. The men approving these “miracles” don’t believe in actual real miracles, even when they are contained in Sacred Scripture! The feeding of the five-thousand? No, you see, what the gospel-writer wished to emphasise in telling this story was that the real miracle was when everyone learned to share. The crossing of the Red Sea? No, you see it was really called the “Reed Sea” because it was like a marsh… Those are things I have heard from conciliar priests with my own ears (as have many of you too, no doubt). We could go on. The point to bear in mind here is this. Just as we are being asked to accept new “Saints” from men who don’t believe in real Saints, we also are being asked to believe in bogus “miracles” by men who cast doubt on real miracles.

In case all of that is all a bit much to remember, below is a handy table for ease of reference! It is of course worth remembering that the other scandal regarding conciliar “canonisations” is the sheer number. John Paul II earned a reputation as a veritable “Saint factory,” canonising hundreds in one go. His successors are no better. Not only does this practice severely damage the prestige and credibility of the Church in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, it also defeats the very point of a canonisation: how can you possibly have a devotion to these new “Saints” when it would take forever just to read their names, never mind learn a bit about
them? The whole point of Saints is that they are held out to us as an example to follow; you can’t hold out a couple of hundred examples in one go and expect to be taken seriously.

The Recusant patent “How-Bogus-Is-My-Saint?” Calculator

[Image: Capture2.png]

But beyond that, it has yet another unfortunate side-effect, in that it means that many genuine Saints may well be mixed in with the conciliar “Saints.” The first canonisation done by Pope Francis, for instance, was of more than 800 people in one go. They were the inhabitants of Otranto who were killed by the Turks in 1480 for refusing to convert to Islam: martyrs. At a cursory glance, it may well be that some or all of them really are martyrs, and therefore Saints.

But can we be certain? And which ones? Does anyone have the time or patience to try to find out? To take one more example, in 2001 John Paul II canonised a group of 233 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Again, there were many Catholics who died for the Faith at the hands of the communists at that time, so it is not inconceivable that at least some of them, many of them even, are genuine Saints and martyrs. But again, doesn’t it just leave one frustrated and demoralised? How certain can anyone be that there wasn’t the odd semi-degenerate “rightwinger” whom the reds rounded up with a load of Catholics into the same firing-squad and buried in the same pit? So the answer is it is probably a mixture, but very difficult to say.

And then there are men such as Padre Pio. Well, they couldn’t very well not canonise him, could they? They know full well that his presence in amongst all those other conciliar “Saints” will lend them credibility. And what about the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales? Well, they were of course martyrs at the hands of the English Protestant regime, they were beatified in 1929 and most of the work for their canonisations was surely done before the Council, so despite the fact that the actual canonisation wasn’t done until 1970, surely one can take them as being genuine Saints who were always going to be canonised, even had Vatican II and the crisis in the Church never happened.

We could go on, but all this really means is that the conciliar “Saints” are a bit of a mixed bag, to put it mildly. Some unmistakably genuine Saints have probably been given a conciliar “canonisation” (what an insult to them - they’ll need to be given a real canonisation when the crisis is over!). Then there are others who may well have been Saints. Then there are a lot of highly dubious “Saints” and finally there are those who are definitely not Saints. So a conciliar canonisation doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is a Saint. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t a Saint either. What a mess.


Where does Newman fit into all this?

All of which is by way of demonstrating that just because the conciliar church says that Newman is a Saint, that doesn’t really mean anything. It means is that he is somewhere on the spectrum of conciliar Saints, somewhere between Padre Pio at one end and Paul VI at the other. Newman may not be a Paul VI, but he may not necessarily be a Padre Pio either. So what are we to make of him? It doesn’t help that he has long been someone whom all sides seem to be trying to claim. The liberals and modernists claim that he is one of them. The “conservatives” of various sorts say that the liberals are twisting things and that really, Newman is on their side. Readers of a certain age who made their way out of the Novus Ordo to Tradition may well be reminded of similar debates which used to surround John Paul II and Benedict XVI while they were alive and on the papal throne. In the 1980s, 90s and early-2000s, John Paul II’s encyclicals would have the more orthodox soundbites quoted by people who were still trying to remain faithful inside the Novus Ordo (a shrinking constituency which has now all-but disappeared in this country); whereas out-and-out modernists and politically correct semiMarxists could quote other passages from the very same encyclical. Many conservative Novus Ordo people became Traditionalists after realising that the liberals and modernists actually had a point: John Paul II really was a modernist and a liberal, and not the conservative they had always thought him to be. Well, is it possible that something similar is going on with John Henry Newman? With that in mind, let us briefly look at some of the criteria mentioned above.

1. An Exemplary Life of Heroic Virtue

Compared to many of the worst conciliar “Saints” Newman comes out looking pretty good here. He certainly didn’t have the love of luxury, or outbursts of bad temper of a Josemaria Escriva, for instance. But then, he was a Victorian, who lived (1801-1890) a good three generations before the latter, so that is as one might expect: people back then knew far better how to behave. Nor does one find in his writing the shameless self-praise of a “Saint” Faustina, whose fake apparition made her sound more exulted than even the Blessed Virgin Mary. That is as it should be, too; but then, we are setting the bar rather low, aren’t we?

One thing which does need mentioning here is the accusations of some kind of latent homosexuality. A not very flattering picture of him was painted by Geoffrey Faber, the nephew of Newman’s colleague Fr. Frederick Faber. Since then, all sorts of “gay rights” people (Peter Tatchell, for instance) have tried to claim Newman as one of their own. Critics point to his friendship with Fr. Ambrose St. John, one of his disciples who together with him left the Anglican religion, entered the Catholic Church and became an Oratorian priest. They often point to the fact that Newman asked to be buried in his friend’s grave. His defenders say that it was a passionate friendship and nothing more. Well, it is true that there can be such a thing as a passionate friendship and it is also true that we shouldn’t always go to the lowest common denominator and assume something sexual which might have been nothing of the sort. The Victorian era, an age not that long past and yet unimaginably more innocent than our own, understood this far better than we do today: only a degenerate age such as our own will automatically equate love with lust. And it is true that the endorsement of “gay rights” activists such as Tatchell means very little. And Geoffrey Faber, by the way, was a non-Catholic who seems to have been a disciple of Sigmund Freud; furthermore, one of the things he seems to have a problem with, in common with many Anglicans of Newman’s day (Charles Kinglsley, for instance), is the very idea itself of clerical celibacy. So we can probably take what he says with a pinch of salt.

All of which is to say that Newman is almost certainly not guilty of this particular charge, but in passing we should perhaps add that it would have been nice to known for certain, and that had there been a proper, thorough investigation of his life and morals, with a Devil’s Advocate and all the rest, greater certainty might have been possible. As things stand, however, since the modern Vatican changed the entire process, the matter won’t have been looked-into as it once would have been, effectively robbing the man himself of a proper defence.

Other than that, the main points of Newman’s life seem to be what one would expect. He sacrificed his position in the establishment of his day, and undoubtedly lost friends and family connections when he converted. This is what one would expect and is what happened to all English converts in those days, but it is still something which counts in his favour. There are others who point to the fact that he had already got himself into trouble within the (so-called) Church of England due to his position within the Oxford Movement and Tract 90 in particular, and that therefore he didn’t give up as much as, say, Henry (later Cardinal) Manning who had been at the height of his popularity when he left the Anglican religion and became a Catholic. There is doubtless some truth in that, too.

Finally, it is perhaps worth mentioning that for the life of a Saint, although one expects to find controversy, one does not expect to find quite so much and with all the wrong people. It has been said of Newman that during the latter (Catholic) part of his life, his friends and admirers were all liberals and his enemies anti-liberals. There is some truth to that. And having read some of his correspondence with Fr. Faber (more about whom later), the tone and content of many of his letters is not edifying and betrays a petulance bordering on selfpity which somehow one cannot imagine witnessing from the pen of a genuine Saint. That is, however, only my opinion - the reader may take it or leave it as he wishes.


2. A Popular [u]Cultus[/u]

Even Newman’s promoters have admitted that it is alarming how little devotion to him there is or has ever been in his own country. I have heard it said that he has more of a following in the USA, which is interesting: perhaps a case of a prophet never being accepted in his own home? But it still ought to be a concern to anyone interested, and ought to have been of great interest and great concern to anyone involved in his cause for canonisation. It is not merely that he didn’t have much of a following in England: he had none at all! Nobody was praying to him, nobody had a devotion to him. In this aspect at least, he appears to be more in the Paul VI camp and all the other definitely bogus conciliar “Saints”. And since, as mentioned above, this one really is (or used to be and ought still to be) the first pre-requisite, that ought to concern us all the more. (Perhaps we ought to have made this number 1, instead of 2..?)

What popularity or respect Newman does have today, as in his own day, seems to some degree to arise from the prestige which he brought with him into the Church. Imagine: at a time when Catholics were still a vanishingly small minority in England (maybe two percent, and most of those were Irish immigrant labourers, unskilled and largely un-educated, who had come over for work), and before the steady flow of converts which would follow his own conversion, he was one of the first “big catches” for a Catholic Church which was only just being re-established in England. One can understand and sympathise with an English Catholic in those days who might be pleased and proud of such a well-known, high-profile academic leaving it all behind to enter the Catholic Church. But that doesn’t really help us. In the late-19th and early 20th Centuries, there was no suggestion that Newman had been a Saint and no devotion to him anywhere, from what we can see. What very little exists in recent years appears to have been drummed up by conciliar liberals in the wake of Vatican II.

In summary then: in the old days, before the Vatican II revolution, the lack of a cultus would have meant that Newman would not even have been considered for beatification or canonisation in the first place. And in the days before Vatican II, he had no cultus at all. Therefore, he ought never to have been considered to begin with and on these grounds alone there is good cause to doubt whether he is a real Saint, even if he is a conciliar “Saint.”


3. Genuine Miracles

Oh dear. Have you ever noticed how all the bogus conciliar “Saints” always seem to work medical “miracles”? Both miracles allegedly worked by Paul VI, for instance, involved an unborn child: the doctors predicted it would have a defect but in the end it was born healthy.

Anyone with any experience of these things will tell you that doctors continually make dire predictions about unborn babies which turn out not to be true, especially when they are using it to push the mother into getting an abortion (as was the case here). I have even known it within my own immediate family circle, as I am sure many of you will have too. That the baby is then born perfectly fine and healthy does not in any way mean that a miracle has taken place: it means you can’t trust modern doctors! In a similar vein there is the medical “miracle” allegedly worked by Mother Theresa, details of which are given in the John Vennari article found elsewhere in these pages.

Regrettably, Newman’s “miracles” do appear to be of a similar kind: more of these medical miracles which seem to take place whenever a conciliar “Saint” is made. His beatification miracle was curing a Novus Ordo married deacon of a spinal condition. But details of this supposed “miracle” are surprisingly hard to find in both Catholic and secular press and even the official Oratorian website (https://www.newmancanonisation.com/newmans-miracle) which gives a detailed account of his canonisation “miracle” is silent regarding the prior “miracle” used to beatify him. Why might that be? Well, our suspicions, it seems, are wellfounded and we can be grateful to SSPX priest Fr. Paul Kimball for including them in the introduction to his 2019 book on Newman:
Quote:“On July 3, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI recognised the healing of Deacon Jack Sullivan in 2001 as a miracle for Newman’s beatification, which occurred on September 19, 2010. Now, Mr. Sullivan underwent the operation of ‘...a laminectomy to remove part of the spinal bones that was causing the problem… Although successfully performed in August 2001, this operation left Jack Sullivan in immense pain and he was warned a full recovery might take months. With the new term approaching, Mr. Sullivan was becoming increasingly anxious about returning to class, and just a few days after his operation he tried to get out of bed. Having taken an excruciating few minutes, with a nurse’s help, to get his feet on the floor, he said he leant on his forearms and recited his prayer to Newman. Michael Powell, a consultant neurosurgeon at London’s University College Hospital, said a typical laminectomy took ‘about 40 minutes, and most patients … walk out happy at two days.’ ’ ” (Michael Hirst, Papal Visit: Cardinal Newman’s ‘miracle cure,’ BBC News, September 13, 2010)

Furthermore, the directive de Canonizatione of Prospero Cardinal Lambertini, who was later crowned Benedict XIV, spelt out the rules for working out if a healing was really a miracle from heaven. It is astounding that this miracle has been approved, for it directly violates the third rule of Benedict XIV for the verification of miracles during the process of canonization of Saints, namely, ‘The patient should not be getting medical treatment around the time of the cure.’ (Doctrina de servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, lib. 4, p.1, c.7, n.1-2.).”
(Cardinal Newman: Trojan Horse in the Church, Fr. Paul Kimball)

This alone was used by the enemies of the Church to pour scorn and ridicule. John Cornwell, author of “Hitler’s Pope,” wrote an article for The Times spelling out in great detail how this miracle did not abide by the Vatican’s own rules and making it look totally ridiculous. Though far too long to quote here, it is well worth a read and we encourage the reader to take a look. The author is a well-known antiCatholic but the worst thing is, he isn’t being dishonest and has clearly done his homework. As to Michael Powell, the London consultant neurosurgeon mentioned above, in 2010 he appeared in a brief segment during a BBC documentary. About 7 minutes in, he can be seen telling Ann Widdecombe:
Quote:“The events that occurred in Jack Sullivan’s case are all explicable, perhaps not so frequently that it would be commonplace, but certainly all of them perfectly reasonable. … To us British neurosurgeons, these are events that don’t at all sound [so] surprising or un-commonplace that it should be considered miraculous.”

Newman’s canonisation miracle appears to be not much better and, like that of Paul VI, it involves a pregnant lady and her unborn child. In this case the mother suffered bleeding during the pregnancy. She stopped bleeding after she prayed to him, and although the doctors said there was a chance that the baby would be born premature, in the end it was born at the right time and was healthy. As Fr. Kimball points out, this too violates the old rules for canonisation miracles, namely the sixth rule, that: “The cure must not come at a time when some natural cause could make the patient think he is cured or which stimulates a cure.”

There is also the fact that at least one of the doctors who lent his name to this “miracle” is a Novus Ordo Catholic who gave a gushing interview to the Novus Ordo press in which he described his deposition in favour of the miracle as a “spiritual experience”:
Quote:“The true spiritual experience was in the stages of the depositions. I literally cried when we were deposing her. It struck to my very heart…”
(https://www.archbalt.org/illinois-doctor...periences/)

Yuck. Now, it might be objected that all this still doesn’t mean that it definitely wasn’t a miracle, that despite all those less-than-encouraging circumstances, it might still have been a miracle anyway. But that would be missing the point: what is required is not a “might-havebeen-a” miracle but an absolutely bullet-proof miracle, one which cannot be explained any other way, since the credibility of the entire process and with it the credibility of the Church (or in this case, the conciliar church) is at stake. And besides which, given all that we have already seen from the conciliar church, do we not have, at the very least, the right, or even the duty, to be a little sceptical? Let us just say that it is a very great shame that these miracle couldn’t have been a little more… unimpeachable. Ah well.


4. Sound doctrine

Newman’s canonisation is almost certainly due to the fact that the modernists recognise in him a man whose thinking paved the way for Vatican II. As mentioned above, “conservative” Novus Ordo Catholics and even some Traditionalists say that he is being misrepresented and “claimed,” in much the same way as the “gay rights” lobby claim him for themselves. On the other hand, that is not the whole story. Despite what his supporters say, there undoubtedly is something not quite right with his teaching, but this is so important that it is worth examining at some length.]]> <![CDATA[John Vennari - Doubt and Confusion: The New “Canonizations”]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=7410 Mon, 25 Aug 2025 15:03:39 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=7410 Autumn 2025 issue of The Recusant, pages 18-26 [slightly adapted and reformatted]:

The following article appeared in the August 2013 Catholic Family News and can be found here: https://catholicfamilynews.com/blog/2014...nizations/


Doubt and Confusion: The New “Canonizations”
By John Vennari


Speaking of the rigorous pre-Vatican II procedure for beatifications, eminent Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh, who died in 1949, wrote the following:
Quote:“No secular court trying a man for his life is more thorough and scrupulous than the Congregation of Rites in seeking to establish whether or not the servant of God practiced virtues both theological and cardinal, and to a heroic degree. If that is established, the advocate of the cause must next prove that his presence in Heaven has been indicated by at least two miracles, while a cardinal who is an expert theologian does all he can to discredit the evidence - hence his popular title of advocatus diaboli, or Devil’s Advocate. If the evidence survives every attempt to destroy it after months, years and sometimes centuries of discussion, he is then beatified, that is, he is declared to be blessed.”

We will later note the new 1983 process of canonization dispenses with the Devil’s Advocate and eliminates the stringent juridical method in favor of an academic approach. The discarding of the “thorough and scrupulous” procedure praised by Mr. Walsh cannot help but introduce doubt to the integrity of the entire new process—especially in the case of “fast-track” canonizations. Mr. Walsh further noted the following about the traditional process:
Quote:“The final stage of canonization, the last of twenty distinct steps, may take even more years or centuries. It must be proved beyond any reasonable doubt that two additional miracles have been performed through the instance of the servant of God, since the beatification. When and if this is done, the Pope issues a bull (a sealed letter) of canonization.”


Sound Orthodoxy

Walsh also stressed the demand for sound orthodoxy regarding anyone considered for canonization:
Quote:“Theologians carefully scrutinize all the available writings - books, letters and so on - of the servant of God whose claim to holiness is being urged, together with all the depositions obtainable from those who spoke with him and knew him well. If nothing contrary to faith or morals is found, a decree is published authorizing further investigation.” [1]

If we begin with the criteria that “nothing contrary to faith or morals” can be found in any legitimate claim to beatification, we read with concern an invocation uttered by one who is now slated for “canonization” [and who was, indeed, “canonized” in 2014]: “Hear our prayers for the intention of the Jewish people, which You continue to cherish according to the Patriarchs.…Be mindful of the new generation, the young and the children: may they persevere in fidelity to You, in what is the exceptional mystery of their vocation.” [2]

Note: the man who offers this prayer does not indicate that Jews should convert to Our Lord’s one true Church for salvation but prays they “persevere in fidelity” to a counterfeit religious system that formally rejects Jesus Christ.

Commenting on The Book of the Dead at Auschwicz, the same man says:
Quote:“Persons whose names are contained in these books were incarcerated, they underwent tortures and were finally deprived of life solely, in most cases, because they belonged to a certain nation rather than another.…In the light of faith, we see the witness of heroic fidelity, which united them to God in eternity, and a seed of peace for future generations.” [3]

While we grieve for anyone who undergoes persecution and torture, our speaker indicates that the Jewish people who suffered at Auschwitz suffered a kind of Jewish martyrdom “which united them to God in eternity,” a concept unheard of in Church history. In days of doctrinal sanity, these radical statements - and there are countless more such utterances from the same man - would have stopped any process of beatification in its tracks and disqualified the candidate permanently.

The Catholic who made these questionable remarks was Pope John Paul II, whom Pope Francis has just approved for “canonization.” [4] In our post-Conciliar period of ecclesiastical sentimentality, the age-old truths of the Faith no longer stand as the central criteria for determining heroic virtue. As Fr. Patrick de La Rocque notes,
Quote:“Far from practicing the theological virtue of Faith to a heroic degree, the late pope [John Paul II] departed from it dangerously in a number of his teachings.” [5]

Nor do we see with John Paul II the virtue of true Charity, since John Paul throughout his entire pontificate refused to remind non-Catholics - Jews included - that they must convert to Christ’s one true Church for salvation. While presenting an entire chapter full of such quotes from the Polish pope, [6] Fr. La Rocque notes:
Quote:“By systematically concealing the [objective] sin of disbelief that is involved in formal adherence to Judaism, so as to praise instead the [alleged] fidelity to God of present-day Judaism…Pope John Paul II was seriously lacking in that delicate but important pastoral charity that consists in denouncing sin so as to allow the conversion of the sinner.” [7]

Yet Fr. La Rocque, or anyone else, who advances reasoned objections to John Paul II’s orthodoxy and objections to the claim that John Paul practiced heroic virtue, is simply ignored. The challenges are neither acknowledged nor answered. “We in the Vatican have decided that John Paul II is a saint, and that is that!” This type of thinking is due primarily to the laxer system of canonization introduced in 1983, as well as to the “new understanding” of what it means to be Catholic that was spawned by the Second Vatican Council, and by its most zealous evangelist, Pope John Paul II.


The New Process

On January 25, 1983, Pope John Paul II issued the Apostolic Constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister, the long-awaited revision of the beatification and canonization process. Cardinal Suenens, Paul VI, and other progressivists since the Council had encouraged such an update. John Paul brought it to fruition.[8]

The change was part of the alleged goal to make the canonization process “simpler, faster, cheaper, more ‘collegial’ and ultimately more productive.” [9] In the new system, the Devil’s Advocate has been eliminated. The “Promoter of the Faith,” as the Devil’s Advocate has been called, is given the new title “Prelate Theologian.” His main task is to choose the theological consulters and preside at the meetings. Catholic journalist Kenneth L. Woodward spotlights the root difference between the old and new systems:
Quote:“At the core of the reform is a striking paradigm shift: no longer would the Church look to the courtroom as its model for arriving at the truth of a saint’s life; instead, it would employ the academic model of researching and writing a doctoral dissertation.”

Woodward continues,
Quote:“In effect, then, the relator had replaced both the Devil’s Advocate and the defense lawyer. He alone was responsible for establishing martyrdom or heroic virtue, and it was up to the theological and historical consultants to give his work a passing or failing grade.” [10]

Though there may have been some abuses by the lawyers over the centuries, the elimination of lawyers radically transforms the procedure that had been at the heart of the saint-making process for half a millennium: a system deemed necessary by the great master of ascetical and mystical theology, Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) in his monumental work, The Beatification and Canonization of Saints. [11]

Though many in the post-Conciliar Vatican welcomed John Paul II’s new method, not all were thrilled. Msgr. Luigi Porsi, a 20-year veteran of the Church’s legal system, decried the elimination of the Devil’s Advocate and the accompanying lawyers as part of the beatification process. In an unanswered letter to Pope John Paul II, Porsi complained the reform went too far:
Quote:“There is no longer any room for an adversarial function.” [12]

Thus, a central question arises: if there is a radical change in what was the rigorous procedure for making saints, how can we expect the same secure results? Indeed, the “fast-track” beatifications of the past few decades already introduce doubt to the integrity of the process. The two cases that first come to mind are that of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Opus Dei Founder Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer.


Mother Teresa: Doctors Insist, No Miracle

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a popular figure recognized as a “saint” while she was still alive, even though, despite her many good works, she seemed to embrace a theology of indifferentism. She is on record saying,
Quote:“I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.” [13]

In 1976, Mother Teresa organized a 25th anniversary celebration of the Missionaries of Charity. As part of the celebration, she obtained permission from the Archbishop of Calcutta for her and her sisters to pray in some pagan temples - non-Christian houses of worship - each day of the jubilee.

Quote:“Her desire was for each group to hold its own worship service of thanksgiving. Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants and so forth joined her and her sisters to thank the one true God in their own way. She and her sisters prayed at eighteen different worship sites,” including Hindu temples. [14]

The central “miracle” employed to justify Mother Teresa’s 2003 “beatification” was the alleged cure of Monica Besra in September 1998. Besra, from Dangram, 460 miles northeast of Calcutta, claimed to have been cured of a tumor after praying to Mother Teresa while pressing a medallion of Mother Teresa’s image to her side.

Despite this claim, Besra’s doctors insist the cure had nothing miraculous about it, but was the result of strong anti-TB drugs administered over a period of nine months. “This miraculous claim is absolute nonsense and should be condemned by everyone,” said Dr. R. K. Musafi. “She had a medium-sized tumor in her lower abdomen caused by tuberculosis. The drugs she was given eventually reduced the cystic mass and it disappeared after a year’s treatment.”

Likewise, Dr. T. K. Biswas, the first doctor to treat Besra, said, “With all due respect to Mother Teresa, there should not be any talk of a miracle by her. We advised her a prolonged anti-tubercular treatment and she was cured.”

Remember, the Catholic Church has always demanded that a miraculous cure requires rigorous proof beyond any reasonable doubt. The integrity of the Mother Teresa “miracle” is thus seriously compromised. Dr. Manju Murshet, Superintendent of the Balurghat Hospital, complained that the doctorswere under pressure from Church members to declare a miraculous cure:
Quote:“They want us to say Monica Besra’s recovery was a miracle and beyond the comprehension of medical science.” [15]

Besra’s husband Deiku also challenges the claim of a miraculous cure. “It is much ado about nothing,” he said, “My wife was cured by the doctors, not by any miracle.” [16]

Further, Besra’s medical records have disappeared from the hospital. The records containing her physician’s notes, prescriptions, and sonograms were taken by Sister Betta of the Missionaries of Charity. When Time magazine contacted Sister Betta to ask about Besra’s medical records, the only response was “no comment.” [17]

Besra herself now claims she has been abandoned by the Missionary sisters who flocked to her home at the time of the alleged miracle and promised support. “My hut was frequented by nuns of the Missionaries of Charity before the beatification of Mother Teresa,” said Mrs. Besra, squatting on the floor of her thatched and mud house.

Quote:“They made a lot of promises to me and assured me of financial help for my livelihood and my children’s education. After that, they forgot me. I am living in penury. My husband is sick. My children have stopped going to school as I have no money. I have to work in the fields to feed my husband and five children.” [18]

It is not our intention to pass a judgment on these events. We merely wish to observe the following: it is hard to imagine this flurry of questions and abuses occurring under the former rigorous system of canonization. With the Devil’s Advocate now eliminated, abuse and suspicion sully not only Mother Teresa’s case, but the entire new beatification process itself. Once again, regarding the integrity of the new process, we encounter doubt.


Monsignor Escriva

Msgr. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of the controversial Opus Dei organization who died in 1975, was also placed on the fast track. Fr. Peter Scott, the then rector of SSPX’s Holy Cross Seminary in Australia, wrote in November 2002 of what he called Escriva’s “shameful” and “highly questionable canonization.”

Noting that due process was not followed, Father Scott objected that the procedure contained no Devil’s Advocate, and that
Quote: “former members of Opus Dei who personally knew Msgr. Escriva and who attempted to register their objections, were not allowed to express their opinion.”

In a last-ditch effort to provide more objective thinking regarding the hasty canonization, a group of former Opus Dei members wrote an Open Letter to Pope John Paul II in which they said:
Quote:“It is because we believe that the truth has been in large part hidden that we now give our testimony in order to avoid a danger for the Faith brought about by the unjustifiable reverence for the man that you have the intention of canonizing soon.”

They went on to explain that the authors of this Open Letter include:
Quote:“people who have intimately known Msgr. Escriva and who can testify to his arrogance, to his evil character, to his improper seeking of a title (Marquise of Peralta), to his dishonesty, to his indifference towards the poor, to his love of luxury and ostentation, to his lack of compassion, and to his idolatrous devotion towards ‘Opus Dei.’ ” [19]

After having pointed out that the process was uncanonical and dishonest, they had this to say:
Quote:“It [the canonization] will offend God. It will stain the Church forever. It will take away from the saints their special holiness. It will call into question the credibility of all the canonizations made during your Papacy. It will undermine the future authority of the Papacy.”

Father Scott notes that those who wrote the Open Letter were not traditionalists; they were former members of Escriva’s organization,
Quote:“but their supplication was not heard, and the ceremony took place as arranged on October 6, 2002.

“Their letter will certainly turn out to be prophetic, for in time they will be proven to be right in their assessment concerning Escriva as well as concerning Opus Dei that they so aptly compare to the liberal Sillon movement, rightly condemned by St. Pius X in 1910. This kind of last-minute objection is unheard of in the history of the Church. How could Catholics possibly regard such a man as heroic in virtue, as an extraordinary model of Catholic spirituality, as a saint must be? For all the reasons that they give, we cannot possibly consider this ‘canonization’ as a valid, infallible papal pronouncement.” [20]

In a similar vein, Catholic author Kenneth Woodward expressed grave reservations about the procedure regarding Escriva’s rapid “beatification.” When Fr. Richard John Neuhaus criticized this negative assessment, claiming the liberal-leaning Woodward was always unfavorable to Opus Dei, Woodward responded,
Quote:“My writing about Opus Dei has focused almost entirely on the beatification of its founder, not the organization itself. On this point, the only fair-minded conclusion I can reach, given the evidence of the positio itself and interviews with people in Rome involved in the process, is that Opus Dei subverted the canonization process to get its man beatified. In a word, it was a scandal - from the conduct of the tribunals through the writing of the positio to the high-handed treatment of the experts picked to judge the cause. That Newsweek caught Opus Dei officials making claims that were not true is a matter of record. Escriva may have been a saint - who am I to judge? But you could never tell from the way his cause was handled.”[21]

Once again, regarding the integrity of the process, we encounter doubt and more doubt.


Assisi: Catholic Youngsters Can’t Believe It

It seems clear that the real purpose of the upcoming “canonizations” of John XXIII and John Paul II [NB: Once again, they took place in 2014] is to “canonize” Vatican II and its entire liberal orientation of religious liberty, ecumenism, and pan-religious activity. For now, we will content ourselves with another objection to John Paul’s canonization.

At the time of the 2011 “beatification” of John Paul II, I learned of a homeschool online discussion taking place among sixth to ninth graders. A traditional Catholic youth (whom I know) was telling non-traditionalist Catholic acquaintances about Pope John Paul II’s panreligious meeting at Assisi; that John Paul invited Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Jains, and pagans to pray together at the event in October 1986. He also posted photos of the Assisi gathering.

The homeschooled youngsters refused to believe it. They claimed it could not be true; that the John Paul II / Assisi photos were doctored, that no pope - especially one “beatified” by the allegedly conservative Benedict XVI - would perform this act of ecclesiastical treason.

The young traditional Catholic who told his acquaintances about Assisi was accused of making up the account; of trying to defame the name of “Blessed” Pope John Paul II; of inventing a malicious story about a pagan-packed, pan-religious prayer-fest that no pope would countenance.

Here, then, is the striking point: The children knew the Assisi prayer meeting was not Catholic. The children knew it was not a manifestation of heroic virtue. The children knew it was a scandal of colossal dimension, and thus refused to believe John Paul could be guilty of it. To their credit, these youngsters displayed a better sensus Catholicus than today’s Vatican leaders. If Catholic homeschool children, age 13 and under, recognize the outrage of the pan-religious meeting at Assisi, why did not Pope Benedict XVI, who placed Papa Wojtyla on the fast-track to beatification? Why does not Pope Francis, who on July 5 [NB: 2013] approved John Paul II’s “canonization”? Under today’s streamlined procedure, these crucial questions are ignored as irrelevant.

Once again regarding the integrity of the process, we encounter doubt, doubt and more doubt.


Defect in Procedure

There is an apparent quick-fix solution to the modern canonization dilemma: it is to declare that today’s popes are not popes at all; that they have lost their office due to heresy, and that we have not had a true pope since Pius XII. Yet this Sedevacantist reaction, I believe, merely substitutes one collection of thorny questions with others of greater magnitude. A thorough response to the details of our unprecedented situation calls for the genius of a Bellarmine or a Garrigou-Lagrange - genius seemingly lacking in our post-Conciliar period. [22]

To conclude: Fast-track beatifications, where the will to beatify supersedes the worthiness of the proposed candidate, are a dangerous and questionable development. This is what we see with the determined push to rapidly canonize John XXIII and John Paul II. Under the new system that eliminates the Devil’s Advocate, legitimate challenges to the sanctity, orthodoxy, and miraculous intervention of the candidate are left unaddressed. As Vatican postulator Msgr. Luigi Porsi warned, “There is no longer any room for an adversarial function.”

Everything in the Catholic Faith conforms to reason. [23] It seems unreasonable, then, to assume that a drastic loosening in the procedure for canonization would yield the same secure results as the “thorough and scrupulous” method that had been in place for centuries. [24]

Thus, I believe modern beatifications and canonizations are at best doubtful due to defect in procedure, and due to a new criteria for holiness engendered by the new “ecumenical Catholicism” of Vatican II.


Notes:
[1] William Thomas Walsh, The Saints in Action (New York: Hanover, 1961), p. 14 (emphasis added). Though Walsh died in 1949, The Saints in Action was not published until 1961.
[2] Fr. Patrick de La Rocque, FSSPX, Pope John Paul II: Doubts about a Beatification (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2011), p. 99.
[3] Ibid., p. 10.
[4] “Pope Francis Signs Canonization Decrees for John XXIII and John Paul II,” Vatican Radio, July 5, 2013. Pope Francis “waived” the second necessary miracle for the “canonization” of John XXIII.
[5] La Rocque, Doubts about a Beatification, p. xviii.
[6] See Chapter III (pp. 89-113), “John Paul II and the Virtue of Charity,” Pope John Paul II: Doubts about a Beatification.
[7] Ibid., p. 97.
[8] Some background: In the year 1234, Pope Gregory IX established procedures to investigate the life of a candidate saint and any attributed miracles. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V entrusted the Congregation of Rites (later named the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints) to oversee the entire process. Beginning with Pope Urban VIII in 1634, various Popes have revised and improved the norms and procedures for canonization. Prospero Lambertini, a brilliant canonist who had come from the ranks of the Congregation of Rites to become Pope Benedict XIV, set himself the task of reviewing and clarifying the Church’s practice of making saints. His long and masterful work in five volumes, De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione (On the Beatification of the Servants of God and the Canonization of the Blesseds), published between 1734 and 1738, is the touchstone text for the making of saints.
[9] Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 91.
[10] Ibid.
[11] See “Advocatus Diaboli” (Devil’s Advocate), Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I, Robert Appleton Company, 1907.
[12] Woodward, Making Saints, p. 95.
[13] Mark Zima, Mother Teresa: The Case for the Cause (Is Mother Teresa of Calcutta a Saint?) (Nashville: Cold Tree Press, 2007), p. 29.
[14] Ibid., p. 65.
[15] Quotes from Doctors Musafi, Biswas, and Murshet are taken from Zima’s Mother Teresa: The Case for the Cause, pp. 190-191.
[16] “Mother Teresa ‘miracle’ patient accuses nuns,” Telegraph, Sept. 5, 2007.
[17] “What’s Mother Teresa Got to Do with It?” Time.com, Oct. 14, 2002.
[18] “Mother Teresa ‘miracle’ patient accuses nuns.” It should be noted that Besra still believes she was miraculously cured by Mother Teresa. Her doctors, however, testify that there was nothing miraculous about it.
[19] These complaints about Escriva surface elsewhere, including the book by a former Opus Dei
member, Beyond the Threshold—A Life in Opus Dei: The True, Unfinished Story (Maria del Carmen Tapia, 1998); and were also mentioned by Fr. Gregory Hesse in speeches at our CFN conference, 1998.
[20] Holy Cross Seminary Newsletter, Nov. 1, 2002.
[21] “Fair to Opus Dei?” Letter to the Editor of First Things, No. 61, March 1996, pp. 2-7. [Note: Woodward’s response was written after Escriva’s “beatification” but prior to his “canonization”].
Posted on Opus Dei Awareness Network webpage, updated June 20, 2005.
[22] For example, it is argued that any “infallibility” that deals with canonization would not extend beyond the fact that the soul of the saint is in Heaven. Period. Yet the way in which the Church would judge that the soul is in Heaven is by means of authentic miracles attributed to the “saint’s” intercession. This is why the old system for determining this was, as William Thomas
Walsh noted, “thorough and scrupulous.” Yet if the stringent procedure for determining a miracle is not followed—such as what appears to be the case with the “miracle” attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta—how is the “saint’s” presence in Heaven determined beyond the pronouncement of a post-Conciliar pope and his will to canonize a given individual?
[23] Though the mysteries, such as the Blessed Trinity and Transubstantiation, are said to be above reason, but not contrary to it.
[24] Fr. Joseph de Sainte Marie was a capable Carmelite theologian who worked in Rome in the 1970s and ’80s. An expert on Fatima and a loyal son of Pope John Paul II, he helped compose the formula for the Pope’s 1982 Consecration of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Despite this, Father de Saint Marie issued the following warning about the unfortunate present state of the Church and those at its highest levels: “In our time, and it is one of the most obvious signs of the extraordinarily abnormal character of the current state of the Church, it is very often the case that the acts of the Holy See demand of us prudence and discernment.” (Cited from Apropos, Isle of Sky, No. 16, 1994, p. 5.) Fr. Joseph de Saint Marie thus tells in a respectful and gentlemanly manner, that our Holy Church now passes through an extraordinary period of history. He uses the word “abnormal.” Yet in the face of this “extraordinarily abnormal character of the current state of the Church,” he does not advise us to follow the Pope blindly. Aligning himself, rather, with the traditional teaching of Popes and Saints (for example, that of Pope Innocent III, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Francis de Sales, John of St. Thomas and others) Father de Saint Marie cautions us that “in our time,” we have to be careful. We have to exercise “prudence and discernment” when it comes to the actions of the Holy See itself; that is, even when it comes to papal actions. Further,
he tells us it is “very often the case” that we have to now exercise this caution.]]> Autumn 2025 issue of The Recusant, pages 18-26 [slightly adapted and reformatted]:

The following article appeared in the August 2013 Catholic Family News and can be found here: https://catholicfamilynews.com/blog/2014...nizations/


Doubt and Confusion: The New “Canonizations”
By John Vennari


Speaking of the rigorous pre-Vatican II procedure for beatifications, eminent Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh, who died in 1949, wrote the following:
Quote:“No secular court trying a man for his life is more thorough and scrupulous than the Congregation of Rites in seeking to establish whether or not the servant of God practiced virtues both theological and cardinal, and to a heroic degree. If that is established, the advocate of the cause must next prove that his presence in Heaven has been indicated by at least two miracles, while a cardinal who is an expert theologian does all he can to discredit the evidence - hence his popular title of advocatus diaboli, or Devil’s Advocate. If the evidence survives every attempt to destroy it after months, years and sometimes centuries of discussion, he is then beatified, that is, he is declared to be blessed.”

We will later note the new 1983 process of canonization dispenses with the Devil’s Advocate and eliminates the stringent juridical method in favor of an academic approach. The discarding of the “thorough and scrupulous” procedure praised by Mr. Walsh cannot help but introduce doubt to the integrity of the entire new process—especially in the case of “fast-track” canonizations. Mr. Walsh further noted the following about the traditional process:
Quote:“The final stage of canonization, the last of twenty distinct steps, may take even more years or centuries. It must be proved beyond any reasonable doubt that two additional miracles have been performed through the instance of the servant of God, since the beatification. When and if this is done, the Pope issues a bull (a sealed letter) of canonization.”


Sound Orthodoxy

Walsh also stressed the demand for sound orthodoxy regarding anyone considered for canonization:
Quote:“Theologians carefully scrutinize all the available writings - books, letters and so on - of the servant of God whose claim to holiness is being urged, together with all the depositions obtainable from those who spoke with him and knew him well. If nothing contrary to faith or morals is found, a decree is published authorizing further investigation.” [1]

If we begin with the criteria that “nothing contrary to faith or morals” can be found in any legitimate claim to beatification, we read with concern an invocation uttered by one who is now slated for “canonization” [and who was, indeed, “canonized” in 2014]: “Hear our prayers for the intention of the Jewish people, which You continue to cherish according to the Patriarchs.…Be mindful of the new generation, the young and the children: may they persevere in fidelity to You, in what is the exceptional mystery of their vocation.” [2]

Note: the man who offers this prayer does not indicate that Jews should convert to Our Lord’s one true Church for salvation but prays they “persevere in fidelity” to a counterfeit religious system that formally rejects Jesus Christ.

Commenting on The Book of the Dead at Auschwicz, the same man says:
Quote:“Persons whose names are contained in these books were incarcerated, they underwent tortures and were finally deprived of life solely, in most cases, because they belonged to a certain nation rather than another.…In the light of faith, we see the witness of heroic fidelity, which united them to God in eternity, and a seed of peace for future generations.” [3]

While we grieve for anyone who undergoes persecution and torture, our speaker indicates that the Jewish people who suffered at Auschwitz suffered a kind of Jewish martyrdom “which united them to God in eternity,” a concept unheard of in Church history. In days of doctrinal sanity, these radical statements - and there are countless more such utterances from the same man - would have stopped any process of beatification in its tracks and disqualified the candidate permanently.

The Catholic who made these questionable remarks was Pope John Paul II, whom Pope Francis has just approved for “canonization.” [4] In our post-Conciliar period of ecclesiastical sentimentality, the age-old truths of the Faith no longer stand as the central criteria for determining heroic virtue. As Fr. Patrick de La Rocque notes,
Quote:“Far from practicing the theological virtue of Faith to a heroic degree, the late pope [John Paul II] departed from it dangerously in a number of his teachings.” [5]

Nor do we see with John Paul II the virtue of true Charity, since John Paul throughout his entire pontificate refused to remind non-Catholics - Jews included - that they must convert to Christ’s one true Church for salvation. While presenting an entire chapter full of such quotes from the Polish pope, [6] Fr. La Rocque notes:
Quote:“By systematically concealing the [objective] sin of disbelief that is involved in formal adherence to Judaism, so as to praise instead the [alleged] fidelity to God of present-day Judaism…Pope John Paul II was seriously lacking in that delicate but important pastoral charity that consists in denouncing sin so as to allow the conversion of the sinner.” [7]

Yet Fr. La Rocque, or anyone else, who advances reasoned objections to John Paul II’s orthodoxy and objections to the claim that John Paul practiced heroic virtue, is simply ignored. The challenges are neither acknowledged nor answered. “We in the Vatican have decided that John Paul II is a saint, and that is that!” This type of thinking is due primarily to the laxer system of canonization introduced in 1983, as well as to the “new understanding” of what it means to be Catholic that was spawned by the Second Vatican Council, and by its most zealous evangelist, Pope John Paul II.


The New Process

On January 25, 1983, Pope John Paul II issued the Apostolic Constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister, the long-awaited revision of the beatification and canonization process. Cardinal Suenens, Paul VI, and other progressivists since the Council had encouraged such an update. John Paul brought it to fruition.[8]

The change was part of the alleged goal to make the canonization process “simpler, faster, cheaper, more ‘collegial’ and ultimately more productive.” [9] In the new system, the Devil’s Advocate has been eliminated. The “Promoter of the Faith,” as the Devil’s Advocate has been called, is given the new title “Prelate Theologian.” His main task is to choose the theological consulters and preside at the meetings. Catholic journalist Kenneth L. Woodward spotlights the root difference between the old and new systems:
Quote:“At the core of the reform is a striking paradigm shift: no longer would the Church look to the courtroom as its model for arriving at the truth of a saint’s life; instead, it would employ the academic model of researching and writing a doctoral dissertation.”

Woodward continues,
Quote:“In effect, then, the relator had replaced both the Devil’s Advocate and the defense lawyer. He alone was responsible for establishing martyrdom or heroic virtue, and it was up to the theological and historical consultants to give his work a passing or failing grade.” [10]

Though there may have been some abuses by the lawyers over the centuries, the elimination of lawyers radically transforms the procedure that had been at the heart of the saint-making process for half a millennium: a system deemed necessary by the great master of ascetical and mystical theology, Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) in his monumental work, The Beatification and Canonization of Saints. [11]

Though many in the post-Conciliar Vatican welcomed John Paul II’s new method, not all were thrilled. Msgr. Luigi Porsi, a 20-year veteran of the Church’s legal system, decried the elimination of the Devil’s Advocate and the accompanying lawyers as part of the beatification process. In an unanswered letter to Pope John Paul II, Porsi complained the reform went too far:
Quote:“There is no longer any room for an adversarial function.” [12]

Thus, a central question arises: if there is a radical change in what was the rigorous procedure for making saints, how can we expect the same secure results? Indeed, the “fast-track” beatifications of the past few decades already introduce doubt to the integrity of the process. The two cases that first come to mind are that of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Opus Dei Founder Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer.


Mother Teresa: Doctors Insist, No Miracle

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was a popular figure recognized as a “saint” while she was still alive, even though, despite her many good works, she seemed to embrace a theology of indifferentism. She is on record saying,
Quote:“I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.” [13]

In 1976, Mother Teresa organized a 25th anniversary celebration of the Missionaries of Charity. As part of the celebration, she obtained permission from the Archbishop of Calcutta for her and her sisters to pray in some pagan temples - non-Christian houses of worship - each day of the jubilee.

Quote:“Her desire was for each group to hold its own worship service of thanksgiving. Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants and so forth joined her and her sisters to thank the one true God in their own way. She and her sisters prayed at eighteen different worship sites,” including Hindu temples. [14]

The central “miracle” employed to justify Mother Teresa’s 2003 “beatification” was the alleged cure of Monica Besra in September 1998. Besra, from Dangram, 460 miles northeast of Calcutta, claimed to have been cured of a tumor after praying to Mother Teresa while pressing a medallion of Mother Teresa’s image to her side.

Despite this claim, Besra’s doctors insist the cure had nothing miraculous about it, but was the result of strong anti-TB drugs administered over a period of nine months. “This miraculous claim is absolute nonsense and should be condemned by everyone,” said Dr. R. K. Musafi. “She had a medium-sized tumor in her lower abdomen caused by tuberculosis. The drugs she was given eventually reduced the cystic mass and it disappeared after a year’s treatment.”

Likewise, Dr. T. K. Biswas, the first doctor to treat Besra, said, “With all due respect to Mother Teresa, there should not be any talk of a miracle by her. We advised her a prolonged anti-tubercular treatment and she was cured.”

Remember, the Catholic Church has always demanded that a miraculous cure requires rigorous proof beyond any reasonable doubt. The integrity of the Mother Teresa “miracle” is thus seriously compromised. Dr. Manju Murshet, Superintendent of the Balurghat Hospital, complained that the doctorswere under pressure from Church members to declare a miraculous cure:
Quote:“They want us to say Monica Besra’s recovery was a miracle and beyond the comprehension of medical science.” [15]

Besra’s husband Deiku also challenges the claim of a miraculous cure. “It is much ado about nothing,” he said, “My wife was cured by the doctors, not by any miracle.” [16]

Further, Besra’s medical records have disappeared from the hospital. The records containing her physician’s notes, prescriptions, and sonograms were taken by Sister Betta of the Missionaries of Charity. When Time magazine contacted Sister Betta to ask about Besra’s medical records, the only response was “no comment.” [17]

Besra herself now claims she has been abandoned by the Missionary sisters who flocked to her home at the time of the alleged miracle and promised support. “My hut was frequented by nuns of the Missionaries of Charity before the beatification of Mother Teresa,” said Mrs. Besra, squatting on the floor of her thatched and mud house.

Quote:“They made a lot of promises to me and assured me of financial help for my livelihood and my children’s education. After that, they forgot me. I am living in penury. My husband is sick. My children have stopped going to school as I have no money. I have to work in the fields to feed my husband and five children.” [18]

It is not our intention to pass a judgment on these events. We merely wish to observe the following: it is hard to imagine this flurry of questions and abuses occurring under the former rigorous system of canonization. With the Devil’s Advocate now eliminated, abuse and suspicion sully not only Mother Teresa’s case, but the entire new beatification process itself. Once again, regarding the integrity of the new process, we encounter doubt.


Monsignor Escriva

Msgr. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of the controversial Opus Dei organization who died in 1975, was also placed on the fast track. Fr. Peter Scott, the then rector of SSPX’s Holy Cross Seminary in Australia, wrote in November 2002 of what he called Escriva’s “shameful” and “highly questionable canonization.”

Noting that due process was not followed, Father Scott objected that the procedure contained no Devil’s Advocate, and that
Quote: “former members of Opus Dei who personally knew Msgr. Escriva and who attempted to register their objections, were not allowed to express their opinion.”

In a last-ditch effort to provide more objective thinking regarding the hasty canonization, a group of former Opus Dei members wrote an Open Letter to Pope John Paul II in which they said:
Quote:“It is because we believe that the truth has been in large part hidden that we now give our testimony in order to avoid a danger for the Faith brought about by the unjustifiable reverence for the man that you have the intention of canonizing soon.”

They went on to explain that the authors of this Open Letter include:
Quote:“people who have intimately known Msgr. Escriva and who can testify to his arrogance, to his evil character, to his improper seeking of a title (Marquise of Peralta), to his dishonesty, to his indifference towards the poor, to his love of luxury and ostentation, to his lack of compassion, and to his idolatrous devotion towards ‘Opus Dei.’ ” [19]

After having pointed out that the process was uncanonical and dishonest, they had this to say:
Quote:“It [the canonization] will offend God. It will stain the Church forever. It will take away from the saints their special holiness. It will call into question the credibility of all the canonizations made during your Papacy. It will undermine the future authority of the Papacy.”

Father Scott notes that those who wrote the Open Letter were not traditionalists; they were former members of Escriva’s organization,
Quote:“but their supplication was not heard, and the ceremony took place as arranged on October 6, 2002.

“Their letter will certainly turn out to be prophetic, for in time they will be proven to be right in their assessment concerning Escriva as well as concerning Opus Dei that they so aptly compare to the liberal Sillon movement, rightly condemned by St. Pius X in 1910. This kind of last-minute objection is unheard of in the history of the Church. How could Catholics possibly regard such a man as heroic in virtue, as an extraordinary model of Catholic spirituality, as a saint must be? For all the reasons that they give, we cannot possibly consider this ‘canonization’ as a valid, infallible papal pronouncement.” [20]

In a similar vein, Catholic author Kenneth Woodward expressed grave reservations about the procedure regarding Escriva’s rapid “beatification.” When Fr. Richard John Neuhaus criticized this negative assessment, claiming the liberal-leaning Woodward was always unfavorable to Opus Dei, Woodward responded,
Quote:“My writing about Opus Dei has focused almost entirely on the beatification of its founder, not the organization itself. On this point, the only fair-minded conclusion I can reach, given the evidence of the positio itself and interviews with people in Rome involved in the process, is that Opus Dei subverted the canonization process to get its man beatified. In a word, it was a scandal - from the conduct of the tribunals through the writing of the positio to the high-handed treatment of the experts picked to judge the cause. That Newsweek caught Opus Dei officials making claims that were not true is a matter of record. Escriva may have been a saint - who am I to judge? But you could never tell from the way his cause was handled.”[21]

Once again, regarding the integrity of the process, we encounter doubt and more doubt.


Assisi: Catholic Youngsters Can’t Believe It

It seems clear that the real purpose of the upcoming “canonizations” of John XXIII and John Paul II [NB: Once again, they took place in 2014] is to “canonize” Vatican II and its entire liberal orientation of religious liberty, ecumenism, and pan-religious activity. For now, we will content ourselves with another objection to John Paul’s canonization.

At the time of the 2011 “beatification” of John Paul II, I learned of a homeschool online discussion taking place among sixth to ninth graders. A traditional Catholic youth (whom I know) was telling non-traditionalist Catholic acquaintances about Pope John Paul II’s panreligious meeting at Assisi; that John Paul invited Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Jains, and pagans to pray together at the event in October 1986. He also posted photos of the Assisi gathering.

The homeschooled youngsters refused to believe it. They claimed it could not be true; that the John Paul II / Assisi photos were doctored, that no pope - especially one “beatified” by the allegedly conservative Benedict XVI - would perform this act of ecclesiastical treason.

The young traditional Catholic who told his acquaintances about Assisi was accused of making up the account; of trying to defame the name of “Blessed” Pope John Paul II; of inventing a malicious story about a pagan-packed, pan-religious prayer-fest that no pope would countenance.

Here, then, is the striking point: The children knew the Assisi prayer meeting was not Catholic. The children knew it was not a manifestation of heroic virtue. The children knew it was a scandal of colossal dimension, and thus refused to believe John Paul could be guilty of it. To their credit, these youngsters displayed a better sensus Catholicus than today’s Vatican leaders. If Catholic homeschool children, age 13 and under, recognize the outrage of the pan-religious meeting at Assisi, why did not Pope Benedict XVI, who placed Papa Wojtyla on the fast-track to beatification? Why does not Pope Francis, who on July 5 [NB: 2013] approved John Paul II’s “canonization”? Under today’s streamlined procedure, these crucial questions are ignored as irrelevant.

Once again regarding the integrity of the process, we encounter doubt, doubt and more doubt.


Defect in Procedure

There is an apparent quick-fix solution to the modern canonization dilemma: it is to declare that today’s popes are not popes at all; that they have lost their office due to heresy, and that we have not had a true pope since Pius XII. Yet this Sedevacantist reaction, I believe, merely substitutes one collection of thorny questions with others of greater magnitude. A thorough response to the details of our unprecedented situation calls for the genius of a Bellarmine or a Garrigou-Lagrange - genius seemingly lacking in our post-Conciliar period. [22]

To conclude: Fast-track beatifications, where the will to beatify supersedes the worthiness of the proposed candidate, are a dangerous and questionable development. This is what we see with the determined push to rapidly canonize John XXIII and John Paul II. Under the new system that eliminates the Devil’s Advocate, legitimate challenges to the sanctity, orthodoxy, and miraculous intervention of the candidate are left unaddressed. As Vatican postulator Msgr. Luigi Porsi warned, “There is no longer any room for an adversarial function.”

Everything in the Catholic Faith conforms to reason. [23] It seems unreasonable, then, to assume that a drastic loosening in the procedure for canonization would yield the same secure results as the “thorough and scrupulous” method that had been in place for centuries. [24]

Thus, I believe modern beatifications and canonizations are at best doubtful due to defect in procedure, and due to a new criteria for holiness engendered by the new “ecumenical Catholicism” of Vatican II.


Notes:
[1] William Thomas Walsh, The Saints in Action (New York: Hanover, 1961), p. 14 (emphasis added). Though Walsh died in 1949, The Saints in Action was not published until 1961.
[2] Fr. Patrick de La Rocque, FSSPX, Pope John Paul II: Doubts about a Beatification (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2011), p. 99.
[3] Ibid., p. 10.
[4] “Pope Francis Signs Canonization Decrees for John XXIII and John Paul II,” Vatican Radio, July 5, 2013. Pope Francis “waived” the second necessary miracle for the “canonization” of John XXIII.
[5] La Rocque, Doubts about a Beatification, p. xviii.
[6] See Chapter III (pp. 89-113), “John Paul II and the Virtue of Charity,” Pope John Paul II: Doubts about a Beatification.
[7] Ibid., p. 97.
[8] Some background: In the year 1234, Pope Gregory IX established procedures to investigate the life of a candidate saint and any attributed miracles. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V entrusted the Congregation of Rites (later named the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints) to oversee the entire process. Beginning with Pope Urban VIII in 1634, various Popes have revised and improved the norms and procedures for canonization. Prospero Lambertini, a brilliant canonist who had come from the ranks of the Congregation of Rites to become Pope Benedict XIV, set himself the task of reviewing and clarifying the Church’s practice of making saints. His long and masterful work in five volumes, De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione (On the Beatification of the Servants of God and the Canonization of the Blesseds), published between 1734 and 1738, is the touchstone text for the making of saints.
[9] Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 91.
[10] Ibid.
[11] See “Advocatus Diaboli” (Devil’s Advocate), Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I, Robert Appleton Company, 1907.
[12] Woodward, Making Saints, p. 95.
[13] Mark Zima, Mother Teresa: The Case for the Cause (Is Mother Teresa of Calcutta a Saint?) (Nashville: Cold Tree Press, 2007), p. 29.
[14] Ibid., p. 65.
[15] Quotes from Doctors Musafi, Biswas, and Murshet are taken from Zima’s Mother Teresa: The Case for the Cause, pp. 190-191.
[16] “Mother Teresa ‘miracle’ patient accuses nuns,” Telegraph, Sept. 5, 2007.
[17] “What’s Mother Teresa Got to Do with It?” Time.com, Oct. 14, 2002.
[18] “Mother Teresa ‘miracle’ patient accuses nuns.” It should be noted that Besra still believes she was miraculously cured by Mother Teresa. Her doctors, however, testify that there was nothing miraculous about it.
[19] These complaints about Escriva surface elsewhere, including the book by a former Opus Dei
member, Beyond the Threshold—A Life in Opus Dei: The True, Unfinished Story (Maria del Carmen Tapia, 1998); and were also mentioned by Fr. Gregory Hesse in speeches at our CFN conference, 1998.
[20] Holy Cross Seminary Newsletter, Nov. 1, 2002.
[21] “Fair to Opus Dei?” Letter to the Editor of First Things, No. 61, March 1996, pp. 2-7. [Note: Woodward’s response was written after Escriva’s “beatification” but prior to his “canonization”].
Posted on Opus Dei Awareness Network webpage, updated June 20, 2005.
[22] For example, it is argued that any “infallibility” that deals with canonization would not extend beyond the fact that the soul of the saint is in Heaven. Period. Yet the way in which the Church would judge that the soul is in Heaven is by means of authentic miracles attributed to the “saint’s” intercession. This is why the old system for determining this was, as William Thomas
Walsh noted, “thorough and scrupulous.” Yet if the stringent procedure for determining a miracle is not followed—such as what appears to be the case with the “miracle” attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta—how is the “saint’s” presence in Heaven determined beyond the pronouncement of a post-Conciliar pope and his will to canonize a given individual?
[23] Though the mysteries, such as the Blessed Trinity and Transubstantiation, are said to be above reason, but not contrary to it.
[24] Fr. Joseph de Sainte Marie was a capable Carmelite theologian who worked in Rome in the 1970s and ’80s. An expert on Fatima and a loyal son of Pope John Paul II, he helped compose the formula for the Pope’s 1982 Consecration of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Despite this, Father de Saint Marie issued the following warning about the unfortunate present state of the Church and those at its highest levels: “In our time, and it is one of the most obvious signs of the extraordinarily abnormal character of the current state of the Church, it is very often the case that the acts of the Holy See demand of us prudence and discernment.” (Cited from Apropos, Isle of Sky, No. 16, 1994, p. 5.) Fr. Joseph de Saint Marie thus tells in a respectful and gentlemanly manner, that our Holy Church now passes through an extraordinary period of history. He uses the word “abnormal.” Yet in the face of this “extraordinarily abnormal character of the current state of the Church,” he does not advise us to follow the Pope blindly. Aligning himself, rather, with the traditional teaching of Popes and Saints (for example, that of Pope Innocent III, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Francis de Sales, John of St. Thomas and others) Father de Saint Marie cautions us that “in our time,” we have to be careful. We have to exercise “prudence and discernment” when it comes to the actions of the Holy See itself; that is, even when it comes to papal actions. Further,
he tells us it is “very often the case” that we have to now exercise this caution.]]> <![CDATA[Jean Madiran [1976]: Outside of Which Church?]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6805 Wed, 22 Jan 2025 14:22:20 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6805 Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre - Volume 1, chapter 9:


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."
]]> Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre - Volume 1, chapter 9:


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."
]]> <![CDATA[Gregory DiPippo: Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6769 Sun, 05 Jan 2025 12:54:50 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6769 NLM's Gregory DiPippo refuting the following error about active participation: "... of how and why popular participation was lost in the high Middle Ages, and putatively recovered by the post-Conciliar reform."


Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 1)

Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 2)]]> NLM's Gregory DiPippo refuting the following error about active participation: "... of how and why popular participation was lost in the high Middle Ages, and putatively recovered by the post-Conciliar reform."


Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 1)

Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 2)]]> <![CDATA[Just How Different Are the Pre-1955, 1962, and 1969 Calendars Around Christmas and Epiphany?]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6746 Sat, 28 Dec 2024 12:24:00 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6746 Just How Different Are the Pre-1955, 1962, and 1969 Calendars Around Christmas and Epiphany?
(2024 Edition)

[Image: CALENDAR%20-%20Just%20How%20Different%20...ition).jpg]
By Peter Kwasniewski - Rorate Caeli [adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original] | December 27, 2024

More and more Catholics are waking up to the huge differences between the old and new Roman liturgical calendars—the one, a product of two millennia of organic development; the other, brainchild of a 1960s committee. A subcategory of these folks are waking up to the significant differences between the calendar of the pre-1955 Missale Romanum and the one observed with the 1962 Missale Romanum. The chart above compares all three for the period from December 25th to January 19th.

In the period from Christmas to Epiphany, one can see at a glance the variations in logic and emphasis. The old calendars place great emphasis on Christmas, which is commemorated throughout the Octave, with the daily use not only of the Gloria but also of the Creed. Even more, the old calendars place massive emphasis on Epiphany, which is a feastday older than Christmas and of loftier pedigree—although one would never know that from how it was demoted in recent decades, shoved to a nearby Sunday for convenience, and shorn of its octave. In the old calendars, the Most Holy Name of Jesus (an 18th-century addition) is an obligatory Sunday celebration, but in the new, an optional weekday celebration for January 3, which is impeded in 2021.

In terms of the “psychology” of the season, one notes that the more modern feast of the Holy Family is not permitted to “intrude” until the great event of the Nativity in all its facets—including its cluster of special companion saints who, as it were, surround the cradle of the infant King—has been given plenty of room to shine. Our gaze is intently focused on the mystery of the Incarnate Word: Christmas for eight days, the Circumcision when the Redeemer first shed His blood, the Holy Name He was given and by which we are saved, the Epiphany or revelation of God as savior of the Gentiles. Only after this do we turn expressly to the family in which Our Lord grew up, His baptism in the Jordan, His first miracle at Cana (Second Sunday after Epiphany: see my article “Basking in the glow of Epiphany: The wedding feast at Cana”), and the start of His preaching and miracles (subsequent Sundays).

It’s not that Our Lady and St. Joseph are neglected, for they are always present in the readings, prayers, and antiphons, especially those of January 1st. Besides, they have their own major feastdays elsewhere in the liturgical year. It’s a matter, rather, of allowing the central mystery of the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of the Father to “breathe,” to occupy center stage. In the new calendar, on the other hand, there is a bureaucratic breathlessness by which we efficiently rush from one thing to the next, almost as if we’d like to get back to “Ordinary Time” as quickly as possible—and with as little interruption of our workaday schedule as possible.

An attentive study of these three columns indicates how the 1962 calendar is transitional to the new calendar of 1969. For example, the Sunday of the Octave of Christmas, instead of being transferred when it collides with one of the feasts of the great saints of the octave, supplants it; the beautiful contrast between the original day and the octave day of the Holy Innocents is lost (“useless repetition”?); the once-universal proper celebrations of the beloved bishop St. Thomas Becket and of the pivotal Roman pontiff Silvester are stifled. More gravely, the feast of the Circumcision is no longer given that title, but simply called the Octave of Christmas; the Vigil of the Epiphany is gone; the full-scale octave of Epiphany is gone, although the ferias continue to use the Epiphany Mass in a vestigial or placeholding way, which made the later introduction of “Ordinary Time” that much easier.

Although the 1962 calendar of the Pacellian-Roncallian Roman Rite is far superior to the 1969 calendar of the modern rite of Paul VI, the pre-1955 classical Roman Rite is superior to both. As with Holy Week, as with Pentecost, so too with Christmastide: this chart gives us yet another angle from which to see the importance of a principled return to the liturgical books prior to the hasty modernizations and clumsy simplifications of Pius XII and John XXIII. It is the next great step in the ongoing restoration of Catholic tradition. And there is no better time than now to take up the pre-55 rites and calendar: we can see how little we can and should rely on the “guidance” (such as it is) of churchmen who are supposedly in charge but who have announced their intention to liquidate all memory of tradition. (And need I add that the concept of official “permission” has received its coup de grâce in our times?)

Now all we need is a good republication of a pre-55 altar missal . . .

(Originally posted 2021, updated in 2022, now updated for 2024. If anyone sees any errors, please contact me. -PK)]]> Just How Different Are the Pre-1955, 1962, and 1969 Calendars Around Christmas and Epiphany?
(2024 Edition)

[Image: CALENDAR%20-%20Just%20How%20Different%20...ition).jpg]
By Peter Kwasniewski - Rorate Caeli [adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original] | December 27, 2024

More and more Catholics are waking up to the huge differences between the old and new Roman liturgical calendars—the one, a product of two millennia of organic development; the other, brainchild of a 1960s committee. A subcategory of these folks are waking up to the significant differences between the calendar of the pre-1955 Missale Romanum and the one observed with the 1962 Missale Romanum. The chart above compares all three for the period from December 25th to January 19th.

In the period from Christmas to Epiphany, one can see at a glance the variations in logic and emphasis. The old calendars place great emphasis on Christmas, which is commemorated throughout the Octave, with the daily use not only of the Gloria but also of the Creed. Even more, the old calendars place massive emphasis on Epiphany, which is a feastday older than Christmas and of loftier pedigree—although one would never know that from how it was demoted in recent decades, shoved to a nearby Sunday for convenience, and shorn of its octave. In the old calendars, the Most Holy Name of Jesus (an 18th-century addition) is an obligatory Sunday celebration, but in the new, an optional weekday celebration for January 3, which is impeded in 2021.

In terms of the “psychology” of the season, one notes that the more modern feast of the Holy Family is not permitted to “intrude” until the great event of the Nativity in all its facets—including its cluster of special companion saints who, as it were, surround the cradle of the infant King—has been given plenty of room to shine. Our gaze is intently focused on the mystery of the Incarnate Word: Christmas for eight days, the Circumcision when the Redeemer first shed His blood, the Holy Name He was given and by which we are saved, the Epiphany or revelation of God as savior of the Gentiles. Only after this do we turn expressly to the family in which Our Lord grew up, His baptism in the Jordan, His first miracle at Cana (Second Sunday after Epiphany: see my article “Basking in the glow of Epiphany: The wedding feast at Cana”), and the start of His preaching and miracles (subsequent Sundays).

It’s not that Our Lady and St. Joseph are neglected, for they are always present in the readings, prayers, and antiphons, especially those of January 1st. Besides, they have their own major feastdays elsewhere in the liturgical year. It’s a matter, rather, of allowing the central mystery of the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of the Father to “breathe,” to occupy center stage. In the new calendar, on the other hand, there is a bureaucratic breathlessness by which we efficiently rush from one thing to the next, almost as if we’d like to get back to “Ordinary Time” as quickly as possible—and with as little interruption of our workaday schedule as possible.

An attentive study of these three columns indicates how the 1962 calendar is transitional to the new calendar of 1969. For example, the Sunday of the Octave of Christmas, instead of being transferred when it collides with one of the feasts of the great saints of the octave, supplants it; the beautiful contrast between the original day and the octave day of the Holy Innocents is lost (“useless repetition”?); the once-universal proper celebrations of the beloved bishop St. Thomas Becket and of the pivotal Roman pontiff Silvester are stifled. More gravely, the feast of the Circumcision is no longer given that title, but simply called the Octave of Christmas; the Vigil of the Epiphany is gone; the full-scale octave of Epiphany is gone, although the ferias continue to use the Epiphany Mass in a vestigial or placeholding way, which made the later introduction of “Ordinary Time” that much easier.

Although the 1962 calendar of the Pacellian-Roncallian Roman Rite is far superior to the 1969 calendar of the modern rite of Paul VI, the pre-1955 classical Roman Rite is superior to both. As with Holy Week, as with Pentecost, so too with Christmastide: this chart gives us yet another angle from which to see the importance of a principled return to the liturgical books prior to the hasty modernizations and clumsy simplifications of Pius XII and John XXIII. It is the next great step in the ongoing restoration of Catholic tradition. And there is no better time than now to take up the pre-55 rites and calendar: we can see how little we can and should rely on the “guidance” (such as it is) of churchmen who are supposedly in charge but who have announced their intention to liquidate all memory of tradition. (And need I add that the concept of official “permission” has received its coup de grâce in our times?)

Now all we need is a good republication of a pre-55 altar missal . . .

(Originally posted 2021, updated in 2022, now updated for 2024. If anyone sees any errors, please contact me. -PK)]]> <![CDATA[The Oath against Modernism vs. the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6306 Wed, 17 Jul 2024 12:07:22 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6306 The Oath against Modernism vs. the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’
by John Vennari
Taken from here.


The expression “hermeneutic of continuity” came into vogue with the ascension of Pope Benedict XVI.

On December 22, 2005, in his speech to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI laid out what would be the program of his pontificate. Usually a Pope will do this in his first encyclical, but informed commentators at the time observed that Pope Benedict appeared to lay out the program for his pontificate in this December 22 address, and not his first encyclical.

In this speech, it is clear that the pivotal principle that would be the program for his pontificate is the Second Vatican Council. (1)

[Image: P001_Ratz-3.jpg]

Benedict's ecumenism with schismatics, heretics, Jews and Muslims contradicts the Magisterium prior to the Council

However, says the Pope, there has been a problem with the Council. Too many in the Church, he laments, approach the Council through a “hermeneutic of rupture” and a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” with the past. Thus, Pope Benedict says, many Catholics have approached the Council with an interpretation of rupture with the past.

The proper way to approach the Council, he insists, is through a “hermeneutic of continuity.” His basic claim — and this has always been his claim as Cardinal Ratzinger — is that Vatican II did not constitute a rupture with Tradition, but a legitimate development of it. We can find this legitimate development if we approach the Council through a hermeneutic — an interpretation — of continuity.

This gives the impression to many that Pope Benedict XVI plans a restoration of Tradition in the Church.

But this is not the case. Yes, Pope Benedict issued the Motu Proprio freeing the Tridentine Mass. This was a matter of justice for which he deserves credit, and it is something we could have guessed he would do, even based on his statements as Cardinal Ratzinger.

But the hermeneutic of continuity does not signal a return to Tradition. Rather, it is another attempt, first and foremost, I believe, to save Vatican II.

Vatican II is still his pivotal principle. The so-called “hermeneutic of continuity” approach will give us nothing more than a new synthesis between Tradition and Vatican II — a synthesis between Tradition and Modernism — which is not a legitimate synthesis.


Novel approach

Initially I want to focus on just one aspect that tells us from the beginning that the “hermeneutic of continuity” approach does not signal a true restoration of Tradition. This is the term itself. Pope Benedict does not employ the Traditional terminology for the preservation of Tradition, but has effectively invented a new expression: “hermeneutic of continuity”.

This is because his approach to Tradition is at odds with what the Church taught for 2000 years.

For example, Benedict XVI never says that the answer to the crisis in the Church is to return the admonition of Pope Agatho who said, “Nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning.”(2)

Pope Benedict never says that the answer to today’s ecclesiastical chaos is to return to the formula contained in the Oath against Modernism, that the Catholic is bound to “sincerely hold that the doctrine of Faith was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia). Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another, different from the one which the Church held previously.”(3)

[Image: P001_Ratz-4.jpg]

The denial of the traditional doctrine on religious liberty brought the applause of the Revolution to Benedict XVI

He cannot use terminology like this because it conflicts with the new teachings of Vatican II, with the new teachings concerning religious liberty and ecumenism. These new teachings are clearly “different from the one which the Church held previously.”(4)

When Pope St. Pius X was battling to maintain Catholic truth and Tradition, he did not come up with his own original phrase in the Oath Against Modernism. The terminology he employed is the ancient terminology of the Church, found in the writings of the Fathers, and enshrined in infallible dogmatic definitions that a Catholic must believe for salvation.

As far back as the 4th Century, St. Vincent of Lerins explained what constitutes the proper development of Catholic doctrine:

“But perhaps some will say: Is there to be no progress of religion in the Church? There is, certainly, and very great ... But it must be a progress and not a change. Let, then, the intelligence, science, and wisdom of each and all of individuals and of the whole Church, in all ages and in all times, increase and flourish in abundance; but simply in its own proper kind, that is to say, in one and the same doctrine, one in the same sense, and one in the same judgment.”(5)

St. Vincent of Lerin’s teaching on Tradition was dogmatically and infallibly enshrined in Vatican I. This demonstrates that the exact same teaching on Tradition was maintained in the Church for more than 1400 years. Vatican I teaches in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius:

“Hence that meaning (sensus) of the sacred doctrine must always be retained which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and we must never abandon that meaning under the appearance or in the name of a deeper understanding.”

Vatican I’s Dei Filius goes on to say that any authentic development in the understanding of doctrine “must proceed in its own class, in the same dogma, with the same meaning and the same explanation.” This is the same basic wording of St. Vincent of Lerins, unchanged for over 1400 years.

[Image: P001_Vincent.jpg]

Vincent of Lerins: Any progress in doctrine has to have the same meaning and follow the same judgment of what was previously taught

And this, as noted, was the wording Pope St. Pius X employed in his Oath against Modernism, wherein the man taking the Oath swears before God to “sincerely hold that the doctrine of Faith was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia).”(6)

Pope Benedict XVI never uses terminology like this. Even as Cardinal Ratzinger he never employed such terminology. The sad fact remains that Pope Benedict XVI and most of our modern Church leaders cannot even use traditional terminology when they claim they are trying to maintain Tradition, but come up with new phrases: “Reciprocal integration”(7) or “hermeneutic of continuity.”

The employment of this new phrase, along with his obvious commitment to the novel aspects of Vatican II such as ecumenism (8) and religious liberty, (9) tells us that as much as we would want it to be true, Pope Benedict XVI is not a Pope of Tradition. He will continue with the novel policies of Vatican II. It may not be in the same wildcat manner as his immediate predecessor. It may be a bit more subdued and refined, and perhaps, a bit more Traditional in appearance. Pope Benedict will even attempt more discipline in certain areas, specifically in liturgical matters, than ever did John Paul II.

But in the end — as far as doctrine — it is still Vatican II’s new orientation that will dominate. What we are commanded in Vatican I and the Oath against Modernism to believe the Catholic Faith “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” as the Church always taught, will be neither mentioned nor reinforced.

Thus, no matter how many times we hear the expression “hermeneutic of continuity,” no matter how many times we are told that Vatican II did not constitute a rupture: the fact remains that Vatican II’s new approach to what is called ecumenism and religious liberty — and by extension, Pope Benedict XVI’s approach to what is called ecumenism and religious liberty (10) — is at odds with the traditional Magisterium of the centuries. Here we do not find continuity, but rupture.

Thus, and I say this with respect, I will not be enthused about any report that Pope Benedict XVI wishes a true return to Tradition, until we hear him employ the terminology for Tradition used for 1500 years; until we hear him call for a return to Catholic Faith “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” of what the Church always taught.


1. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia offering them his Christmas Greetings, Thursday, December 22, 2005. Available on Vatican Webpage.
2. Apud Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, n.7.
3. Oath against Modernism, 1910. (emphasis added)
4. For example, the French Bishops made a formal statement in which they abandoned even the intention of fighting for the Social Kingship of Christ. The Bishops of France plainly said in the Dagens Report in 1997: “Without hesitation, we accept, as Catholics, to take place in the present cultural and institutional context, which is especially characterized by the emergence of individualism and by the principle of secularity. We reject any nostalgia for times gone by when the principle of authority seemed to be an unquestionable fact. We do not dream of an impossible return to what used to be called Christendom.” - Apud Fr. Alain Lorins, DICI, 2008: September 27/October 8 edition.
5. Apud Fr. Edward F. Hanahoe, S.A., “Ecclesiology and Ecumenism,” The American Ecclesiastical Review, November 1962, Part II, p. 328. (emphasis added)
6. Dei Filius, Vatican I.
7. The new concepts of “Reciprocal Integration” and “Enrichment of Faith” were key principles of Pope John Paul II. See Fr. Johannes Dörmann, Pope John Paul II’s Theological Journey to the Prayer Meeting of Religions in Assisi, (Kansas City, Angelus Press, 2003), Part II, Volume 3, pp. 1-38.
8. One of the many examples of Pope Benedict’s new ecumenical approach. On August 19, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, he conducted an ecumenical meeting in Cologne, Germany. Here he said regarding ecumenism: “... this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history. Absolutely not! It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity. ... To this end, dialogue has its own contribution to make.” This statement bears no continuity with what the Popes have taught for 2000 years, that the non-Catholic must convert to Christ’s one true Church for unity and salvation. Apud. Apostolic Journey to Cologne, On the Occasion of the XX World Youth Day. Ecumenical Meeting, Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Cologne — Archbishop’s House: Friday, 19 August 2005. On Vatican webpage here (emphasis added)
9. Fr. Yves Congar openly admitted Vatican II’s new doctrine of Religious Liberty is a rupture with the past. Congar said, “What is new in this teaching in relation to the doctrine of Leo XIII and even of Pius XII … is the determination of the basis peculiar to this liberty, which is sought not in the objective truth of moral or religious good, but in the ontological quality of the human person.” Apud Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council (Angelus Press), p. 21.
10. For more examples of Pope Benedict’s novel ecumenical approach, see: “Assisi 2012: Religious Indifferentism on Parade” and “Common Mission and ‘Significant Silence’” (on Pope Benedict’s approach to modern Judaism). (all at www.cfnews.org )]]> The Oath against Modernism vs. the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’
by John Vennari
Taken from here.


The expression “hermeneutic of continuity” came into vogue with the ascension of Pope Benedict XVI.

On December 22, 2005, in his speech to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI laid out what would be the program of his pontificate. Usually a Pope will do this in his first encyclical, but informed commentators at the time observed that Pope Benedict appeared to lay out the program for his pontificate in this December 22 address, and not his first encyclical.

In this speech, it is clear that the pivotal principle that would be the program for his pontificate is the Second Vatican Council. (1)

[Image: P001_Ratz-3.jpg]

Benedict's ecumenism with schismatics, heretics, Jews and Muslims contradicts the Magisterium prior to the Council

However, says the Pope, there has been a problem with the Council. Too many in the Church, he laments, approach the Council through a “hermeneutic of rupture” and a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” with the past. Thus, Pope Benedict says, many Catholics have approached the Council with an interpretation of rupture with the past.

The proper way to approach the Council, he insists, is through a “hermeneutic of continuity.” His basic claim — and this has always been his claim as Cardinal Ratzinger — is that Vatican II did not constitute a rupture with Tradition, but a legitimate development of it. We can find this legitimate development if we approach the Council through a hermeneutic — an interpretation — of continuity.

This gives the impression to many that Pope Benedict XVI plans a restoration of Tradition in the Church.

But this is not the case. Yes, Pope Benedict issued the Motu Proprio freeing the Tridentine Mass. This was a matter of justice for which he deserves credit, and it is something we could have guessed he would do, even based on his statements as Cardinal Ratzinger.

But the hermeneutic of continuity does not signal a return to Tradition. Rather, it is another attempt, first and foremost, I believe, to save Vatican II.

Vatican II is still his pivotal principle. The so-called “hermeneutic of continuity” approach will give us nothing more than a new synthesis between Tradition and Vatican II — a synthesis between Tradition and Modernism — which is not a legitimate synthesis.


Novel approach

Initially I want to focus on just one aspect that tells us from the beginning that the “hermeneutic of continuity” approach does not signal a true restoration of Tradition. This is the term itself. Pope Benedict does not employ the Traditional terminology for the preservation of Tradition, but has effectively invented a new expression: “hermeneutic of continuity”.

This is because his approach to Tradition is at odds with what the Church taught for 2000 years.

For example, Benedict XVI never says that the answer to the crisis in the Church is to return the admonition of Pope Agatho who said, “Nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning.”(2)

Pope Benedict never says that the answer to today’s ecclesiastical chaos is to return to the formula contained in the Oath against Modernism, that the Catholic is bound to “sincerely hold that the doctrine of Faith was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia). Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another, different from the one which the Church held previously.”(3)

[Image: P001_Ratz-4.jpg]

The denial of the traditional doctrine on religious liberty brought the applause of the Revolution to Benedict XVI

He cannot use terminology like this because it conflicts with the new teachings of Vatican II, with the new teachings concerning religious liberty and ecumenism. These new teachings are clearly “different from the one which the Church held previously.”(4)

When Pope St. Pius X was battling to maintain Catholic truth and Tradition, he did not come up with his own original phrase in the Oath Against Modernism. The terminology he employed is the ancient terminology of the Church, found in the writings of the Fathers, and enshrined in infallible dogmatic definitions that a Catholic must believe for salvation.

As far back as the 4th Century, St. Vincent of Lerins explained what constitutes the proper development of Catholic doctrine:

“But perhaps some will say: Is there to be no progress of religion in the Church? There is, certainly, and very great ... But it must be a progress and not a change. Let, then, the intelligence, science, and wisdom of each and all of individuals and of the whole Church, in all ages and in all times, increase and flourish in abundance; but simply in its own proper kind, that is to say, in one and the same doctrine, one in the same sense, and one in the same judgment.”(5)

St. Vincent of Lerin’s teaching on Tradition was dogmatically and infallibly enshrined in Vatican I. This demonstrates that the exact same teaching on Tradition was maintained in the Church for more than 1400 years. Vatican I teaches in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius:

“Hence that meaning (sensus) of the sacred doctrine must always be retained which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and we must never abandon that meaning under the appearance or in the name of a deeper understanding.”

Vatican I’s Dei Filius goes on to say that any authentic development in the understanding of doctrine “must proceed in its own class, in the same dogma, with the same meaning and the same explanation.” This is the same basic wording of St. Vincent of Lerins, unchanged for over 1400 years.

[Image: P001_Vincent.jpg]

Vincent of Lerins: Any progress in doctrine has to have the same meaning and follow the same judgment of what was previously taught

And this, as noted, was the wording Pope St. Pius X employed in his Oath against Modernism, wherein the man taking the Oath swears before God to “sincerely hold that the doctrine of Faith was handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia).”(6)

Pope Benedict XVI never uses terminology like this. Even as Cardinal Ratzinger he never employed such terminology. The sad fact remains that Pope Benedict XVI and most of our modern Church leaders cannot even use traditional terminology when they claim they are trying to maintain Tradition, but come up with new phrases: “Reciprocal integration”(7) or “hermeneutic of continuity.”

The employment of this new phrase, along with his obvious commitment to the novel aspects of Vatican II such as ecumenism (8) and religious liberty, (9) tells us that as much as we would want it to be true, Pope Benedict XVI is not a Pope of Tradition. He will continue with the novel policies of Vatican II. It may not be in the same wildcat manner as his immediate predecessor. It may be a bit more subdued and refined, and perhaps, a bit more Traditional in appearance. Pope Benedict will even attempt more discipline in certain areas, specifically in liturgical matters, than ever did John Paul II.

But in the end — as far as doctrine — it is still Vatican II’s new orientation that will dominate. What we are commanded in Vatican I and the Oath against Modernism to believe the Catholic Faith “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” as the Church always taught, will be neither mentioned nor reinforced.

Thus, no matter how many times we hear the expression “hermeneutic of continuity,” no matter how many times we are told that Vatican II did not constitute a rupture: the fact remains that Vatican II’s new approach to what is called ecumenism and religious liberty — and by extension, Pope Benedict XVI’s approach to what is called ecumenism and religious liberty (10) — is at odds with the traditional Magisterium of the centuries. Here we do not find continuity, but rupture.

Thus, and I say this with respect, I will not be enthused about any report that Pope Benedict XVI wishes a true return to Tradition, until we hear him employ the terminology for Tradition used for 1500 years; until we hear him call for a return to Catholic Faith “in the same meaning and in the same explanation” of what the Church always taught.


1. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia offering them his Christmas Greetings, Thursday, December 22, 2005. Available on Vatican Webpage.
2. Apud Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, n.7.
3. Oath against Modernism, 1910. (emphasis added)
4. For example, the French Bishops made a formal statement in which they abandoned even the intention of fighting for the Social Kingship of Christ. The Bishops of France plainly said in the Dagens Report in 1997: “Without hesitation, we accept, as Catholics, to take place in the present cultural and institutional context, which is especially characterized by the emergence of individualism and by the principle of secularity. We reject any nostalgia for times gone by when the principle of authority seemed to be an unquestionable fact. We do not dream of an impossible return to what used to be called Christendom.” - Apud Fr. Alain Lorins, DICI, 2008: September 27/October 8 edition.
5. Apud Fr. Edward F. Hanahoe, S.A., “Ecclesiology and Ecumenism,” The American Ecclesiastical Review, November 1962, Part II, p. 328. (emphasis added)
6. Dei Filius, Vatican I.
7. The new concepts of “Reciprocal Integration” and “Enrichment of Faith” were key principles of Pope John Paul II. See Fr. Johannes Dörmann, Pope John Paul II’s Theological Journey to the Prayer Meeting of Religions in Assisi, (Kansas City, Angelus Press, 2003), Part II, Volume 3, pp. 1-38.
8. One of the many examples of Pope Benedict’s new ecumenical approach. On August 19, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, he conducted an ecumenical meeting in Cologne, Germany. Here he said regarding ecumenism: “... this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history. Absolutely not! It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity. ... To this end, dialogue has its own contribution to make.” This statement bears no continuity with what the Popes have taught for 2000 years, that the non-Catholic must convert to Christ’s one true Church for unity and salvation. Apud. Apostolic Journey to Cologne, On the Occasion of the XX World Youth Day. Ecumenical Meeting, Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Cologne — Archbishop’s House: Friday, 19 August 2005. On Vatican webpage here (emphasis added)
9. Fr. Yves Congar openly admitted Vatican II’s new doctrine of Religious Liberty is a rupture with the past. Congar said, “What is new in this teaching in relation to the doctrine of Leo XIII and even of Pius XII … is the determination of the basis peculiar to this liberty, which is sought not in the objective truth of moral or religious good, but in the ontological quality of the human person.” Apud Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council (Angelus Press), p. 21.
10. For more examples of Pope Benedict’s novel ecumenical approach, see: “Assisi 2012: Religious Indifferentism on Parade” and “Common Mission and ‘Significant Silence’” (on Pope Benedict’s approach to modern Judaism). (all at www.cfnews.org )]]> <![CDATA[Archbishop Lefebvre: The Mass of All Times versus the Mass of Our Time]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6017 Wed, 13 Mar 2024 08:33:15 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6017 Open Letter to Confused Catholics:



Chapter 4. The Mass of All Times versus the Mass of Our Time.


In preparation for the 1981 Eucharistic Congress, a questionnaire was distributed, the first question of which was: “Of these two definitions: ‘The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass’ and ‘Eucharistic Meal’, which one do you adopt spontaneously?” There is a great deal that could be said about this way of questioning Catholics, giving them to some extent the choice and appealing to their private judgment on a subject where spontaneity has no place. The definition of the Mass is not chosen in the same way that one chooses a political party.

Alas! The insinuation does not result from a blunder on the part of the person who drew up the questionnaire. One has to accept that the liturgical reform tends to replace the idea and the reality of the Sacrifice by the reality of a meal. That is how one comes to speak of eucharistic celebration, or of a “Supper”; but the expression “Sacrifice” is much less used. It has almost totally disappeared from catechism handbooks just as it has from sermons. It is absent from Canon II, attributed to St. Hippolytus.

This tendency is connected with what we have discovered concerning the Real Presence: if there is no longer a sacrifice, there is no longer any need for a victim. The victim is present in view of the sacrifice. To make of the Mass a memorial or fraternal meal is the Protestant error. What happened in the sixteenth century? Precisely what is taking place today. Right from the start they replaced the altar by a table, removed the crucifix from it, and made the “president of the assembly” turn around to face the congregation. The setting of the Protestant Lord's Supper is found in Pierres Vivantes, the prayer book prepared by the bishops in France which all children attending catechism are obliged to use:
Quote:“Christians meet together to celebrate the Eucharist. It is the Mass... They proclaim the faith of the Church, they pray for the whole world, they offer the bread and the wine. The priest who presides at the assembly says the great prayer of thanksgiving.”

Now in the Catholic religion it is the priest who celebrates Mass; it is he who offers the bread and wine. The notion of president has been borrowed directly from Protestantism. The vocabulary follows the change of ideas. Formerly, we would say, “Cardinal Lustiger will celebrate a Pontifical Mass.” I am told that at Radio Notre Dame, the phrase used at present is, “Jean-Marie Lustiger will preside at a concelebration.” Here is how they speak about Mass in a brochure issued by the Conference of Swiss Bishops:
Quote:“The Lord's Supper achieves firstly communion with Christ. It is the same communion that Jesus brought about during His life on earth when He sat at table with sinners, and has been continued in the Eucharistic meal since the day of the Resurrection. The Lord invites His friends to come together and He will be present among them.”

To that every Catholic is obliged to reply in a categoric manner, “NO! the Mass is not that!” It is not the continuation of a meal similar to that which Our Lord invited Saint Peter and a few of his disciples one morning on the lakeside, after His Resurrection. “When they came to land they saw a charcoal fire there and a fish laid thereon and bread. Jesus said to them, come and dine. And none of them durst ask Him, ‘Who art thou?,’ knowing that it was the Lord. And Jesus cometh and taketh the bread and giveth them, and fish in like manner” (John 21: 9-13).

The communion of the priest and the faithful is a communion to the Victim Who has offered Himself up on the altar of sacrifice. This is of solid stone; if not it contains at least the altar stone which is a stone of sacrifice. Within are laid relics of the martyrs because they have offered their blood for their Master. This communion of the Blood of Our Lord with the blood of the martyrs encourages us also to offer up our lives.

If the Mass is a meal, I understand the priest turning towards the congregation. One does not preside at a meal with one's back to the guests. But a sacrifice is offered to God, not to the congregation. This is the reason why the priest as the head of the faithful turns toward God and the crucifix over the altar.

At every opportunity emphasis is laid on what the New Sunday Missal calls the “Narrative of the Institution.” The Jean-Bart Centre, the official centre for the Archdiocese of Paris, states, “At the center of the Mass, there is a narrative.” Again, no! The Mass is not a narrative, it is an action.

Three indispensable conditions are needed for it to be the continuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross: the oblation of the victim, the transubstantiation which renders the victim present effectively and not symbolically, and the celebration by a priest, consecrated by his priesthood, in place of the High Priest Who is Our Lord.

Likewise the Mass can obtain the remission of sins. A simple memorial, a narrative of the institution accompanied by a meal, would be far from sufficient for this. All the supernatural virtue of the Mass comes from its relationship to the Sacrifice of the Cross. If we no longer believe that, then we no longer believe anything about Holy Church, the Church would no longer have any reason for existing, we would no longer claim to be Catholics. Luther understood very clearly that the Mass is the heart and soul of the Church. He said: “Let us destroy the Mass and we shall destroy the Church.”

Now we can see that the Novus Ordo Missae, that is to say, the New Order adopted after the Council, has been drawn up on Protestant lines, or at any rate dangerously close to them. For Luther, the Mass was a sacrifice of praise, that is to say, an act of praise, an act of thanksgiving, but certainly not an expiatory sacrifice which renews and applies the Sacrifice of the Cross. For him, the Sacrifice of the Cross took place at a given moment of history, it is the prisoner of that history; we can only apply to ourselves Christ's merits by our faith in His death and resurrection. Contrarily, the Church maintains that this Sacrifice is realized mystically upon our altars at each Mass, in an unbloody manner by the separation of the Body and the Blood under the species of bread and wine. This renewal allows the merits of the Cross to be applied to the faithful there present, perpetuating this source of grace in time and in space. The Gospel of St. Matthew ends with these words: “And behold, I am with you all days, even until the end of the world.”

The difference in conception is not slender. Efforts are being made to reduce it, however, by the alteration of Catholic doctrine of which we can see numerous signs in the liturgy.

Luther said, “Worship used to be addressed to God as a homage. Henceforth it will be addressed to man to console and enlighten him. The sacrifice used to have pride of place but the sermon will supplant it.” That signified the introduction of the Cult of Man, and, in the Church, the importance accorded to the “Liturgy of the Word.” If we open the new missals, this revolution has been accomplished in them too. A reading has been added to the two which existed, together with a “universal prayer” often utilized for propagating political or social ideas; taking the homily into account, we often end up with a shift of balance towards the “word.” Once the sermon is ended, the Mass is very close to its end.

Within the Church, the priest is marked with an indelible character which makes of him an alter Christus: he alone can offer the Holy Sacrifice. Luther considered the distinction between clergy and laity to the “first wall raised up by the Romanists”; all Christians are priests, the pastor is only exercising a function in presiding at the Evangelical Mass. In the Novus Ordo, the “I” of the celebrant has been replaced by “we”; it is written everywhere that the faithful “celebrate,” they are associated with the acts of worship, they read the epistle and occasionally the Gospel, give out Communion, sometimes preach the homily, which may be replaced by “a dialogue by small groups upon the Word of God,” meeting together beforehand to “construct” the Sunday celebration. But this is only a first step; for several years we have heard of those responsible for diocesan organizations who have been putting forward propositions of this nature: “It is not the ministers but the assembly who celebrate” (handouts by the National Center for Pastoral Liturgy), or “The assembly is the prime subject of the liturgy”; what matters is not the “functioning of the rites but the image the assembly gives to itself and the relationship the co-celebrants create between themselves” (P. Gelineau, architect of the liturgical reform and professor at the Paris Catholic Institute).

If it is the assembly which matters then it is understandable that private Masses should be discredited, which means that priests no longer say them because it is less and less easy to find an assembly, above all during the week. It is a breach with the unchanging doctrine: that the Church needs a multiplicity of Sacrifices of the Mass, both for the application of the Sacrifice of the Cross and for all the objects assigned to it, adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation,[5] and impetration.[6]

As if that were not enough, the objective of some is to eliminate the priest entirely, which has given rise to the notorious SAAP (Sunday Assemblies in the Absence of the Priest). We can imagine the faithful gathering to pray together in order to honor the Lord's Day; but these SAAP are in reality a sort of “dry Mass,” lacking only the consecration; and the lack, as one can read in a document of the Regional Center for Social and Religious Studies at Lille, is only because “until further instructions lay people do not have the power to carry out this act.” The absence of the priest may even be intentional “so that the faithful can learn to manage for themselves.” Father Gelineau in Demain la Liturgie writes that the SAAP are only an “educational transition until such time as mentalities have changed,” and he concludes with disconcerting logic that there are still too many priests in the Church, “too many doubtless for things to evolve quickly.”

Luther suppressed the Offertory; Why offer the pure and Immaculate Host if there is no more sacrifice? In the French Novus Ordo the Offertory is practically non-existent; besides which it no longer has this name. The New Sunday Missal speaks of the “prayers of presentation.” The formula used reminds one more of a thanksgiving, a thank-you, for the fruits of the earth. To realize this fully, it is sufficient to compare it with the formulas traditionally used by the Church in which clearly appears the propitiatory and expiatory nature of the Sacrifice “which I offer Thee for my innumerable sins, offenses and negligences, for all those here present and for all Christians living and dead, that it may avail for my salvation and theirs for eternal life.” Raising the chalice, the priest then says, “We offer Thee, Lord, the chalice of Thy redemption, imploring Thy goodness to accept it like a sweet perfume into the presence of Thy divine Majesty for our salvation and that of the whole world.”

What remains of that in the New Mass? This: “Blessed are You, Lord, God of the universe, You who give us this bread, fruit of the earth and work of human hands. We offer it to You; it will become the bread of life,” and the same for the wine which will become “our spiritual drink.” What purpose is served by adding, a little further on: “Wash me of my faults, Lord. Purify me of my sin,” and “may our sacrifice today find grace before You”? Which sin? Which sacrifice? What connection can the faithful make between this vague presentation of the offerings and the redemption that he is looking forward to? I will ask another question: Why substitute for a text that is clear and whose meaning is complete, a series of enigmatic and loosely bound phrases? If a need is found for change, it should be for something better. These incidental phrases which seem to make up for the insufficiency of the “prayers of presentation” remind us of Luther, who was at pains to arrange the changes with caution. He retained as much as possible of the old ceremonies, limiting himself to changing their meaning. The Mass, to a great extent, kept its external appearance, the people found in the churches nearly the same setting, nearly the same rites, with slight changes made to please them, because from then on people were consulted much more than before; they were much more aware of their importance in matters of worship, taking a more active part by means of chant and praying aloud. Little by little Latin gave way to German.

Doesn't all this remind you of something? Luther was also anxious to create new hymns to replace “all the mumblings of popery”. Reforms always adopt the appearance of a cultural revolution.

In the Novus Ordo the most ancient parts of the Roman Canon which goes back to apostolic times has been reshaped to bring it closer to the Lutheran formula of consecration, with both an addition and a suppression. The translation in French has gone even further by altering the meaning of the words pro multis. Instead of “My blood which shall be shed for you and for many,” we read “which shall be shed for you and for the multitude.” This does not mean the same thing and theologically is not without significance.

You may have noticed that most priests nowadays recite as one continuous passage the principal part of the Canon which begins, “the night before the Passion He took bread in His holy hands,” without observing the pause implied by the rubric of the Roman Missal: “Holding with both hands the host between the index finger and the thumb, he pronounces the words of the Consecration in a low but distinct voice and attentively over the host.” The tone changes, becomes intimatory, the five words “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum,” operate the miracle of transubstantiation, as do those that are said for the consecration of the wine. The new Missal asks the celebrant to keep to the narrative tone of voice as if he were indeed proceeding with a memorial. Creativity being now the rule, we see some celebrants who recite the text while showing the Host all around or even breaking it in an ostentatious manner so as to add the gesture to their words and better illustrate their text. The two genuflections out of the four having been suppressed, those which remain being sometimes omitted, we have to ask ourselves if the priest in fact has the feeling of consecrating, even supposing that he really does have the intention to do so.

Then, from being puzzled Catholics you become worried Catholics: is the Mass at which you have assisted valid? Is the Host you have received truly the Body of Christ?

It is a grave problem. How can the ordinary faithful decide? For the validity of a Mass there exists essential conditions: matter, form, intention and the validly ordained priest. If these conditions are filled one cannot see how to conclude invalidity. The prayers of the Offertory, the Canon and the Priest's Communion are necessary for the integrity of the Sacrifice and the Sacrament, but no, for its validity. Cardinal Mindzenty pronouncing in secret in his prison the words of Consecration over a little bread and wine, so as to nourish himself with the Body and Blood of Our Lord without being seen by his guards, was certainly accomplishing the Sacrifice and the Sacrament.

A Mass celebrated with the American bishop's honeycakes of which I have spoken is certainly, invalid, like those where the words of the Consecration are seriously altered or even omitted. I am not inventing anything, a case has been recorded where a celebrant went to such an extent of creativity that he quite simply forgot the Consecration! But how can we assess the intention of the priest? It is obvious that there are fewer and fewer valid Masses as the faith of priests becomes corrupted and they no longer have the intention to do what the Church--which cannot change her intention--has always done. The present-day training of those who are called seminarians does not prepare them to accomplish valid Masses. They are no longer taught to consider the Holy Sacrifice as the essential action of their priestly life.

Furthermore it can be said without any exaggeration whatsoever, that the majority of Masses celebrated without altar stones, with common vessels, leavened bread, with the introduction of profane words into the very body of the Canon, etc., are sacrilegious, and they prevent faith by diminishing it. The desacralization is such that these Masses can come to lose their supernatural character, “the mystery of faith,” and become no more than acts of natural religion.

Your perplexity takes perhaps the following form: may I assist at a sacrilegious Mass which is nevertheless valid, in the absence of any other, in order to satisfy my Sunday obligation? The answer is simple: these Masses cannot be the object of an obligation; we must moreover apply to them the rules of moral theology and canon law as regards the participation or the attendance at an action which endangers the faith or may be sacrilegious.

The New Mass, even when said with piety and respect for the liturgical rules, is subject to the same reservations since it is impregnated with the spirit of Protestantism. It bears within it a poison harmful to the faith. That being the case the French Catholic[7] of today finds himself in the conditions of religious practice which prevail in missionary countries. There, the inhabitants in some regions are able to attend Mass only three or four times a year. The faithful of our country should make the effort to attend once each month at the Mass of All Time, the true source of grace and sanctification, in one of those places where it continues to be held in honor.

I owe it to truth to say and affirm without fear of error that the Mass codified by St. Pius V--and not invented by him, as some often say--express clearly these three realities: sacrifice, Real Presence, and the priesthood of the clergy. It takes into account also, as the Council of Trent has pointed out, the nature of mankind which needs outside help to raise itself to meditation upon divine things. The established customs have not been made at random, they cannot be overthrown or abruptly abolished with impunity. How many of the faithful, how many young priests, how many bishops, have lost the faith since the introduction of these reforms! One cannot thwart nature and faith without their taking their revenge.

But as it happens, we are told, man is no longer what he was a century ago; his nature has been changed by the technical civilization in which he is immersed. How absurd! The innovators take good care not to reveal to the faithful their desire to fall into line with Protestantism. They invoke another argument: change. Here is how they explain it at the theological evening school in Strasbourg: “We must recognize that today we are confronted with a veritable cultural mutation. One particular manner of celebrating the memorial of the Lord was bound up with a religious universe which is no longer ours.” It is quickly said, and everything disappears. We must start again from scratch. Such are the sophisms they use to make us change our faith. What is a “religious universe?” It would be better to be frank and say: “a religion which is no longer ours.”


Notes
5 The action of rendering God propitious.

6 The action of obtaining divine graces and blessings.

7 Any Catholic, in fact.--ed.


Source]]> Open Letter to Confused Catholics:



Chapter 4. The Mass of All Times versus the Mass of Our Time.


In preparation for the 1981 Eucharistic Congress, a questionnaire was distributed, the first question of which was: “Of these two definitions: ‘The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass’ and ‘Eucharistic Meal’, which one do you adopt spontaneously?” There is a great deal that could be said about this way of questioning Catholics, giving them to some extent the choice and appealing to their private judgment on a subject where spontaneity has no place. The definition of the Mass is not chosen in the same way that one chooses a political party.

Alas! The insinuation does not result from a blunder on the part of the person who drew up the questionnaire. One has to accept that the liturgical reform tends to replace the idea and the reality of the Sacrifice by the reality of a meal. That is how one comes to speak of eucharistic celebration, or of a “Supper”; but the expression “Sacrifice” is much less used. It has almost totally disappeared from catechism handbooks just as it has from sermons. It is absent from Canon II, attributed to St. Hippolytus.

This tendency is connected with what we have discovered concerning the Real Presence: if there is no longer a sacrifice, there is no longer any need for a victim. The victim is present in view of the sacrifice. To make of the Mass a memorial or fraternal meal is the Protestant error. What happened in the sixteenth century? Precisely what is taking place today. Right from the start they replaced the altar by a table, removed the crucifix from it, and made the “president of the assembly” turn around to face the congregation. The setting of the Protestant Lord's Supper is found in Pierres Vivantes, the prayer book prepared by the bishops in France which all children attending catechism are obliged to use:
Quote:“Christians meet together to celebrate the Eucharist. It is the Mass... They proclaim the faith of the Church, they pray for the whole world, they offer the bread and the wine. The priest who presides at the assembly says the great prayer of thanksgiving.”

Now in the Catholic religion it is the priest who celebrates Mass; it is he who offers the bread and wine. The notion of president has been borrowed directly from Protestantism. The vocabulary follows the change of ideas. Formerly, we would say, “Cardinal Lustiger will celebrate a Pontifical Mass.” I am told that at Radio Notre Dame, the phrase used at present is, “Jean-Marie Lustiger will preside at a concelebration.” Here is how they speak about Mass in a brochure issued by the Conference of Swiss Bishops:
Quote:“The Lord's Supper achieves firstly communion with Christ. It is the same communion that Jesus brought about during His life on earth when He sat at table with sinners, and has been continued in the Eucharistic meal since the day of the Resurrection. The Lord invites His friends to come together and He will be present among them.”

To that every Catholic is obliged to reply in a categoric manner, “NO! the Mass is not that!” It is not the continuation of a meal similar to that which Our Lord invited Saint Peter and a few of his disciples one morning on the lakeside, after His Resurrection. “When they came to land they saw a charcoal fire there and a fish laid thereon and bread. Jesus said to them, come and dine. And none of them durst ask Him, ‘Who art thou?,’ knowing that it was the Lord. And Jesus cometh and taketh the bread and giveth them, and fish in like manner” (John 21: 9-13).

The communion of the priest and the faithful is a communion to the Victim Who has offered Himself up on the altar of sacrifice. This is of solid stone; if not it contains at least the altar stone which is a stone of sacrifice. Within are laid relics of the martyrs because they have offered their blood for their Master. This communion of the Blood of Our Lord with the blood of the martyrs encourages us also to offer up our lives.

If the Mass is a meal, I understand the priest turning towards the congregation. One does not preside at a meal with one's back to the guests. But a sacrifice is offered to God, not to the congregation. This is the reason why the priest as the head of the faithful turns toward God and the crucifix over the altar.

At every opportunity emphasis is laid on what the New Sunday Missal calls the “Narrative of the Institution.” The Jean-Bart Centre, the official centre for the Archdiocese of Paris, states, “At the center of the Mass, there is a narrative.” Again, no! The Mass is not a narrative, it is an action.

Three indispensable conditions are needed for it to be the continuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross: the oblation of the victim, the transubstantiation which renders the victim present effectively and not symbolically, and the celebration by a priest, consecrated by his priesthood, in place of the High Priest Who is Our Lord.

Likewise the Mass can obtain the remission of sins. A simple memorial, a narrative of the institution accompanied by a meal, would be far from sufficient for this. All the supernatural virtue of the Mass comes from its relationship to the Sacrifice of the Cross. If we no longer believe that, then we no longer believe anything about Holy Church, the Church would no longer have any reason for existing, we would no longer claim to be Catholics. Luther understood very clearly that the Mass is the heart and soul of the Church. He said: “Let us destroy the Mass and we shall destroy the Church.”

Now we can see that the Novus Ordo Missae, that is to say, the New Order adopted after the Council, has been drawn up on Protestant lines, or at any rate dangerously close to them. For Luther, the Mass was a sacrifice of praise, that is to say, an act of praise, an act of thanksgiving, but certainly not an expiatory sacrifice which renews and applies the Sacrifice of the Cross. For him, the Sacrifice of the Cross took place at a given moment of history, it is the prisoner of that history; we can only apply to ourselves Christ's merits by our faith in His death and resurrection. Contrarily, the Church maintains that this Sacrifice is realized mystically upon our altars at each Mass, in an unbloody manner by the separation of the Body and the Blood under the species of bread and wine. This renewal allows the merits of the Cross to be applied to the faithful there present, perpetuating this source of grace in time and in space. The Gospel of St. Matthew ends with these words: “And behold, I am with you all days, even until the end of the world.”

The difference in conception is not slender. Efforts are being made to reduce it, however, by the alteration of Catholic doctrine of which we can see numerous signs in the liturgy.

Luther said, “Worship used to be addressed to God as a homage. Henceforth it will be addressed to man to console and enlighten him. The sacrifice used to have pride of place but the sermon will supplant it.” That signified the introduction of the Cult of Man, and, in the Church, the importance accorded to the “Liturgy of the Word.” If we open the new missals, this revolution has been accomplished in them too. A reading has been added to the two which existed, together with a “universal prayer” often utilized for propagating political or social ideas; taking the homily into account, we often end up with a shift of balance towards the “word.” Once the sermon is ended, the Mass is very close to its end.

Within the Church, the priest is marked with an indelible character which makes of him an alter Christus: he alone can offer the Holy Sacrifice. Luther considered the distinction between clergy and laity to the “first wall raised up by the Romanists”; all Christians are priests, the pastor is only exercising a function in presiding at the Evangelical Mass. In the Novus Ordo, the “I” of the celebrant has been replaced by “we”; it is written everywhere that the faithful “celebrate,” they are associated with the acts of worship, they read the epistle and occasionally the Gospel, give out Communion, sometimes preach the homily, which may be replaced by “a dialogue by small groups upon the Word of God,” meeting together beforehand to “construct” the Sunday celebration. But this is only a first step; for several years we have heard of those responsible for diocesan organizations who have been putting forward propositions of this nature: “It is not the ministers but the assembly who celebrate” (handouts by the National Center for Pastoral Liturgy), or “The assembly is the prime subject of the liturgy”; what matters is not the “functioning of the rites but the image the assembly gives to itself and the relationship the co-celebrants create between themselves” (P. Gelineau, architect of the liturgical reform and professor at the Paris Catholic Institute).

If it is the assembly which matters then it is understandable that private Masses should be discredited, which means that priests no longer say them because it is less and less easy to find an assembly, above all during the week. It is a breach with the unchanging doctrine: that the Church needs a multiplicity of Sacrifices of the Mass, both for the application of the Sacrifice of the Cross and for all the objects assigned to it, adoration, thanksgiving, propitiation,[5] and impetration.[6]

As if that were not enough, the objective of some is to eliminate the priest entirely, which has given rise to the notorious SAAP (Sunday Assemblies in the Absence of the Priest). We can imagine the faithful gathering to pray together in order to honor the Lord's Day; but these SAAP are in reality a sort of “dry Mass,” lacking only the consecration; and the lack, as one can read in a document of the Regional Center for Social and Religious Studies at Lille, is only because “until further instructions lay people do not have the power to carry out this act.” The absence of the priest may even be intentional “so that the faithful can learn to manage for themselves.” Father Gelineau in Demain la Liturgie writes that the SAAP are only an “educational transition until such time as mentalities have changed,” and he concludes with disconcerting logic that there are still too many priests in the Church, “too many doubtless for things to evolve quickly.”

Luther suppressed the Offertory; Why offer the pure and Immaculate Host if there is no more sacrifice? In the French Novus Ordo the Offertory is practically non-existent; besides which it no longer has this name. The New Sunday Missal speaks of the “prayers of presentation.” The formula used reminds one more of a thanksgiving, a thank-you, for the fruits of the earth. To realize this fully, it is sufficient to compare it with the formulas traditionally used by the Church in which clearly appears the propitiatory and expiatory nature of the Sacrifice “which I offer Thee for my innumerable sins, offenses and negligences, for all those here present and for all Christians living and dead, that it may avail for my salvation and theirs for eternal life.” Raising the chalice, the priest then says, “We offer Thee, Lord, the chalice of Thy redemption, imploring Thy goodness to accept it like a sweet perfume into the presence of Thy divine Majesty for our salvation and that of the whole world.”

What remains of that in the New Mass? This: “Blessed are You, Lord, God of the universe, You who give us this bread, fruit of the earth and work of human hands. We offer it to You; it will become the bread of life,” and the same for the wine which will become “our spiritual drink.” What purpose is served by adding, a little further on: “Wash me of my faults, Lord. Purify me of my sin,” and “may our sacrifice today find grace before You”? Which sin? Which sacrifice? What connection can the faithful make between this vague presentation of the offerings and the redemption that he is looking forward to? I will ask another question: Why substitute for a text that is clear and whose meaning is complete, a series of enigmatic and loosely bound phrases? If a need is found for change, it should be for something better. These incidental phrases which seem to make up for the insufficiency of the “prayers of presentation” remind us of Luther, who was at pains to arrange the changes with caution. He retained as much as possible of the old ceremonies, limiting himself to changing their meaning. The Mass, to a great extent, kept its external appearance, the people found in the churches nearly the same setting, nearly the same rites, with slight changes made to please them, because from then on people were consulted much more than before; they were much more aware of their importance in matters of worship, taking a more active part by means of chant and praying aloud. Little by little Latin gave way to German.

Doesn't all this remind you of something? Luther was also anxious to create new hymns to replace “all the mumblings of popery”. Reforms always adopt the appearance of a cultural revolution.

In the Novus Ordo the most ancient parts of the Roman Canon which goes back to apostolic times has been reshaped to bring it closer to the Lutheran formula of consecration, with both an addition and a suppression. The translation in French has gone even further by altering the meaning of the words pro multis. Instead of “My blood which shall be shed for you and for many,” we read “which shall be shed for you and for the multitude.” This does not mean the same thing and theologically is not without significance.

You may have noticed that most priests nowadays recite as one continuous passage the principal part of the Canon which begins, “the night before the Passion He took bread in His holy hands,” without observing the pause implied by the rubric of the Roman Missal: “Holding with both hands the host between the index finger and the thumb, he pronounces the words of the Consecration in a low but distinct voice and attentively over the host.” The tone changes, becomes intimatory, the five words “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum,” operate the miracle of transubstantiation, as do those that are said for the consecration of the wine. The new Missal asks the celebrant to keep to the narrative tone of voice as if he were indeed proceeding with a memorial. Creativity being now the rule, we see some celebrants who recite the text while showing the Host all around or even breaking it in an ostentatious manner so as to add the gesture to their words and better illustrate their text. The two genuflections out of the four having been suppressed, those which remain being sometimes omitted, we have to ask ourselves if the priest in fact has the feeling of consecrating, even supposing that he really does have the intention to do so.

Then, from being puzzled Catholics you become worried Catholics: is the Mass at which you have assisted valid? Is the Host you have received truly the Body of Christ?

It is a grave problem. How can the ordinary faithful decide? For the validity of a Mass there exists essential conditions: matter, form, intention and the validly ordained priest. If these conditions are filled one cannot see how to conclude invalidity. The prayers of the Offertory, the Canon and the Priest's Communion are necessary for the integrity of the Sacrifice and the Sacrament, but no, for its validity. Cardinal Mindzenty pronouncing in secret in his prison the words of Consecration over a little bread and wine, so as to nourish himself with the Body and Blood of Our Lord without being seen by his guards, was certainly accomplishing the Sacrifice and the Sacrament.

A Mass celebrated with the American bishop's honeycakes of which I have spoken is certainly, invalid, like those where the words of the Consecration are seriously altered or even omitted. I am not inventing anything, a case has been recorded where a celebrant went to such an extent of creativity that he quite simply forgot the Consecration! But how can we assess the intention of the priest? It is obvious that there are fewer and fewer valid Masses as the faith of priests becomes corrupted and they no longer have the intention to do what the Church--which cannot change her intention--has always done. The present-day training of those who are called seminarians does not prepare them to accomplish valid Masses. They are no longer taught to consider the Holy Sacrifice as the essential action of their priestly life.

Furthermore it can be said without any exaggeration whatsoever, that the majority of Masses celebrated without altar stones, with common vessels, leavened bread, with the introduction of profane words into the very body of the Canon, etc., are sacrilegious, and they prevent faith by diminishing it. The desacralization is such that these Masses can come to lose their supernatural character, “the mystery of faith,” and become no more than acts of natural religion.

Your perplexity takes perhaps the following form: may I assist at a sacrilegious Mass which is nevertheless valid, in the absence of any other, in order to satisfy my Sunday obligation? The answer is simple: these Masses cannot be the object of an obligation; we must moreover apply to them the rules of moral theology and canon law as regards the participation or the attendance at an action which endangers the faith or may be sacrilegious.

The New Mass, even when said with piety and respect for the liturgical rules, is subject to the same reservations since it is impregnated with the spirit of Protestantism. It bears within it a poison harmful to the faith. That being the case the French Catholic[7] of today finds himself in the conditions of religious practice which prevail in missionary countries. There, the inhabitants in some regions are able to attend Mass only three or four times a year. The faithful of our country should make the effort to attend once each month at the Mass of All Time, the true source of grace and sanctification, in one of those places where it continues to be held in honor.

I owe it to truth to say and affirm without fear of error that the Mass codified by St. Pius V--and not invented by him, as some often say--express clearly these three realities: sacrifice, Real Presence, and the priesthood of the clergy. It takes into account also, as the Council of Trent has pointed out, the nature of mankind which needs outside help to raise itself to meditation upon divine things. The established customs have not been made at random, they cannot be overthrown or abruptly abolished with impunity. How many of the faithful, how many young priests, how many bishops, have lost the faith since the introduction of these reforms! One cannot thwart nature and faith without their taking their revenge.

But as it happens, we are told, man is no longer what he was a century ago; his nature has been changed by the technical civilization in which he is immersed. How absurd! The innovators take good care not to reveal to the faithful their desire to fall into line with Protestantism. They invoke another argument: change. Here is how they explain it at the theological evening school in Strasbourg: “We must recognize that today we are confronted with a veritable cultural mutation. One particular manner of celebrating the memorial of the Lord was bound up with a religious universe which is no longer ours.” It is quickly said, and everything disappears. We must start again from scratch. Such are the sophisms they use to make us change our faith. What is a “religious universe?” It would be better to be frank and say: “a religion which is no longer ours.”


Notes
5 The action of rendering God propitious.

6 The action of obtaining divine graces and blessings.

7 Any Catholic, in fact.--ed.


Source]]> <![CDATA[The “Any Valid Mass!” Canard]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6016 Wed, 13 Mar 2024 08:24:15 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6016 The Recusant #50 - January 2020.


This seems to be a constantly recurring theme. How did so many Traditional Catholics end up thinking like this? How did we end up here? Perhaps it is time to take another look at:


The “Any Valid Mass!” Canard


A gentleman who, one suspects, is not on the side of the Resistance, and who could not, I think, be called “a reader,” recently wrote in to The Recusant to castigate the Resistance in general, this newsletter and its editor in particular. After saying that we have “lost the plot” and are on the road “to ruin damnation and failure,” he continues thus:

“I would like to make some more serious points after having read the recent issue of the ‘Recusant’:

• There is absolutely no way to ever justify remaining at home on Sunday when there is a Tridentine mass available in your area.

• If there are concerns about being ‘contaminated’ by the views of a priest who doesn’t fit your definition of a ‘true son of Archbishop Lefebvre’, why not sit outside during the sermon and leave straight after mass?

• As shocking as this may sound, there are graces to be earned at each and every Latin mass celebrated by a validly ordained priest.

• I couldn’t disagree more with the conclusions you make with regards to the SSPX, however, if ever I found myself in a situation where the only Latin mass available in my area was offered by a priest associated with the so-called ‘Resistance’ movement, I certainly wouldn’t deprive myself of attending such a mass.

• Going to mass is not the same as attending a political rally where our presence signifies support for the priest - the only reason we go to mass is to receive the necessary nourishment for our souls.

• Our Lord said by their fruits ye shall know them. The number of faithful supporting the Society worldwide continues to increase as does the number of overall priests. These are indisputable facts which you choose to conveniently ignore.”

Although he is wrong, I admire the fact that the author goes straight to the point and does not waste time. Let us try to answer in a similar way, point by point.


1. There is absolutely no justification for remaining at home when there is a valid Tridentine Mass in your area.

Not true.

If this were true, what are we to make of the Catholics behind the Iron Curtain, in Poland, Hungary and elsewhere, who refused to attend the Mass of a “pax priest” (one who had gained the approval of the Communist authorities)? Those “pax priests” were certainly validly ordained and they offered a valid Tridentine Mass. How then could so many Catholics refuse to attend their Masses, even when they had no alternative on a given Sunday?

Let us take another example closer to our own era. In recent decades, we have seen the Church driven underground in China and replaced with a phoney counterfeit controlled by the Communist government (called the “Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association” or CPCA).

Clearly the ministrations of an underground priest cannot be relied upon to be all that regular, and being part of an underground Church will necessarily mean uncertainty and irregularity when it comes to the sacraments. What’s more, due to the unusual circumstances, both the CPCA and the underground Church continued to use the Tridentine Missal all the way down to the 1990s in many places. From Wikipedia:

“Due to CPCA pressure, Mass continued for some years after Pope Paul VI's 1969 revision of the Roman Missal to be celebrated in mainland China in the Tridentine Mass form, and for lack of the revised text in Latin or Chinese, even priests who refused any connection with the CPCA kept the older form. As the effects of the Cultural Revolution faded in the 1980s, the Mass of Paul VI began to be used, and at the beginning of the next decade the CPCA officially permitted the publication even locally of texts […]”

So: were the faithful (non-Communist, non-“patriotic”) Catholics wrong to flee underground? Nobody once disputed that the CPCA had valid orders or that their Masses were valid Masses. Valid Tridentine Masses, as it happens. If, as we are told, “there is absolutely no way ever to justify remaining at home on Sunday when there is a Tridentine Mass available in your area,” what ought those underground Catholics to have done? Suppose the priest who had been due to offer Mass for them in secret had been arrested on Saturday? Suppose there were no faithful underground priest nearby to begin with? What ought they to have done? Attend a CPCA Mass? Or is there more to being a Catholic than valid sacraments?

What about the old SSPX? I can remember the days when an SSPX priest would tell you that you were better off not going to an indult Mass, even if there was no SSPX Mass to go to. Take a look at the list of SSPX Mass centres in Great Britain in 2001, which we reproduced in a previous issue (Recusant 47, p.44). See how many of those Mass centres were bi-weekly or monthly? Regular weekly Masses were in the minority. In 2001, the majority of SSPX chapels did not have Mass every week. And yet was there ever an occasion where the faithful were warned about making a holy hour at home? Did the SSPX used officially to tell people to go to the Indult Mass? No? Why not?

The truth is that there are any number of reasons or circumstances which not only “justify” staying home and avoiding a “valid Tridentine Mass” but make it a positive duty. Anyone who says otherwise needs some remedial catechism.

Take another look at the baptism ritual. When the child is presented at the door of the Church on the day of his baptism, and the priest asks: “What do you ask of the Church?” What is the answer to this question? Is it “baptism”? Is it: “The sacraments”? How about: “Valid tridentine sacraments”..? Think about it. What is it which “gives life everlasting”..?


2. If there are concerns about being ‘contaminated’ by the views of a priest who doesn't fit your definition of a ‘true son of Archbishop Lefebvre’, why not sit outside during the sermon and leave straight after mass?

Because that is not our main concern. This so-called “risk of contamination” is not, and never has been, our justification. You will not find that sentiment expressed anywhere in these pages going back fifty issues or seven years.

This does not mean that there are no negative effects which one would expect to see (and have been seen) as a result from regularly attending Mass at the SSPX, particularly those who know better but who, often through weakness, did not make the break. The gradual process of becoming slowly more liberal without realising it, being boiled alive like the frog in the proverbial boiling pot is a very real danger. But that is something which comes more as a result of making our public confession of Christ secondary, and making own selfish desire to “get more sacraments” primary; it is not something which comes from “contamination” by the priest. And it is not the reason why we do not attend. The main reason why we do not attend the SSPX is because our presence there would offend Almighty God. This offence given to Almighty God which, I think, also brings in its train the weakening, the gradual loss of zeal, the diminution of Faith.

Again, let me emphasise this point. What you seem to present as our reason for not attending SSPX Mass is the opposite of the truth. We are not concerned with the individual priest.

There may well be some very fine examples of priests still in the SSPX, but that doesn’t matter, it is beside the point. What matters is the official, public stance of the organisation. If you knew a “validly ordained” Orthodox priest and you happened to know him well enough to have heard him admit, in private, that the Catholic Church was the true Church, that he accepted papal primacy, etc. you still could not attend his Mass. The same goes for a priest who says the both New Mass and the Tridentine Mass: even if he told you that he hates the New Mass and thinks it is un-Catholic. What he thinks or says privately doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change a thing. What a priest admits in private does not count. I would attend the Mass of a priest whom, personally, I could not stand, provided he publicly stands for the truth; the converse is equally true, no matter how much you like a particular priest or agree with what he says, you ought not to support him as long as he is a member of something which publicly stands for compromise and denial of Catholic Tradition.

Anyone who thought and acted the way you describe would find himself faced with a truly impossible task. How can the average layman possibly be expected to vet every single priest? Especially in some SSPX chapels where different priests are rotated through from one week to the next, how could anyone be expected to know whether or to what extent this or that priest is a “true son of Archbishop Lefebvre”..? It’s ludicrous.


3. As shocking as this may sound, there are graces to be earned at each and every Latin mass celebrated by a validly ordained priest.

Again, I ask: What on earth were the faithful Chinese Catholics thinking? What madness overcame the Catholics behind the Iron Curtain? How could they have been so wrong?

The answer is that they were not wrong. Here is where I think the problem arises. The Council of Trent teaches that the sacraments actually contain the graces they represent. This is a contradiction of the Protestant teaching that they are only symbolic or that it is the ‘faith’ of the believer which somehow makes them work. But the fact that the sacraments are not merely symbolic and actually do contain the grace they represent, does not mean that one will always and everywhere and in all circumstances receive grace from a sacrament provided it is valid. That is not, never has been and never could be Catholic teaching. If that were so, then the majority of Catholics in Russia ought to be attending Mass at the Russian Orthodox and the 4th century Catholic faithful were wrong to steer clear of Arian priest and bishops.

What many Catholics today, your good self included, seem to believe is that the sacraments are some sort of magic talisman. They are like the ‘one ring’ of Sauron, whoever has it can use it, no matter how honestly or dishonestly he came by it. In reality, of course, you cannot “steal” a sacrament any more than you can cheat Almighty God. If you obtain a sacrament by doing something which displeases Him, then you would have been better off not having it.

Let us take another hypothetical example. Suppose there is a Tridentine Mass in your area. Suppose, too, that it is “celebrated by a validly ordained priest.” But suppose that priest had been suspended or even defrocked because he was a homosexual pederast who abused boys.

Suppose that priest, according to the law of the Church, ought not to be celebrating that Tridentine Mass and you ought not to be attending it. Is it still true to say that “there is absolutely no way ever to justify” not going to that Mass? And what about the graces? Will you be getting those graces by attending the illegal Mass of a suspended homo-pederast?

We may never do evil that good may come of it. That being the case, may we attend a Mass which we know we ought not to attend, simply because it is valid and we want to steal, sorry I mean “earn” graces from it? If it as simple as saying that one can gain graces from attending “each and every Latin mass celebrated by a validly ordained priest,” does that mean that if the only Tridentine Mass is the one said by the suspended pederast, you have to go? You it seems, would say, “Yes, go”. We, on the other hand, would say, “No, don’t go”.

Very well, let’s forget for one moment what you or I would say. What does the Church say about attending such a Mass offered by such a priest? Do I need to spell it out, or can you guess?


4. I couldn’t disagree more with the conclusions you make with regards to the SSPX, however, if ever I found myself in a situation where the only Latin mass available in my area was offered by a priest associated with the so-called ‘Resistance’ movement, I certainly wouldn’t deprive myself of attending such a mass.

Good. Though the real reason for attending is of course far more serious. You attend it because, once you are no longer in ignorance of what is really going on, you are morally obliged not only to attend but wholeheartedly to support the Resistance.

This does bring up an interesting point, though. The SSPX priests and superiors would not agree with you. They tell people not to attend the Resistance. They even sometimes punish people for attending. If you have your children in a SSPX school, just see what happens when you start regularly to attend the Resistance. The SSPX of yore told people not to go to the Indult Mass. The SSPX of today is fine with the Indult Mass (our own District Superior of Great Britain positively tells people to go to it!). But they used to recommend not to go. In neither case did or do the SSPX appear to agree with your mistaken notion that, “there are graces to be earned at each and every Latin mass celebrated by a validly ordained priest”, or that “there is absolutely no justification” for staying away from any Tridentine Mass ever.

Staying home when it is the wrong Mass is the Catholic thing to do. It is what the Catholics did during the Arian crisis; it is what the Catholics did and do in China; it is what Catholics did during the upheavals of 16th century England; it is what Catholics did behind the Iron Curtain. It is what many Catholics do today in vast swathes of Russia, despite the ecumenism of the past fifty years.


5. Going to mass is not the same as attending a political rally where our presence signifies support for the priest - the only reason we go to mass is to receive the necessary nourishment for our souls.

Again, that is not true. The reason you go to Mass is to give glory to God, to assist in His worship, to give Him that which is His right. We don’t give glory to God in secret; we don’t worship Him in secret. Your idea that “the only reason we go to Mass is to receive the necessary nourishment for our souls” is in essence selfish. If you were talking about confession, I might agree with you: you need to take good care, but in the end which priest you confess to or how often to is really nobody’s business. But Mass is not the same as confession, it is the official public worship given to Almighty God by His Church. And we are not talking about a Mass said in private, on a weekday, by an elderly priest on one of the innumerable dusty and disused side altars of an old abbey church. We are, I think, talking about a publicly advertised Sunday Mass: a parish Mass or the equivalent. Again, if what you say were true, what reason would there be not to attend the Mass of a “validly ordained” Arian priest if you were living in the Arian crisis 1,500 -odd years ago?

What reason would there be for not going to the Mass of a “validly ordained” ‘pax priest’ behind the Iron Curtain? What reason for Catholics in China not to assist at the Mass of a “validly ordained” CPCA priest? None.

I really think you must snap out of this idea that your duty is somehow to “get grace” out of the sacraments by hook or by crook, and that how you get it does not matter. It is not only our interior actions which matter, but our exterior actions too. Our Lord tells us that we must confess Him “before men” if we wish Him to confess us before God the Father. When we die, when we go before the Judgement Seat of Almighty God, we will be judged not just on our interior thoughts and desires, but on our exterior actions. Remember that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of the Father.

Note, he who does. It is what we do, our actions, which matter most.


6. Our Lord said by their fruits ye shall know them. The number of faithful supporting the Society worldwide continues to increase as does the number of overall priests. These are indisputable facts which you choose to conveniently ignore.

“Indisputable”..? I hope you will forgive me then, if I dispute some of your “facts.”

First, I hate to break this to you, but the number of faithful has been noticeably in decline for a few years already. There are noticeably fewer chapels in Great Britain than there were even ten years ago. In the 1970s there were perhaps 2,000 faithful at the SSPX in this country. By the year 2000 it was more like 1,500; by 2012 more like 1,000. Who knows what it is now. Second, does that argument not strike you as rather facile? What are the “fruits” that we should be looking for? Is it simply a numbers game? If that were so, then the SSPX is not and never was the answer. The Novus Ordo has far more priests, even today. In my country there
are 15 SSPX priests compared to some 3,500 Novus Ordo priests, or 233 for every one SSPX priest. I have heard it said that there may be as many as 200 or more SSPX priests in France.

But even if there were 250, that is still less than 2% when compared with an estimated 13,000 conciliar priests. The US District website says that there are 89 SSPX priests in that country; but there are around 35,000 Novus Ordo priests, or 393 for every one SSPX priests. We could go on. You get the idea, I think.

That is just priests. You in fact mentioned the number of faithful supporting the Society. Unfortunately, there again it’s the same story. Around 1,000 faithful (perhaps less) in Great Britain compared to somewhere in the region of 700,000 or 800,000 Catholics who attend the Novus Ordo on Sundays. In the USA, around 25,000 faithful attend the SSPX, according to the SSPX themselves (sspx.org/en/general-statistics-about-sspx) versus roughly 2.75 million souls at the Novus Ordo on a given Sunday (39% of 70.4million total, according to a 2018 Gallup survey). Significantly less than 1%, in other words.

‘Ah, but that doesn’t count!’ - I can hear the cry - ‘Those are Novus Ordo Catholics, they’re not Traditional! They don’t have the same spirit! They’re lukewarm! They believe all sorts of heresies! You’re not comparing like with like! They don’t count!’ Very well. But that’s my point - it isn’t really a question of numbers then, is it? We need to dig a little deeper than the skin-deep analysis found in raw figures. If we agree that it has more to do with the spirit, the ardour and zeal or whatever else, perhaps it would be more fruitful to look at those qualities as they are found at the SSPX and compare it to the old SSPX and the Resistance of today.

In the old SSPX, it was normal for a priest to say three Masses on Sunday in three different locations and to spend the rest of the day on the road, travelling hundreds of miles between each one. That is still the case in the Resistance today, except that the priest will have to travel even greater distances between Mass centres than was the case before. The SSPX priest in the old days used to do anointings at all hours of the day and night, as does the Resistance priest of today.

In the days of the old SSPX, the typical SSPX Mass centre in Great Britain was a rented hall with Mass once or twice a month. Whenever there was Mass there, the faithful supported it even if they had to travel some distance themselves. On the Sunday when there wasn’t Mass, many of them sanctified the day without Mass, rather than involving themselves in the compromise of the Indult Mass. The typical SSPX faithful knew why he was there, what the fight was about and why it was necessary to support the work of Archbishop Lefebvre.

For the typical faithful at an SSPX chapel today, alas, that is increasingly less the case. The typical SSPX priest of today travels far less, grumbles when he does have to travel, expects to have everything laid on for him and would as soon close the Mass centre down as carry on saying Mass in a rented hall. The old SSPX was not afraid to carry Christ into the public forum, processions, for instance, used to go out of the Church and down the street; the new SSPX are often too scared to leave the property. The faithful of the old SSPX, the died-in-the-wool Lefebvrists might sometimes have been eccentric, they might have been offensive, they might
have been many things, but one can also imagine them being martyrs. Somehow, try as I might, I just cannot picture the typical modern-day SSPX faithful defying princes and rulers and laying down his life for Christ. Which of the two have “the fruits”, where do we see more zeal, greater ardour, more devotion? The old SSPX or the new SSPX? Which one does the Resistance today more closely resemble?

One could dig even deeper and have a look at the signs of worldliness: standards of modesty in dress; the size of families; whether one would overhear “right-wing conspiracy theory” -type conversations versus “mainstream normie” conversations after Mass; the old SSPX, where families were urged not even to have a TV in the home, versus the modern equivalent homes where electronic gadgets and screens abound. We could go on. The presence or absence of Catholic Action and other lay initiatives, of Catholic Social teaching, including controversial topics such as true Catholic social order, the evils of usury, etc. The fact alone that in 2013 the
SSPX purged all the Fr. Denis Fahey articles from the US District website speaks volumes.

Finally, let me say a word about your boast that “the number of overall priests” in the SSPX “continues to rise.” It is true that there are more SSPX priests than ever before, but this is a double-edged sword, and I wouldn’t shout it too loudly about it if I were you. Firstly, if things had continued as they were, one ought to see an exponential rise, not the more-or-less straightline increase which we see over the past forty-something years. Vocations are supposed to come from SSPX chapels run by SSPX priests, aren’t they? How then do you explain that there are more SSPX priests than there were in earlier times, but more or less the same number of vocations and ordinations? The number of vocations-per-priest must surely be less..?

Secondly, what are those priests doing? In the USA there are 89 priests looking after 103 chapels. In the 1990s there were roughly one-third the number of priests looking after the same number of chapels. How is that possible? It is only possible due to a diminution of apostolic zeal. The number of priests, as we saw earlier by comparing it to the Novus Ordo, is not the only thing that matters. If what matters is the quality of those priests, the zeal of those priests, then you need to start worrying.

The current model SSPX priest is greatly inferior to his 1980s counterpart, in his actions, his spirit and even his loyalty to Catholic Tradition. No SSPX priest from a couple of decades ago would ever have been found dead publishing the kind of modernist nonsense about evolution which Fr. Paul Robinson’s book contains. Is it not an insult to St. Pius X that the Society which bears his name should be publishing and promoting some of the very same ideas which gave rise, towards the end of the 19th century, to the modernism which he had to condemn?


Conclusion

As to the whole of what you have said, in case you hadn’t gathered I think you are wrong. I am sure that it is not entirely your fault, however. And I am equally certain that there are others out there who think along the same lines. All I will conclude for now is that the clergy seem to have done a very poor job in instructing the faithful. Many Catholics, for instance, are under the mistaken impression that Sunday Mass attendance is one of the ten commandments. It is not. Sunday Mass attendance is a commandment of the Church. What the ten commandments require is that we sanctify the day. One of the main ways in which we do this is by attending Mass, if you can (abstaining from servile work being another). In normal times, that would simply mean that you attend your nearest Mass. These are not normal times. Since attending Mass is a commandment of the Church, it is for the Church to provide you with a Mass which you can attend. Any Mass which would involve offending Almighty God, is clearly not a Mass which you can attend. If there is a Mass nearby which you can in conscience attend and where your presence would not involve a compromise on the level of the Faith and would not, therefore, offend Almighty God, then you must attend it on Sundays and holy days. You must also try to make an extra effort to travel further to such a Mass, and if the effort seems too great, the circumstances too inconvenient, you must try not to resent it; rather, you must ask yourself why it is that Almighty God planned from all eternity for you to be living through this, why He wishes for you to find yourself facing such a choice. Then you must respond with generosity, urging yourself and summoning as much love and devotion towards Him as possible, and telling Him that you will prove your love and devotion for Him through your actions.]]> The Recusant #50 - January 2020.


This seems to be a constantly recurring theme. How did so many Traditional Catholics end up thinking like this? How did we end up here? Perhaps it is time to take another look at:


The “Any Valid Mass!” Canard


A gentleman who, one suspects, is not on the side of the Resistance, and who could not, I think, be called “a reader,” recently wrote in to The Recusant to castigate the Resistance in general, this newsletter and its editor in particular. After saying that we have “lost the plot” and are on the road “to ruin damnation and failure,” he continues thus:

“I would like to make some more serious points after having read the recent issue of the ‘Recusant’:

• There is absolutely no way to ever justify remaining at home on Sunday when there is a Tridentine mass available in your area.

• If there are concerns about being ‘contaminated’ by the views of a priest who doesn’t fit your definition of a ‘true son of Archbishop Lefebvre’, why not sit outside during the sermon and leave straight after mass?

• As shocking as this may sound, there are graces to be earned at each and every Latin mass celebrated by a validly ordained priest.

• I couldn’t disagree more with the conclusions you make with regards to the SSPX, however, if ever I found myself in a situation where the only Latin mass available in my area was offered by a priest associated with the so-called ‘Resistance’ movement, I certainly wouldn’t deprive myself of attending such a mass.

• Going to mass is not the same as attending a political rally where our presence signifies support for the priest - the only reason we go to mass is to receive the necessary nourishment for our souls.

• Our Lord said by their fruits ye shall know them. The number of faithful supporting the Society worldwide continues to increase as does the number of overall priests. These are indisputable facts which you choose to conveniently ignore.”

Although he is wrong, I admire the fact that the author goes straight to the point and does not waste time. Let us try to answer in a similar way, point by point.


1. There is absolutely no justification for remaining at home when there is a valid Tridentine Mass in your area.

Not true.

If this were true, what are we to make of the Catholics behind the Iron Curtain, in Poland, Hungary and elsewhere, who refused to attend the Mass of a “pax priest” (one who had gained the approval of the Communist authorities)? Those “pax priests” were certainly validly ordained and they offered a valid Tridentine Mass. How then could so many Catholics refuse to attend their Masses, even when they had no alternative on a given Sunday?

Let us take another example closer to our own era. In recent decades, we have seen the Church driven underground in China and replaced with a phoney counterfeit controlled by the Communist government (called the “Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association” or CPCA).

Clearly the ministrations of an underground priest cannot be relied upon to be all that regular, and being part of an underground Church will necessarily mean uncertainty and irregularity when it comes to the sacraments. What’s more, due to the unusual circumstances, both the CPCA and the underground Church continued to use the Tridentine Missal all the way down to the 1990s in many places. From Wikipedia:

“Due to CPCA pressure, Mass continued for some years after Pope Paul VI's 1969 revision of the Roman Missal to be celebrated in mainland China in the Tridentine Mass form, and for lack of the revised text in Latin or Chinese, even priests who refused any connection with the CPCA kept the older form. As the effects of the Cultural Revolution faded in the 1980s, the Mass of Paul VI began to be used, and at the beginning of the next decade the CPCA officially permitted the publication even locally of texts […]”

So: were the faithful (non-Communist, non-“patriotic”) Catholics wrong to flee underground? Nobody once disputed that the CPCA had valid orders or that their Masses were valid Masses. Valid Tridentine Masses, as it happens. If, as we are told, “there is absolutely no way ever to justify remaining at home on Sunday when there is a Tridentine Mass available in your area,” what ought those underground Catholics to have done? Suppose the priest who had been due to offer Mass for them in secret had been arrested on Saturday? Suppose there were no faithful underground priest nearby to begin with? What ought they to have done? Attend a CPCA Mass? Or is there more to being a Catholic than valid sacraments?

What about the old SSPX? I can remember the days when an SSPX priest would tell you that you were better off not going to an indult Mass, even if there was no SSPX Mass to go to. Take a look at the list of SSPX Mass centres in Great Britain in 2001, which we reproduced in a previous issue (Recusant 47, p.44). See how many of those Mass centres were bi-weekly or monthly? Regular weekly Masses were in the minority. In 2001, the majority of SSPX chapels did not have Mass every week. And yet was there ever an occasion where the faithful were warned about making a holy hour at home? Did the SSPX used officially to tell people to go to the Indult Mass? No? Why not?

The truth is that there are any number of reasons or circumstances which not only “justify” staying home and avoiding a “valid Tridentine Mass” but make it a positive duty. Anyone who says otherwise needs some remedial catechism.

Take another look at the baptism ritual. When the child is presented at the door of the Church on the day of his baptism, and the priest asks: “What do you ask of the Church?” What is the answer to this question? Is it “baptism”? Is it: “The sacraments”? How about: “Valid tridentine sacraments”..? Think about it. What is it which “gives life everlasting”..?


2. If there are concerns about being ‘contaminated’ by the views of a priest who doesn't fit your definition of a ‘true son of Archbishop Lefebvre’, why not sit outside during the sermon and leave straight after mass?

Because that is not our main concern. This so-called “risk of contamination” is not, and never has been, our justification. You will not find that sentiment expressed anywhere in these pages going back fifty issues or seven years.

This does not mean that there are no negative effects which one would expect to see (and have been seen) as a result from regularly attending Mass at the SSPX, particularly those who know better but who, often through weakness, did not make the break. The gradual process of becoming slowly more liberal without realising it, being boiled alive like the frog in the proverbial boiling pot is a very real danger. But that is something which comes more as a result of making our public confession of Christ secondary, and making own selfish desire to “get more sacraments” primary; it is not something which comes from “contamination” by the priest. And it is not the reason why we do not attend. The main reason why we do not attend the SSPX is because our presence there would offend Almighty God. This offence given to Almighty God which, I think, also brings in its train the weakening, the gradual loss of zeal, the diminution of Faith.

Again, let me emphasise this point. What you seem to present as our reason for not attending SSPX Mass is the opposite of the truth. We are not concerned with the individual priest.

There may well be some very fine examples of priests still in the SSPX, but that doesn’t matter, it is beside the point. What matters is the official, public stance of the organisation. If you knew a “validly ordained” Orthodox priest and you happened to know him well enough to have heard him admit, in private, that the Catholic Church was the true Church, that he accepted papal primacy, etc. you still could not attend his Mass. The same goes for a priest who says the both New Mass and the Tridentine Mass: even if he told you that he hates the New Mass and thinks it is un-Catholic. What he thinks or says privately doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change a thing. What a priest admits in private does not count. I would attend the Mass of a priest whom, personally, I could not stand, provided he publicly stands for the truth; the converse is equally true, no matter how much you like a particular priest or agree with what he says, you ought not to support him as long as he is a member of something which publicly stands for compromise and denial of Catholic Tradition.

Anyone who thought and acted the way you describe would find himself faced with a truly impossible task. How can the average layman possibly be expected to vet every single priest? Especially in some SSPX chapels where different priests are rotated through from one week to the next, how could anyone be expected to know whether or to what extent this or that priest is a “true son of Archbishop Lefebvre”..? It’s ludicrous.


3. As shocking as this may sound, there are graces to be earned at each and every Latin mass celebrated by a validly ordained priest.

Again, I ask: What on earth were the faithful Chinese Catholics thinking? What madness overcame the Catholics behind the Iron Curtain? How could they have been so wrong?

The answer is that they were not wrong. Here is where I think the problem arises. The Council of Trent teaches that the sacraments actually contain the graces they represent. This is a contradiction of the Protestant teaching that they are only symbolic or that it is the ‘faith’ of the believer which somehow makes them work. But the fact that the sacraments are not merely symbolic and actually do contain the grace they represent, does not mean that one will always and everywhere and in all circumstances receive grace from a sacrament provided it is valid. That is not, never has been and never could be Catholic teaching. If that were so, then the majority of Catholics in Russia ought to be attending Mass at the Russian Orthodox and the 4th century Catholic faithful were wrong to steer clear of Arian priest and bishops.

What many Catholics today, your good self included, seem to believe is that the sacraments are some sort of magic talisman. They are like the ‘one ring’ of Sauron, whoever has it can use it, no matter how honestly or dishonestly he came by it. In reality, of course, you cannot “steal” a sacrament any more than you can cheat Almighty God. If you obtain a sacrament by doing something which displeases Him, then you would have been better off not having it.

Let us take another hypothetical example. Suppose there is a Tridentine Mass in your area. Suppose, too, that it is “celebrated by a validly ordained priest.” But suppose that priest had been suspended or even defrocked because he was a homosexual pederast who abused boys.

Suppose that priest, according to the law of the Church, ought not to be celebrating that Tridentine Mass and you ought not to be attending it. Is it still true to say that “there is absolutely no way ever to justify” not going to that Mass? And what about the graces? Will you be getting those graces by attending the illegal Mass of a suspended homo-pederast?

We may never do evil that good may come of it. That being the case, may we attend a Mass which we know we ought not to attend, simply because it is valid and we want to steal, sorry I mean “earn” graces from it? If it as simple as saying that one can gain graces from attending “each and every Latin mass celebrated by a validly ordained priest,” does that mean that if the only Tridentine Mass is the one said by the suspended pederast, you have to go? You it seems, would say, “Yes, go”. We, on the other hand, would say, “No, don’t go”.

Very well, let’s forget for one moment what you or I would say. What does the Church say about attending such a Mass offered by such a priest? Do I need to spell it out, or can you guess?


4. I couldn’t disagree more with the conclusions you make with regards to the SSPX, however, if ever I found myself in a situation where the only Latin mass available in my area was offered by a priest associated with the so-called ‘Resistance’ movement, I certainly wouldn’t deprive myself of attending such a mass.

Good. Though the real reason for attending is of course far more serious. You attend it because, once you are no longer in ignorance of what is really going on, you are morally obliged not only to attend but wholeheartedly to support the Resistance.

This does bring up an interesting point, though. The SSPX priests and superiors would not agree with you. They tell people not to attend the Resistance. They even sometimes punish people for attending. If you have your children in a SSPX school, just see what happens when you start regularly to attend the Resistance. The SSPX of yore told people not to go to the Indult Mass. The SSPX of today is fine with the Indult Mass (our own District Superior of Great Britain positively tells people to go to it!). But they used to recommend not to go. In neither case did or do the SSPX appear to agree with your mistaken notion that, “there are graces to be earned at each and every Latin mass celebrated by a validly ordained priest”, or that “there is absolutely no justification” for staying away from any Tridentine Mass ever.

Staying home when it is the wrong Mass is the Catholic thing to do. It is what the Catholics did during the Arian crisis; it is what the Catholics did and do in China; it is what Catholics did during the upheavals of 16th century England; it is what Catholics did behind the Iron Curtain. It is what many Catholics do today in vast swathes of Russia, despite the ecumenism of the past fifty years.


5. Going to mass is not the same as attending a political rally where our presence signifies support for the priest - the only reason we go to mass is to receive the necessary nourishment for our souls.

Again, that is not true. The reason you go to Mass is to give glory to God, to assist in His worship, to give Him that which is His right. We don’t give glory to God in secret; we don’t worship Him in secret. Your idea that “the only reason we go to Mass is to receive the necessary nourishment for our souls” is in essence selfish. If you were talking about confession, I might agree with you: you need to take good care, but in the end which priest you confess to or how often to is really nobody’s business. But Mass is not the same as confession, it is the official public worship given to Almighty God by His Church. And we are not talking about a Mass said in private, on a weekday, by an elderly priest on one of the innumerable dusty and disused side altars of an old abbey church. We are, I think, talking about a publicly advertised Sunday Mass: a parish Mass or the equivalent. Again, if what you say were true, what reason would there be not to attend the Mass of a “validly ordained” Arian priest if you were living in the Arian crisis 1,500 -odd years ago?

What reason would there be for not going to the Mass of a “validly ordained” ‘pax priest’ behind the Iron Curtain? What reason for Catholics in China not to assist at the Mass of a “validly ordained” CPCA priest? None.

I really think you must snap out of this idea that your duty is somehow to “get grace” out of the sacraments by hook or by crook, and that how you get it does not matter. It is not only our interior actions which matter, but our exterior actions too. Our Lord tells us that we must confess Him “before men” if we wish Him to confess us before God the Father. When we die, when we go before the Judgement Seat of Almighty God, we will be judged not just on our interior thoughts and desires, but on our exterior actions. Remember that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of the Father.

Note, he who does. It is what we do, our actions, which matter most.


6. Our Lord said by their fruits ye shall know them. The number of faithful supporting the Society worldwide continues to increase as does the number of overall priests. These are indisputable facts which you choose to conveniently ignore.

“Indisputable”..? I hope you will forgive me then, if I dispute some of your “facts.”

First, I hate to break this to you, but the number of faithful has been noticeably in decline for a few years already. There are noticeably fewer chapels in Great Britain than there were even ten years ago. In the 1970s there were perhaps 2,000 faithful at the SSPX in this country. By the year 2000 it was more like 1,500; by 2012 more like 1,000. Who knows what it is now. Second, does that argument not strike you as rather facile? What are the “fruits” that we should be looking for? Is it simply a numbers game? If that were so, then the SSPX is not and never was the answer. The Novus Ordo has far more priests, even today. In my country there
are 15 SSPX priests compared to some 3,500 Novus Ordo priests, or 233 for every one SSPX priest. I have heard it said that there may be as many as 200 or more SSPX priests in France.

But even if there were 250, that is still less than 2% when compared with an estimated 13,000 conciliar priests. The US District website says that there are 89 SSPX priests in that country; but there are around 35,000 Novus Ordo priests, or 393 for every one SSPX priests. We could go on. You get the idea, I think.

That is just priests. You in fact mentioned the number of faithful supporting the Society. Unfortunately, there again it’s the same story. Around 1,000 faithful (perhaps less) in Great Britain compared to somewhere in the region of 700,000 or 800,000 Catholics who attend the Novus Ordo on Sundays. In the USA, around 25,000 faithful attend the SSPX, according to the SSPX themselves (sspx.org/en/general-statistics-about-sspx) versus roughly 2.75 million souls at the Novus Ordo on a given Sunday (39% of 70.4million total, according to a 2018 Gallup survey). Significantly less than 1%, in other words.

‘Ah, but that doesn’t count!’ - I can hear the cry - ‘Those are Novus Ordo Catholics, they’re not Traditional! They don’t have the same spirit! They’re lukewarm! They believe all sorts of heresies! You’re not comparing like with like! They don’t count!’ Very well. But that’s my point - it isn’t really a question of numbers then, is it? We need to dig a little deeper than the skin-deep analysis found in raw figures. If we agree that it has more to do with the spirit, the ardour and zeal or whatever else, perhaps it would be more fruitful to look at those qualities as they are found at the SSPX and compare it to the old SSPX and the Resistance of today.

In the old SSPX, it was normal for a priest to say three Masses on Sunday in three different locations and to spend the rest of the day on the road, travelling hundreds of miles between each one. That is still the case in the Resistance today, except that the priest will have to travel even greater distances between Mass centres than was the case before. The SSPX priest in the old days used to do anointings at all hours of the day and night, as does the Resistance priest of today.

In the days of the old SSPX, the typical SSPX Mass centre in Great Britain was a rented hall with Mass once or twice a month. Whenever there was Mass there, the faithful supported it even if they had to travel some distance themselves. On the Sunday when there wasn’t Mass, many of them sanctified the day without Mass, rather than involving themselves in the compromise of the Indult Mass. The typical SSPX faithful knew why he was there, what the fight was about and why it was necessary to support the work of Archbishop Lefebvre.

For the typical faithful at an SSPX chapel today, alas, that is increasingly less the case. The typical SSPX priest of today travels far less, grumbles when he does have to travel, expects to have everything laid on for him and would as soon close the Mass centre down as carry on saying Mass in a rented hall. The old SSPX was not afraid to carry Christ into the public forum, processions, for instance, used to go out of the Church and down the street; the new SSPX are often too scared to leave the property. The faithful of the old SSPX, the died-in-the-wool Lefebvrists might sometimes have been eccentric, they might have been offensive, they might
have been many things, but one can also imagine them being martyrs. Somehow, try as I might, I just cannot picture the typical modern-day SSPX faithful defying princes and rulers and laying down his life for Christ. Which of the two have “the fruits”, where do we see more zeal, greater ardour, more devotion? The old SSPX or the new SSPX? Which one does the Resistance today more closely resemble?

One could dig even deeper and have a look at the signs of worldliness: standards of modesty in dress; the size of families; whether one would overhear “right-wing conspiracy theory” -type conversations versus “mainstream normie” conversations after Mass; the old SSPX, where families were urged not even to have a TV in the home, versus the modern equivalent homes where electronic gadgets and screens abound. We could go on. The presence or absence of Catholic Action and other lay initiatives, of Catholic Social teaching, including controversial topics such as true Catholic social order, the evils of usury, etc. The fact alone that in 2013 the
SSPX purged all the Fr. Denis Fahey articles from the US District website speaks volumes.

Finally, let me say a word about your boast that “the number of overall priests” in the SSPX “continues to rise.” It is true that there are more SSPX priests than ever before, but this is a double-edged sword, and I wouldn’t shout it too loudly about it if I were you. Firstly, if things had continued as they were, one ought to see an exponential rise, not the more-or-less straightline increase which we see over the past forty-something years. Vocations are supposed to come from SSPX chapels run by SSPX priests, aren’t they? How then do you explain that there are more SSPX priests than there were in earlier times, but more or less the same number of vocations and ordinations? The number of vocations-per-priest must surely be less..?

Secondly, what are those priests doing? In the USA there are 89 priests looking after 103 chapels. In the 1990s there were roughly one-third the number of priests looking after the same number of chapels. How is that possible? It is only possible due to a diminution of apostolic zeal. The number of priests, as we saw earlier by comparing it to the Novus Ordo, is not the only thing that matters. If what matters is the quality of those priests, the zeal of those priests, then you need to start worrying.

The current model SSPX priest is greatly inferior to his 1980s counterpart, in his actions, his spirit and even his loyalty to Catholic Tradition. No SSPX priest from a couple of decades ago would ever have been found dead publishing the kind of modernist nonsense about evolution which Fr. Paul Robinson’s book contains. Is it not an insult to St. Pius X that the Society which bears his name should be publishing and promoting some of the very same ideas which gave rise, towards the end of the 19th century, to the modernism which he had to condemn?


Conclusion

As to the whole of what you have said, in case you hadn’t gathered I think you are wrong. I am sure that it is not entirely your fault, however. And I am equally certain that there are others out there who think along the same lines. All I will conclude for now is that the clergy seem to have done a very poor job in instructing the faithful. Many Catholics, for instance, are under the mistaken impression that Sunday Mass attendance is one of the ten commandments. It is not. Sunday Mass attendance is a commandment of the Church. What the ten commandments require is that we sanctify the day. One of the main ways in which we do this is by attending Mass, if you can (abstaining from servile work being another). In normal times, that would simply mean that you attend your nearest Mass. These are not normal times. Since attending Mass is a commandment of the Church, it is for the Church to provide you with a Mass which you can attend. Any Mass which would involve offending Almighty God, is clearly not a Mass which you can attend. If there is a Mass nearby which you can in conscience attend and where your presence would not involve a compromise on the level of the Faith and would not, therefore, offend Almighty God, then you must attend it on Sundays and holy days. You must also try to make an extra effort to travel further to such a Mass, and if the effort seems too great, the circumstances too inconvenient, you must try not to resent it; rather, you must ask yourself why it is that Almighty God planned from all eternity for you to be living through this, why He wishes for you to find yourself facing such a choice. Then you must respond with generosity, urging yourself and summoning as much love and devotion towards Him as possible, and telling Him that you will prove your love and devotion for Him through your actions.]]> <![CDATA[Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: The New Rite Condemned by the Tradition of the Church]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6015 Wed, 13 Mar 2024 08:03:44 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=6015 The Recusant #59 - Advent 2022:



Source: https://fsspx.news/en/content/32569 see also: thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=4382


Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: The New Rite Condemned by the Tradition of the Church
Extracts from “The Mass of All Time”



1. The judgement of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci

We are not judging the intention but the facts and the consequences of these facts, similar incidentally, to those of past centuries where these reforms had been introduced oblige us to acknowledge, along with Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci (Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, sent to the Holy Father on September 3, 1969) that the “Novus Ordo Missae … represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated at the Council of Trent.1”


2. A new rite already condemned by several Popes and Councils

It is a conception more Protestant than Catholic which expresses everything which has been unduly exalted and everything which has been diminished. Contrary to the teachings of the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, contrary to the encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII, the role of the faithful in the participation of the Mass has been exaggerated, and the role of the priest has been belittled to that of a mere president. 

It has exaggerated the place given to the liturgy of the Word and lessened the place given to the propitiatory Sacrifice. It has exalted the communal meal and secularized it, at the expense of respect for and faith in the Real Presence effected by transubstantiation.

In suppressing the sacred language, it has pluralized the rites ad infinitum, profaning them by incorporating worldly or pagan elements, and it has spread false translations at the expense of the true faith and genuine piety of the faithful.

And yet the Councils of Florence2 and Trent3 had both declared anathemas against all of these changes, while affirming that our Mass in its Canon dated back to Apostolic times.

The popes St. Pius V and Clement VIII insisted on the necessity of avoiding changes and transformation and of preserving perpetually this Roman Rite hallowed by Tradition.

The desacralisation of the Mass and its secularisation lead to the laicisation of the priesthood, in the Protestant manner.4

How can this reform of the Mass be reconciled with the canons of the Council of Trent and the condemnations in the Bull Auctorem Fidei of Pius VI?


3. “It is Tradition which condemns them, not me”

I do not set myself up as a judge; I am nothing, I am merely an echo of a Magisterium which is clear, which is evident, which is in all of the books, the papal encyclicals, council documents, basically in all of the theological books prior to the Council. What is being said now does not at all conform with the Magisterium which has been professed for two thousand years. Therefore it is the Tradition of the Church, her Magisterium which condemns them. Not me!


4. The traditional judgments of the Church on the Eucharist are definitive

As for our attitude vis-à-vis the liturgical reform and the breviary, we must hold fast to the affirmations of the Council of Trent. It is hard to see how to reconcile it with the liturgical reform. Yet the Council of Trent is a dogmatic, definitive Council and once the Church has made a definitive pronouncement on certain matters, another council may not change these definitions. Without this no more truth is possible!

Faith is something which is unchangeable. When the Church has presented it with all of her authority, there is an obligation to believe it to be immutable. Now, if the Council of Trent went to the trouble of adding anathemas to all of the verities concerning the sacraments and the liturgy, it was not for nothing. How can they behave so casually, as if the Council of Trent no longer exists and say that Vatican II has the same authority and consequently can change everything? We might just as well change our Credo which dates from the Council of Nicea, which is much more ancient, because Vatican II has the same authority and is more important than the Council of Nicea…

It is our duty to be firm about these things, and this is the strongest response we can make to the liturgical reform: it goes against the absolutely definitive and dogmatic definitions of the Council of Trent.


5. An avowal by Paul VI

Here is an interesting little fact which illustrates what Paul VI thought of the changes in the Mass. (…) Jean Guitton asked him: “Why would you not accept that the priests at Écône continue to celebrate the Mass of St. Pius V? It was what was said before. I do not see why the seminary is refused the ancient Mass. Why not allow them to celebrate it?” The response given by Paul VI is very significant. He replied: “No, if we grant the Mass of St. Pius V to the Society of St. Pius X, all that we have gained through Vatican II will be lost.” (…) It is extraordinary that the pope could see the ruin of Vatican II in the return of the ancient Mass. It was an incredible revelation! This is why the liberals wanted so much for us to say this Mass which represents for them a totally different concept of the Church. The Mass of St. Pius V is not liberal, it is anti-liberal and anti-ecumenical. Therefore it cannot conform to the spirit of Vatican II.



1 - Archbishop Lefebvre, letter to Cardinal Seper, 26th February 1978
2 - cf. DS 1320
3 - cf. DS 1751, 1753, 1756, 1759
4 - ‘Open Letter to the Pope’ 21st November 1983



* * * * *


What did Archbishop Lefebvre say about Attending the New Mass?


1974:
“Is the New Mass really intrinsically bad? If the Mass were intrinsically bad, I would say, well, I would say you can’t do an intrinsically bad act, that’s always forbidden; but if the Mass is not intrinsically bad, but only bad due to the circumstances which surround it … well since circumstances can change, can be changed…if there are seminarians who don’t have any other Mass, can they go to a Mass like that? I think so, what can you do! … However, I also told you, I think at least twice, that it is possible that our attitude, our position regarding this problem might become firmer or somehow harder, so to speak...” (Écône, 1974)


1975-1981:
“Little by little the Archbishop’s position hardened … In 1975 he admitted that one could ‘assist occasionally at the New Mass when one feared going without Communion for a long time.’ [...] Soon, Archbishop Lefebvre would no longer tolerate participation at Masses celebrated in the new rite except passively, for example at funerals. … He considered that it was bad in itself and not only because of the circumstances in which the rite was performed.” ( “Biography of Marcel Lefebvre,” p465 ff)


1976:
“The [new] rite of the Mass is a bastard rite, the sacraments are bastard sacraments – we no longer know if they are sacraments which give grace or which do not give grace.” (Lille, 1976)


1978:
“What should be our attitude in general towards these New Masses, even if it would be difficult to be able to assist at a Mass of Saint Pius V? I believe that we must be more and more severe. little by little … one no longer sees, one becomes blind. This is why I think we must avoid going to these Masses.” (Écône, 1978)


1979:
“It must be understood immediately that we do not hold to the absurd idea that if the New Mass is valid, we are free to assist at it. The Church has always forbidden the faithful to assist at the Masses of heretics and schismatics even when they are valid. It is clear that no one can assist at sacrilegious Masses or at Masses which endanger our faith. All these innovations are authorized. One can fairly say without exaggeration that most of these [new] Masses are sacrilegious acts which pervert the Faith by diminishing it.” (November 1979)


1981:
“This Mass is not bad in a merely accidental or extrinsic way. There is something in it that is truly bad. … Really, in conscience, I cannot advise anyone to attend this Mass, it is not possible.” (Abp. Lefebvre, 1981 - cf. David Allen White, ‘The Horn of the Unicorn’, p.224 ff.)


1985:
“Your perplexity takes perhaps the following form: may I assist at a sacrilegious mass which is nevertheless valid, in the absence of any other, in order to satisfy my Sunday obligation? The answer is simple: these masses cannot be the object of an obligation; we must moreover apply to them the rules of moral theology and canon law as regards the participation or the attendance at an action which endangers the faith or may be sacrilegious.

The new Mass, even when said with piety and respect for the liturgical rules, is subject to the same reservations since it is impregnated with the spirit of Protestantism. It bears within it a poison harmful to the faith. That being the case, the French Catholic of today finds himself in the conditions of religious practice which prevail in missionary countries. There, the inhabitants in some regions are only able to attend Mass three or four times a year. The faithful of our country should make the effort to attend one each month at the Mass of all time, the true source of grace and sanctification, in one of those places where it continues to be held in honour.” (Open Letter to Confused Catholics, 1985)


1990:
“And that’s why I will never celebrate the Mass according to the new rite, even under threat of ecclesiastical penalties and I will never advise anyone positively to participate actively in such a Mass. Because people are still asking us those questions: ‘I have not the Mass of St. Pius V on Sunday, and there is a mass said by a priest that I know well, a holy man, so, wouldn’t it be better to go to the mass of this priest, even if it is the new mass but said with piety, instead of abstaining?’ No! This is not true! This is not true, because this rite is bad! Is bad, is bad! And the reason why this rite is bad in itself, is because it is poisoned. It is a poisoned rite! Mr. Salleron says it very well, here: ‘It is not a choice between two rites that could be good. It is a choice between a Catholic Rite and a rite that is practically bordering on Protestantism,’ and thus, which attacks our faith, the Catholic Faith! So, it is out of question to encourage people to go to Mass in the new rite. […]

I’m a little surprised, you know. Sometimes, I receive a lot of requests for consultations from our priests who are in the priories and some are asking me: ‘What should one reply to a person who says he cannot have the Mass of St. Pius V and who believes that he is under the obligation to go to a mass of the new rite, said by a good priest, a serious priest who offers all the guarantees almost of holiness? etc.’ But, I do not understand how they cannot answer this by themselves! They don’t find the conclusion by themselves and they feel obliged to ask me such a thing. It's incredible! So you see, there are still some who hesitate. This is unbelievable!” (Fideliter, April 1990)



* * * * *



Archbishop Lefebvre on the Indult / Ecclesia Dei Priests


“And we must not waver for one moment either in not being with those who are in the process of betraying us. Some people [say] ‘After all, we must be charitable, we must be kind, we must not be divisive, after all, they are celebrating the Tridentine Mass, they are not as bad as everyone says’ - but they are betraying us - betraying us! They are shaking hands with the Church's destroyers. They are shaking hands with people holding modernist and liberal ideas condemned by the Church. So they are doing the devil’s work. Thus those who were with us and were working with us for the rights of Our Lord, for the salvation of souls, are now saying, ‘So long as they grant us the old Mass, we can shake hands with Rome, no problem.’ ” (Two Years After the Consecrations, Fideliter, 1990)]]> The Recusant #59 - Advent 2022:



Source: https://fsspx.news/en/content/32569 see also: thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=4382


Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: The New Rite Condemned by the Tradition of the Church
Extracts from “The Mass of All Time”



1. The judgement of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci

We are not judging the intention but the facts and the consequences of these facts, similar incidentally, to those of past centuries where these reforms had been introduced oblige us to acknowledge, along with Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci (Short Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, sent to the Holy Father on September 3, 1969) that the “Novus Ordo Missae … represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated at the Council of Trent.1”


2. A new rite already condemned by several Popes and Councils

It is a conception more Protestant than Catholic which expresses everything which has been unduly exalted and everything which has been diminished. Contrary to the teachings of the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, contrary to the encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII, the role of the faithful in the participation of the Mass has been exaggerated, and the role of the priest has been belittled to that of a mere president. 

It has exaggerated the place given to the liturgy of the Word and lessened the place given to the propitiatory Sacrifice. It has exalted the communal meal and secularized it, at the expense of respect for and faith in the Real Presence effected by transubstantiation.

In suppressing the sacred language, it has pluralized the rites ad infinitum, profaning them by incorporating worldly or pagan elements, and it has spread false translations at the expense of the true faith and genuine piety of the faithful.

And yet the Councils of Florence2 and Trent3 had both declared anathemas against all of these changes, while affirming that our Mass in its Canon dated back to Apostolic times.

The popes St. Pius V and Clement VIII insisted on the necessity of avoiding changes and transformation and of preserving perpetually this Roman Rite hallowed by Tradition.

The desacralisation of the Mass and its secularisation lead to the laicisation of the priesthood, in the Protestant manner.4

How can this reform of the Mass be reconciled with the canons of the Council of Trent and the condemnations in the Bull Auctorem Fidei of Pius VI?


3. “It is Tradition which condemns them, not me”

I do not set myself up as a judge; I am nothing, I am merely an echo of a Magisterium which is clear, which is evident, which is in all of the books, the papal encyclicals, council documents, basically in all of the theological books prior to the Council. What is being said now does not at all conform with the Magisterium which has been professed for two thousand years. Therefore it is the Tradition of the Church, her Magisterium which condemns them. Not me!


4. The traditional judgments of the Church on the Eucharist are definitive

As for our attitude vis-à-vis the liturgical reform and the breviary, we must hold fast to the affirmations of the Council of Trent. It is hard to see how to reconcile it with the liturgical reform. Yet the Council of Trent is a dogmatic, definitive Council and once the Church has made a definitive pronouncement on certain matters, another council may not change these definitions. Without this no more truth is possible!

Faith is something which is unchangeable. When the Church has presented it with all of her authority, there is an obligation to believe it to be immutable. Now, if the Council of Trent went to the trouble of adding anathemas to all of the verities concerning the sacraments and the liturgy, it was not for nothing. How can they behave so casually, as if the Council of Trent no longer exists and say that Vatican II has the same authority and consequently can change everything? We might just as well change our Credo which dates from the Council of Nicea, which is much more ancient, because Vatican II has the same authority and is more important than the Council of Nicea…

It is our duty to be firm about these things, and this is the strongest response we can make to the liturgical reform: it goes against the absolutely definitive and dogmatic definitions of the Council of Trent.


5. An avowal by Paul VI

Here is an interesting little fact which illustrates what Paul VI thought of the changes in the Mass. (…) Jean Guitton asked him: “Why would you not accept that the priests at Écône continue to celebrate the Mass of St. Pius V? It was what was said before. I do not see why the seminary is refused the ancient Mass. Why not allow them to celebrate it?” The response given by Paul VI is very significant. He replied: “No, if we grant the Mass of St. Pius V to the Society of St. Pius X, all that we have gained through Vatican II will be lost.” (…) It is extraordinary that the pope could see the ruin of Vatican II in the return of the ancient Mass. It was an incredible revelation! This is why the liberals wanted so much for us to say this Mass which represents for them a totally different concept of the Church. The Mass of St. Pius V is not liberal, it is anti-liberal and anti-ecumenical. Therefore it cannot conform to the spirit of Vatican II.



1 - Archbishop Lefebvre, letter to Cardinal Seper, 26th February 1978
2 - cf. DS 1320
3 - cf. DS 1751, 1753, 1756, 1759
4 - ‘Open Letter to the Pope’ 21st November 1983



* * * * *


What did Archbishop Lefebvre say about Attending the New Mass?


1974:
“Is the New Mass really intrinsically bad? If the Mass were intrinsically bad, I would say, well, I would say you can’t do an intrinsically bad act, that’s always forbidden; but if the Mass is not intrinsically bad, but only bad due to the circumstances which surround it … well since circumstances can change, can be changed…if there are seminarians who don’t have any other Mass, can they go to a Mass like that? I think so, what can you do! … However, I also told you, I think at least twice, that it is possible that our attitude, our position regarding this problem might become firmer or somehow harder, so to speak...” (Écône, 1974)


1975-1981:
“Little by little the Archbishop’s position hardened … In 1975 he admitted that one could ‘assist occasionally at the New Mass when one feared going without Communion for a long time.’ [...] Soon, Archbishop Lefebvre would no longer tolerate participation at Masses celebrated in the new rite except passively, for example at funerals. … He considered that it was bad in itself and not only because of the circumstances in which the rite was performed.” ( “Biography of Marcel Lefebvre,” p465 ff)


1976:
“The [new] rite of the Mass is a bastard rite, the sacraments are bastard sacraments – we no longer know if they are sacraments which give grace or which do not give grace.” (Lille, 1976)


1978:
“What should be our attitude in general towards these New Masses, even if it would be difficult to be able to assist at a Mass of Saint Pius V? I believe that we must be more and more severe. little by little … one no longer sees, one becomes blind. This is why I think we must avoid going to these Masses.” (Écône, 1978)


1979:
“It must be understood immediately that we do not hold to the absurd idea that if the New Mass is valid, we are free to assist at it. The Church has always forbidden the faithful to assist at the Masses of heretics and schismatics even when they are valid. It is clear that no one can assist at sacrilegious Masses or at Masses which endanger our faith. All these innovations are authorized. One can fairly say without exaggeration that most of these [new] Masses are sacrilegious acts which pervert the Faith by diminishing it.” (November 1979)


1981:
“This Mass is not bad in a merely accidental or extrinsic way. There is something in it that is truly bad. … Really, in conscience, I cannot advise anyone to attend this Mass, it is not possible.” (Abp. Lefebvre, 1981 - cf. David Allen White, ‘The Horn of the Unicorn’, p.224 ff.)


1985:
“Your perplexity takes perhaps the following form: may I assist at a sacrilegious mass which is nevertheless valid, in the absence of any other, in order to satisfy my Sunday obligation? The answer is simple: these masses cannot be the object of an obligation; we must moreover apply to them the rules of moral theology and canon law as regards the participation or the attendance at an action which endangers the faith or may be sacrilegious.

The new Mass, even when said with piety and respect for the liturgical rules, is subject to the same reservations since it is impregnated with the spirit of Protestantism. It bears within it a poison harmful to the faith. That being the case, the French Catholic of today finds himself in the conditions of religious practice which prevail in missionary countries. There, the inhabitants in some regions are only able to attend Mass three or four times a year. The faithful of our country should make the effort to attend one each month at the Mass of all time, the true source of grace and sanctification, in one of those places where it continues to be held in honour.” (Open Letter to Confused Catholics, 1985)


1990:
“And that’s why I will never celebrate the Mass according to the new rite, even under threat of ecclesiastical penalties and I will never advise anyone positively to participate actively in such a Mass. Because people are still asking us those questions: ‘I have not the Mass of St. Pius V on Sunday, and there is a mass said by a priest that I know well, a holy man, so, wouldn’t it be better to go to the mass of this priest, even if it is the new mass but said with piety, instead of abstaining?’ No! This is not true! This is not true, because this rite is bad! Is bad, is bad! And the reason why this rite is bad in itself, is because it is poisoned. It is a poisoned rite! Mr. Salleron says it very well, here: ‘It is not a choice between two rites that could be good. It is a choice between a Catholic Rite and a rite that is practically bordering on Protestantism,’ and thus, which attacks our faith, the Catholic Faith! So, it is out of question to encourage people to go to Mass in the new rite. […]

I’m a little surprised, you know. Sometimes, I receive a lot of requests for consultations from our priests who are in the priories and some are asking me: ‘What should one reply to a person who says he cannot have the Mass of St. Pius V and who believes that he is under the obligation to go to a mass of the new rite, said by a good priest, a serious priest who offers all the guarantees almost of holiness? etc.’ But, I do not understand how they cannot answer this by themselves! They don’t find the conclusion by themselves and they feel obliged to ask me such a thing. It's incredible! So you see, there are still some who hesitate. This is unbelievable!” (Fideliter, April 1990)



* * * * *



Archbishop Lefebvre on the Indult / Ecclesia Dei Priests


“And we must not waver for one moment either in not being with those who are in the process of betraying us. Some people [say] ‘After all, we must be charitable, we must be kind, we must not be divisive, after all, they are celebrating the Tridentine Mass, they are not as bad as everyone says’ - but they are betraying us - betraying us! They are shaking hands with the Church's destroyers. They are shaking hands with people holding modernist and liberal ideas condemned by the Church. So they are doing the devil’s work. Thus those who were with us and were working with us for the rights of Our Lord, for the salvation of souls, are now saying, ‘So long as they grant us the old Mass, we can shake hands with Rome, no problem.’ ” (Two Years After the Consecrations, Fideliter, 1990)]]> <![CDATA[Bp. Strickland defends Catholic teaching condemning female ‘deacons’ in new pastoral letter]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5493 Wed, 06 Sep 2023 12:13:20 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5493 Bp. Strickland defends Catholic teaching condemning female ‘deacons’ in new pastoral letter
'As God did not call men to be mothers, God did not call women to be fathers, and to be sacramentally ordained as a minister for Christ in His Church, Our Lord calls for men to be spiritual fathers and bridegrooms to His bride, The Church. This role can only be filled by one properly ordered to this role.'

[Image: Screenshot-2023-01-20-114833-e1674215340552-810x500.jpg]

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas
YouTube/Screenshot
Sep 5, 2023
(LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Jospeh Strickland of Tyler, Texas, has issued a pastoral letter today, September 5, 2023. Below is the full text.


My Dear Sons and Daughters in Christ:

I write to you today to discuss more fully the first basic truth that I spoke of in my first pastoral letter: “Christ established One Church—the Catholic Church—and, therefore, only the Catholic Church provides the fullness of Christ’s truth and the authentic path to His salvation for all of us.”

To begin, I must state clearly and emphatically this fundamental truth—Jesus Christ is the only path to everlasting life; no other path to salvation can be found! As Our Lord Himself tells us: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (Jn 14:6). In order that we might participate in that promise of everlasting life, Our Lord in His great mercy established the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. As we read in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ said: “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matt 16:18-19). The foundation and divine head of the Church is Jesus Christ; however, this passage makes it clear that Jesus is promising to establish a visible Church upon the earth with a visible head, Peter, to whom He will entrust a unique mission and a specific authority.

The Catholic Church IS the body of Christ, and He is inseparable from His body. The Church’s understanding of Christ’s words in Matthew has deepened throughout the ages, but in accordance with Sacred Tradition handed down from Christ to the Apostles (cf. 2 Thess 2:15), and then preserved and protected by the Church Fathers and saints and martyrs until today, it has always been understood and proclaimed that the Catholic Church is the single, divinely-instituted Church that Christ established for the salvation of souls. All that the Church is, as the mystical body of Christ, flows from the truth that it was, and is, divinely constituted by Christ, and her basic elements—which include the sacred Deposit of Faith—cannot be altered by men because it does not belong to men; the Church belongs to Christ!

St. Cyril of Jerusalem stated in A.D. 350: “The Church is called catholic then because it extends over all the world, from one end of the earth to the other; and because it teaches universally and completely the doctrines that ought to come to men’s knowledge, concerning things both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly; and because it brings into subjection to godliness the whole race of mankind, governors and governed, learned and unlearned; and because it universally treats and heals the whole class of sins that are committed by soul or body, and possesses in itself every form of virtue that is named, both in deeds and words, and in every spiritual gift.”

Christ therefore established His Church for all people, for all time, for the salvation of all. There is no salvation apart from Christ and His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church; this is an infallible teaching of the Church. However, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and His Church.” As Catholics, we are lovingly and joyfully bound to the Church and to the seven sacraments instituted by Christ. These are essential for our salvation. Some may ask, however: “What about those outside the Church? What about those who have never heard of Christ? Can they be saved?” For those who are not united to Christ through His Church and through the grace of the sacraments, we simply pray for them and entrust them to God. Although we must never be presumptuous of God’s grace, we recognize that God is sovereign, and if in His mercy He would choose to operate in ways beyond our knowledge or understanding, He has full authority to operate however He chooses because He is not bound by anything other than His own perfect nature.

We ourselves must cling tightly to the Church and the sacraments as He gave them to us, but we must also pray always for souls outside the Church, that God offers His grace to those souls in ways unknown and unseen to us. However, I want to emphasize this point—if God would choose to offer grace beyond the normal sacramental means, we recognize that this grace would always still flow to every soul from Christ and through His Church in a mystical way. Therefore, anyone receiving and accepting God’s grace would never be saved through any other path or church or religion; there is One Savior, One Redeemer, for all mankind, and He established One Church for the salvation of souls.

God desires the salvation of all, but He does not force salvation upon any of us; it requires our cooperation and free assent to His grace. He calls each one of us to participate in His plan of salvation not only for ourselves, but for the world; this is the Great Commission: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matt 28:19-20).

We live in an age of great interconnectedness where people across the globe can share and learn with each other as never before in human history. This is a great blessing in many respects as it opens the possibility of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ in ways not before possible. True ecumenism, however, is an open invitation to all people to experience and embrace the fullness of Christ and the Christian life which can be found only in the Catholic Church. This path, although difficult at times, is the only sure path to true everlasting love, grace, and life with God. It is false charity to tell people that regardless of what path they are on, it is God’s Will that they stay where they are because this does not call on people to embrace the one true path instituted by God for the salvation of souls. Therefore, the Church has a sacred obligation, borne of love, to evangelize all people.

Another topic that I want to discuss because it will reportedly be a topic of discussion at the upcoming Synod on Synodality is the divinely-instituted structure of the Church as it applies to ordination of women. As Sacred Scripture tells us, Christ ordained only men as apostles. Sacred Tradition and the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church have affirmed throughout the ages that the Church has no authority whatsoever to ordain women to the priesthood. This cannot be changed because Christ instituted a male priesthood in order to image Himself as the bridegroom with the Church as His bride. As St. John Paul II solemnly stated in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

It is imperative to state, though, that Christ would never want a “lesser” role for women than He wants for men. Women have made and continue to make indispensable contributions in the history and life of the Church. From the greatest and most perfect of God’s creation in all of history, Our Blessed Mother, the Queen of Heaven and Earth; to some of the greatest saints and Doctors of the Church; to our holy and faithful women in religious orders and convents; to the countless women who have and continue to impart the faith to their families and communities; Christ instituted His Church in a way that calls for women to have “more” of a role in Him than could ever be found in the world. However, as God did not call men to be mothers, God did not call women to be fathers, and to be sacramentally ordained as a minister for Christ in His Church, Our Lord calls for men to be spiritual fathers and bridegrooms to His bride, The Church. This role can only be filled by one properly ordered to this role.

For those who would inquire about the potential for female deacons in the Catholic Church, I would offer this: Scripture tells us that from the earliest days of the Church, women served as faithful servants (Greek: diakonos) of the members of the Church. (cf. Rom 16:1). Historians and scholars tell us that women served in many important roles of service in the early Church, including acts of charity for the poor, caring for the sick, preparing other women for baptism, etc. However, we see in the Acts of the Apostles that there is another type of servant (diakonos) called specifically by the apostles and set apart from other servants in the Church; the apostles laid hands on these particular servants, and these servants then received a sacramental ordination to fulfill their unique role. Scripture tells us that the apostles said, “Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, who we appoint to this task.” (Acts 6:3). And then, “They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid hands on them.” (Acts 6:6). Although many (both men and women) have faithfully served the Church as servants/diakonos throughout history, the sacramental ordination to the diaconate—as one of the three degrees of the sacrament of Holy Orders (deacon, priest, bishop)—has always been reserved for baptized males alone. All three degrees act as instruments of Christ in persona Christi Capitis, (in the person of Christ as the Head), but with distinct functions for each office. Because sacramentally ordained deacons share in the apostolic ministry with priests and bishops, the Church has decreed that they must also be men, as were the apostles Jesus chose.

The Canons of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) state in reference to women who have been granted a certain status of service: “We refer to deaconesses who have been granted this status, for they do not receive any imposition of hands, so that they are in all respects to be numbered among the laity.” (Canon No. 19).

In conclusion, I want to state that although the Church is holy because of her Founder and her divine origin, she is also made up of sinful members who are called constantly to repentance and conversion. However, there is a Church Triumphant in heaven that exists perfectly in her fullness in Christ in heaven where the heavenly marriage feast is eternally celebrated with God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are eternally worshipped and adored. The choirs of angels, the Immaculate Virgin Mary, and all the saints eternally cry “Holy, Holy, Holy” before the throne of God.

It is important that we, as the Church Militant on earth, carry this truth and hope in our hearts as we strive to align ourselves and every aspect of the Church on this earth with her heavenly reality. Because of sin, both personal and communal, the Church Militant on earth falls short of the Church Triumphant in heaven, but it is our mission to strive always for holiness and by the grace of God to persevere until the end so that we might also join with the Church Triumphant. Part of this striving on earth consists in engaging in the spiritual battle that is taking place around us daily as many attempt to chip away or destroy altogether the Deposit of Faith.

My dear sons and daughters, be assured that angels surround us in this battle, and saints—especially Our Holy and Blessed Mother—offer their heavenly assistance as we seek the eternal prize Our Lord has won for us.

Remaining your humble father and servant,

Most Reverend Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop of Tyler, Texas]]> Bp. Strickland defends Catholic teaching condemning female ‘deacons’ in new pastoral letter
'As God did not call men to be mothers, God did not call women to be fathers, and to be sacramentally ordained as a minister for Christ in His Church, Our Lord calls for men to be spiritual fathers and bridegrooms to His bride, The Church. This role can only be filled by one properly ordered to this role.'

[Image: Screenshot-2023-01-20-114833-e1674215340552-810x500.jpg]

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas
YouTube/Screenshot
Sep 5, 2023
(LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Jospeh Strickland of Tyler, Texas, has issued a pastoral letter today, September 5, 2023. Below is the full text.


My Dear Sons and Daughters in Christ:

I write to you today to discuss more fully the first basic truth that I spoke of in my first pastoral letter: “Christ established One Church—the Catholic Church—and, therefore, only the Catholic Church provides the fullness of Christ’s truth and the authentic path to His salvation for all of us.”

To begin, I must state clearly and emphatically this fundamental truth—Jesus Christ is the only path to everlasting life; no other path to salvation can be found! As Our Lord Himself tells us: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (Jn 14:6). In order that we might participate in that promise of everlasting life, Our Lord in His great mercy established the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. As we read in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ said: “And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matt 16:18-19). The foundation and divine head of the Church is Jesus Christ; however, this passage makes it clear that Jesus is promising to establish a visible Church upon the earth with a visible head, Peter, to whom He will entrust a unique mission and a specific authority.

The Catholic Church IS the body of Christ, and He is inseparable from His body. The Church’s understanding of Christ’s words in Matthew has deepened throughout the ages, but in accordance with Sacred Tradition handed down from Christ to the Apostles (cf. 2 Thess 2:15), and then preserved and protected by the Church Fathers and saints and martyrs until today, it has always been understood and proclaimed that the Catholic Church is the single, divinely-instituted Church that Christ established for the salvation of souls. All that the Church is, as the mystical body of Christ, flows from the truth that it was, and is, divinely constituted by Christ, and her basic elements—which include the sacred Deposit of Faith—cannot be altered by men because it does not belong to men; the Church belongs to Christ!

St. Cyril of Jerusalem stated in A.D. 350: “The Church is called catholic then because it extends over all the world, from one end of the earth to the other; and because it teaches universally and completely the doctrines that ought to come to men’s knowledge, concerning things both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly; and because it brings into subjection to godliness the whole race of mankind, governors and governed, learned and unlearned; and because it universally treats and heals the whole class of sins that are committed by soul or body, and possesses in itself every form of virtue that is named, both in deeds and words, and in every spiritual gift.”

Christ therefore established His Church for all people, for all time, for the salvation of all. There is no salvation apart from Christ and His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church; this is an infallible teaching of the Church. However, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and His Church.” As Catholics, we are lovingly and joyfully bound to the Church and to the seven sacraments instituted by Christ. These are essential for our salvation. Some may ask, however: “What about those outside the Church? What about those who have never heard of Christ? Can they be saved?” For those who are not united to Christ through His Church and through the grace of the sacraments, we simply pray for them and entrust them to God. Although we must never be presumptuous of God’s grace, we recognize that God is sovereign, and if in His mercy He would choose to operate in ways beyond our knowledge or understanding, He has full authority to operate however He chooses because He is not bound by anything other than His own perfect nature.

We ourselves must cling tightly to the Church and the sacraments as He gave them to us, but we must also pray always for souls outside the Church, that God offers His grace to those souls in ways unknown and unseen to us. However, I want to emphasize this point—if God would choose to offer grace beyond the normal sacramental means, we recognize that this grace would always still flow to every soul from Christ and through His Church in a mystical way. Therefore, anyone receiving and accepting God’s grace would never be saved through any other path or church or religion; there is One Savior, One Redeemer, for all mankind, and He established One Church for the salvation of souls.

God desires the salvation of all, but He does not force salvation upon any of us; it requires our cooperation and free assent to His grace. He calls each one of us to participate in His plan of salvation not only for ourselves, but for the world; this is the Great Commission: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matt 28:19-20).

We live in an age of great interconnectedness where people across the globe can share and learn with each other as never before in human history. This is a great blessing in many respects as it opens the possibility of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ in ways not before possible. True ecumenism, however, is an open invitation to all people to experience and embrace the fullness of Christ and the Christian life which can be found only in the Catholic Church. This path, although difficult at times, is the only sure path to true everlasting love, grace, and life with God. It is false charity to tell people that regardless of what path they are on, it is God’s Will that they stay where they are because this does not call on people to embrace the one true path instituted by God for the salvation of souls. Therefore, the Church has a sacred obligation, borne of love, to evangelize all people.

Another topic that I want to discuss because it will reportedly be a topic of discussion at the upcoming Synod on Synodality is the divinely-instituted structure of the Church as it applies to ordination of women. As Sacred Scripture tells us, Christ ordained only men as apostles. Sacred Tradition and the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church have affirmed throughout the ages that the Church has no authority whatsoever to ordain women to the priesthood. This cannot be changed because Christ instituted a male priesthood in order to image Himself as the bridegroom with the Church as His bride. As St. John Paul II solemnly stated in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

It is imperative to state, though, that Christ would never want a “lesser” role for women than He wants for men. Women have made and continue to make indispensable contributions in the history and life of the Church. From the greatest and most perfect of God’s creation in all of history, Our Blessed Mother, the Queen of Heaven and Earth; to some of the greatest saints and Doctors of the Church; to our holy and faithful women in religious orders and convents; to the countless women who have and continue to impart the faith to their families and communities; Christ instituted His Church in a way that calls for women to have “more” of a role in Him than could ever be found in the world. However, as God did not call men to be mothers, God did not call women to be fathers, and to be sacramentally ordained as a minister for Christ in His Church, Our Lord calls for men to be spiritual fathers and bridegrooms to His bride, The Church. This role can only be filled by one properly ordered to this role.

For those who would inquire about the potential for female deacons in the Catholic Church, I would offer this: Scripture tells us that from the earliest days of the Church, women served as faithful servants (Greek: diakonos) of the members of the Church. (cf. Rom 16:1). Historians and scholars tell us that women served in many important roles of service in the early Church, including acts of charity for the poor, caring for the sick, preparing other women for baptism, etc. However, we see in the Acts of the Apostles that there is another type of servant (diakonos) called specifically by the apostles and set apart from other servants in the Church; the apostles laid hands on these particular servants, and these servants then received a sacramental ordination to fulfill their unique role. Scripture tells us that the apostles said, “Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, who we appoint to this task.” (Acts 6:3). And then, “They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid hands on them.” (Acts 6:6). Although many (both men and women) have faithfully served the Church as servants/diakonos throughout history, the sacramental ordination to the diaconate—as one of the three degrees of the sacrament of Holy Orders (deacon, priest, bishop)—has always been reserved for baptized males alone. All three degrees act as instruments of Christ in persona Christi Capitis, (in the person of Christ as the Head), but with distinct functions for each office. Because sacramentally ordained deacons share in the apostolic ministry with priests and bishops, the Church has decreed that they must also be men, as were the apostles Jesus chose.

The Canons of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) state in reference to women who have been granted a certain status of service: “We refer to deaconesses who have been granted this status, for they do not receive any imposition of hands, so that they are in all respects to be numbered among the laity.” (Canon No. 19).

In conclusion, I want to state that although the Church is holy because of her Founder and her divine origin, she is also made up of sinful members who are called constantly to repentance and conversion. However, there is a Church Triumphant in heaven that exists perfectly in her fullness in Christ in heaven where the heavenly marriage feast is eternally celebrated with God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are eternally worshipped and adored. The choirs of angels, the Immaculate Virgin Mary, and all the saints eternally cry “Holy, Holy, Holy” before the throne of God.

It is important that we, as the Church Militant on earth, carry this truth and hope in our hearts as we strive to align ourselves and every aspect of the Church on this earth with her heavenly reality. Because of sin, both personal and communal, the Church Militant on earth falls short of the Church Triumphant in heaven, but it is our mission to strive always for holiness and by the grace of God to persevere until the end so that we might also join with the Church Triumphant. Part of this striving on earth consists in engaging in the spiritual battle that is taking place around us daily as many attempt to chip away or destroy altogether the Deposit of Faith.

My dear sons and daughters, be assured that angels surround us in this battle, and saints—especially Our Holy and Blessed Mother—offer their heavenly assistance as we seek the eternal prize Our Lord has won for us.

Remaining your humble father and servant,

Most Reverend Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop of Tyler, Texas]]> <![CDATA[Fr. Joseph Clifford Fenton: Sacrorum Antistitum and the Background of the Oath Against Modernism]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5462 Fri, 25 Aug 2023 11:03:09 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5462 Sacrorum Antistitum and the Background of the Oath Against Modernism
by Joseph Clifford Fenton


DESCRIPTION
This document provides a translation and explanation of the introduction and conclusion of the Motu Proprio Sacrorum Antistitum, one of the main anti-Modernist pronouncements issued by the Holy See during the reign of Pius X.

LARGER WORK
The American Ecclesiastical Review

PAGES
239-260

PUBLISHER & DATE
The Catholic University of America Press, October 1960


September 1 of this year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the last, and in some ways the most important, of the three main anti-Modernist pronouncements issued by the Holy See during the brilliant reign of St. Pius X. This document was the Motu proprio Sacrorum antistitum. The other two basic anti-Modernist documents are, of course, the Holy Office decree Lamentabili sane exitu, dated July 3, 1907, and the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, issued September 8 of that same year.

The Sacrorum antistitum is best known because it contains the text of the famous anti-Modernist oath and the rules prescribing when and by whom this oath is to be taken. Because of the tremendous intrinsic importance of the oath itself and by reason of its function in the doctrinal life of the Catholic Church, the papal document containing this oath definitely deserves serious study by the present generation of theologians. The Sacrorum antistitum brings out the basic objectives, which the saintly Pius X hoped to attain through the taking of the oath. These objectives, which are also the ends St. Pius X worked to achieve through the writing of the Motu proprio itself, are expressed very clearly in the introduction and in the conclusion to this document.

Since the entire text of the Sacrorum antistitum is not very generally available here and now, it will be helpful to see a translation of its most important parts, including the introduction and conclusion. The following is a translation of the introduction to this Motu proprio.



The Introduction


We believe that no bishop is ignorant of the fact that the wily Modernists have not abandoned their plans for disturbing the peace of the Church since they were unmasked by the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. For they have not ceased to seek out new recruits and to gather them into a secret alliance. Nor have they ceased, along with their new associates, to inject the poison of their own teachings into the veins of the Christian body-politic by turning out anonymous or pseudonymous books and articles. If, after a re-reading of the above-mentioned encyclical Pascendi, this audacity, which has caused Us so much grief, be considered very carefully, it will become quite apparent that these men are just as the encyclical describes them: enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us. They are men who pervert their ministry in such a way as to bait their hooks with poisoned meat in order to catch the unwary. They carry with them a form of doctrine in which the summary of all errors is contained.

While this plague is spreading abroad over that very part of the Lord's field from which the best fruits might be expected, it is the duty of all Bishops to exert themselves in defence of the Catholic faith and most diligently to see to it that the integrity of the divine deposit suffers no loss. Likewise it is most definitely Our duty to obey the commands of Christ the Saviour, who gave to Peter, to whose position of authority We, though unworthy, have succeeded, the order: "Confirm thy brethren." Thus, so that the souls of the good may be strengthened in the present struggle, We have considered it opportune to repeat the following statements and commands of the encyclical Pascendi. 1

The last words of this introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum show that the first section of the body of this Motu proprio is a long citation from the disciplinary part of the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. To this citation is attached an appendix, having to do with legislation concerning seminaries. The second part of the body of the text of the Sacrorum antistitum contains the text of the anti-Modernist oath, together with the rules prescribing when and by whom his oath is to be taken, and the other directives, which accompanied the command to take the oath. The third section is merely a statement in Latin of a text on preaching, originally issued in Italian, on the orders of Pope Leo XIII, by the Congregation of Bishops and of Regulars, on July 31, 1894.

The introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum contains some badly needed lessons for the priests of our own time. Incidentally it contains some reminders of truths in the theological and in the historical orders, which are far too seldom insisted upon today. It will, in my judgment, be definitely helpful to take cognizance of some of these truths at this time.

(1) Basically the Sacrorum antistitum and the anti-Modernist oath it contains were intended by St. Pius X as works he was required to perform in order to carry out his own divinely imposed responsibility to confirm the faith of his fellow members of the Catholic Church and to strengthen the efforts of the Bishops to see to it that their flocks received the divinely revealed message in all its integrity and purity.

For the sake of both fidelity to revealed teaching and of historical veracity, it is absolutely imperative that our contemporary Catholic scholars take cognizance of the truth of St. Pius X's claim about his intention. Actually the responsibility, which St. Pius X had assumed when he accepted the burden of the papacy, demanded that he take the most effective means at his disposal to protect the faith of Catholics. Quite obviously the greatest danger to the faith of the members of the true Church of Jesus Christ exists when some members of this Church actually teach or even show sympathy for doctrine contradictory to or incompatible with the body of Catholic dogma without receiving any reproof from those whom God has commissioned and obligated to protect the purity and the integrity of the Catholic faith.

St. Pius X was acutely conscious of the fact that many influential Catholics were teaching or encouraging erroneous doctrines opposed to the divinely revealed Catholic message long after those erroneous doctrines had been pointed out and condemned by the highest teaching authority within the Church. And the saintly Pope was brilliant enough to realize that, unless he took some sort of drastic action, a great number of Catholics might be persuaded to imagine that de facto the Church at least tacitly tolerated the doctrinal deviations of the Modernists and their sympathizers. Thus he directed the severe commands of the Sacrorum antistitum towards the protection of the Catholic faith that was his most important responsibility as the Vicar of Christ on earth.

It was and it still is the contention of the Modernists, together with their sympathizers and their dupes, that St. Pius X in some way or another went beyond the bounds imposed by prudence and charity in the war he waged against the heresy of Modernism. As a matter of fact, even after the regular investigations involved in the process of his beatification had been completed, the Sacred Congregation of Rites considered it best to commission its historical section to conduct a special investigation into the validity of this particular contention. This strict investigation, which made use of all available testimony and of the very abundant documentary material pertinent to the question, brought out very clearly the fact that St. Pius X, in issuing the Sacrorum antistitum and in taking the other steps against the Modernists and their supporters during the latter days of his pontificate, had been doing only what the demands of his high office demanded of him. 2

One of the most striking indications of this is to be found in a well-known statement attributed to Pope Benedict XV. The Disquisitio of the Historical Section of the Sacred Congregation of Rites reprints this statement in a part of the testimony offered by Msgr. Hoenning-O'Carroll in the course of the inquiry into the virtues of Pius X held in Venice.

Quote:Particularly his [Pius X's] political dealings with France and the steps he took against Modernism were attacked as imprudent and exaggerated . . . When Father Mauro Serafini was having an audience with Pope Benedict XV, the Pope said to him: "Now that I am sitting on this Chair, I see very well how right Pius X was. While I was the Sostituto in the Secretariate of State, and even while I was Archbishop of Bologna, I did not always share the thought of Pius X, but now I have to realize how right he was." 3

Monsignor Hoenning-O'Carroll testified that he learned of this statement of Pope Benedict XV from Monsignor Pescini. Despite the fact that this particular witness knew the story only through hearsay, the statement itself seems very well attested. It seems to reflect the mind of Pope Benedict XV.

In any event there is ample and compelling evidence that the Sacrorum antistitum and the other anti-Modernistic documents issued by St. Pius X were actually called for and really required by reason of the danger to the Catholic faith which had been caused by the activity of the Modernists, their sympathizers, and their dupes, within the true Church of Jesus Christ.

(2) At the time the Sacrorum antistitum was being written, the integrity of the Catholic faith itself was being seriously threatened. Within the Catholic Church itself a definite and formidable effort was being made to persuade members of the true Church to reject as antiquated and outdated certain teachings, which were actually presented by the Church's magisterium as belonging to the deposit of divine public revelation. This effort was being made by the Modernists, most of whom were members of the Catholic Church. The teachings, which these men had attempted to impose upon the Church had been specifically and authoritatively condemned by the Holy See three years before the Sacrorum antistitum was issued.

Thus it is immensely important to realize that the teachings against which the Sacrorum antistitum was directed were being put forward by an obdurate group of men whose heresies had been indicated, denounced, and condemned three years before this Motu proprio was written. This, incidentally, is quite at variance with the unhistorical statements of some contemporary sympathizers with Modernism and the Modernists. Writers of this sort have tried to delude their fellow Catholics into imagining that, upon the appearance of the Lamentabili sane exitu and the Pascendi dominici gregis, most of the men who had been teaching and defending the doctrines condemned in these two documents quickly and humbly submitted to the teaching authority of the Holy See. The text of the Sacrorum antistitum, and also, be it noted, the text of the Ad beatissimi, the inaugural encyclical of Pope Benedict XV, show that no such reaction took place. 4 The well defined group which had been proposing and favoring the propositions condemned in the Lamentabili and in the Pascendi insolently continued to work for acceptance of their errors within the Church even after St. Pius X had denounced and condemned them.

(3) In the Sacrorum antistitum St. Pius X speaks out very clearly of the existence of a secret alliance or a foedus clandestinum among the Modernists of his day. For one reason or another, this truth, observed and stated by St. Pius X, and clearly evident to any person who takes the trouble to study the history of the Modernist movement, has always been singularly distasteful to sympathizers with Modernism and with the Modernists. It seems to have been precisely in order to cause confusion on this particular point that the men who have been partial to the Modernists have gone to such extreme lengths to delude people into imagining that the opposition to Loisy, Von Hugel, and their ilk within the Catholic Church was fundamentally the work of a secret alliance of sinister and reactionary Catholics. It would certainly appear that the ridiculous and mendacious propaganda directed against the Sodalitium Pianum and against Monsignor Umberto Benigni, even over the course of the past few years, 5 can best be explained as an attempt to cover up the fact that there was a foedus clandestinum connected with and inherent in the Modernist movement.

(4) The introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum takes cognizance of the fact that most of the genuinely dangerous supporters of the Modernist movement, the men against whose efforts the Sacrorum antistitum and its commands were particularly directed, were priests active within the Catholic Church itself. St. Pius X took cognizance of the fact that such priests were actually perverting their own ministry. They were guilty of using their priestly power and their priestly position to counter, rather than to advance, the work of Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Basically the work of the priesthood is directed towards the glory of God, which is to be achieved and obtained in the salvation of souls. This objective is to be obtained only by those who pass from this life living the life of sanctifying grace. And the life of sanctifying grace cannot exist apart from the truth faith, until such time as the faith itself is replaced by the Beatific Vision. Thus the priestly ministry in the true Church of Jesus Christ necessarily seeks to induce men to accept God's supernatural teaching with the certain assent of divine faith and works to increase the perfection and the intensity of the faith in those who already possess this virtue. Hence any effort on the part of a Catholic priest to influence people to reject or to pass over a truth revealed by God and proposed as such by the Church's magisterium definitely constitutes a perversion of the sacerdotal ministry.

(5)St. Pius X describes the Modernists as men "who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us." It would be difficult indeed to appreciate the position of the Church in the twentieth century without realizing the objectivity and the shrewdness of this observation.

A man is to be feared by the Church, or by the members of the Church, in the measure that this man intends and is genuinely able to harm the Church, or to counteract and negate the salvific mission of Our Lord's Mystical Body in this world. And this happens especially when non-members of the Church are influenced not to accept its divine message and not to seek entrance into this society, and when members of the Church are pressured to reject Our Lord, or His love, or His divine teaching. It is most important to remember that the only real and serious damage to the cause of Christ is done when effective efforts are made to nullify and to counteract the work the Church does as the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ Our Lord.

With its insistence that the Modernists and their sympathizers were "enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us," the introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum takes cognizance of the fact that, during our own times at least, non-members of the Church have, generally speaking, not been able to damage the Church to any very considerable extent. Quite obviously, despite their manifest and intense ill will, people like those who used to be associated with the old Menace and the Ku Klux Klan, and those who are now associated with groups like P. . . U, are not particularly formidable adversaries of Our Lord, His Church, or His message. They have certainly helped to stir up and further to envenom antipathy towards the Catholic Church on the part of ignorant non-Catholics who were previously ill disposed towards the Church. But it would hardly seem likely that any Catholic has ever been turned against Christ or against the Church's divinely revealed message as a result of anything that has ever been said or written by these rabble-rousers. And it seems highly unlikely that any individual has been excluded from the Beatific Vision by reason of anything he has said or done by reason of their influence.

On the other hand, no one has ever been as well placed to harm the true Church and to counteract its essential work as a Catholic priest in good standing. If such a man, by his preaching, his teaching, or his writing, actually sets forth the kind of teaching condemned in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis, or if he works to discredit the loyal defenders of Catholic dogma without receiving any repudiation or reproof from those to whom the apostolic deposit of divine revelation has been entrusted, the Catholic people are in grave danger of being deceived.

The Modernists and their most influential sympathizers were, in great part, drawn from the ranks of the Catholic clergy. Thus they were, in the words of the introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum, the "enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us." These Catholics who taught or favored Modernism were the men whose influence within the true Church of Jesus Christ St. Pius X sought to counter by the teaching and the directives contained in the Sacrorum antistitum.

(6) Finally, in the introduction to this famous Motu proprio, St. Pius X makes it very clear indeed that the Bishops of the Catholic Church were bound in conscience by the obligations of their office to act energetically against this teaching that contradicted the divinely revealed truth proposed as such by the true Church. The "defence of the Catholic faith" and strenuous efforts "to see to it that the integrity of the divine deposit suffers no loss" are definitely not works of supererogation. These are the duties prescribed by Our Lord Himself for the leaders of the Church, which He has purchased by His blood.


The Conclusion To The Sacrorum Antistitum

The conclusion to this document, the last of the three great anti-Modernist declarations issued by the Holy See during the reign of St. Pius X, is even more enlightening than the introduction. In this we see how St. Pius X enunciated, more clearly than in any other document, the most fundamental position of the Modernists. The text of this conclusion follows:

Quote:Moved by the seriousness of the evil that is increasing every day, an evil, which We cannot put off confronting without the most grave danger, We have decided to issue and to repeat these commands. For it is no longer a case, as it was in the beginning, of dealing with disputants who come forward in the clothing of sheep. Now we are faced with open and bitter enemies from within our own household, who, in agreement with the outstanding" opponents of the Church, are working for the overthrow of the faith. They are men whose audacity against the wisdom that has come down from heaven increases daily. They arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men.

To counter such attempts against the evangelical doctrine and the ecclesiastical tradition, there will never be sufficient vigilance or too much severity on the part of those to whom the faithful care of the sacred deposit has been entrusted. 6

In this conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum, St. Pius X expressly recognizes the fact that the Modernists and their sympathizers, the anti-anti-Modernists, were actually working, in agreement with the most-bitter enemies of the Catholic Church, for the destruction of the Catholic faith. It is interesting and highly important to note exactly what St. Pius X said. He definitely did not claim that these men were working directly to destroy the Church as a society. It is quite obvious that, given the intimate connection between the Church and the faith, a connection so close and perfect that the Church itself may be defined as the congregatio fidelium, the repudiation of the Catholic faith would inevitably lead to the dissolution of the Church. Yet, for the Modernists and for those who co-operated in their work, the immediate object of attack was always the faith itself. These individuals were perfectly willing that the Catholic Church should continue to exist as a religious society, as long as it did not insist upon the acceptance of that message which, all during the course of the previous centuries of its existence, it had proposed as a message supernaturally revealed by the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. They were willing and even anxious to retain their membership in the Catholic Church, as long as they were not obliged to accept on the authority of divine faith such unfashionable dogmas as, for example, the truth that there is truly no salvation outside of the Church.

What these men were really working for was the transformation of the Catholic Church into an essentially non-doctrinal religious body. They considered that their era would be willing to accept the Church as a kind of humanitarian institution, vaguely religious, tastefully patriotic, and eminently cultural. And they definitely intended to tailor the Church to fit the needs and the tastes of their own era.

It must be understood, of course, that the Modernists and the men who aided their efforts did not expect the Catholic Church to repudiate its age-old formulas of belief. They did not want the Church to reject or to abandon the ancient creeds, or even any of those formularies in which the necessity of the faith and the necessity of the Church are so firmly and decisively stated. What they sought was a declaration on the part of the Church's magisterium to the effect that these old formulas did not, during the first decade of the twentieth century, carry the same meaning for the believing Catholic that they had carried when these formulas had first been drawn up. Or, in other words, they sought to force or to delude the teaching authority of Christ's Church into coming out with the fatally erroneous proposition that what is accepted by divine faith in this century is objectively something different from what was believed in the Catholic Church on the authority of God revealing in previous times.

Thus the basic objective of Modernism was to reject the fact that, when he sets forth Catholic dogma, the Catholic teacher is acting precisely as an ambassador of Christ. The Modernists were men who were never quite able to grasp or to accept the truth that the teaching of the Catholic Church is, as the First Vatican Council designated the content of the Constitution Dei Films, actually "the salutary doctrine of Christ," and not merely some kind of doctrine, which has developed out of that teaching. And, in the final analysis, the position of the Modernists constituted the ultimate repudiation of the Catholic faith. If the teaching proposed by the Church as dogma is not actually and really the doctrine supernaturally revealed by God through Jesus Christ Our Lord, through the Prophets of the Old Testament who were His heralds, or through the Apostles who were His witnesses, then there could be nothing more pitifully inane than the work of the Catholic magisterium.

It is interesting to note the parallel between what St. Pius X says about the intentions of the Modernists and what his great predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, had to say about the basic premise of the errors he pointed out and condemned in his famed letter, the Testem benevolentiae. St. Pius X declares that the Modernists "arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men." And Pope Leo XIII states:

Quote:The principles on which the new opinions We have mentioned are based may be reduced to this: that in order the more easily to bring over to Catholic doctrine those who dissent from it, the Church ought to adapt herself somewhat to our advanced civilization, and, relaxing her ancient rigor, show some indulgence to modern theories and methods. Many think that this is to be understood not only with regard to the rule of life, but also to the doctrines in which the deposit of faith is contained. For they contend that it is opportune, in order to work in a more attractive way upon the wills of those who are not in accord with us, to pass over certain heads of doctrines, as if of lesser moment, or so to soften them that they may not have the same meaning which the Church has invariably held. 7

Thus, when we examine the actual texts of the Testimonium benevolentiae and of the Sacrorum antistitum, it becomes quite apparent that Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were engaged in combating doctrinal deviations that actually sprang from an identical principle, the fantastically erroneous assumption that the supernatural communication of the Triune God could and should be brought up to date and given a certain respectability before modern society. The men who sustained the weird teachings condemned by Pope Leo XIII, a document, which, incidentally, did not denounce any mere phantom body of doctrine, and the men who taught and protected the doctrinal monstrosities stigmatized in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis, based their errors on a common foundation. The false Americanism and the heresy of Modernism were both offshoots of doctrinal liberal Catholicism.

This belief that the meaning of the Church's dogmatic message was in some way subject to change and capable of being improved and brought up to date was definitely not an explicit part of the original or the more naive stage of the liberal Catholic movement. The first components of liberal Catholicism, during the earlier days of the unfortunate Felicite De Lamenais, were religious indifferentism, some false concepts of human freedom, and the advocacy of a separation of Church and state as the ideal situation in a nation made up of members of the true Church. But, after these teachings had been forcefully repudiated by Pope Gregory XVI in his encyclical Mirari vos arbitramur, a new set of factors entered into this system. These were inserted into the fabric of liberal Catholicism because the leaders of this movement persisted in defending as legitimate Catholic doctrine this teaching, which had been clearly and vigorously condemned by the supreme power of the Catholic magisterium. Most prominent among these newer components of liberal Catholicism were minimism, doctrinal subjectivism, and an insistence that there had been and that there had to be at least some sort of change in the objective meaning of the Church's dogmatic message over the course of the centuries. 8

The liberal Catholic since the time of Montalembert has been well aware of the fact that the basic theses he proposes as acceptable Catholic doctrine have been specifically and vehemently repudiated by the doctrinal authority of the Roman Church. If he is to continue to propose these teachings as a member of the Church, he is obliged by the very force of self-consistency to claim that the declarations of the magisterium, which condemned his favorite theses do not at this moment mean objectively what they meant at the time they were issued. And, if such a claim is advanced about the Mirari vos arbitramur, there is very little to prevent its being put forward on the subject of the Athanasian Creed. Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were well aware of the fact that the advocates of the false Americanism and the teachers and the protectors of the Modernist heresy were employing this same discredited tactic.

This common basis of the false doctrinal Americanism and of the Modernist heresy is, like doctrinal indifferentism itself, ultimately a rejection of Catholic dogma as a genuine supernatural message or communication from the living God Himself. It would seem impossible for anyone to be blasphemous or silly enough to be convinced, on the one hand, that the dogmatic message of the Catholic Church is actually a locutio Dei ad homines, and to imagine, on the other hand, that he, a mere creature, could in some way improve that teaching or make it more respectable. The very fact that a man would be so rash as to attempt to bring the dogma of the Church up to date, or to make it more acceptable to those who are not privileged to be members of the true Church, indicates that this individual is not actually and profoundly convinced that this dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church is a supernatural communication from the living and Triune God, the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. It would be the height of blasphemy knowingly to set out to improve or to bring up to date what one would seriously consider a genuine message from the First Cause of the universe.

The conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum brings out more clearly than any other statement of the Holy See the fact that Modernism sprang from the same basic principle, as did the false Americanism pointed out and proscribed in the Testem benevolentiae of Pope Leo XIII.



The Immediate Context Of The Oath In The Sacrorum Antistitum

The main body of the first section of the Sacrorum antistitum is substantially a repetition of the legislative or disciplinary portion of the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. To this, however, in the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, is added an expression of the saintly Pontiff's concern for seminaries, ending with the vigorous command that henceforth the reading of "diaria quaevis aut commentaria, quantumvis optima" was strictly forbidden to seminarians "onerata moderatorum conscientia qui ne id accidat religiose non caverint." 9

The second section of the Sacrorum antistitum, the one which contains and which deals with the Oath against Modernism, follows immediately after the statement of the prohibition of the reading of newspapers by seminarians. The first part of this section is of particular importance in that it shows very clearly the effect, which St. Pius X wished to produce through the taking of the oath. The section begins as follows:

Quote:But in order to do away with all suspicion that Modernism may secretly enter in [to the seminaries], not only do We will that the commands listed under n. 2 above be obeyed absolutely, but We also order that all teachers, before their first lectures at the beginning of the scholastic year, must show to their Bishop the text which each shall decide to use in teaching, or the questions or theses that are to be treated, and that furthermore throughout the year itself the kind of teaching of each course be examined, and that if such teaching be found to run counter to sound doctrine, that this will result in the immediate dismissal of the teacher. Finally [We will] that over and above the profession of faith [the teacher] should take an oath before his Bishop, according to the formula that follows, and that he should sign his name. 10

The Sacrorum antistitum goes on to say that the profession of faith shall be that prescribed by Pope Pius IV, together with the additions, relative to the First Vatican Council, prescribed by the Decree of Jan. 20, 1877. And it likewise indicates the Church officials other than professors in seminaries who are bound by law to take the Oath.

Actually, then, in the immediate context of the Sacrorum antistitum, the command that seminary professors take Oath against Modernism stands out as one of four orders directed towards the prevention of the entrance of Modernism into ecclesiastical seminaries. These four directives are:
(1) the strict carrying out of the legislation set down under n. 2 of the first section of the Sacrorum antistitum,
(2) the submission by individual seminary professors to their Bishops at the beginning of the scholastic year of the textbooks they are going to use and of the theses they are going to propound,
(3) the investigation (obviously by the competent and proper ecclesiastical authority), of the teaching offered in the various courses being given to the seminarians, and finally
(4) the making of the Tridentine-Vatican profession of faith and the taking of the Oath against Modernism. The teacher is to sign his name to the Oath he has taken. The context would seem to indicate that it was the mind of St. Pius X that this Oath should be taken every year at the beginning of the academic term.

All of the other operations, including the taking of the Oath against Modernism, are subordinated to a certain extent to the legislation set down in the second sub-section of the first part of the Sacrorum antistitum. This sub-section, it must be remembered, is part of the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, which is simply reproduced from the disciplinary portion of the Pascendi dominici gregis. The pertinent sub-section follows:

Quote:All these prescriptions, both Our own and those of Our predecessor, are to be kept in view whenever there is a question of choosing directors and teachers for seminaries and for Catholic universities. Anyone who in any way is found to be tainted with Modernism is to be excluded without compunction from these offices, whether of administration or of teaching, and those who already occupy such offices are to be removed. The same policy is to be followed with regard to those who openly or secretly lend support to Modernism, either by praising the Modernists and excusing their culpable conduct, or by carping at scholasticism, and the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, or by refusing obedience to ecclesiastical authority in any of its depositaries; and with regard to those who manifest a love of novelty in history, archeology, and biblical exegesis; and finally with regard to those who neglect the sacred sciences or appear to prefer the secular [sciences] to them. On this entire subject, Venerable Brethren, and especially with regard to the choice of teachers, you cannot be too watchful or too careful, for as a rule the students are modeled according to the pattern of their teachers. Strong in the consciousness of your duty, act always in this matter with prudence and with vigor.

Equal diligence and severity are to be used in examining and selecting candidates for Holy Orders. Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty! God hates the proud and the obstinate mind. In the future the doctorate in theology or in canon law must never be conferred on anyone who has not first of all made the regular course in scholastic philosophy. If such a doctorate be conferred, it is to be held as null and void. The rules laid down in 1896 by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars for the clerics of Italy, both secular and regular, about the frequenting of universities, We now decree to be extended to all nations. Clerics and priests inscribed in a Catholic institute or university must not in the future follow in civil universities those courses for which there are chairs in the Catholic institutes to which they belong. If this has been permitted anywhere in the past, We order that it shall not be allowed in the future. Let the Bishops who form the governing boards of such institutes or universities see to it with all care that these Our commands be constantly observed. 11

There can be no doubt whatsoever about the severity of the directives which are, in the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, immediately associated with the command that teachers in seminaries and in the ecclesiastical schools of Catholic universities take the Oath against Modernism, which appeared for the first time in that document. St. Pius X ordered that those who taught the errors condemned in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis should be dropped from any position on the administrative or on the teaching staff of any seminary or Catholic university, and that men who held such views must not, under any conditions whatsoever, be considered as prospects for membership in the administrations or in the professional corps of such institutions. Furthermore he ordered that the sympathizers with Modernism should be treated in exactly the same fashion. It is quite obvious that, in speaking of lovers of "novelties," the saintly Pontiff meant people who favored these propositions condemned by the Church and designated as Modernism.

Then there were other directives. It was decreed that the doctorate in sacred theology and in canon law must never, in the future, be conferred on any person who had not taken a regular course in scholastic philosophy. Furthermore, St. Pius X ordered that priests connected with Catholic institutions of higher learning must not, in the future, take in non-Catholic institutions of higher studies courses, which were being given in the schools with which they themselves were connected.

All of these directives went against the liberal Catholic spirit, of which Modernism was the outstanding expression. All of them were likewise unpopular, as calculated to arouse the antagonism of the enemies who attacked the Church from the outside. All of them were duly denounced and regretted as obscurantist. Catholics of mediocre intellectual attainments attracted praise to themselves for their disloyalty to Our Lord's cause and to His Church, which was manifested in their disdainful reactions against these commands of Christ's Vicar on earth. Yet certainly and incontrovertibly the cause of Christ, the cause of truth, the cause of the Catholic faith, benefited to the extent that these rigorous directives were carried out.

It must definitely be understood that the most rigorous and the most important of these directives set forth in the disciplinary part of the Pascendi dominici gregis, and afterwards in the Sacrorum antistitum, are expressions of what we may call the natural law of the supernatural order. In other words, the obligation of the individual Bishop to exclude Modernists and sympathizers with Modernism from the administrations and from the professorial staffs of seminaries and of Catholic universities definitely did not begin with the first promulgation of this law by St. Pius X. Given the position and the obligation of the Bishop within the true Church of Jesus Christ, and given the nature and the necessity of the Catholic faith, it is always the clear duty of the Bishop to exclude from the dignity of teaching in the Church in any position under his control any individual who will teach or favor the contradiction of the divinely revealed message. Modernism was and is such a contradiction. Thus it was and always will necessarily remain the duty of the Bishop to see to it that any individual who teaches or who supports Modernism in any way be excluded from any co-operation in the apostolic task of teaching the divine message of Jesus Christ within His Church.

In issuing this decree, St. Pius X was taking cognizance of the basic truth about the teaching work in the Church, which was afterwards brought out so clearly by Pope Pius XII in his allocution Si diligis. This document brings out more clearly than any other in recent years the tremendous responsibility of the Bishop in the field of teaching the divine message.

Quote:Christ Our Lord entrusted the truth, which He had brought from heaven to the Apostles, and through them to their successors. He sent His Apostles, as He had been sent by the Father, (John, 20:21), to teach all nations everything they had heard from Him (cf. Matt., 28:19 f.). The Apostles are, therefore by divine right the true doctors and teachers in the Church. Besides the lawful successors of the Apostles, namely the Roman Pontiff for the universal Church and the Bishops for the faithful entrusted to their care (cf. can. 1326), there are no other teachers divinely constituted in the Church of Christ. But both the Bishops and, first of all, the Supreme Teacher and Vicar of Christ on earth, may associate others with themselves in their work as teacher, and may use their advice. They delegate to them the faculty to teach, either by special grant, or by conferring an office to which this faculty is attached (cf. can. 1328). Those who are so called teach, not in their own name, nor by reason of their theological knowledge, but by reason of the mandate they have received from the lawful Teaching Authority. Their faculty always remains subject to that Authority, nor is it ever exercised in its own right or independently. Bishops, for their part, by conferring this faculty, are not deprived of the right to teach. They retain the very grave obligation of supervising the doctrine, which others propose, in order to help them and of seeing to its integrity and security. Therefore the legitimate Teaching Authority of the Church is guilty of no injury or no offence to any of those to whom it has given a canonical mission, if it desires to ascertain what they, to whom it has entrusted the mission of teaching, are proposing and defending in their lectures, in books, notes, and reviews intended for the use of their students, as well as in books and other publications intended for the general public. 12

In the Si diligis, Pope Pius XII explains the directives issued by St. Pius X in the Pascendi and in the Sacrorum antistitum. The members of the apostolic hierarchy of jurisdiction, the Pope and the residential Bishops throughout the world are responsible before God Himself for the teaching in the Catholic Church. All the legitimate teaching in the Church is issued by them or under their direction. They have full responsibility and full competence to see to it that the faithful of Christ receive His message in all of its purity and integrity. Naturally if they themselves contradict, or transform, or withhold any portion of the revealed truth, which has been entrusted to them, they will have been recreant to the commission they have received from Our Lord Himself. And, in precisely the same way, they are being disloyal to Our Lord if they allow those whom they use as helpers in the teaching work within the Church to deny or to adulterate any of the divinely revealed doctrines.

The power and the dignity of the apostolic Catholic hierarchy in the field of dogmatic teaching are beyond comparison. But with that dignity and with that authority goes the gravest responsibility which human beings are called upon to assume. The directives, which, in the Sacrorum antistitum, form the immediate context of the command to take the Oath against Modernism, simply take cognizance of these basic and most important facts.

In the final analysis, they are founded upon an awareness of the tremendous and vital necessity of the divine faith itself. St. Pius X directed that all professors or directors of seminaries and of Catholic universities, who taught or showed sympathy with the doctrines condemned as Modernism, should be removed from their positions, and commanded that such individuals should not be brought into such positions in the future. This order, as is quite obvious, is simply a statement of what is actually required by the constitution of the Catholic Church itself. The same obligation would have been incumbent on the Bishops of the Catholic Church even if St. Pius X had not spoken out and issued these directives.

The Sacrorum antistitum, however, goes even further. It demands that the individual teachers in seminaries and in Catholic universities submit to their Bishops the name of the textbook they intend to follow or the list of theses they intend to teach and defend in their academic lectures. Furthermore it insists that the Bishops themselves take care, during the course of the academic year, to find out exactly what is being taught in the various classes in the Catholic institutes of higher learning under their direction. And then, in order to bring out this obligation for doctrinal orthodoxy in the clearest possible way, the Sacrorum antistitum orders these teachers to make the Profession of Faith of the Council of Trent and of the First Vatican Council, and to take and sign their names to the special Oath composed by St. Pius X precisely to repudiate and to condemn the central teachings of the Modernist movement.

With this salutary severity with reference to the teachers and directors of ecclesiastical seminaries and of Catholic universities, the Sacrorum antistitum likewise contains strict directives about the candidates for Holy Orders. Men who hold Modernistic teachings or who are sympathetic towards the Modernists are not to be ordained. With his intense awareness of the pastoral mission of the Catholic priesthood, St. Pius X was all too cognizant of the harm that could and inevitably would come to the Catholic Church from a priest who would be willing to pervert his position by working against the divinely revealed teaching of Jesus Christ.



The Oath Itself


Against the background of the Sacrorum antistitum, then, the Oath against Modernism appears as something intended primarily for teachers in and directors of ecclesiastical seminaries and Catholic universities. Other dignitaries of the Catholic Church are ordered to take this Oath, along with the Tridentine Profession of the Faith. But it is something intended primarily and immediately for those who are called upon to teach or to direct candidates for Holy Orders.

Thus the Oath itself is constituted as a Profession of the Catholic belief. The man who takes this Oath makes his solemn declaration in the sight of God Himself that he firmly accepts and receives all the teachings and each individual one of the teachings "that have been defined, asserted, and declared by the infallible magisterium of the Church, especially those points of doctrine which are directly opposed to the errors of this time." 13 The most important and influential of these "errors of this time" are clearly pointed out in the formula, and the man who takes the Oath calls upon God as His Witness that he rejects these false judgments and firmly accepts the statements of Catholic doctrine opposed to them. St. Pius X ordered that the professors and administrators in seminaries and in Catholic universities sign their names to the formula of the Oath after they had taken it. Thus it would be difficult to find or even to conceive of a more effective measure for the protection of candidates for Holy Orders from the infection of Modernism than that constituted by St. Pius X in his legislation about the Oath in the Sacrorum antistitum. The man who taught or in any way aided in the dissemination or the protection of Modernistic teachings in a seminary or in a Catholic university after the issuance of the Sacrorum antistitum would mark himself, not only as a sinner against the Catholic faith, but also as a common perjurer.

Incidentally, the Oath against Modernism contained in the Sacrorum antistitum is something, which demands a certain amount of knowledge in the man who takes it seriously and religiously. We must not allow ourselves to forget that essentially an oath is an act of religion, an act in which we worship almighty God or manifest our acknowledgement of His supreme excellence and of our own complete and absolute dependence upon Him. 14 Thus an oath is definitely not something that can be taken lightly. And the man who takes the Oath against Modernism calls upon God to witness that he reverently submits and whole-heartedly assents "to all the condemnations, the declarations, and the commands which are contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili, especially to those that relate to what they call the history of dogmas." 15 It would seem to be irreverent indeed for any seminary or university professor to take this oath without knowing exactly what is condemned, what is taught, and what is commanded in these two tremendously important documents. It is quite obvious that some of the doctrines and directives contained in the Pascendi and in the Lamentabili are also brought out in the Oath against Modernism. But it is equally clear that not all of these teachings and precepts of the two 1907 documents are set forth in the Oath, and that the man who wishes to take the Oath as a religious act, to take it worthily, must exert himself to find out exactly and in detail what he is promising to accept and to believe. And it is patent that the man who does not take the time and the trouble to find out what is taught and what is commanded in the Pascendi and in the Lamentabili is being somewhat careless in calling upon the living God to witness that he will whole-heartedly abide by the doctrines and the directives contained in these two statements.



Recapitulation


The Oath against Modernism is undoubtedly, up until now, the most important and the most influential document issued by the Holy See during the course of the twentieth century.[/color] It is a magnificent statement of Catholic truth, in the face of the errors, which were being disseminated within the Church by the cleverest enemies the Mystical Body of Christ has encountered in the course of its history. It was a profession of Catholic belief intended primarily for those engaged in the spiritual and intellectual formation of candidates for Holy Orders. According to the strict command of the Sacrorum antistitum, the men for whom the Oath against Modernism was primarily intended were also obliged to show their Bishops, at the beginning of each academic year, the textbooks they were employing in class, and the theses they intended to teach and to defend. The Bishops themselves were not only reminded of their obligation, but were strictly commanded to watch over the teaching being given in the institutions of higher learning under their direction and control.

The Bishops were also commanded to see to it that no man tainted with Modernism, either as a teacher of the errors condemned in the Lamentabili and the Pascendi, or as one who supported these errors by working to discredit the teachers of Catholic truth who opposed and unmasked Modernism, was to be admitted to or permitted to remain in the professorial corps or the administration of an ecclesiastical seminary or a Catholic university. And no young man who was infected by Modernism errors was to be allowed to become or to remain a candidate for Holy Orders.

This was the rigorous and powerful direction of the Sacrorum antistitum. Quite obviously it was not and it still is not in accord with the tastes of liberal Catholics. But it was and it remains the great expression of St. Pius X's desire to accomplish his mission as Christ's Vicar on earth. It was and it remains a tremendously effective factor for the protection of the little ones of Jesus Christ against the virus of Modernism.



Endnotes

1 The Latin text of the Sacrorum antistitum is to be found in the Codicis iuris canonici fontes, cura Petri Cardinalis Gasparri editi (Typis polyglottis Vaticanis, 1933), III, 774-90. This particular section is on p. 774.
2 The documentation and the results of this investigation are contained in the Disquisitio circa quasdam obiectiones modum agendi Servi Dei [Pii Papae X] respicientes in Modernismi debellatione, una cum summario additionali ex officio compilato, which is n. 77 of the printed documents of the Sectio historica of the Sacra Rituum Congregatio. The work was edited by Father Antonelli, O.F.M. It is mentioned and used rather well by Pierre Fernessole, in his Pie X: Essai historique (Paris: Lethielleux, 1953), II, 237-51. It is employed brilliantly by Fr. Raymond Dulac in his two famous articles, "Les devoirs du journaliste catholique selon le Bienheureux Pie X," and "Simple note sur le Sodalitium Pianum," in La pensee catholique, n. 23 (1952), 68-87; 88-93.
3 Disquisitio, p. 127. Cited by Fernessole, op. cit., II, 249.
4 It is quite evident that Pope Benedict XV considered the Modernism condemned by St. Pius X as an influential movement in the Church four years after the Sacrorum antistitum was written. Thus we read in the Ad beatissimi: "And so there came into being the monstrous errors of Modernism, which Our predecessor rightly designated as the gathering together of all the heresies, and which he solemnly condemned. To the fullest extent possible, Venerable Brethren, We here renew that condemnation. And, because this pestiferous contagion has not yet been overcome, but even now creeps in here and there, even though in a hidden manner. We exhort all most diligently against any infection of this evil, to which you might rightly apply the words that Job said on another subject: 'It is a fire that devoureth even to destruction, and rooteth up all things that spring.' And We will that Catholic men should turn away in disgust, not only from the errors, but from the very mentality, or, as they call it, the spirit of the Modernists" (Cf. Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 842).
It must also be remembered that the errors denounced by the late Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis definitely were Modernistic.
5 Perhaps the most insolent and naive of these attacks is that contained in the article " 'La Sapiniere,' ou breve histoire de l'organisation integriste," written by someone who used the pseudonym "Louis Davallon," in the May 15, 1955, number of Folliet's Chronique sociale de France, pp. 241-62. A brief discussion of this unfortunate and thoroughly untrustworthy article will be found in Fenton, "Some Recent Writings in the Field of Fundamental Dogmatic Theology," Part II, in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXXIV, 5 (May, 1956), 340-45. It is tragic that an otherwise respectable book, The Life of Benedict XV, by Walter H. Peters (Milwaukee: Bruce 1959), incorporates some of this nonsensical propaganda against Monsignor Benigni into its chapter "Modernists and Integralists" (pp. 42-53).
6 The text is in Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 789 f.
7 The text is in Denz., n. 1967. This passage is translated in Father Wynne's edition of The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903), p. 442.
8 Cf. Fenton, "The Components of Liberal Catholicism," in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXXIX, 1 (July, 1958), 36-53.
9 Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 782.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., III, 776.
12 The text and translation of the Si diligis are in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXX, 2 (Aug., 1954), 127-37. This passage is found on pp. 133 f.
13 Denz., n. 2145.
14 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 89, a. 4.
15 Denz., n. 2146.]]> Sacrorum Antistitum and the Background of the Oath Against Modernism
by Joseph Clifford Fenton


DESCRIPTION
This document provides a translation and explanation of the introduction and conclusion of the Motu Proprio Sacrorum Antistitum, one of the main anti-Modernist pronouncements issued by the Holy See during the reign of Pius X.

LARGER WORK
The American Ecclesiastical Review

PAGES
239-260

PUBLISHER & DATE
The Catholic University of America Press, October 1960


September 1 of this year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the last, and in some ways the most important, of the three main anti-Modernist pronouncements issued by the Holy See during the brilliant reign of St. Pius X. This document was the Motu proprio Sacrorum antistitum. The other two basic anti-Modernist documents are, of course, the Holy Office decree Lamentabili sane exitu, dated July 3, 1907, and the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, issued September 8 of that same year.

The Sacrorum antistitum is best known because it contains the text of the famous anti-Modernist oath and the rules prescribing when and by whom this oath is to be taken. Because of the tremendous intrinsic importance of the oath itself and by reason of its function in the doctrinal life of the Catholic Church, the papal document containing this oath definitely deserves serious study by the present generation of theologians. The Sacrorum antistitum brings out the basic objectives, which the saintly Pius X hoped to attain through the taking of the oath. These objectives, which are also the ends St. Pius X worked to achieve through the writing of the Motu proprio itself, are expressed very clearly in the introduction and in the conclusion to this document.

Since the entire text of the Sacrorum antistitum is not very generally available here and now, it will be helpful to see a translation of its most important parts, including the introduction and conclusion. The following is a translation of the introduction to this Motu proprio.



The Introduction


We believe that no bishop is ignorant of the fact that the wily Modernists have not abandoned their plans for disturbing the peace of the Church since they were unmasked by the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. For they have not ceased to seek out new recruits and to gather them into a secret alliance. Nor have they ceased, along with their new associates, to inject the poison of their own teachings into the veins of the Christian body-politic by turning out anonymous or pseudonymous books and articles. If, after a re-reading of the above-mentioned encyclical Pascendi, this audacity, which has caused Us so much grief, be considered very carefully, it will become quite apparent that these men are just as the encyclical describes them: enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us. They are men who pervert their ministry in such a way as to bait their hooks with poisoned meat in order to catch the unwary. They carry with them a form of doctrine in which the summary of all errors is contained.

While this plague is spreading abroad over that very part of the Lord's field from which the best fruits might be expected, it is the duty of all Bishops to exert themselves in defence of the Catholic faith and most diligently to see to it that the integrity of the divine deposit suffers no loss. Likewise it is most definitely Our duty to obey the commands of Christ the Saviour, who gave to Peter, to whose position of authority We, though unworthy, have succeeded, the order: "Confirm thy brethren." Thus, so that the souls of the good may be strengthened in the present struggle, We have considered it opportune to repeat the following statements and commands of the encyclical Pascendi. 1

The last words of this introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum show that the first section of the body of this Motu proprio is a long citation from the disciplinary part of the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. To this citation is attached an appendix, having to do with legislation concerning seminaries. The second part of the body of the text of the Sacrorum antistitum contains the text of the anti-Modernist oath, together with the rules prescribing when and by whom his oath is to be taken, and the other directives, which accompanied the command to take the oath. The third section is merely a statement in Latin of a text on preaching, originally issued in Italian, on the orders of Pope Leo XIII, by the Congregation of Bishops and of Regulars, on July 31, 1894.

The introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum contains some badly needed lessons for the priests of our own time. Incidentally it contains some reminders of truths in the theological and in the historical orders, which are far too seldom insisted upon today. It will, in my judgment, be definitely helpful to take cognizance of some of these truths at this time.

(1) Basically the Sacrorum antistitum and the anti-Modernist oath it contains were intended by St. Pius X as works he was required to perform in order to carry out his own divinely imposed responsibility to confirm the faith of his fellow members of the Catholic Church and to strengthen the efforts of the Bishops to see to it that their flocks received the divinely revealed message in all its integrity and purity.

For the sake of both fidelity to revealed teaching and of historical veracity, it is absolutely imperative that our contemporary Catholic scholars take cognizance of the truth of St. Pius X's claim about his intention. Actually the responsibility, which St. Pius X had assumed when he accepted the burden of the papacy, demanded that he take the most effective means at his disposal to protect the faith of Catholics. Quite obviously the greatest danger to the faith of the members of the true Church of Jesus Christ exists when some members of this Church actually teach or even show sympathy for doctrine contradictory to or incompatible with the body of Catholic dogma without receiving any reproof from those whom God has commissioned and obligated to protect the purity and the integrity of the Catholic faith.

St. Pius X was acutely conscious of the fact that many influential Catholics were teaching or encouraging erroneous doctrines opposed to the divinely revealed Catholic message long after those erroneous doctrines had been pointed out and condemned by the highest teaching authority within the Church. And the saintly Pope was brilliant enough to realize that, unless he took some sort of drastic action, a great number of Catholics might be persuaded to imagine that de facto the Church at least tacitly tolerated the doctrinal deviations of the Modernists and their sympathizers. Thus he directed the severe commands of the Sacrorum antistitum towards the protection of the Catholic faith that was his most important responsibility as the Vicar of Christ on earth.

It was and it still is the contention of the Modernists, together with their sympathizers and their dupes, that St. Pius X in some way or another went beyond the bounds imposed by prudence and charity in the war he waged against the heresy of Modernism. As a matter of fact, even after the regular investigations involved in the process of his beatification had been completed, the Sacred Congregation of Rites considered it best to commission its historical section to conduct a special investigation into the validity of this particular contention. This strict investigation, which made use of all available testimony and of the very abundant documentary material pertinent to the question, brought out very clearly the fact that St. Pius X, in issuing the Sacrorum antistitum and in taking the other steps against the Modernists and their supporters during the latter days of his pontificate, had been doing only what the demands of his high office demanded of him. 2

One of the most striking indications of this is to be found in a well-known statement attributed to Pope Benedict XV. The Disquisitio of the Historical Section of the Sacred Congregation of Rites reprints this statement in a part of the testimony offered by Msgr. Hoenning-O'Carroll in the course of the inquiry into the virtues of Pius X held in Venice.

Quote:Particularly his [Pius X's] political dealings with France and the steps he took against Modernism were attacked as imprudent and exaggerated . . . When Father Mauro Serafini was having an audience with Pope Benedict XV, the Pope said to him: "Now that I am sitting on this Chair, I see very well how right Pius X was. While I was the Sostituto in the Secretariate of State, and even while I was Archbishop of Bologna, I did not always share the thought of Pius X, but now I have to realize how right he was." 3

Monsignor Hoenning-O'Carroll testified that he learned of this statement of Pope Benedict XV from Monsignor Pescini. Despite the fact that this particular witness knew the story only through hearsay, the statement itself seems very well attested. It seems to reflect the mind of Pope Benedict XV.

In any event there is ample and compelling evidence that the Sacrorum antistitum and the other anti-Modernistic documents issued by St. Pius X were actually called for and really required by reason of the danger to the Catholic faith which had been caused by the activity of the Modernists, their sympathizers, and their dupes, within the true Church of Jesus Christ.

(2) At the time the Sacrorum antistitum was being written, the integrity of the Catholic faith itself was being seriously threatened. Within the Catholic Church itself a definite and formidable effort was being made to persuade members of the true Church to reject as antiquated and outdated certain teachings, which were actually presented by the Church's magisterium as belonging to the deposit of divine public revelation. This effort was being made by the Modernists, most of whom were members of the Catholic Church. The teachings, which these men had attempted to impose upon the Church had been specifically and authoritatively condemned by the Holy See three years before the Sacrorum antistitum was issued.

Thus it is immensely important to realize that the teachings against which the Sacrorum antistitum was directed were being put forward by an obdurate group of men whose heresies had been indicated, denounced, and condemned three years before this Motu proprio was written. This, incidentally, is quite at variance with the unhistorical statements of some contemporary sympathizers with Modernism and the Modernists. Writers of this sort have tried to delude their fellow Catholics into imagining that, upon the appearance of the Lamentabili sane exitu and the Pascendi dominici gregis, most of the men who had been teaching and defending the doctrines condemned in these two documents quickly and humbly submitted to the teaching authority of the Holy See. The text of the Sacrorum antistitum, and also, be it noted, the text of the Ad beatissimi, the inaugural encyclical of Pope Benedict XV, show that no such reaction took place. 4 The well defined group which had been proposing and favoring the propositions condemned in the Lamentabili and in the Pascendi insolently continued to work for acceptance of their errors within the Church even after St. Pius X had denounced and condemned them.

(3) In the Sacrorum antistitum St. Pius X speaks out very clearly of the existence of a secret alliance or a foedus clandestinum among the Modernists of his day. For one reason or another, this truth, observed and stated by St. Pius X, and clearly evident to any person who takes the trouble to study the history of the Modernist movement, has always been singularly distasteful to sympathizers with Modernism and with the Modernists. It seems to have been precisely in order to cause confusion on this particular point that the men who have been partial to the Modernists have gone to such extreme lengths to delude people into imagining that the opposition to Loisy, Von Hugel, and their ilk within the Catholic Church was fundamentally the work of a secret alliance of sinister and reactionary Catholics. It would certainly appear that the ridiculous and mendacious propaganda directed against the Sodalitium Pianum and against Monsignor Umberto Benigni, even over the course of the past few years, 5 can best be explained as an attempt to cover up the fact that there was a foedus clandestinum connected with and inherent in the Modernist movement.

(4) The introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum takes cognizance of the fact that most of the genuinely dangerous supporters of the Modernist movement, the men against whose efforts the Sacrorum antistitum and its commands were particularly directed, were priests active within the Catholic Church itself. St. Pius X took cognizance of the fact that such priests were actually perverting their own ministry. They were guilty of using their priestly power and their priestly position to counter, rather than to advance, the work of Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Basically the work of the priesthood is directed towards the glory of God, which is to be achieved and obtained in the salvation of souls. This objective is to be obtained only by those who pass from this life living the life of sanctifying grace. And the life of sanctifying grace cannot exist apart from the truth faith, until such time as the faith itself is replaced by the Beatific Vision. Thus the priestly ministry in the true Church of Jesus Christ necessarily seeks to induce men to accept God's supernatural teaching with the certain assent of divine faith and works to increase the perfection and the intensity of the faith in those who already possess this virtue. Hence any effort on the part of a Catholic priest to influence people to reject or to pass over a truth revealed by God and proposed as such by the Church's magisterium definitely constitutes a perversion of the sacerdotal ministry.

(5)St. Pius X describes the Modernists as men "who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us." It would be difficult indeed to appreciate the position of the Church in the twentieth century without realizing the objectivity and the shrewdness of this observation.

A man is to be feared by the Church, or by the members of the Church, in the measure that this man intends and is genuinely able to harm the Church, or to counteract and negate the salvific mission of Our Lord's Mystical Body in this world. And this happens especially when non-members of the Church are influenced not to accept its divine message and not to seek entrance into this society, and when members of the Church are pressured to reject Our Lord, or His love, or His divine teaching. It is most important to remember that the only real and serious damage to the cause of Christ is done when effective efforts are made to nullify and to counteract the work the Church does as the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ Our Lord.

With its insistence that the Modernists and their sympathizers were "enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us," the introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum takes cognizance of the fact that, during our own times at least, non-members of the Church have, generally speaking, not been able to damage the Church to any very considerable extent. Quite obviously, despite their manifest and intense ill will, people like those who used to be associated with the old Menace and the Ku Klux Klan, and those who are now associated with groups like P. . . U, are not particularly formidable adversaries of Our Lord, His Church, or His message. They have certainly helped to stir up and further to envenom antipathy towards the Catholic Church on the part of ignorant non-Catholics who were previously ill disposed towards the Church. But it would hardly seem likely that any Catholic has ever been turned against Christ or against the Church's divinely revealed message as a result of anything that has ever been said or written by these rabble-rousers. And it seems highly unlikely that any individual has been excluded from the Beatific Vision by reason of anything he has said or done by reason of their influence.

On the other hand, no one has ever been as well placed to harm the true Church and to counteract its essential work as a Catholic priest in good standing. If such a man, by his preaching, his teaching, or his writing, actually sets forth the kind of teaching condemned in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis, or if he works to discredit the loyal defenders of Catholic dogma without receiving any repudiation or reproof from those to whom the apostolic deposit of divine revelation has been entrusted, the Catholic people are in grave danger of being deceived.

The Modernists and their most influential sympathizers were, in great part, drawn from the ranks of the Catholic clergy. Thus they were, in the words of the introduction to the Sacrorum antistitum, the "enemies who are all the more to be feared by reason of their very nearness to us." These Catholics who taught or favored Modernism were the men whose influence within the true Church of Jesus Christ St. Pius X sought to counter by the teaching and the directives contained in the Sacrorum antistitum.

(6) Finally, in the introduction to this famous Motu proprio, St. Pius X makes it very clear indeed that the Bishops of the Catholic Church were bound in conscience by the obligations of their office to act energetically against this teaching that contradicted the divinely revealed truth proposed as such by the true Church. The "defence of the Catholic faith" and strenuous efforts "to see to it that the integrity of the divine deposit suffers no loss" are definitely not works of supererogation. These are the duties prescribed by Our Lord Himself for the leaders of the Church, which He has purchased by His blood.


The Conclusion To The Sacrorum Antistitum

The conclusion to this document, the last of the three great anti-Modernist declarations issued by the Holy See during the reign of St. Pius X, is even more enlightening than the introduction. In this we see how St. Pius X enunciated, more clearly than in any other document, the most fundamental position of the Modernists. The text of this conclusion follows:

Quote:Moved by the seriousness of the evil that is increasing every day, an evil, which We cannot put off confronting without the most grave danger, We have decided to issue and to repeat these commands. For it is no longer a case, as it was in the beginning, of dealing with disputants who come forward in the clothing of sheep. Now we are faced with open and bitter enemies from within our own household, who, in agreement with the outstanding" opponents of the Church, are working for the overthrow of the faith. They are men whose audacity against the wisdom that has come down from heaven increases daily. They arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men.

To counter such attempts against the evangelical doctrine and the ecclesiastical tradition, there will never be sufficient vigilance or too much severity on the part of those to whom the faithful care of the sacred deposit has been entrusted. 6

In this conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum, St. Pius X expressly recognizes the fact that the Modernists and their sympathizers, the anti-anti-Modernists, were actually working, in agreement with the most-bitter enemies of the Catholic Church, for the destruction of the Catholic faith. It is interesting and highly important to note exactly what St. Pius X said. He definitely did not claim that these men were working directly to destroy the Church as a society. It is quite obvious that, given the intimate connection between the Church and the faith, a connection so close and perfect that the Church itself may be defined as the congregatio fidelium, the repudiation of the Catholic faith would inevitably lead to the dissolution of the Church. Yet, for the Modernists and for those who co-operated in their work, the immediate object of attack was always the faith itself. These individuals were perfectly willing that the Catholic Church should continue to exist as a religious society, as long as it did not insist upon the acceptance of that message which, all during the course of the previous centuries of its existence, it had proposed as a message supernaturally revealed by the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. They were willing and even anxious to retain their membership in the Catholic Church, as long as they were not obliged to accept on the authority of divine faith such unfashionable dogmas as, for example, the truth that there is truly no salvation outside of the Church.

What these men were really working for was the transformation of the Catholic Church into an essentially non-doctrinal religious body. They considered that their era would be willing to accept the Church as a kind of humanitarian institution, vaguely religious, tastefully patriotic, and eminently cultural. And they definitely intended to tailor the Church to fit the needs and the tastes of their own era.

It must be understood, of course, that the Modernists and the men who aided their efforts did not expect the Catholic Church to repudiate its age-old formulas of belief. They did not want the Church to reject or to abandon the ancient creeds, or even any of those formularies in which the necessity of the faith and the necessity of the Church are so firmly and decisively stated. What they sought was a declaration on the part of the Church's magisterium to the effect that these old formulas did not, during the first decade of the twentieth century, carry the same meaning for the believing Catholic that they had carried when these formulas had first been drawn up. Or, in other words, they sought to force or to delude the teaching authority of Christ's Church into coming out with the fatally erroneous proposition that what is accepted by divine faith in this century is objectively something different from what was believed in the Catholic Church on the authority of God revealing in previous times.

Thus the basic objective of Modernism was to reject the fact that, when he sets forth Catholic dogma, the Catholic teacher is acting precisely as an ambassador of Christ. The Modernists were men who were never quite able to grasp or to accept the truth that the teaching of the Catholic Church is, as the First Vatican Council designated the content of the Constitution Dei Films, actually "the salutary doctrine of Christ," and not merely some kind of doctrine, which has developed out of that teaching. And, in the final analysis, the position of the Modernists constituted the ultimate repudiation of the Catholic faith. If the teaching proposed by the Church as dogma is not actually and really the doctrine supernaturally revealed by God through Jesus Christ Our Lord, through the Prophets of the Old Testament who were His heralds, or through the Apostles who were His witnesses, then there could be nothing more pitifully inane than the work of the Catholic magisterium.

It is interesting to note the parallel between what St. Pius X says about the intentions of the Modernists and what his great predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, had to say about the basic premise of the errors he pointed out and condemned in his famed letter, the Testem benevolentiae. St. Pius X declares that the Modernists "arrogate to themselves the right to correct this revealed wisdom as if it were something corrupt, to renew it as if it were something that had become obsolete, to improve it and to adapt it to the dictates, the progress, and the comfort of the age as if it had been opposed to the good of society and not merely opposed to the levity of a few men." And Pope Leo XIII states:

Quote:The principles on which the new opinions We have mentioned are based may be reduced to this: that in order the more easily to bring over to Catholic doctrine those who dissent from it, the Church ought to adapt herself somewhat to our advanced civilization, and, relaxing her ancient rigor, show some indulgence to modern theories and methods. Many think that this is to be understood not only with regard to the rule of life, but also to the doctrines in which the deposit of faith is contained. For they contend that it is opportune, in order to work in a more attractive way upon the wills of those who are not in accord with us, to pass over certain heads of doctrines, as if of lesser moment, or so to soften them that they may not have the same meaning which the Church has invariably held. 7

Thus, when we examine the actual texts of the Testimonium benevolentiae and of the Sacrorum antistitum, it becomes quite apparent that Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were engaged in combating doctrinal deviations that actually sprang from an identical principle, the fantastically erroneous assumption that the supernatural communication of the Triune God could and should be brought up to date and given a certain respectability before modern society. The men who sustained the weird teachings condemned by Pope Leo XIII, a document, which, incidentally, did not denounce any mere phantom body of doctrine, and the men who taught and protected the doctrinal monstrosities stigmatized in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis, based their errors on a common foundation. The false Americanism and the heresy of Modernism were both offshoots of doctrinal liberal Catholicism.

This belief that the meaning of the Church's dogmatic message was in some way subject to change and capable of being improved and brought up to date was definitely not an explicit part of the original or the more naive stage of the liberal Catholic movement. The first components of liberal Catholicism, during the earlier days of the unfortunate Felicite De Lamenais, were religious indifferentism, some false concepts of human freedom, and the advocacy of a separation of Church and state as the ideal situation in a nation made up of members of the true Church. But, after these teachings had been forcefully repudiated by Pope Gregory XVI in his encyclical Mirari vos arbitramur, a new set of factors entered into this system. These were inserted into the fabric of liberal Catholicism because the leaders of this movement persisted in defending as legitimate Catholic doctrine this teaching, which had been clearly and vigorously condemned by the supreme power of the Catholic magisterium. Most prominent among these newer components of liberal Catholicism were minimism, doctrinal subjectivism, and an insistence that there had been and that there had to be at least some sort of change in the objective meaning of the Church's dogmatic message over the course of the centuries. 8

The liberal Catholic since the time of Montalembert has been well aware of the fact that the basic theses he proposes as acceptable Catholic doctrine have been specifically and vehemently repudiated by the doctrinal authority of the Roman Church. If he is to continue to propose these teachings as a member of the Church, he is obliged by the very force of self-consistency to claim that the declarations of the magisterium, which condemned his favorite theses do not at this moment mean objectively what they meant at the time they were issued. And, if such a claim is advanced about the Mirari vos arbitramur, there is very little to prevent its being put forward on the subject of the Athanasian Creed. Pope Leo XIII and St. Pius X were well aware of the fact that the advocates of the false Americanism and the teachers and the protectors of the Modernist heresy were employing this same discredited tactic.

This common basis of the false doctrinal Americanism and of the Modernist heresy is, like doctrinal indifferentism itself, ultimately a rejection of Catholic dogma as a genuine supernatural message or communication from the living God Himself. It would seem impossible for anyone to be blasphemous or silly enough to be convinced, on the one hand, that the dogmatic message of the Catholic Church is actually a locutio Dei ad homines, and to imagine, on the other hand, that he, a mere creature, could in some way improve that teaching or make it more respectable. The very fact that a man would be so rash as to attempt to bring the dogma of the Church up to date, or to make it more acceptable to those who are not privileged to be members of the true Church, indicates that this individual is not actually and profoundly convinced that this dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church is a supernatural communication from the living and Triune God, the Lord and Creator of heaven and earth. It would be the height of blasphemy knowingly to set out to improve or to bring up to date what one would seriously consider a genuine message from the First Cause of the universe.

The conclusion to the Sacrorum antistitum brings out more clearly than any other statement of the Holy See the fact that Modernism sprang from the same basic principle, as did the false Americanism pointed out and proscribed in the Testem benevolentiae of Pope Leo XIII.



The Immediate Context Of The Oath In The Sacrorum Antistitum

The main body of the first section of the Sacrorum antistitum is substantially a repetition of the legislative or disciplinary portion of the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. To this, however, in the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, is added an expression of the saintly Pontiff's concern for seminaries, ending with the vigorous command that henceforth the reading of "diaria quaevis aut commentaria, quantumvis optima" was strictly forbidden to seminarians "onerata moderatorum conscientia qui ne id accidat religiose non caverint." 9

The second section of the Sacrorum antistitum, the one which contains and which deals with the Oath against Modernism, follows immediately after the statement of the prohibition of the reading of newspapers by seminarians. The first part of this section is of particular importance in that it shows very clearly the effect, which St. Pius X wished to produce through the taking of the oath. The section begins as follows:

Quote:But in order to do away with all suspicion that Modernism may secretly enter in [to the seminaries], not only do We will that the commands listed under n. 2 above be obeyed absolutely, but We also order that all teachers, before their first lectures at the beginning of the scholastic year, must show to their Bishop the text which each shall decide to use in teaching, or the questions or theses that are to be treated, and that furthermore throughout the year itself the kind of teaching of each course be examined, and that if such teaching be found to run counter to sound doctrine, that this will result in the immediate dismissal of the teacher. Finally [We will] that over and above the profession of faith [the teacher] should take an oath before his Bishop, according to the formula that follows, and that he should sign his name. 10

The Sacrorum antistitum goes on to say that the profession of faith shall be that prescribed by Pope Pius IV, together with the additions, relative to the First Vatican Council, prescribed by the Decree of Jan. 20, 1877. And it likewise indicates the Church officials other than professors in seminaries who are bound by law to take the Oath.

Actually, then, in the immediate context of the Sacrorum antistitum, the command that seminary professors take Oath against Modernism stands out as one of four orders directed towards the prevention of the entrance of Modernism into ecclesiastical seminaries. These four directives are:
(1) the strict carrying out of the legislation set down under n. 2 of the first section of the Sacrorum antistitum,
(2) the submission by individual seminary professors to their Bishops at the beginning of the scholastic year of the textbooks they are going to use and of the theses they are going to propound,
(3) the investigation (obviously by the competent and proper ecclesiastical authority), of the teaching offered in the various courses being given to the seminarians, and finally
(4) the making of the Tridentine-Vatican profession of faith and the taking of the Oath against Modernism. The teacher is to sign his name to the Oath he has taken. The context would seem to indicate that it was the mind of St. Pius X that this Oath should be taken every year at the beginning of the academic term.

All of the other operations, including the taking of the Oath against Modernism, are subordinated to a certain extent to the legislation set down in the second sub-section of the first part of the Sacrorum antistitum. This sub-section, it must be remembered, is part of the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, which is simply reproduced from the disciplinary portion of the Pascendi dominici gregis. The pertinent sub-section follows:

Quote:All these prescriptions, both Our own and those of Our predecessor, are to be kept in view whenever there is a question of choosing directors and teachers for seminaries and for Catholic universities. Anyone who in any way is found to be tainted with Modernism is to be excluded without compunction from these offices, whether of administration or of teaching, and those who already occupy such offices are to be removed. The same policy is to be followed with regard to those who openly or secretly lend support to Modernism, either by praising the Modernists and excusing their culpable conduct, or by carping at scholasticism, and the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, or by refusing obedience to ecclesiastical authority in any of its depositaries; and with regard to those who manifest a love of novelty in history, archeology, and biblical exegesis; and finally with regard to those who neglect the sacred sciences or appear to prefer the secular [sciences] to them. On this entire subject, Venerable Brethren, and especially with regard to the choice of teachers, you cannot be too watchful or too careful, for as a rule the students are modeled according to the pattern of their teachers. Strong in the consciousness of your duty, act always in this matter with prudence and with vigor.

Equal diligence and severity are to be used in examining and selecting candidates for Holy Orders. Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty! God hates the proud and the obstinate mind. In the future the doctorate in theology or in canon law must never be conferred on anyone who has not first of all made the regular course in scholastic philosophy. If such a doctorate be conferred, it is to be held as null and void. The rules laid down in 1896 by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars for the clerics of Italy, both secular and regular, about the frequenting of universities, We now decree to be extended to all nations. Clerics and priests inscribed in a Catholic institute or university must not in the future follow in civil universities those courses for which there are chairs in the Catholic institutes to which they belong. If this has been permitted anywhere in the past, We order that it shall not be allowed in the future. Let the Bishops who form the governing boards of such institutes or universities see to it with all care that these Our commands be constantly observed. 11

There can be no doubt whatsoever about the severity of the directives which are, in the text of the Sacrorum antistitum, immediately associated with the command that teachers in seminaries and in the ecclesiastical schools of Catholic universities take the Oath against Modernism, which appeared for the first time in that document. St. Pius X ordered that those who taught the errors condemned in the Lamentabili sane exitu and in the Pascendi dominici gregis should be dropped from any position on the administrative or on the teaching staff of any seminary or Catholic university, and that men who held such views must not, under any conditions whatsoever, be considered as prospects for membership in the administrations or in the professional corps of such institutions. Furthermore he ordered that the sympathizers with Modernism should be treated in exactly the same fashion. It is quite obvious that, in speaking of lovers of "novelties," the saintly Pontiff meant people who favored these propositions condemned by the Church and designated as Modernism.

Then there were other directives. It was decreed that the doctorate in sacred theology and in canon law must never, in the future, be conferred on any person who had not taken a regular course in scholastic philosophy. Furthermore, St. Pius X ordered that priests connected with Catholic institutions of higher learning must not, in the future, take in non-Catholic institutions of higher studies courses, which were being given in the schools with which they themselves were connected.

All of these directives went against the liberal Catholic spirit, of which Modernism was the outstanding expression. All of them were likewise unpopular, as calculated to arouse the antagonism of the enemies who attacked the Church from the outside. All of them were duly denounced and regretted as obscurantist. Catholics of mediocre intellectual attainments attracted praise to themselves for their disloyalty to Our Lord's cause and to His Church, which was manifested in their disdainful reactions against these commands of Christ's Vicar on earth. Yet certainly and incontrovertibly the cause of Christ, the cause of truth, the cause of the Catholic faith, benefited to the extent that these rigorous directives were carried out.

It must definitely be understood that the most rigorous and the most important of these directives set forth in the disciplinary part of the Pascendi dominici gregis, and afterwards in the Sacrorum antistitum, are expressions of what we may call the natural law of the supernatural order. In other words, the obligation of the individual Bishop to exclude Modernists and sympathizers with Modernism from the administrations and from the professorial staffs of seminaries and of Catholic universities definitely did not begin with the first promulgation of this law by St. Pius X. Given the position and the obligation of the Bishop within the true Church of Jesus Christ, and given the nature and the necessity of the Catholic faith, it is always the clear duty of the Bishop to exclude from the dignity of teaching in the Church in any position under his control any individual who will teach or favor the contradiction of the divinely revealed message. Modernism was and is such a contradiction. Thus it was and always will necessarily remain the duty of the Bishop to see to it that any individual who teaches or who supports Modernism in any way be excluded from any co-operation in the apostolic task of teaching the divine message of Jesus Christ within His Church.

In issuing this decree, St. Pius X was taking cognizance of the basic truth about the teaching work in the Church, which was afterwards brought out so clearly by Pope Pius XII in his allocution Si diligis. This document brings out more clearly than any other in recent years the tremendous responsibility of the Bishop in the field of teaching the divine message.

Quote:Christ Our Lord entrusted the truth, which He had brought from heaven to the Apostles, and through them to their successors. He sent His Apostles, as He had been sent by the Father, (John, 20:21), to teach all nations everything they had heard from Him (cf. Matt., 28:19 f.). The Apostles are, therefore by divine right the true doctors and teachers in the Church. Besides the lawful successors of the Apostles, namely the Roman Pontiff for the universal Church and the Bishops for the faithful entrusted to their care (cf. can. 1326), there are no other teachers divinely constituted in the Church of Christ. But both the Bishops and, first of all, the Supreme Teacher and Vicar of Christ on earth, may associate others with themselves in their work as teacher, and may use their advice. They delegate to them the faculty to teach, either by special grant, or by conferring an office to which this faculty is attached (cf. can. 1328). Those who are so called teach, not in their own name, nor by reason of their theological knowledge, but by reason of the mandate they have received from the lawful Teaching Authority. Their faculty always remains subject to that Authority, nor is it ever exercised in its own right or independently. Bishops, for their part, by conferring this faculty, are not deprived of the right to teach. They retain the very grave obligation of supervising the doctrine, which others propose, in order to help them and of seeing to its integrity and security. Therefore the legitimate Teaching Authority of the Church is guilty of no injury or no offence to any of those to whom it has given a canonical mission, if it desires to ascertain what they, to whom it has entrusted the mission of teaching, are proposing and defending in their lectures, in books, notes, and reviews intended for the use of their students, as well as in books and other publications intended for the general public. 12

In the Si diligis, Pope Pius XII explains the directives issued by St. Pius X in the Pascendi and in the Sacrorum antistitum. The members of the apostolic hierarchy of jurisdiction, the Pope and the residential Bishops throughout the world are responsible before God Himself for the teaching in the Catholic Church. All the legitimate teaching in the Church is issued by them or under their direction. They have full responsibility and full competence to see to it that the faithful of Christ receive His message in all of its purity and integrity. Naturally if they themselves contradict, or transform, or withhold any portion of the revealed truth, which has been entrusted to them, they will have been recreant to the commission they have received from Our Lord Himself. And, in precisely the same way, they are being disloyal to Our Lord if they allow those whom they use as helpers in the teaching work within the Church to deny or to adulterate any of the divinely revealed doctrines.

The power and the dignity of the apostolic Catholic hierarchy in the field of dogmatic teaching are beyond comparison. But with that dignity and with that authority goes the gravest responsibility which human beings are called upon to assume. The directives, which, in the Sacrorum antistitum, form the immediate context of the command to take the Oath against Modernism, simply take cognizance of these basic and most important facts.

In the final analysis, they are founded upon an awareness of the tremendous and vital necessity of the divine faith itself. St. Pius X directed that all professors or directors of seminaries and of Catholic universities, who taught or showed sympathy with the doctrines condemned as Modernism, should be removed from their positions, and commanded that such individuals should not be brought into such positions in the future. This order, as is quite obvious, is simply a statement of what is actually required by the constitution of the Catholic Church itself. The same obligation would have been incumbent on the Bishops of the Catholic Church even if St. Pius X had not spoken out and issued these directives.

The Sacrorum antistitum, however, goes even further. It demands that the individual teachers in seminaries and in Catholic universities submit to their Bishops the name of the textbook they intend to follow or the list of theses they intend to teach and defend in their academic lectures. Furthermore it insists that the Bishops themselves take care, during the course of the academic year, to find out exactly what is being taught in the various classes in the Catholic institutes of higher learning under their direction. And then, in order to bring out this obligation for doctrinal orthodoxy in the clearest possible way, the Sacrorum antistitum orders these teachers to make the Profession of Faith of the Council of Trent and of the First Vatican Council, and to take and sign their names to the special Oath composed by St. Pius X precisely to repudiate and to condemn the central teachings of the Modernist movement.

With this salutary severity with reference to the teachers and directors of ecclesiastical seminaries and of Catholic universities, the Sacrorum antistitum likewise contains strict directives about the candidates for Holy Orders. Men who hold Modernistic teachings or who are sympathetic towards the Modernists are not to be ordained. With his intense awareness of the pastoral mission of the Catholic priesthood, St. Pius X was all too cognizant of the harm that could and inevitably would come to the Catholic Church from a priest who would be willing to pervert his position by working against the divinely revealed teaching of Jesus Christ.



The Oath Itself


Against the background of the Sacrorum antistitum, then, the Oath against Modernism appears as something intended primarily for teachers in and directors of ecclesiastical seminaries and Catholic universities. Other dignitaries of the Catholic Church are ordered to take this Oath, along with the Tridentine Profession of the Faith. But it is something intended primarily and immediately for those who are called upon to teach or to direct candidates for Holy Orders.

Thus the Oath itself is constituted as a Profession of the Catholic belief. The man who takes this Oath makes his solemn declaration in the sight of God Himself that he firmly accepts and receives all the teachings and each individual one of the teachings "that have been defined, asserted, and declared by the infallible magisterium of the Church, especially those points of doctrine which are directly opposed to the errors of this time." 13 The most important and influential of these "errors of this time" are clearly pointed out in the formula, and the man who takes the Oath calls upon God as His Witness that he rejects these false judgments and firmly accepts the statements of Catholic doctrine opposed to them. St. Pius X ordered that the professors and administrators in seminaries and in Catholic universities sign their names to the formula of the Oath after they had taken it. Thus it would be difficult to find or even to conceive of a more effective measure for the protection of candidates for Holy Orders from the infection of Modernism than that constituted by St. Pius X in his legislation about the Oath in the Sacrorum antistitum. The man who taught or in any way aided in the dissemination or the protection of Modernistic teachings in a seminary or in a Catholic university after the issuance of the Sacrorum antistitum would mark himself, not only as a sinner against the Catholic faith, but also as a common perjurer.

Incidentally, the Oath against Modernism contained in the Sacrorum antistitum is something, which demands a certain amount of knowledge in the man who takes it seriously and religiously. We must not allow ourselves to forget that essentially an oath is an act of religion, an act in which we worship almighty God or manifest our acknowledgement of His supreme excellence and of our own complete and absolute dependence upon Him. 14 Thus an oath is definitely not something that can be taken lightly. And the man who takes the Oath against Modernism calls upon God to witness that he reverently submits and whole-heartedly assents "to all the condemnations, the declarations, and the commands which are contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili, especially to those that relate to what they call the history of dogmas." 15 It would seem to be irreverent indeed for any seminary or university professor to take this oath without knowing exactly what is condemned, what is taught, and what is commanded in these two tremendously important documents. It is quite obvious that some of the doctrines and directives contained in the Pascendi and in the Lamentabili are also brought out in the Oath against Modernism. But it is equally clear that not all of these teachings and precepts of the two 1907 documents are set forth in the Oath, and that the man who wishes to take the Oath as a religious act, to take it worthily, must exert himself to find out exactly and in detail what he is promising to accept and to believe. And it is patent that the man who does not take the time and the trouble to find out what is taught and what is commanded in the Pascendi and in the Lamentabili is being somewhat careless in calling upon the living God to witness that he will whole-heartedly abide by the doctrines and the directives contained in these two statements.



Recapitulation


The Oath against Modernism is undoubtedly, up until now, the most important and the most influential document issued by the Holy See during the course of the twentieth century.[/color] It is a magnificent statement of Catholic truth, in the face of the errors, which were being disseminated within the Church by the cleverest enemies the Mystical Body of Christ has encountered in the course of its history. It was a profession of Catholic belief intended primarily for those engaged in the spiritual and intellectual formation of candidates for Holy Orders. According to the strict command of the Sacrorum antistitum, the men for whom the Oath against Modernism was primarily intended were also obliged to show their Bishops, at the beginning of each academic year, the textbooks they were employing in class, and the theses they intended to teach and to defend. The Bishops themselves were not only reminded of their obligation, but were strictly commanded to watch over the teaching being given in the institutions of higher learning under their direction and control.

The Bishops were also commanded to see to it that no man tainted with Modernism, either as a teacher of the errors condemned in the Lamentabili and the Pascendi, or as one who supported these errors by working to discredit the teachers of Catholic truth who opposed and unmasked Modernism, was to be admitted to or permitted to remain in the professorial corps or the administration of an ecclesiastical seminary or a Catholic university. And no young man who was infected by Modernism errors was to be allowed to become or to remain a candidate for Holy Orders.

This was the rigorous and powerful direction of the Sacrorum antistitum. Quite obviously it was not and it still is not in accord with the tastes of liberal Catholics. But it was and it remains the great expression of St. Pius X's desire to accomplish his mission as Christ's Vicar on earth. It was and it remains a tremendously effective factor for the protection of the little ones of Jesus Christ against the virus of Modernism.



Endnotes

1 The Latin text of the Sacrorum antistitum is to be found in the Codicis iuris canonici fontes, cura Petri Cardinalis Gasparri editi (Typis polyglottis Vaticanis, 1933), III, 774-90. This particular section is on p. 774.
2 The documentation and the results of this investigation are contained in the Disquisitio circa quasdam obiectiones modum agendi Servi Dei [Pii Papae X] respicientes in Modernismi debellatione, una cum summario additionali ex officio compilato, which is n. 77 of the printed documents of the Sectio historica of the Sacra Rituum Congregatio. The work was edited by Father Antonelli, O.F.M. It is mentioned and used rather well by Pierre Fernessole, in his Pie X: Essai historique (Paris: Lethielleux, 1953), II, 237-51. It is employed brilliantly by Fr. Raymond Dulac in his two famous articles, "Les devoirs du journaliste catholique selon le Bienheureux Pie X," and "Simple note sur le Sodalitium Pianum," in La pensee catholique, n. 23 (1952), 68-87; 88-93.
3 Disquisitio, p. 127. Cited by Fernessole, op. cit., II, 249.
4 It is quite evident that Pope Benedict XV considered the Modernism condemned by St. Pius X as an influential movement in the Church four years after the Sacrorum antistitum was written. Thus we read in the Ad beatissimi: "And so there came into being the monstrous errors of Modernism, which Our predecessor rightly designated as the gathering together of all the heresies, and which he solemnly condemned. To the fullest extent possible, Venerable Brethren, We here renew that condemnation. And, because this pestiferous contagion has not yet been overcome, but even now creeps in here and there, even though in a hidden manner. We exhort all most diligently against any infection of this evil, to which you might rightly apply the words that Job said on another subject: 'It is a fire that devoureth even to destruction, and rooteth up all things that spring.' And We will that Catholic men should turn away in disgust, not only from the errors, but from the very mentality, or, as they call it, the spirit of the Modernists" (Cf. Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 842).
It must also be remembered that the errors denounced by the late Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis definitely were Modernistic.
5 Perhaps the most insolent and naive of these attacks is that contained in the article " 'La Sapiniere,' ou breve histoire de l'organisation integriste," written by someone who used the pseudonym "Louis Davallon," in the May 15, 1955, number of Folliet's Chronique sociale de France, pp. 241-62. A brief discussion of this unfortunate and thoroughly untrustworthy article will be found in Fenton, "Some Recent Writings in the Field of Fundamental Dogmatic Theology," Part II, in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXXIV, 5 (May, 1956), 340-45. It is tragic that an otherwise respectable book, The Life of Benedict XV, by Walter H. Peters (Milwaukee: Bruce 1959), incorporates some of this nonsensical propaganda against Monsignor Benigni into its chapter "Modernists and Integralists" (pp. 42-53).
6 The text is in Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 789 f.
7 The text is in Denz., n. 1967. This passage is translated in Father Wynne's edition of The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903), p. 442.
8 Cf. Fenton, "The Components of Liberal Catholicism," in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXXIX, 1 (July, 1958), 36-53.
9 Codicis iuris canonici fontes. III, 782.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., III, 776.
12 The text and translation of the Si diligis are in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXXX, 2 (Aug., 1954), 127-37. This passage is found on pp. 133 f.
13 Denz., n. 2145.
14 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 89, a. 4.
15 Denz., n. 2146.]]> <![CDATA[Fr. Jenkins [2016]: On Eucharistic Miracles in the New Mass]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5389 Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:55:55 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5389 welcome message, sometimes we will draw from sources that may not be something we normally recommend or promote:

Quote:It has, from the beginning, been the stance of The Catacombs to share articles that highlight some aspect of the true Catholic Faith, even if the website from which they originate may be problematic in some way, e.g. sedevacantist, Indult-esque, etc.

As long as the subject matter in that particular instance is an accurate mirror of the teachings of the Faith it may be shared here, whilst leaving aside all references to any problematic content (i.e. sedevacantist references, promotion of Vatican II, etc.).

-Admin, The Catacombs


With that in mind, we are sharing here the reply of Fr. William Jenkins in 2016 on the subject of New Mass Eucharistic miracles, sent to us by a friend overseas.

We have previously shared another article by Fr. Jenkins: The New Rite: Purging the Priesthood in the Conciliar Church. Fr. Jenkins was one of the "Nine" who were ordained and subsequently left the SSPX, for reasons which included a sedevacantist stance. Fr. Jenkins has remained sedevacantist ever since. 

In this video, Fr. Jenkins responds to a question about what to think about the so-called 'Eucharistic miracles' in the New Mass:
Begins at 22:30 minute mark to 37:00 minute mark.


]]> welcome message, sometimes we will draw from sources that may not be something we normally recommend or promote:

Quote:It has, from the beginning, been the stance of The Catacombs to share articles that highlight some aspect of the true Catholic Faith, even if the website from which they originate may be problematic in some way, e.g. sedevacantist, Indult-esque, etc.

As long as the subject matter in that particular instance is an accurate mirror of the teachings of the Faith it may be shared here, whilst leaving aside all references to any problematic content (i.e. sedevacantist references, promotion of Vatican II, etc.).

-Admin, The Catacombs


With that in mind, we are sharing here the reply of Fr. William Jenkins in 2016 on the subject of New Mass Eucharistic miracles, sent to us by a friend overseas.

We have previously shared another article by Fr. Jenkins: The New Rite: Purging the Priesthood in the Conciliar Church. Fr. Jenkins was one of the "Nine" who were ordained and subsequently left the SSPX, for reasons which included a sedevacantist stance. Fr. Jenkins has remained sedevacantist ever since. 

In this video, Fr. Jenkins responds to a question about what to think about the so-called 'Eucharistic miracles' in the New Mass:
Begins at 22:30 minute mark to 37:00 minute mark.


]]> <![CDATA[Dr. Carol Byrne: Liturgical Calisthenics]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5249 Sun, 11 Jun 2023 23:03:15 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5249 work on the Dialogue Mass. 

Below is the response she gives in response to a question regarding standing during the Pater Noster in the pre-1955 Missae:




Liturgical Calisthenics

TIA | June 1, 2023

Dear TIA,

I was hoping you could ask Dr. Carol Byrne a question about the old rubrics of the Mass.

For some time now, I have been kneeling during the Our Father in High Masses (everyone kneels during it in the Low Masses). I was told that standing during the Our Father was an innovation. Recently however, I became concerned that this could be wrong and I do not want to stand out for no reason during the Holy Mass (at present, only I and another family continue to kneel).

Can you clarify for me the correct rubrics regarding the position of the congregation (standing or kneeling) during the Our Father?

Thank you,

M.G.

______________________


Dr. Carol Byrne responds:

Dear M.G.,

Whether to stand at the Pater Noster during a High or Sung Mass is one of those vexed questions that even traditional Catholics today have been known to argue about at length but never manage to settle or resolve.

There are no rubrics for lay people in the traditional Roman Missal. Whatever postures they adopted during a High or Sung Mass were regulated purely by custom, which varied slightly from place to place. These were, however, usually kept to a minimum, such as standing for the Gospel and the Creed, and at the entrance and exit of the priest and his ministers, as ecclesiastical decorum dictates.

My memories go back to the early 1950s when the congregation, including my parents, knelt during most of the High Mass, telling their beads while the choir sang. Any orders for the laity to stand, let along sing, during the Pater Noster would have been greeted with admiratio (astonishment). It would never have occurred to the older generation of those days that they should mimic the actions of the priest and choir (as they are instructed to do nowadays) – in fact, they would have instinctively recoiled from such an instruction.

It was only when the Liturgical Movement introduced “active participation”, and when it was imposed on the faithful by progressive Bishops from the 1960s onwards, that all the congregation were expected to stand up and sing at various intervals, including at the Pater Noster. Since then, they have been in a constant state of movement up and down, up and down, throughout the Mass, performing a sort of Catholic calisthenics. This is hardly conducive to the right atmosphere for contemplation of the Holy Sacrifice, which is the only correct way for lay people to participate in the Mass.

So, it is my opinion that you do well in kneeling during the Pater Noster.



Kind regards,

Dr. Carol Byrne]]> work on the Dialogue Mass. 

Below is the response she gives in response to a question regarding standing during the Pater Noster in the pre-1955 Missae:




Liturgical Calisthenics

TIA | June 1, 2023

Dear TIA,

I was hoping you could ask Dr. Carol Byrne a question about the old rubrics of the Mass.

For some time now, I have been kneeling during the Our Father in High Masses (everyone kneels during it in the Low Masses). I was told that standing during the Our Father was an innovation. Recently however, I became concerned that this could be wrong and I do not want to stand out for no reason during the Holy Mass (at present, only I and another family continue to kneel).

Can you clarify for me the correct rubrics regarding the position of the congregation (standing or kneeling) during the Our Father?

Thank you,

M.G.

______________________


Dr. Carol Byrne responds:

Dear M.G.,

Whether to stand at the Pater Noster during a High or Sung Mass is one of those vexed questions that even traditional Catholics today have been known to argue about at length but never manage to settle or resolve.

There are no rubrics for lay people in the traditional Roman Missal. Whatever postures they adopted during a High or Sung Mass were regulated purely by custom, which varied slightly from place to place. These were, however, usually kept to a minimum, such as standing for the Gospel and the Creed, and at the entrance and exit of the priest and his ministers, as ecclesiastical decorum dictates.

My memories go back to the early 1950s when the congregation, including my parents, knelt during most of the High Mass, telling their beads while the choir sang. Any orders for the laity to stand, let along sing, during the Pater Noster would have been greeted with admiratio (astonishment). It would never have occurred to the older generation of those days that they should mimic the actions of the priest and choir (as they are instructed to do nowadays) – in fact, they would have instinctively recoiled from such an instruction.

It was only when the Liturgical Movement introduced “active participation”, and when it was imposed on the faithful by progressive Bishops from the 1960s onwards, that all the congregation were expected to stand up and sing at various intervals, including at the Pater Noster. Since then, they have been in a constant state of movement up and down, up and down, throughout the Mass, performing a sort of Catholic calisthenics. This is hardly conducive to the right atmosphere for contemplation of the Holy Sacrifice, which is the only correct way for lay people to participate in the Mass.

So, it is my opinion that you do well in kneeling during the Pater Noster.



Kind regards,

Dr. Carol Byrne]]> <![CDATA[Dr. Byrne: Communion in the Hand in the Early Church]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5183 Fri, 19 May 2023 11:14:18 +0000 Stone]]> https://thecatacombs.org/showthread.php?tid=5183 Communion in the Hand in the Early Church

TIA [emphasis mine] | May 18, 2023


Dear Tradition in Action,

Do you have any good articles on the topic of communion in the hand?

I heard from a priest that in the Early Church, priests would place communion in the hand of men who would then bow their heads to consume the Eucharist on their hands in a reverent manner. Women, however, could only do this only with a cloth on their hands.

I also heard that the Church eventually did away with this practice when it was learned that Christ was substantially present in every particle of the Eucharist. Is the existence of communion in the hand in the early Church correct or is this a modern myth? If this was true it would seem that it is not wrong for unconsecrated hands to touch the Eucharist since the Church cannot have a longstanding defective liturgical discipline.

What is the correct understanding of communion in the hand based on tradition? Is there even more to this question than dropping fragments of Our Lord? I found this article which also claims communion in the hand was common in the early Church and promoted among the early church fathers here. Is this article correct?

In Our Lady of Good Success,

M.R.


______________________


Dr. Byrne responds:

Dear M.R.,

Many liturgists today try to justify Communion in the hand by claiming that it was an ancient and universal practice legitimately restored after Vatican II. To claim is one thing, but to give satisfactory proof is another.

From the historical point of view, we can say that there is some evidence that the practice existed in the early centuries in some areas of the Church. But we do not know the full record of how often this happened. It would be a dangerous assumption to think that we have enough evidence to form a comprehensive opinion of the method by which Holy Communion was received by the faithful in the early Church of the East and the West. Several factors militate against this – the time scale (eight centuries), the vastness of the geographical area (the Middle East, the subcontinent of India evangelized by St. Thomas the Apostle, North Africa and Europe) and, most crucially, the paucity of reliable data.

Let us beware of over-confident scholars who preen themselves on their knowledge drawn from research in this area and draw conclusions that are not warranted by the data. In spite of the multiplication of “cases” of Communion in the hand they claim to have found, they have left us with only meagre pickings to work on. What knowledge they have given us is fragmentary and lacking in the all-important context that is needed to make an in-depth analysis of the relevant situations surrounding the reception of Holy Communion in early Christianity.

First, we will examine the context, then the evidence.

The context is Arianism, a heresy that denied the Divinity of Christ. It arose in the 4th century, and was only suppressed in the 6th and 7th centuries, as the martyrdom of St. Hermenegild (585) testifies. It was the perfect breeding ground for the spread of Communion in the hand.

Although the majority of the world’s Bishops had succumbed to the heresy, we have no knowledge of how many people used this method of reception. It is important to keep this background in mind when we come to examine the efforts of the good Bishops who tried to maintain attitudes of greater reverence among the faithful when receiving the Sacrament. It was a constant battle. After all, customs are often difficult to eradicate once they have taken root.

The evidence for early Communion in the hand is anything but straightforward. Some citations are of doubtful authenticity, and others often pose an interpretative problem for the experts.

For example, the most popular quote in favor of the practice is one attributed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315-386) who is alleged to have instructed the newly baptized to “make a throne” of their hands so that Communion could be placed on it. The authenticity of this passage has been contested by scholars for several reasons.
  • It has been shown that the relevant quote could have been added by someone other than St. Cyril, perhaps by his successor, Bishop John, who was influenced by Arianism, as we know from the correspondence of St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome and St. Augustine.
  • Besides, the same passage contains a Communion rite in which lay people are told to handle the Eucharist by touching the Host to their eyes and smearing the Precious Blood on their foreheads and sensory organs.
  • And they are also told not to deprive themselves of Communion even if they are “defiled by sins” (which, being undifferentiated, must include both venial and mortal), in contradiction of St. Paul’s injunction (1 Corinthians 11:29); whereas all the other Fathers of the Church insisted that communicants be free from serious sins and quarrels with their fellow Christians.
  • But, curiously, the most convincing evidence against the authenticity of this passage has not hitherto been brought forward – the form of worship described by St. Cyril in his Catechetical Lectures. This is identical in all respects to the Divine Liturgy of St. James which, as we shall see below, incorporates a rite of Communion given directly on the tongue.
While we would do well to consider the rite of Pseudo-Cyril as an interpolation, or even a figment of the imagination, that does not mean that there was no evidence for Communion in the hand in the Patristic period.

The testimony of St. Basil the Great (330-379) is more illuminating. He acknowledged that taking Communion “by one’s own hand” was customary during times of persecution and also for hermits in the desert, where no priest was present. He did not, therefore, consider it to be a “serious offence” in exceptional and unavoidable circumstances. We can draw the corollary that he would have considered it a grave fault to do so without necessity.

We must keep in mind that the persecution of Christians extended beyond the first three centuries, especially in the Eastern Church. There, the practice of Communion in the hand is acknowledged by early Patristic figures from St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom to St. John Damascene in the 8th century, in those areas where it occurred.

This does not necessarily mean, however, that they fully condoned it, still less that they were enthusiastic about it. The Fathers treated the hands of the laity as ritually “unclean” and prescribed strict protocol for the reception of Communion – the washing of hands for men and the veiling of the hand for women. It all comes across as the equivalent of a damage limitation exercise.

It is true that the Council of Trullo, held in Constantinople in 692, prescribed Communion in the hand (Canon 101). But this was only after a custom had developed among the laity, moved by a Catholic instinct, to adopt what they considered a more worthy form of reception, i.e., in small containers and vessels of gold, silver or other precious materials that they brought with them for the purpose. Not everyone, evidently, was happy with touching the Host with their hands.

While Canon 101 provides evidence for Communion in the hand, it tells us nothing about its frequency. With significant opposition to it from the laity, it cannot be described as common usage. Besides, we know that the Trullan Canons were not uniformly obeyed in the East.

Only a superficial reading of this evidence would lead one to think that Communion in the hand was the norm throughout the Christian world for the first 800 years or so of the Church’s existence. In handling the research data, proponents of this method exaggerate the importance of their findings. For example, they can only produce one single example in the whole of England (where someone happens to place Communion in the hand of a dying monk), yet this is included to bump up the geographical statistics.

[Image: F_085_Ros.jpg]

The Purple Codex of Rossano

Then there is the phenomenon of “confirmation bias,” by which they “see” evidence where it either does not exist or is difficult to interpret. An example is the Purple Codex of Rossano, a Greek illuminated Gospel Book dated between the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century. One of the illustrations, a depiction of the Last Supper, shows an Apostle about to receive Communion, while the others are lined up behind.

We note that the communicant is not standing upright with hands extended (as in modern times) to take Communion with his fingers; he is bowing low with bended knee and his hand(s) placed directly under his chin, while Our Lord presents the Host to his lips. The intention of this gesture, it seems, could be interpreted as being consistent with reception of Communion on the tongue, that is, in order to provide a kind of “safety net” lest any fragments fall to the ground. (Guarding the Host with scrupulous care to avoid profanation was, unlike modern times, a major preoccupation with early Christians).

Yet today’s doctrinaire progressivists insist on Communion in the hand as the only possible interpretation.

On the subject of reception of Holy Communion on the tongue in the early Church, no evidence has been found that any Pope at any time in the history of the Church ever personally introduced Communion in the hand before Paul VI. But there is good supporting evidence from Popes, Fathers of the Church and local Councils that the faithful received Communion on the tongue in some places. However, progressivists reject this evidence on the flimsiest, most arbitrary and even self-contradictory grounds.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence is contained in the early Christian Liturgy of St. James, which is the original local rite of Jerusalem, spoken of by St. Cyril. In it, one of the prayers said by the priest before distributing Communion uses the metaphor of the “burning coal” (Isaiah 6:6-7) which was taken by an Angel from the altar and was touched to the lips of Isaiah to purify his soul. He prays:

“The Lord will bless us, and make us worthy with the pure touchings of our fingers to take the live coal, and place it upon the mouths of the faithful for the purification and renewal of their souls and bodies, now and always”.

As this liturgy is still used in some Eastern Catholic as well as Schismatic rites where Communion on the tongue is the norm, it shows an uninterrupted tradition since early Christian times.

Pope St. Eutychianus (275-283) forbade lay people to take Holy Communion to the sick:

Nullus præsumat tradere communionem laico vel femminæ ad deferendum infirmo (Let no one dare to consign Communion to any layman or woman to take to a sick person).

Critics contend that this does not prove anything about the practice of giving Communion in the hand or on the tongue. But they ignore the implied reasoning behind the prohibition – that Communion handled by a lay person was not something to be positively approved. Administering the Sacrament to others is thus seen as the prerogative of the ordained priest – a point later made by the Council of Trent which described it as an Apostolic Tradition.

Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461), in his comments on the Sixth Chapter of the Gospel of John, mentioned the tradition of Communion received in the mouth:

Hoc enim ore sumitur quod fide creditur, et frustra ab illis AMEN respondetur, a quibus contra id quod accipitur, disputatur. (For that is received in the mouth which is believed in faith; and those who dispute what they receive answer AMEN in vain. (Sermon 91.3)

Objections have been raised that this quote does not prove a custom of Communion on the tongue, on the grounds that it refers simply to “taking by mouth” (ore sumitur) which, of course, can be accomplished by the agency of one’s own hand. But we must consider the correct translation in context. As sumitur in Latin means “is received” in the sense of accepted from a giver, and ore indicates the method of reception – by or in the mouth – we can infer from the quote that Communion was not taken in the hand.

Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) is mentioned by his biographer, John the Deacon, in connection with the practice of Communion on the tongue. John recorded that when Pope Gregory was about to place the Host in the mouth of a woman, he had to withdraw his hand “ab ore ejus” (from her mouth) because she suddenly started to laugh. Instead of accepting this account as read, critics reject it as apocryphal, not because they have any personal knowledge in the matter, but on the opinion of Fr. Joseph Jungmann who, however, offered no solid grounds for his argument. So the valuable piece of evidence is dismissed out of hand.

St. Gregory related in Dialogues 3 the curing of a mute and crippled man when Pope St. Agapitus (535-536) placed the Host in his mouth. Cynics follow the opinion of the liturgical scholar, Fr F. X. Funk, who said that Communion could not have been given to him in the hand, because he was too weak to hold it. But St. Gregory had mentioned nothing about a malfunctioning arm. He described the man as “lame” and stated: “Agapitus … restored him to the use of his legs: and after he had put our Lord’s Body into his mouth, that tongue, which long time before had not spoken, was loosed.”

The Council of Saragossa (380) threatened with excommunication any who dared to continue receiving Holy Communion in the hand

The Synod of Cordoba in 839 condemned the sect of so-called Casiani because of their refusal to receive Holy Communion directly into their mouths.

The Synod of Rouen (uncertain date) confirmed the norm in force regarding the administration of Communion on the tongue, threatening sacred ministers with suspension from their office if they distributed Communion to the laity on the hand. It decreed:

“Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layman or laywoman, but only in their mouths.”

But progressivists, illogically, dismiss this evidence because the date of the Synod has been contested by historians.

In conclusion, we can say that both methods were practised in the early Church until Communion on the tongue “won out” over its reception in the hand in the 9th century, to become the settled, obligatory and universal norm for over a thousand years.

One final point must be made for clarity. The modern method of receiving Communion in the hand, whereby standing communicants grasp (or grab) the Host in their fingers and pop it quickly into their mouths, sometimes with a perfunctory nod of the head, has no resemblance to the ancient method. It is not, therefore, a “restoration,” but an innovation derived from the practices used by the 16th-century Protestant reformers to signal their disbelief in the Real Presence.]]> Communion in the Hand in the Early Church

TIA [emphasis mine] | May 18, 2023


Dear Tradition in Action,

Do you have any good articles on the topic of communion in the hand?

I heard from a priest that in the Early Church, priests would place communion in the hand of men who would then bow their heads to consume the Eucharist on their hands in a reverent manner. Women, however, could only do this only with a cloth on their hands.

I also heard that the Church eventually did away with this practice when it was learned that Christ was substantially present in every particle of the Eucharist. Is the existence of communion in the hand in the early Church correct or is this a modern myth? If this was true it would seem that it is not wrong for unconsecrated hands to touch the Eucharist since the Church cannot have a longstanding defective liturgical discipline.

What is the correct understanding of communion in the hand based on tradition? Is there even more to this question than dropping fragments of Our Lord? I found this article which also claims communion in the hand was common in the early Church and promoted among the early church fathers here. Is this article correct?

In Our Lady of Good Success,

M.R.


______________________


Dr. Byrne responds:

Dear M.R.,

Many liturgists today try to justify Communion in the hand by claiming that it was an ancient and universal practice legitimately restored after Vatican II. To claim is one thing, but to give satisfactory proof is another.

From the historical point of view, we can say that there is some evidence that the practice existed in the early centuries in some areas of the Church. But we do not know the full record of how often this happened. It would be a dangerous assumption to think that we have enough evidence to form a comprehensive opinion of the method by which Holy Communion was received by the faithful in the early Church of the East and the West. Several factors militate against this – the time scale (eight centuries), the vastness of the geographical area (the Middle East, the subcontinent of India evangelized by St. Thomas the Apostle, North Africa and Europe) and, most crucially, the paucity of reliable data.

Let us beware of over-confident scholars who preen themselves on their knowledge drawn from research in this area and draw conclusions that are not warranted by the data. In spite of the multiplication of “cases” of Communion in the hand they claim to have found, they have left us with only meagre pickings to work on. What knowledge they have given us is fragmentary and lacking in the all-important context that is needed to make an in-depth analysis of the relevant situations surrounding the reception of Holy Communion in early Christianity.

First, we will examine the context, then the evidence.

The context is Arianism, a heresy that denied the Divinity of Christ. It arose in the 4th century, and was only suppressed in the 6th and 7th centuries, as the martyrdom of St. Hermenegild (585) testifies. It was the perfect breeding ground for the spread of Communion in the hand.

Although the majority of the world’s Bishops had succumbed to the heresy, we have no knowledge of how many people used this method of reception. It is important to keep this background in mind when we come to examine the efforts of the good Bishops who tried to maintain attitudes of greater reverence among the faithful when receiving the Sacrament. It was a constant battle. After all, customs are often difficult to eradicate once they have taken root.

The evidence for early Communion in the hand is anything but straightforward. Some citations are of doubtful authenticity, and others often pose an interpretative problem for the experts.

For example, the most popular quote in favor of the practice is one attributed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315-386) who is alleged to have instructed the newly baptized to “make a throne” of their hands so that Communion could be placed on it. The authenticity of this passage has been contested by scholars for several reasons.
  • It has been shown that the relevant quote could have been added by someone other than St. Cyril, perhaps by his successor, Bishop John, who was influenced by Arianism, as we know from the correspondence of St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome and St. Augustine.
  • Besides, the same passage contains a Communion rite in which lay people are told to handle the Eucharist by touching the Host to their eyes and smearing the Precious Blood on their foreheads and sensory organs.
  • And they are also told not to deprive themselves of Communion even if they are “defiled by sins” (which, being undifferentiated, must include both venial and mortal), in contradiction of St. Paul’s injunction (1 Corinthians 11:29); whereas all the other Fathers of the Church insisted that communicants be free from serious sins and quarrels with their fellow Christians.
  • But, curiously, the most convincing evidence against the authenticity of this passage has not hitherto been brought forward – the form of worship described by St. Cyril in his Catechetical Lectures. This is identical in all respects to the Divine Liturgy of St. James which, as we shall see below, incorporates a rite of Communion given directly on the tongue.
While we would do well to consider the rite of Pseudo-Cyril as an interpolation, or even a figment of the imagination, that does not mean that there was no evidence for Communion in the hand in the Patristic period.

The testimony of St. Basil the Great (330-379) is more illuminating. He acknowledged that taking Communion “by one’s own hand” was customary during times of persecution and also for hermits in the desert, where no priest was present. He did not, therefore, consider it to be a “serious offence” in exceptional and unavoidable circumstances. We can draw the corollary that he would have considered it a grave fault to do so without necessity.

We must keep in mind that the persecution of Christians extended beyond the first three centuries, especially in the Eastern Church. There, the practice of Communion in the hand is acknowledged by early Patristic figures from St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom to St. John Damascene in the 8th century, in those areas where it occurred.

This does not necessarily mean, however, that they fully condoned it, still less that they were enthusiastic about it. The Fathers treated the hands of the laity as ritually “unclean” and prescribed strict protocol for the reception of Communion – the washing of hands for men and the veiling of the hand for women. It all comes across as the equivalent of a damage limitation exercise.

It is true that the Council of Trullo, held in Constantinople in 692, prescribed Communion in the hand (Canon 101). But this was only after a custom had developed among the laity, moved by a Catholic instinct, to adopt what they considered a more worthy form of reception, i.e., in small containers and vessels of gold, silver or other precious materials that they brought with them for the purpose. Not everyone, evidently, was happy with touching the Host with their hands.

While Canon 101 provides evidence for Communion in the hand, it tells us nothing about its frequency. With significant opposition to it from the laity, it cannot be described as common usage. Besides, we know that the Trullan Canons were not uniformly obeyed in the East.

Only a superficial reading of this evidence would lead one to think that Communion in the hand was the norm throughout the Christian world for the first 800 years or so of the Church’s existence. In handling the research data, proponents of this method exaggerate the importance of their findings. For example, they can only produce one single example in the whole of England (where someone happens to place Communion in the hand of a dying monk), yet this is included to bump up the geographical statistics.

[Image: F_085_Ros.jpg]

The Purple Codex of Rossano

Then there is the phenomenon of “confirmation bias,” by which they “see” evidence where it either does not exist or is difficult to interpret. An example is the Purple Codex of Rossano, a Greek illuminated Gospel Book dated between the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century. One of the illustrations, a depiction of the Last Supper, shows an Apostle about to receive Communion, while the others are lined up behind.

We note that the communicant is not standing upright with hands extended (as in modern times) to take Communion with his fingers; he is bowing low with bended knee and his hand(s) placed directly under his chin, while Our Lord presents the Host to his lips. The intention of this gesture, it seems, could be interpreted as being consistent with reception of Communion on the tongue, that is, in order to provide a kind of “safety net” lest any fragments fall to the ground. (Guarding the Host with scrupulous care to avoid profanation was, unlike modern times, a major preoccupation with early Christians).

Yet today’s doctrinaire progressivists insist on Communion in the hand as the only possible interpretation.

On the subject of reception of Holy Communion on the tongue in the early Church, no evidence has been found that any Pope at any time in the history of the Church ever personally introduced Communion in the hand before Paul VI. But there is good supporting evidence from Popes, Fathers of the Church and local Councils that the faithful received Communion on the tongue in some places. However, progressivists reject this evidence on the flimsiest, most arbitrary and even self-contradictory grounds.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence is contained in the early Christian Liturgy of St. James, which is the original local rite of Jerusalem, spoken of by St. Cyril. In it, one of the prayers said by the priest before distributing Communion uses the metaphor of the “burning coal” (Isaiah 6:6-7) which was taken by an Angel from the altar and was touched to the lips of Isaiah to purify his soul. He prays:

“The Lord will bless us, and make us worthy with the pure touchings of our fingers to take the live coal, and place it upon the mouths of the faithful for the purification and renewal of their souls and bodies, now and always”.

As this liturgy is still used in some Eastern Catholic as well as Schismatic rites where Communion on the tongue is the norm, it shows an uninterrupted tradition since early Christian times.

Pope St. Eutychianus (275-283) forbade lay people to take Holy Communion to the sick:

Nullus præsumat tradere communionem laico vel femminæ ad deferendum infirmo (Let no one dare to consign Communion to any layman or woman to take to a sick person).

Critics contend that this does not prove anything about the practice of giving Communion in the hand or on the tongue. But they ignore the implied reasoning behind the prohibition – that Communion handled by a lay person was not something to be positively approved. Administering the Sacrament to others is thus seen as the prerogative of the ordained priest – a point later made by the Council of Trent which described it as an Apostolic Tradition.

Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461), in his comments on the Sixth Chapter of the Gospel of John, mentioned the tradition of Communion received in the mouth:

Hoc enim ore sumitur quod fide creditur, et frustra ab illis AMEN respondetur, a quibus contra id quod accipitur, disputatur. (For that is received in the mouth which is believed in faith; and those who dispute what they receive answer AMEN in vain. (Sermon 91.3)

Objections have been raised that this quote does not prove a custom of Communion on the tongue, on the grounds that it refers simply to “taking by mouth” (ore sumitur) which, of course, can be accomplished by the agency of one’s own hand. But we must consider the correct translation in context. As sumitur in Latin means “is received” in the sense of accepted from a giver, and ore indicates the method of reception – by or in the mouth – we can infer from the quote that Communion was not taken in the hand.

Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) is mentioned by his biographer, John the Deacon, in connection with the practice of Communion on the tongue. John recorded that when Pope Gregory was about to place the Host in the mouth of a woman, he had to withdraw his hand “ab ore ejus” (from her mouth) because she suddenly started to laugh. Instead of accepting this account as read, critics reject it as apocryphal, not because they have any personal knowledge in the matter, but on the opinion of Fr. Joseph Jungmann who, however, offered no solid grounds for his argument. So the valuable piece of evidence is dismissed out of hand.

St. Gregory related in Dialogues 3 the curing of a mute and crippled man when Pope St. Agapitus (535-536) placed the Host in his mouth. Cynics follow the opinion of the liturgical scholar, Fr F. X. Funk, who said that Communion could not have been given to him in the hand, because he was too weak to hold it. But St. Gregory had mentioned nothing about a malfunctioning arm. He described the man as “lame” and stated: “Agapitus … restored him to the use of his legs: and after he had put our Lord’s Body into his mouth, that tongue, which long time before had not spoken, was loosed.”

The Council of Saragossa (380) threatened with excommunication any who dared to continue receiving Holy Communion in the hand

The Synod of Cordoba in 839 condemned the sect of so-called Casiani because of their refusal to receive Holy Communion directly into their mouths.

The Synod of Rouen (uncertain date) confirmed the norm in force regarding the administration of Communion on the tongue, threatening sacred ministers with suspension from their office if they distributed Communion to the laity on the hand. It decreed:

“Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layman or laywoman, but only in their mouths.”

But progressivists, illogically, dismiss this evidence because the date of the Synod has been contested by historians.

In conclusion, we can say that both methods were practised in the early Church until Communion on the tongue “won out” over its reception in the hand in the 9th century, to become the settled, obligatory and universal norm for over a thousand years.

One final point must be made for clarity. The modern method of receiving Communion in the hand, whereby standing communicants grasp (or grab) the Host in their fingers and pop it quickly into their mouths, sometimes with a perfunctory nod of the head, has no resemblance to the ancient method. It is not, therefore, a “restoration,” but an innovation derived from the practices used by the 16th-century Protestant reformers to signal their disbelief in the Real Presence.]]>