–Let’s see where we go from here now… Good grief.
–Take it easy. The truth must be affirmed with peace, joy and fortitude. And with patience.
A brief evocation of the history of the Church in its last half-century will help us to better understand the position of Archbishop Lefebvre, of the SSPX and of those who today are more or less in agreement with them.
The sacred Second Vatican Council, convoked by Blessed John XXIII, was an immense grace of God for his Church (1962-1965), like all the previous Councils. In it Our Lord Jesus Christ gathered 2,500 Fathers in ecclesial assembly. It was by far the most numerous Council in history. And building on the previous Councils, many of them dogmatic, it dealt with a predominantly pastoral and renewing purpose with the great realities of the Catholic Church.
It is well known that among the conciliar Fathers, as in so many other previous Councils, there were strongly opposed doctrinal and pastoral tendencies. The liberal group, led by some Cardinals, such as Bea, Alfrink, Willebrands, was supported mainly by Central European and French Bishops. And on the other side, the traditional group, directed by Cardinals such as Siri and Ottaviani and by the Coetus internationalis Patrum, presided over by Archbishop Lefebvre, had the support of Italy, Spain and Spanish America, as well as of not a few Churches of recent birth. The first group was a minority, but extremely organized and supported by renowned progressive theologians and by the world press. The second, poorly organized and much less efficient in the media, but extremely lucid and courageous, nevertheless obtained the support of the majority of the Fathers. And in some cases it was Pope Paul VI who, with personal interventions, “confirmed in the faith” his brethren. Let us give thanks to God.
The Council is finally promulgated with great agreement among the Fathers. All the documents, even the most debated ones, such as that on religious liberty, are signed by the conciliar Assembly, also by Archbishop Lefebvre, with almost total unanimity. It is evident that all the conciliar Fathers are convinced that the 21st ecumenical Council keeps full fidelity and continuity with the doctrine of the 20 previous Councils. They would not have signed it if they did not believe so. And they all know well that if the conciliar teaching on some concrete question gave rise to a doubtful interpretation, this must be elucidated by always adhering to the teachings previously established with greater clarity and firmness by Holy Mother Church. I also point out that the Fathers unanimously approved the teachings of Vatican II, not the doctrinal falsifications that would soon be spread in its name.
It is worth bearing in mind, on the other hand, that in the history of the Church the Second Vatican Council is the only one that has produced as its final document a thick book of 700 or 1,000 pages. And in such an extremely long writing there is no lack of certain texts born as the result of harshly opposed conciliar forces. This real circumstance, and the use of a language at times more literary and rhetorical than theological and precise, gives rise to some confused, imprecise and even false expressions, if they are taken in their literalness and out of context —which must not be done— (Reform or apostasy 24), and which need to be clarified in later acts of the apostolic Magisterium, as has indeed happened, specifically in pontifical addresses and post-conciliar Encyclicals. I will return to this shortly.
The falsification of the doctrines of Vatican II began during its very celebration, and multiplied greatly in the post-council. The aforementioned liberal minority, through many progressive theologians and with the complicity of almost the entire world press, spread during the Council and even more after it a neo-modernist version of the conciliar documents, which many Catholics —without having read the conciliar texts or having read them— received as the authentic conciliar doctrine. In fact, theologians such as Küng and Schillebeeckx, considering themselves to be the theologians really faithful to Vatican II, spread not a few heresies in its name.
The radical error of Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers was to accuse the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council and the Popes who followed it of being the principal causes of the very strong resurgence, above all in the de-Christianized West, of an extreme neo-modernism, which spreads among the Christian people precisely the opposite of what the Council has taught: “Rome has broken with Tradition, has fallen into heresy and into apostasy”…
It is true that the errors and horrors that occurred within the Church after the Council, above all in the de-Christianized West, were and are innumerable. Many of them have been pointed out and combated in this same blog Reform or apostasy, still unfinished. Below I indicate in parentheses the number of some articles of this blog.
In the post-conciliar decades, and up to today, many fundamental truths of the faith were frequently denied or silenced (22-23), such as soteriology, salvation-condemnation (08-09), the existence of the devil (16-17), the great permanent battle between the Kingdom and the world (19-21). In those years the sexual Revolution wreaked havoc not only in the world, but also among the Christian people. The great encyclical Humanæ vitæ was in 1968 widely resisted, even by some episcopal Conferences. The birth rate dropped abruptly as the use of contraceptive methods became widespread. The secularizations of priests and religious multiplied, and priestly and religious vocations also dropped abruptly, almost to the point of disappearing in some local Churches. Apostolic action and evangelization in the missions largely ceased (13). Innumerable heretical or gravely deviant doctrines were spread (39, 51-65, 76-79). Few were the orthodox theologians who combated them (42-43), and at the same time the exercise of apostolic Authority became weak in not a few Churches (40-41): the condemnations of the heretical errors and of the sacrilegious abuses were at times lamentably late (45-47), and Catholic language gradually became obscure and weak (24-32). There were born, as new heresies, extreme forms of feminism, of liberationism and of an at times markedly nationalist indigenism (49-50). The Lutheran contempt for ecclesiastical Law became an at times predominant mentality among pastors and laity (80-94). The teaching of the political doctrine of the Church greatly diminished (95-125), specifically that anti-liberal doctrine which, for example, Cardinal Pie spread with lucidity (33-38), and which was replaced in a good part of Pastors, theologians and laity by a secularist liberal mentality, which almost totally eliminated the political activity of Catholics (95-125).
We can therefore affirm, with the certainty of faith, that in the face of so many degradations of the faith and of Christian life, the Holy Spirit, soul of the Church, renewer of the face of the earth, cries out today in the heart of many Catholics reform or apostasy! (01-07). All this is true.
But to accuse the Second Vatican Council of those enormous evils is a great falsehood, a calumny, and it is an offense against the Holy Spirit, who assisted with his light and his grace the Pope and the 2,500 conciliar Fathers, as he had helped in the 20 previous Councils. Often the adage post hoc, ergo propter hoc is false: this has happened after that, therefore that is the cause of this.
The apostasy of the rich West begins much before Vatican II, with the Renaissance, Protestantism, the Enlightenment, liberalism, the French Revolution, Freemasonry, liberal Catholicism, modernism, communism, the sexual revolution, May 1968, and it is strongly accentuated when the nations of the West, having attained stable prosperity and wealth, and already largely recovered from the enormous ravages produced by the Second World War, decide to “worship the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever” (Rom 1:25). And over the years, this secularist apostasy spreads more or less through the other sister Churches of the world.
From then on the collapse of not a few Churches of the rich West begins. The immense majority of the baptized remain far from the Eucharist, far, then, from Christ and from the Church. Already the great majority of Catholic marriages accept contraception without problems of conscience, and practice it whenever they deem it convenient. Already in these nations there are hardly any vocations. Already the thoughts and ways of the world are the thoughts and ways of the greater part of the baptized. All these are certain, objective, verifiable data. But to attribute to the Second Vatican Council this so grave ruin of the Church in the West is an enormous error.
The modern errors of the last fifty years have not derived from the conciliar texts. Look, for example, at the errors reproved by the Congregation for the Faith through severe Notifications —Küng, Schillebeeckx, De Mello, Vidal, Haight, Sobrino, etc.— and you will never find any foundation for them in texts of Vatican II. These and so many other masters of error shamelessly describe themselves as the theologians truly faithful “to the Council”; but curiously they never cite it: they hold to the “spirit of the Council,” which is not yet “edited,” and which consists only of their own ideas. On the contrary, the traditional Catholic writers, that is, Catholics, have not ceased to cite thousands of times over half a century the texts of Vatican II and the encyclicals of the post-conciliar Popes.
The traditional hermeneutic of continuity of Catholic doctrine comes to be a central theme of the preaching of Benedict XVI from the very beginning of his pontificate (22-XII-2005, 26-V-2009). And John Paul II had already insisted on it, specifically on the very grave occasion of the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei (2-VII-1988).
It is necessary “to call the attention of theologians and other experts in ecclesiastical sciences, so that they too may feel challenged” with a view to “a new effort of deepening, in which the continuity of the Council [Vatican II] with Tradition may be fully clarified, above all in the doctrinal points that, perhaps because of their novelty, have not yet been well understood by some sectors of the Church” (n.5,b).
Credo in Ecclesiam. The Catholic Church, the one that remains in full communion with its Bishops and the Pope, always keeps the truth and the means of sanctification. It is not necessary to distance oneself from the unity of the Church with schismatic acts in order to reaffirm the Catholic truths and combat the errors and abuses that may arise in her, for She herself has power in the Holy Spirit to overcome them. Quite the contrary happens outside the Catholic Church: the monophysite errors, for example, of the abbot Eutyches (+454) can be perpetuated for centuries, up to today, in Christian confessions separated from Rome. But that cannot happen in the Catholic Church, because she is “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). The Church may perhaps take a long or short time to overcome errors and abuses —Arianism, simony—, but always, aided by Christ, her Spouse, she ends up overcoming them. She may keep alarmingly prolonged silences —as today, for example, on Catholic political doctrine (97-98, 100-105)—; but the Lord of history will give her words when He wills. Let us pray and wait with patience. The Church teaches when she speaks, not when she is silent.
In the post-conciliar time the doctrinal errors and the disciplinary, moral and liturgical abuses have been denounced from within the Catholic Church, although not as much, certainly, as would be desirable. To make a list of names to demonstrate what I say is practically impossible; but I will cite only some examples, the first that come to my mind. Lay authors, such as Von Hildebrand, Maritain at the end of his life, Francisco Canals, Messori, Weigel, Ricardo de la Cierva, Woods, have borne witness to the truth with great force, against heresies and abuses: and the Church will never lack men like them. Bishops and theologians have also done the same, such as Siri, Ottaviani, González Martín, Fabro, Mondin and so many more: and the Church will never lack men like them. Even Catholic theologians who on some questions had previously shown themselves close to progressive theses, such as Fr. Henri de Lubac, S.J., were already sounding the alarm two years after Vatican II:
“It is quite clear that the Church is facing a grave crisis. Under the name of ‘the new Church,’ ‘the post-conciliar Church,’ an attempt is now being made to establish a Church different from that of Jesus Christ: an anthropocentric society threatened by immanentist apostasy, a letting oneself be dragged along by a movement of general abdication under the pretext of renewal, ecumenism or adaptation” (address at the University of Toronto, VIII-1967: cited in Témoignage chrétien, Paris IX-1967).
But it has always been the Popes of the post-council who have been the firmest witnesses of Catholic truth, and those who have most forcefully combated the errors and evils of the present Church. We can appreciate it, for example, in some grave questions.
–The Catholic truth of the Eucharist, for example, so gravely falsified in recent times, also among “Catholic” authors, has found its firmest defense in the eucharistic doctrine of the post-conciliar Popes. Against those who denied the sacrificial character of the Mass, Paul VI affirms with the force of Peter: “We believe that the Mass… is really the sacrifice of Calvary, which is made sacramentally present on our altars” (Credo of the People of God, 1968, 24; cf. Mysterium fidei, earlier, in 1965). John Paul II gives the sacrifice the theological primacy for the understanding of the Mystery (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 2003, 11-16). Benedict XVI affirms that in the Eucharist “the redemptive sacrifice of Christ is made present” (Sacramentum caritatis, 2007, 14; cf. 9-14).
–The holiness of marriage and the struggle against contraception, as taught by Pius XI (Casti connubii, 1930) or Pius XII, have been promoted to the maximum by the Popes of the post-council. They have not feared for this to confront half the world and the other half, and also a good part of the Church (Humanæ vitæ, 1968; Familiaris consortio, 1981; Catechism, 1993).
–The missions of the Church and the uniqueness of Christ as universal Savior have also been truths of the faith that the recent Popes have defended with great force against innumerable heresies spread within the Church (Evangelii nuntiandi, 1975; Redemptor hominis, 1979; Redemptoris missio, 1990; Dominus Iesus, 2000).
And thus we could go on recalling formidable documents of the apostolic Magisterium, which have come to form in the Church of our time a doctrinal Corpus as broad and harmonious as there has been in no epoch of her history. Cum Petro et sub Petro, the Catholic Church of today fulfills and will continue to fulfill the promise of Christ: “the Holy Spirit will teach you all truth” (Jn 16:13).
In the decades of the post-council the most grave and authoritative diagnoses of the evils of the present Church we have always found in the Popes. They have never tried to ignore, deny or diminish the gravity of those infidelities. The Popes know that in some local Churches, at least in their highest levels, heresies and sacrileges abound more than orthodoxy and orthopraxis. And on occasions they express that tremendous reality with absolute clarity. I will recall some texts.
–Paul VI, already in his first encyclical, Ecclesiam suam (1964), gives a strong alarm about the reviving modernism (no. 10). And immediately after the Council was closed he recognizes and expresses with all clarity the ecclesial degradation that is being produced acceleratedly, above all in the local Churches of the rich West. They are the years, for example, of the Dutch Catechism and of the Pastoral Council of Holland (1967-1969), the years of the shameful resistance to his heroic encyclical Humanæ vitæ (1968), the decades of the avalanche of secularizations… His diagnosis is lucid, grave and realistic. And humble too: the pastor recognizes that the wolves have entered the flock that the Lord has entrusted to his care, and that they are wreaking havoc in it.
In the opening address of the Second General Conference of the Latin American episcopate (CELAM), held in Medellín, Paul VI puts the Ibero-American Bishops on alert with very grave words: “The faith is besieged by the most subversive currents of modern thought. The distrust that, even in Catholic circles, has spread concerning the validity of the fundamental principles of reason, that is, of our philosophia perennis, has disarmed us before the assaults, not rarely radical and captious, of fashionable thinkers; the vacuum produced in our philosophical schools by the abandonment of confidence in the great masters of Christian thought, is frequently occupied by a superficial and almost servile acceptance of fashionable philosophies, many times as simplistic as they are confused, and these have shaken our normal, human and wise art of thinking the truth; we are tempted by historicism, by relativism, by subjectivism, by neopositivism, which in the field of faith create a spirit of subversive criticism, a false persuasion that in order to attract and evangelize the men of our time we have to renounce the doctrinal patrimony, accumulated over centuries by the Magisterium of the Church, and that we can model, not by virtue of a better clarity of expression, but of a change of dogmatic content, a new Christianity, tailored to man and not to the measure of the authentic Word of God. Unfortunately, also among us, some theologians do not always go by the right path” (Bogotá, 24-VIII-1968).
And in those years he repeated the same warnings: “The Church finds herself in a restless hour of self-criticism or, better said, of self-demolition. It is like an acute and complex inversion, which no one would have expected after the Council. The Church is practically striking herself” (7-XII-1968). “Through some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God” (29-VI-1972; cf. the extensive later address on the devil, 15-XI-1972). Lamentable is “the division, the disaggregation that, unfortunately, is found in not a few sectors of the Church” (30-VIII-1973). “The opening to the world was a true invasion of worldly thought in the Church” (23-XI-1973). To suggest that it is Paul VI himself who with his liturgical reforms and other pontifical acts increases in the Church “the smoke of Satan” is an unspeakable baseness.
–John Paul II, in the same spirit, declares in an address at the Congress of Popular Missionaries (6-II-1981): “It is necessary to admit with realism, and with profound and tormented sensibility, that the Christians of today, in great part, feel lost, confused, perplexed, and even disillusioned. Ideas contrasting with the truth revealed and taught from always have been scattered by the handful. True and proper heresies have been propagated in the dogmatic and moral field, creating doubts, confusions, rebellions. Even the liturgy has been manipulated. Immersed in intellectual and moral relativism, and therefore in permissivism, Christians find themselves tempted by atheism, by agnosticism, by a vaguely moralistic illuminism, by a sociological Christianity, without defined dogmas and without objective morality” (6-II-1981).
–Benedict XVI, being still Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith, in his book Report on the faith (BAC, Madrid 1985), makes extensive and minute analyses of the situation that lead him to identical diagnoses. And a month before being constituted Pope, presiding over the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum in Rome, in substitution for John Paul II, incapacitated, he says:
“Meditation [at the 9th station]. What can the third fall of Jesus under the weight of the cross tell us? Perhaps it makes us think of the fall of men, of the fact that many turn away from Christ, of the tendency toward a secularism without God. But, should we not also think of what Christ must suffer in his own Church? How many times the sacrament of his presence is abused, and into the emptiness and malice of heart where he often enters. How many times we celebrate only ourselves without realizing it! How many times his Word is deformed and abused! How little faith there is in many theories, how many empty words! How much filth in the Church and among those who, by their priesthood, ought to be completely given over to him! How much pride, how much self-sufficiency! How little we respect the sacrament of Reconciliation, in which he waits for us to raise us up from our falls! This too is present in his passion. The betrayal of the disciples, the unworthy reception of his Body and his Blood, is certainly the greatest sorrow of the Redeemer, the one that pierces his heart. There is nothing left for us but to cry out to him from the depths of the soul: Kyrie, eleison – Lord, save us (cf. Mt 8:25).
“Prayer. Lord, frequently your Church seems to us a boat about to sink, taking on water on all sides. And also in your field we see more weeds than wheat. We are overwhelmed by its attire and its face, so filthy. But we ourselves stain them. We are the ones who betray you, notwithstanding the pompous gestures and the high-sounding words. Have mercy on your Church: in her too Adam, man, falls again and again. On falling, we remain on the ground and Satan rejoices, because he hopes that we will never again be able to rise; he hopes that you, being dragged into the fall of your Church, will remain cast down forever. But you will rise. You have risen again, you have resurrected and you can raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save us and sanctify us all. Pater noster […] liberanos a Malo. Amen” (25-III-2005).
A boat that is sinking… A field with more weeds than wheat… The College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church, on 19 April 2005, a month after Cardinal Ratzinger said those tremendous words in public, elected him as Pope, Vicar of Christ, Successor of Peter, thinking that he was the Bishop most suited to take the helm of the Barque of Peter.
“Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram ædificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portæ inferi non prævalebunt adversus eam” (Mt 16:18). The Church continually receives her salvation from the Savior. And the texts that I have recalled confirm to us what from the beginning we already knew by faith, credo in Ecclesiam: that the Church always has, by the work of the Holy Spirit, strength to overcome in the world and in herself error and sin. It is possible that she does not achieve it immediately, but finally she is always raised by the hand of her Spouse, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit always sustains her in the Catholic truth when she wavers. She never ceases to be the Mater et Magistra, who saves us from error and sin, sanctifying us with the truth and the grace of Christ.
The Catholic Church, also after Vatican II, has flourished in marvels of grace and of holiness. She has not only known the proliferation of errors and horrors, on which I have dwelt especially in order to respond to the accusing philo-Lefebvrians. On the contrary, how many Bishops and parish priests, frequently overwhelmed by situations of overwhelming de-Christianization, have gone on giving their lives with incessant love in the service of Christ and of his Church, “spending themselves and being spent for souls to the point of exhaustion” (2 Cor 12:15). How many consecrated persons have lived cloistered in permanent offering of praise and supplication. How many works of heroic multiform beneficence have flourished on the tree of the Church. How many religious institutes and lay movements have been renewed or have been born in these decades… I cite only a few, not the largest, that are especially known and dear to me: Schola Cordis Iesu, Servants of the Home of the Mother, Instituto Mater Dei, Servants of the Poor of the Third World, Miles Christi, Schola Veritatis…
How many holy persons and works I have known in half a century. Discalced Carmelites… It could be said that, by a mysterious correspondence, to the abysses of evil that the Lord permits he responds by raising up mountains of grace and holiness. Who will be able to convince me that this is no longer the Catholic Church? And that the Mass that hundreds of thousands of us Bishops and priests celebrate, according to the Novus Ordo promulgated by Paul VI, is heretical, or at least conducive to heresy, and certainly vitanda?… It makes one want to weep, from sorrow and from gratitude.
Never must an “eternal Rome” and a “temporal Rome,” that of today, be set in opposition. Never must the Church be condemned as “apostate and adulteress.” Never is it licit to distance oneself from her by schismatic acts, as if these were indispensable in order to be able to save “the continuity of the Church” in truth and holiness. Never must we set in opposition to the Church of Christ –to this Church, there is no other–, an “eternal Rome,” which has no more reality than that of an ectoplasm. To do so is absolutely contrary to the ecclesial Tradition of the Fathers and of the saints. Never must we turn our back on our mother the Church, despite her infected wounds and the filth of her tunic. She is the inexhaustible source of truth and of grace. Never must we be ashamed of the existing Church, because she is the only Body of Christ, made up of saints and sinners (LG 8c; GS 43f). Jesus tells us, referring also to his own Body: “blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in me!” (Mt 11:6).
–Archbishop Lefebvre, on the contrary, on the occasion of the post-conciliar errors and horrors went on becoming ever more scandalized by the Council, by the Popes, by the renewed Liturgy. And he said terrible things, which his followers continue to spread in books and internet sites: “eternal Rome condemns temporal Rome. That is why we prefer the eternal one” in the SSPX (Tissier 494)… “Rome has lost the faith, Rome is in apostasy” (577)… “One cannot follow those people, it is apostasy… Let us proceed to the consecration” of Bishops (578). “The Chair of Peter and the posts of authority in Rome being occupied by antichrists, the destruction of the Reign of Our Lord is pursued rapidly” (578) [1]… “The situation of the papacy since John XXIII and his successors poses ever graver problems… They are founding a new conciliar Church… Is this Church still apostolic and still Catholic?… Must we still consider this pope as Catholic?” (569) [2].
It is already clear that, with God’s favor, I will have to add another article.
José María Iraburu, priest
Translation of the French texts
- Since the See of Peter and the posts of authority in Rome are occupied by antichrists, the destruction of the Reign of Our Lord advances at an accelerated pace… ↩
- The situation of the papacy from John XXIII onward and his successors keeps posing ever graver problems… They have founded a new conciliar Church… Is this Church still apostolic and Catholic?… Must we consider that this Pope is Catholic? ↩
Post post.–. Those who attack this poor priest and his recent articles, and take a swipe at InfoCatólica along the way, have few arguments. Proof of this is the quantity of false accusations and improbable suppositions that we find in their writings: we were not in Fátima to protest a certain profanation, we have said nothing (!) about the Bishops who rejected a Bishop elected by the Pope and about those others, so many, who resist the Summorum Pontificum, etc. We attack the traditionalists, and thus we combat against Catholic Tradition. Managed by the Neocatechumenals, and who knows also whether by certain economic powers, we seek to situate ourselves well in the present Church, and to obtain personal ecclesiastical prebends. We defend the Popes from the Lefebvrian attacks, but we attack the Pope when he extends them a hand. Perhaps what we are really after, at bottom, is simply that the SSPX not reach an agreement with the Catholic Church. And that the PP win the next elections… It is something mind-boggling. Pathetic. At Catholic.net, its current director, Mrs. Mayra Novelo de Bardo, had to halt similar attacks by closing a forum, and arguing her decision with force and objective data. She had already closed another one earlier. May God reward her.
They even deny us the right to call ourselves InfoCatólica, a name we are willing to renounce one hour after they have renounced their own name Panorama Católico Internacional, Catholic.net, Informations Catholiques Internationales and a hundred or five hundred more publications that bear analogous names. The odium theologicum has led them to lose the sense of the ridiculous.
Author: Fr. José María Iraburu
