Declaration of Support
Your Excellency, Archbishop Viganò,
Several days ago one of four bishops striving within the Church to maintain the defence of the Faith in accordance with the example set by Archbishop Lefebvre, wrote to you a letter of congratulations and support for your own letter of June 9, in which you traced back to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) the present crisis of the Church. With this further letter to yourself, all four of these bishops wish to give public expression to the same congratulations and support for yourself in your present difficult circumstances. Essentially we repeat what Bishop Tomás wrote to you, only a little shortened:
It is as a duty of conscience in front of the whole Church that this letter comes to give you public support in your recent denunciation of the crisis engulfing the Church, and of its origins in the Second Vatican Council. St Thomas Aquinas teaches that there is no obligation to profess the Faith at every moment, but when the Faith is in peril, then there is a grave duty to profess it, even at the risk of one’s life.
Can anyone today deny the unprecedented crisis in the Church, striking deeply at the Catholic priesthood? Yet truly Catholic priests are absolutely necessary for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and for the maintaining of holy doctrine. When the Church’s lawful authorities refuse to act in line with the mind of the Church, no bishop can merely resist in the Faith, like a layman may. Before God, from whom we receive our episcopacy, we state by our consecration with the fullness of Holy Orders that in the present crisis not only is it lawful but it is our bounden duty to use these powers for the good of souls.
In your letter of June 6, with an admirable clarity and sincerity, Your Excellency recognises how the Catholic clergy and faithful were deceived when the Council introduced new directions originating in the anti-Christian conspiracy. It is painful to observe the lamentable blindness of so many colleagues in the episcopacy and the priesthood who do not see, or do not wish to see, the present crisis and the need to resist the modernism now reigning supreme, and the Conciliar sect which is entrenched at the highest levels of the Church. This resistance is entirely lawful and in accordance with the will of the abiding Church. A bishop must, in effect, fulfil the mission entrusted to him: to hand down whatever can and must be handed down by the fullness of his Orders for the keeping of the Faith: “Tradidi quod et accepi.”
By their anti-liberalism and anti-modernism, in June of 1988 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, to save the treasure of Catholic Tradition from modernism and the New Mass and the Council’s reforms, went ahead with consecrating four bishops in the so-called “Operation Survival,” thus guaranteeing that grace and the unchanging doctrine would continue to be handed down. As their heirs, we wish to express our sincere adherence to Your Excellency’s position, dictated by his fidelity to the Church of all time. By so doing we wish to do no other than drink at the same source, which is the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church, outside of which there is no salvation.
And if anyone asks us when there will be an agreement with the authorities in Rome, our reply is simple: when Rome returns to Our Lord. On the day when the Roman officials once again recognise Our Lord as the King of all peoples and nations, on that day it will not be ourselves returning to the Church but those who attempted to overthrow the Catholic Church which we never left. In the meantime we judge that by openly opposing and resisting the Council’s errors and those who promote them, we are rendering the most necessary service to the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
May the most Blessed Virgin, Our Lady, who as our Mother at Fatima warned us of the gravity of the present hour, grant to the Pope and to the bishops of the entire world the graces necessary for the Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart to be performed, and for the devotion of Reparation of the First Five Saturdays to be spread far and wide, so that modernism is abandoned and souls return to the Catholic Faith, whole and inviolate, without which it is impossible to please God.
May God bless His Excellency Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò,
Bishop Jean-Michel Faure
Bishop Tomás Aquinas
Bishop Richard Williamson
Bishop Gerardo Zendejas
