FORTUNATE LEADERS - St. Marcel Initiative

But such a message rulers will not hear?

Maybe, but the truth was told in a manner clear.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Ps. CXXVI, 1). All the more true for those building a State! Lucky the politicians today who have Catholic priests to remind them of how truly to serve their land. Alas, today’s politicians hardly have ears to hear those ancient and important truths. The leaders of Switzerland have recently had such a priest, a Swiss priest of the “ Resistance,” appealing to them to submit the direction of their country’s affairs to the one true God of Switzerland’s Catholic past. Their reaction seems to have been minimal. Like all the rest of us, they may have to learn the hard way. But in the meantime, here below is this priest’s appeal, only abbreviated to fit into an A4 page –

Honourable Lady President, honourable ladies and gentlemen recently re-elected as Federal, State or Local Councillors for 2023 to 2027, warm congratulations on your re-election! Please allow me as a Catholic priest of the Apostles of Jesus and Mary to bring to you a request for the government of our country to make a public return to the profession and respect of the Christian religion. Thereby we may hope for God’s blessing and protection from harm for our beloved country. Here are four thoughts –

1 At the last major meeting of the oldest of all Christian churches, the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church held in Rome from 1962 to 1965, many Catholic leaders, faced with our godless times, judged it best for God’s Church to be modernised. That was the right problem but the wrong solution, as it meant, for instance, that religion would henceforth be a merely private affair. Grave error. From long before the founding of Switzerland in 1291, Jesus Christ had been Creator and Redeemer of all men ever alive, and until world’s end, Lord, Judge and King, of Switzerland and the entire world.

2 As a result of Christ and His one true Church being cut out by deism, naturalism and liberalism, Christ is brought down to the same level as all other religions, and anything supposedly supernatural loses all interest, and mankind is handed over to the tyranny of the now purely secular civil States. For wherever the Majesty of the one true God is bracketed out, some anti-god is bound to step in to take His place.

3 In the mid-17th century a saintly German priest, the Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser (1613–1658), was given by Heaven visions of the whole history of the Church in seven Ages, including the Fifth Age of Apostasy from Luther to today. But we have become too blind to be able to see our times like this.

4 Switzerland’s Patron Saint, Nicholas of Flue (1417–1487), is famous for his saying that, “If God is driven out of a State, it is doomed to destruction.” Thus Switzerland’s 700-year existence as a Christian democracy is at an end, unless we can revive the profession of faith in God of our forefathers.

Honourable leaders of our government, Jesus Christ alone can bring us to Heaven. Witnesses to that fact are the churches, crosses and chapels strewn all over our country, as are the Christian values still buried in the depths of many a Swiss conscience. But these values are being smothered in dirt, or washed out altogether, so that our country is well on the way to its destruction, as when three years ago the Swiss people were misled into voting for a law opposed to God and to Nature, in favour of same-sex marriage. If that is freedom of religion and conscience, it will lead to the loss of all religion and all conscience.

Ahead of us is either Christianity or Communism. We are all of us made for Heaven. Let our rulers create favourable conditions for the Church, and the Church will look after our people and our youth. Ladies and Gentlemen, rulers all, let me ask of you to respect the rights of God and the Catholic family, to profess and promote the Christian religion, and to maintain the Christian neutrality of our land. And may God be with you all. I pray for you every day, at Mass and with the Holy Rosary.

With the greatest respect, and with all blessings, Fr. Aloysius Bruehwiler.

Kyrie eleison