Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Madiran – Betrayal.

Madiran - Betrayal. on December 26, 2020

In Paris in May of 1968 there occurred student riots so radical and long-lasting as to get attention from media all over the world. For theoretical subversion and practical destruction of everything that had till then made up the Western way of life, they were comparable to the riots that ravaged many cities of the United States last summer (of 2020). In fact the Paris riots inspired the sixth and last Part of Jean Madiran’s book, The Heresy of the 20th century, because they were a picture-book illustration of what his whole book had been trying to say: Catholic civilisation is turning Communist, and it is a great betrayal, and the Catholic bishops are the traitors. Hence the three Chapters of Part Six of the book: 1) May ‘68 is the bishops’ final betrayal, 2) They repudiate the true Catholics, 3) They betray real Christianity.

In Chapter One Madiran tells how when in Paris in the springtime of 1968 the revolting students, like the summer rioters in the USA, threatened to tear down Western civilisation, the French bishops’ official comment was, “It is a wide-ranging movement calling for a new society,” and they were ready to welcome it in the name of Vatican II. In their official declaration one month later they declared: “The 1968 Revolution divides the people for and against, but we bishops are for.” In fact, says Madiran, for those revolting the end justifies the means, so they made such use of force, lies and trickery to get their way that they provoked an even more “wide-ranging” counter-movement, but what do modern bishops care about the radical subversion of all natural law and Christian civilisation? None of them believe that Communism is a betrayal. But it is a movement of reform? That is just a lie and a trap, says Madiran.

In the second Chapter he tells how to ingratiate themselves with the Revolutionaries on the left, the bishops had to bring to them on a platter the heads of the most faithful Catholics on the right, otherwise known as the “integrists,” or followers of integral Catholicism. (Here exactly is why in the 1970’s Pope Paul VI made such strenuous efforts to cripple Archbishop Lefebvre, but God had other ideas. However, just a few more years, and what had been his Society was longing for the approval of modernised Rome.) Back in the 1960’s the French bishops set out on a long course of talking out of both sides of their mouth.

To the left they would say, “Oh, please don’t take us for conservatives or integrists, we’re revolutionaries just like you,” while to the right they would say, “Oh please don’t think we’re changing anything.” And ever since these bishops have been trying to go in two directions at once – a recipe for paralysis. But they always avoid taking on “integrists” in straight argument – they have given up the high ground of truth.

In the last Chapter of his entire book, Madiran finalises his condemnation of the paltry French bishops. The modern world is not good, running on lies in all domains: Evolution, Six Million, Nine-Eleven, Covid, and those are just a few of the outstanding falsehoods. But what had gone wrong? The students hardly knew because they had mostly been told that the modern world is wonderful. But if that is true, then instinctively they want to tear it down. However, the Catholic Church, while it also disbelieves in modernity, knows exactly what went wrong, and in 1864 published a major list of 80 of the errors – Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors. Here is the doctrine that the bishops should have been teaching the students, because had these learnt it well, they could have been rebuilding all “Western civilisation” ever since the 1960’s. As it was, at Vatican II the world’s bishops preferred to join the Communists instead of fighting them, and the students were turned into barbarians, and all Christian civilisation was betrayed.

Referring to the bishops, Madiran adds one final word to his book – “Wretches!”

The analysis of The Heresy of the 20th century is clear. The lessons in the 2020’s for the USA in particular are plentiful. Perhaps only full-scale disaster will enable mankind to learn them. Yet, as Bishop Butler said in the 18th century, “Things are what they are. Their consequences will be what they will be. Why then should we seek to deceive ourselves?”

Kyrie eleison.

Vigano Answers

Vigano Answers on November 21, 2020

In the month of August a journalist with Life Site News wrote to Archbishop Viganò in hiding in Italy an article concerning daily life in today’s world for Catholics wishing to keep the Faith. The title was Questions for Viganò: His Excellency is right about Vatican II. But what does he think Catholics should do now? The Archbishop began his reply of September 1st by assuring Stephen Kokx that he was happy to answer the questions, because they addressed “matters that are very important for the faithful.” The Archbishop’s reply is summarised here below, while at the end of it these “Comments” will highlight one point in particular.

Kokx asked the Archbishop, “Who belongs to the Catholic Church and who is separated from it?” The Archbishop replied, anybody who proposes any of the adulterated doctrines of the Council cannot possibly be Catholic. Nor can anybody be Catholic who accepts any of those doctrines knowing them to be in rupture with unchanging Catholic doctrine. On the other hand if a person is baptised, considers themselves to be a Catholic and recognises the Catholic Hierarchy, that does not necessarily mean that they accept the Conciliar doctrine, or adhere to the Conciliar team, knowing them to be in rupture with Catholic Tradition. Nor then are they necessarily outside the Church. But even office-holders who have authority inside the Church are doubtfully Catholic if they accept Conciliar doctrine knowing it to be contrary to Catholic Tradition. They have Authority in the Church, but they cannot exercise it. Only their Authority entitles Conciliarists to claim that they are Catholics, and not just members of a sect.

Therefore Traditional Catholics belong in the Church, and Modernists do not. Moreover laity faithful to Tradition often may and must seek out priests, communities and institutes that are likewise faithful to Tradition, especially in the celebration of Mass. In this respect the clergy are less free that the laity because they belong to a hierarchy which normally requires obedience, but they have the same right and duty to practise their Faith, that Faith which justifies and requires their use of the old rite of Mass. And if the Church is to rise again from the various horrors of the Newchurch, note that the fidelity of true believers under persecution is needed inside the Church, to defeat Modernism.

It was by staying inside the Church that Archbishop Lefebvre was a model of faithfulness under persecution. His Society of St Pius X was a standing reproach to Modernists, and it was enabled to survive by the episcopal Consecrations of 1988, so that eventually the true Mass could be set free again, and Vatican II could be shown up. Bishop Tissier de Mallerais is right that for the time being there are both the true Church and a false “church” under one roof, but that roof is Catholic, so that it belongs to the true Church while the false Conciliar Church is nothing but an intruder. We must hope and pray that a number of now sleeping shepherds will wake up to see how they have been deceived.

In this necessary fight for Our Lord and His Mother it is a privilege to take part, and by so doing to help to revive honour, fidelity and heroism. By the sacrament of Confirmation, we are soldiers of Christ, and Christians have had to take part in one great battle after another to defend the True, the Good and the Beautiful. Let us resist Modernists with Truth and charity. Those who practise Modernism are at fault, not we who denounce it! Let the laity by all means attend Masses which do not shock, but nourish their Faith. True pastors will be given back to us by God, untrue pastors will die off. Let the laity look after good priests, recreate charity, avoid division and rebellion, offer advice respectfully, calling in question not Church authority but how it is misused. God will not fail to reward our fidelity and to restore His Church, drawing vocations from families which will have kept the Faith. All serious problems are human problems. All human problems have a Catholic solution.

And the point to highlight? Notice how the Archbishop measures everything by Truth and Faith.

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran; the Bishops

Madiran; the Bishops on October 31, 2020

It will be recalled that in the Prologue of his book The Heresy of the 20th century Jean Madiran placed the blame for that heresy fairly and squarely on the Catholic bishops who led up to and followed straight after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), notably on the bishops of France whom he best knew. Chapter I of his book showed, following St. Pius X’s great Encyclical Pascendi of 1907, how these bishops’ minds were rendered unfit for reality, let alone for Catholic doctrine, by the subjectivism of Kant’s philosophy, now reigning supreme in the philosophy departments of virtually all “universities.” In Chapter II Madiran tackles the French bishops themselves, in six loosely connected sections.

Firstly, he says that to follow these bishops we would have to throw away a veritable treasure trove of Catholic treasures, such as St. Pius X, Gregorian Chant, Thomism, Canon Law, Our Lady, patriotism, our Greco-Latin heritage, Marian piety and last but not least, the devotion of little old women praying. For our part, he says, we refuse to scorn any of these familiar features of the Catholic family. Behind all of them is the love of Christ, while behind all the talk of “recycling,” “renovations” and “renewal” is hate. And behind all achievements of “Western civilisation” is Christ, neither India nor Africa nor China.

Secondly, to all the world the Newchurch has proclaimed its apostasy: the Newbishops’ policy is no longer to convert anyone. Yet the basics of life and death remain exactly the same. Let the Church teach us how to live and die. We are all too full of the world. Let priests teach us how to get to Heaven!

Thirdly, these bishops say that “the change of civilisation” calls for “a more evangelical concept of salvation,” by which they mean not just “a new form of words,” which is what they say they mean, but a new content of the words, meaning a new religion. Your Excellences, our answer is “NO!” Moreover, as a baptised Catholic I am entitled to demand of you the true Faith, because your “new form of words” in pursuit of a new “concept of salvation” is bound to be heretical, not just clumsy, but a new religion, contradicting the true Faith.

Fourthly, up until 1966 these bishops had not yet defected from the Catholic Faith, but now they are claiming that theirs is at last the authentic Christianity, when in fact their “post-Conciliar mentality” is breaking with the true Faith. The truth is that we are in the middle of a war between two different religions. And actively or passively, all the bishops are supporting the new religion. Some Catholic bishop must speak up, because souls are perishing! Msgr. Lefebvre, are you listening?

We need no bishops to tell us to be modern. We are all too modern. But modern technology and modern philosophy are not the business of Catholic bishops! We know the moderns, and we scorn them. You do not know them and you love them. Marx, Nietzsche, Freud are mere fantasy-merchants. Wake up!

Fifthly, the Newchurch is now ruining all apprenticeship, teaching and education. By wanting to give to the youngsters only what is modern, which they already have, you give them nothing, while making them think they know everything. Thus abandoned, they will become tomorrow’s barbarians, so that you are betraying not only the Faith but all civilisation. Come back to Tradition! God, give us some true bishops!

Sixthly, the bishops’ authority is based only on truth, legitimacy and law. If these bishops were right, the Church of Tradition would no longer exist. But the Truth is primarily their business, so that they have no authority to change the Faith, and if they do so, they have no authority to be obeyed, nor will we leave them in peace. We expect from them the certainty, purity and sanctity of the unchanging Catholic Faith.

(In Section 4 above, Archbishop Lefebvre is not mentioned by name, but he was in Madiran’s mind. Two years later the Archbishop founded the Society of St Pius X, and the rest is history.)

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran’s Foreword

Madiran's Foreword on October 3, 2020

In the Foreword to his book on The Heresy of the 20th Century Jean Madiran begins with the direct statement that it is the Catholic bishops who are responsible for the heresy of the 20th century (p.17 in the 2018 re-edition of the book from via.romana@yahoo.fr). Knowing that he will be accused as a mere layman of speaking out of turn, he states defiantly (28) that when the shepherds or bishops have turned into wolves or destroyers of the Faith. he needed as a baptised Catholic neither to ask for, nor to be given, any mandate to defend the Faith

And he makes (26) a crucial distinction which announces the thesis of his whole book. Heresy in the strict sense of the word means the wilful denial of what one knows to be a defined proposition of the Faith, but in the broad sense it means the acceptance of a whole teaching radically alien to the Faith. The heresy he will be attacking is in this broad sense, going far beyond the contradiction of just any one proposition of the Faith. The “20th century heresy” is to be found rather “in the night, in emptiness, in nothingness.”

And how did the French bishops get emptied out? Madiran writes (20) that for 100 years, reaching back then to the middle of the 19th century, they had been out of touch with Rome, at that time the truly Catholic Rome of Pius IX and the Syllabus, because their whole mentality (21) had slipped away from Rome. Theirs was Catholic discipline without conviction, Catholic obedience without understanding of what the obedience was for. In a few words Madiran is hitting on the essence of the pre-conciliar Church: under the influence of the modern world, a progressive loss of Catholic faith had resulted in a Church where the appearances were still standing but the substance behind the appearances was gone. How the true Church needed to resist that new Revolutionary world the anti-liberal Popes did lay out, especially Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII and Pius X in their social teaching, but of their Encyclicals Madiran (23) says that the bishops in the 1950’s knew virtually nothing.

Graver still for Madiran, foreshadowing the whole Part VI of the book to come, the 20th century heresy of these bishops was their all-engulfing faithless mentality, which denies that there is any such thing as the natural law (24). Magnetised by the modern world, infected by its liberalism, they had long been mentally slipping away from Rome and rejecting its social doctrine, but in the 1950’s they were still mouthing certain formulae of the old catechism. However, in their hearts all sense of the natural law was being lost, and this meant that in the years immediately following the Council they were ready to lay hands on dogma and the catechism which they had left up till then outwardly intact. Thus their disagreement with Rome on social doctrine contained implicitly that total uprooting of the Christian religion from which the entire Church suffered in the aftermath of the Council (25).

For if there is no natural law or rational order embedded by God in all of Creation around us, then all reason and faith are shipwrecked, and while the formulae of the Gospel and the dogmatic definitions may for a while be accurately recited and repeated, their substance has been drained out and all religion has been radically subverted. Bishops without natural law have no more access to the Gospel or to dogmatic definitions. They can no longer preserve or hand down anything (26). They are ripe to swing left towards the substitute religion of modernity, which is Communism (26).

And to conclude the Foreword, Madiran appeals to a compatriot who foresaw this decadence in the clergy even before the First World War. Charles Péguy (1873–1914) wrote in 1909 that the clergy (30) were successfully destroying Christianity by wanting it to progress with the times. They were themselves losing the faith (32), accepting its disappearance as something natural.

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop Tranferred

Archbishop Tranferred on September 26, 2020

Two days ago, the mortal remains of Archbishop Lefebvre were transferred from the vault next to the Seminary of Écône where they had rested temporarily since his death in 1991, to a solid marble sarcophagus in the crypt beneath the Seminary Chapel specially prepared for their permanent repose. All splendour is fitting for the place of burial of the greatest man of God, the greatest hero of the Catholic Faith, of modern times, the Archbishop who virtually single-handed saved the Catholic doctrine, sacraments and priesthood from perishing, from their corruption and elimination by modern men who no longer believed in them as they had been handed down by the faithful Catholic Church through nearly two thousand years.

And one may say that after his death his successors continued his work more or less faithfully for another 20 years, but then in 2012 occurred a change in his Society of St Pius X which obliged many souls to speak of a New-society, somewhat as the changes in the Church following on the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) obliged many Catholics to speak of a New-church, so radical were the changes. Alas, the ceremony of transferral of the Archbishop’s remains reflected this transferral of his work from Society to New-society, because it was celebrated not by the present Superior General, Fr. David Pagliarani, but by his predecessor as Superior General, the one who was mainly responsible for the transfer from Society to New-society. This choice of Fr. Pagliarani’s predecessor to celebrate such an outstanding event in honour of the Society’s Founder is neither a good omen nor is it an accident. It reminds us of the quote of Our Lord (Mt. XXIII):

29  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’

It may well be that today the universal hypocrisy of a world spurning Our Lord runs so deep that many souls taking part in the ceremony of two days ago were not conscious hypocrites, God knows, nor so severely to be condemned as Our Lord condemned those who He knew were about to crucify Him. For indeed many Catholics, who had been faithfully following the Archbishop in his “disobedience” towards the Church’s unfaithful officials, were skilfully mislead by his successors back towards the same officials with their Conciliar religion of man. Nevertheless, objectively speaking, the parallel is clear.

* The Pharisees built monuments to honour the prophets that they themselves would also have killed.

The New-society builds a sarcophagus for its Founder when it itself has been making friends with the Pachamamists whom he already abominated.

* To the Pharisees Our Lord promised to send messengers to denounce their infidelity, but these they would kill just the same.

To the New-church and New-society he sends an Archbishop Viganò to remind them of their infidelity. As for the New-church, it would kill him. The New-society does its best to pay no attention to him.

* The Pharisees were warned by Our Lord of the grave consequences of their infidelity, and indeed in 70 AD Jerusalem was utterly destroyed.

As for the New-society, it has for now reduced the work of Archbishop to radical impotency, because the worldwide network of the Faith which he built up is in absolute need of new bishops to maintain that Faith, but by the New-society’s refusal to consecrate new bishops without the Pachamamists’ consent, it is refusing new bishops who will maintain the faith of Archbishop Lefebvre, because the Pachamamists will never consent to the consecration of bishops who will defend that faith.

In brief, the New-society’s members allowed that predecessor of Fr Pagliarani to honour their Founder’s place of burial who did more than anyone else to bury his work. Are they aware of how they risk contributing to the transferral of a gathering for heroes into a playpen of Neo-pharisees?

Kyrie eleison.

Men Lacking

Men Lacking on May 23, 2020

When Authority abandons Truth in the Catholic Church as it has been doing ever since Vatican II, then it is easier said than done to walk the fine line between heresy on the left and schism on the right. So it is not surprising if an unusually sharp remark like that of Archbishop Lefebvre quoted in the last two issues of these “Comments” (“Hoist the ladder . . . ”) arouses interest.

One layman even doubted the authenticity of the remark – could the sweet Archbishop really have said such a thing? Oh yes, he did. The original words are a little less elegant than the polished quotation, but the substance is identical – “With that, all that’s left is to pull up the ladder. There’s nothing to be done with these people (the Conciliar Romans). What have we got in common with them? Nothing! It’s not possible. It’s not possible” (6 Sept. 1990). The 1990 audio tape reference is Audio – Retrec – PASCALE90 or SACERDOTALE90. (However, let anyone wishing to check the quotation for himself beware of “revised” collections of the Archbishop’s tapes, because any words of his strongly opposed, like these to the Conciliarists in Rome, may well have been cut out by “editors” of the pro-Rome Newsociety.)

Another reader who reacted to the quotation is a priest, from the Novus Ordo, but now firmly established in a Newsociety Priory in Switzerland (without having been conditionally re-ordained, as best we know).

He thinks that “things really look different today” because the present generation of officials in Rome are a different breed from those that the Archbishop was reacting to in the 1980’s, and the best of them want a genuine restoration of the Church. He concludes that to adopt the Archbishop’s attitude today leaves only two solutions – either the “Resistance” or sedevacantism.

But, Father, while the present breed of Church leaders may be different men from the traitor-priests of the Archbishop’s time, who did all they could to destroy the true Church, have they understood (or read) Pascendi? And what use are sweet and well-meaning Church authorities to the Faith or to the Church or to the SSPX or to the “Resistance,” if they have not grasped that the problem is rubber minds which cannot even conceive of truth condemning error or of dogma condemning heresy? A rubber mind sympathetic to Tradition is basically no more use to Tradition than a rubber mind condemning Tradition. Nor is it true that things are “really different” from the Archbishop’s time. The sign that a priest has really understood the problem is when – at least figuratively – he wants to go down to Rome with a machine-gun and send all sweetie-pies to meet their Maker, as Putin would say. In brief, the “Resistance” must stay on the road, otherwise the road will be torn up to provide stones to cry out the Truth in place of the silent shepherds and their non-barking dogs (cf. Lk XIX, 40). The “Resistance” must not, may not, give way!

Finally a good priest seeks to console us with the news from a Society Prior that the Newsociety Superior General told a meeting in February of all Newsociety Priors in France that discussions between the SSPX and Rome are at a standstill because the SSPX is still insisting on doctrine first – well done, Fr Pagliarani – while Rome insists on fixing first a practical agreement. But need Rome even be concerned? Need it not merely wait for the ripe fruit to fall into its lap? Bishop Tissier is now so unwell that reportedly a room is being hospitalised inside Écône for him to retire to. Only two SSPX bishops remain to look after its worldwide needs. So either the Superior General must submit to Rome’s terms for the consecration of further bishops, continuing his predecessor’s disastrous conciliating of Church leaders who, however sweet they are, have lost the Faith, as the Archbishop said. Or he must consecrate more bishops without the Pope’s permission, as the Archbishop did. But would the Newsociety still follow in the Archbishop’s heroic line, of defying the (at least) objective traitors in Rome? One may doubt it.

Kyrie eleison.