Bp. THOMAS SPEAKS
Bp. THOMAS SPEAKS on August 17, 2024
And, to his Master, proves still faithful and wise.
Bishop Thomas Aquinas, Superior of the “Resistance” Benedictine Monastery in the hills behind Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, does not often make public declarations, but the one that he made at the end of last month on “Archbishop Lefebvre, Archbishop Vigano and Sedevacantism” might make us wish that he took position in public more often. In those crucial years of the 1970’s and 1980’s Fr. Thomas Aquinas was never a seminarian directly under Archbishop Lefebvre inside the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X, but he was closer to the Archbishop in thought and mind than many of his own seminarians, and could be called at that time a confidant of the Archbishop. His faithfulness to the Archbishop’s way of thinking is clear from this recent article of Bishop Thomas, translated below, complete, from a French version of the original –
Archbishop Vigano has behaved like a true hero ever since he realised, or began to realise, just how the Conciliar Church is doctrinally and morally decomposing. Unfortunately he seems to be leaning towards the position that the Apostolic See is vacant. Time will tell if he is truly a sedevacantist.
As for Archbishop Lefebvre, he had already begun this fight with the Conciliar Church when it was even more decisive than it is today. He had gained the trust of Catholics all over the world, thanks to his solid doctrinal formation and to his superior practical judgment. The latter enabled him to avoid both the trap to the left of the Ecclesia Dei communities going back under Rome, and the trap to the right of sedevacantism. He pointed out precisely how on the left Dom Gerard and others like him were leading their communities to commit suicide by placing themselves under the authority of the modernists, while the sedevacantists on the right were putting themselves in a position as uncertain as it is dangerous, by stating more than Church teaching allows one to state.
Some people think that Archbishop Lefebvre would be a sedevacantist today. I do not think so. I even think the opposite. I think the arguments he gave when he was alive have lost nothing of their force or relevance today. His arguments are simple. What becomes of the Church if the Popes from John XXIII to Francis were never Popes? Were the Cardinals appointed by them not valid Cardinals? Who will elect the next Pope? How can we ever have a Pope again? Sedevacantism would seem to imperil the very existence of the Church. Let us rather wait for the Church to give official judgment on the question one day, so as to resolve it once and for all.
Given how opinions held and measures undertaken diverge within Tradition today, I see only one reasonable line of conduct: to hold on to and to hand down what we received from Archbishop Lefebvre, in doctrine and in practice. Many will object that in practice one needs to take into account how the state of the Church crisis has evolved from the Archbishop’s day to our own. True, there have been changes, but they are not essential. The crisis remains essentially the same. Like the Arian crisis which lasted 60 years, this crisis carries on, unchanged. Hence the relevance of the Archbishop’s example.
May Our Lady, conqueror of all heresies, grant us the grace to overcome the attacks of the Devil and of the modernists.
+Tomas Aquinas, O.S.B.
Here is the Catholic wisdom of Archbishop Lefebvre, restated for our times, most fruitful for the Church when judged by its fruits, of not deviating to the right or to the left, as the Lord God commanded Joshua when he succeeded to Moses as leader of the Israelites (Joshua I, 7). Truth is the measure of this centre position, and not where right or left may happen to find themselves, because Truth is of God.
Kyrie eleison.