Vatican II

Archbishop’s Wisdom

Archbishop’s Wisdom on December 29, 2007

Working through the monthly letters from Winona Seminary between the years of the episcopal consecrations (1988) and the year of Archbishop Lefebvre’s death (1991), I have been reading through a number of the direct quotes from those last years of his life. What clarity of vision!

Here are a few samples from mid-June of 1988, in other words after he had taken the decision to consecrate, but before the consecrations actually took place:

“It is not true that between ourselves and Rome it is just a question of details to negotiate. The basic problem is always there – Rome’s liberalism and modernism. They [the Roman churchmen] mean to bring us and all our works round to the Council while leaving us a little Tradition . . .”

Cardinal Ratzinger [as he then was] “put before me a letter to the Pope that I should sign, apologizing for my errors! But it is we that should be questioning them on their faith! We should be demanding of them to pronounce the Anti-Modernist Oath . . . But whenever I bring up their liberalism and modernism, they never reply. They just persist in their errors.”

“The more you think about it, the more you realize their intentions are not good . . . We cannot put ourselves into their hands . . . We made an honest attempt to continue Tradition under Rome’s protection, but it did not work out . . . They never intended to secure a place for Tradition within the Church. I entered these negotiations” (of May, 1988) because of “a faint hope that these churchmen had changed. They have not changed, except for the worse.” In conclusion: “I do not think one can say that Rome has not lost the faith.”

And by 2007, 2008, have we seen anything coming out of Rome to persuade us to the contrary? If anyone thinks so, let him show us his evidence.

Kyrie eleison.

“Pascendi” – II

“Pascendi” – II on November 3, 2007

Before the centenary year of Pope St. Pius X’s great anti-modernist encyclical, “Pascendi,” closes out, let us give two examples of the light which it throws upon today’s undiminishing confusion in Church and world: the primacy of objective truth, and the non-binding nature of sedevacantism (the disbelief that recent Popes are true popes).

Over the last two centuries, the modern world has fallen more and more into the grave error of subjectivism, whereby every man (or subject) makes his own truth, so that he is free from any supposedly objective truth imposing itself upon his mind from outside. One hundred years ago this error threatened to undermine the objectivity of all Catholic dogma – hence the Encyclical. Yet one hundred years later, despite Pius X’s efforts, the mass of Catholic churchmen are awash in this error – hence Vatican II, Religious Liberty, Ecumenism, etc.

In Pascendi, Pius X nailed the unhooking of the subjective mind from objective reality as the foundation of the coherent Newfaith of the modernists’ Newchurch. What mental rest and spiritual relaxation to be able to lean on the one true religion given to us from outside and above by the one true God, without our having to pay heed to the mass of modern fantasies!

However the Conciliar fantasies have taken such a grip on many of today’s churchmen that the temptation arises to consider that none of them are churchmen at all, in particular the last few Popes. But Pascendi can offer a way out of this temptation by its same teaching that subjectivism unhooks churchmen’s minds from reality. Are they fully aware of how mad they are, when virtually everyone shares in their madness? And if they are not fully aware, do they necessarily disqualify themselves as churchmen? Pascendi suggests at least to me that sedevacantism is not binding.

By no means everyone agrees with letting the Conciliar churchmen off the hook in this way, but that is of secondary importance. Back to Pascendi – what is of primary importance is to give glory to God and to save our souls by submitting our minds to that one objective Faith which God has revealed, and without which nobody can please God (Heb XI:6).

Kyrie eleison.