Category:

Beware of the Error of the 50's

5/16/2013

As the world around us grows more and more naughty, with the devil being given, as a punishment for our naughtiness, more and more power to shut down whatever is true, just, holy, of good report, so candles of goodness, without in themselves increasing in power or light, nevertheless stand out more and more, and we should be correspondingly more grateful for their survival. Who can tell how soon they may be extinguished?

Thus when Catholics attending a true Mass run into any of the difficulties surrounding its celebration, they can become impatient, for instance, at lack of unity amongst all the priests celebrating the true Mass. Such impatience may be justified, at least in past, but would not such Catholics be wiser today to be grateful for any and every single true Mass celebrated? We may not yet be in those days when the sacrifice is going to be taken away (Dan 8:11), but if things continue on their present course, those days may soon be here, and then with what longing may those Catholics not look back on a single one of those back-room Masses said in however unfavorable circumstances?

It is called being grateful for small mercies, or, counting one's blessings. Similarly wise, in my opinion, is anybody who does not pin too great hopes on the future of the Society of St. Pius X. Through it no doubt immense gifts and graces have come to many of us in the past and are still coming in the present, but nothing gives us the right to count on their continuation in the future. On the contrary, according to all normal expectations, the more powerful the current of apostasy sweeping downstream Church and world to their perdition, the more irresistible the current becomes, and the more likely it is that the still resisting Society will be swept away as well.

Please, these lines are being written before the Society's General Chapter of July 11 to 14, so they have nothing to do with any particular decision that will be taken there. They are based on entirely general considerations, for instance that every Catholic group or organization has a structure of authority, which authority must ultimately derive from the Vicar of Christ, the Pope. When therefore the Pope repudiates a Catholic organization, as Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have effectively repudiated the Society of St. Pius X, then that organization is submitted to a severe strain ....

Here is another dark thought: in the 1950's the Catholic Church was holding out magnificently against the world, conversions were multiplying, the intellectuals were rejecting Communism, the whole world seemed ready to lie down at the feet of the Church, and what happened? In the 1960's it was the Church which at Vatican Two collapsed at the feet of the world! Today the Society of St. Pius X is holding out magnificently against the false church, intellectuals are rejecting the Novus Ordo, conversions to Tradition are beginning .... Let us beware of that moment when all the church seems about to lay down arms at the feet of the Society! Exile is painful, the combat is wearisome, the world has its attractions ....

Now — brighter thoughts! — of course God is God, God is the Lord of Life and death, God can preserve or destroy what He will, God will never abandon His Catholic Church nor leave His sheep without shepherd, so He can easily provide Society members with special graces to ensure the Society's survival until such time as He inspires a Pope not only to give the surviving Society his approval, but also maybe to lean on the Society for support in reconstructing the Church.

Such a scenario is intrinsically possible, even, without any vanity on our part, plausible. For instance Rome no doubt relied on Archbishop Lefebvre's death in 1991 to provoke the disintegration of the Society, but for over three years Rome has been disappointed. Similarly, right now Rome must be hoping that the General Chapter will sow germs of division or disunity between Society members, but you readers have been praying, and the Lord God can all the more easily grant special graces of unity if true fidelity to Himself was the original reason — and it was — for the Papal disapproval putting that unity under strain in the first place.

Nevertheless, while the scenario of special graces of survival for the Society until the recovery of the Pope, is a scenario possible and even plausible, it is neither necessary nor certain, and that is why we need to be wisely grateful. For instance, humanly speaking, it is wholly possible that the devil of discord or even the maneuvers of Rome will get in amongst Society members — Rome is still eagerly angling for individual defections of Society priests. Now may Heaven prevent that any of us should through any fault of his own cause or promote such discord, but regardless of our good will, the pressures are intense, the confusion is great, temptations are multiple, the devil is cunning and human nature by itself remains weak.

So the possibility of the Society stumbling and falling before such time as God brings the Pope back to his Catholic senses remains a possibility which must be kept in mind. What it amounts to is no more than what any Catholic should know: in the Catholic Church itself I have an absolute, faith, hope and trust, because the Catholic Church enjoys Our Lord's own guarantee of survival and protection ("Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Mt XVI, 18); "Going, teach all nations... and behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world" (Mt. XXVIII, 20)). But in all other institutions I have only a relative faith, hope and trust, relative to their fidelity to the Catholic Church, because within that church there are many institutions like the Society of St. Pius X that have come with time, and with time have gone. Upon the Catholic Church I absolutely depend to save my soul, upon the Society of St. Pius X only relatively. So for as long as the Society seems to be the instrument God has given me to serve the Church, I mean to serve the Society with all my heart and soul, but the Society remains in relation to the Church a means to an end.

That is why for each ceremony of ordinations like those of a week ago I am immensely grateful, and for each month that the Seminary can continue to prepare young men to be ordained, and for each year that the Society of St. Pius X is still there to sustain its seminaries, and yet if any or all of these gifts from God were to crack or perish, I would not be entirely surprised nor would my Catholic Faith be weakened. At the beginning of the Church Militant Jesus Christ led his followers through the catacombs and persecution out into the open, and at the end of the Church Militant He may well lead them from the tent in the open field through persecution back to the catacombs. If it comes to that, and if we make it to the catacombs, for many of us it will certainly not have been without the Society but back in the catacombs we may have to do without the Society.

Ah, dear Society! Dear Seminary! Dear seminarians? Regularly I tell them that as Society of St. Pius X seminarians they are on a hiding to nothing, that they have everything to lose and nothing to gain; that the whole world is against them; that the whole world is going to hell in a hand-basket; that the Society of St. Pius X could easily perish; that the future is dark and where there is no gloom it is full of doom. Do you know, I do believe that if any of my dire forebodings actually came true, seminarians would be pleasantly surprised!

Letter from Winona 1994

Pentecost History And Customs

5/15/2013

Pentecost (Whitsunday), a feast of the universal Church which commemorates the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ, on the ancient Jewish festival called the "feast of weeks" or Pentecost (Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10). Whitsunday is so called from the white garments which were worn by those who were baptised during the vigil; Pentecost ("Pfingsten" in German), is the Greek for "the fiftieth" (day after Easter).Whitsunday, as a Christian feast, dates back to the first century, although there is no evidence that it was observed, as there is in the case of Easter; the passage in 1 Corinthians 16:8 probably refers to the Jewish feast. This is not surprising, for the feast, originally of only one day's duration, fell on a Sunday; besides it was so closely bound up with Easter that it appears to be not much more than the termination of Paschal tide.

That Whitsunday belongs to the Apostolic times is stated in the seventh of the (interpolated) fragments attributed to St. Irenæus. In Tertullian (On Baptism 19) the festival appears as already well established. The Gallic pilgrim gives a detailed account of the solemn manner in which it was observed at Jerusalem ("Peregrin. Silviæ", ed. Geyer, iv). The Apostolic Constitutions (Book V, Part 20) say that Pentecost lasts one week, but in the West it was not kept with an octave until at quite a late date. It appears from Berno of Reichenau (d. 1048) that it was a debatable point in his time whether Whitsunday ought to have an octave. At present it is of equal rank with Easter Sunday. During the vigil formerly the catechumens who remained from Easter were baptized, consequently the ceremonies on Saturday are similar to those on Holy Saturday.

The office of Pentecost has only one Nocturn during the entire week. At Terce the "Veni Creator" is sung instead of the usual hymn, because at the third hour the Holy Ghost descended. The Mass has a Sequence, "Veni Sancte Spiritus" the authorship of which by some is ascribed to King Robert of France. The colour of the vestments is red, symbolic of the love of the Holy Ghost or of the tongues of fire. Formerly the law courts did not sit during the entire week, and servile work was forbidden. A Council of Constance (1094) limited this prohibition to the first three days of the week. The Sabbath rest of Tuesday was abolished in 1771, and in many missionary territories also that of Monday; the latter was abrogated for the entire Church by Pius X in 1911. Still, as at Easter, the liturgical rank of Monday and Tuesday of Pentecost week is a Double of the First Class.In Italy it was customary to scatter rose leaves from the ceiling of the churches to recall the miracle of the fiery tongues; hence in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy Whitsunday is called Pascha rosatum.

The Italian name Pascha rossa comes from the red colours of the vestments used on Whitsunday. In France it was customary to blow trumpets during Divine service, to recall the sound of the mighty wind which accompanied the Descent of the Holy Ghost. In England the gentry amused themselves with horse races. The Whitsun Ales or merrymakings are almost wholly obsolete in England. At these ales the Whitsun plays were performed. At Vespers of Pentecost in the Oriental Churches the extraordinary service of genuflexion, accompanied by long poetical prayers and psalms, takes place. (Cf. Maltzew, "Fasten-und Blumen Triodion", p. 898 where the entire Greco-Russian service is given; cf. also Baumstark, "Jacobit. Fest brevier", p. 255.) On Pentecost the Russians carry flowers and green branches in their hands.

SSPX deal with Rome

5/13/2013

“We would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order, supposedly, to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion. It is not the subjects that make the superiors, but the superiors who make the subjects… Amongst the whole Roman curia, amongst all the world’s bishops who are progressives, I would have been completely swamped. I would have been able to do nothing… [As for the Pope appointing conservative bishops] I don’t think it is a true return to Tradition. Just as in a fight when the troops are going a little too far ahead and one holds them back, so they are slightly putting the brakes on the impulse of Vatican II because the supporters of the council are going to far… the supposedly conservative bishops are wholly supportive of the council and of the liturgical reforms… No, all of that is tactics, which you have to use in any fight. You have to avoid excesses… [Asked about signs of benevolence to Tradition] There are plenty of signs showing us that what you are talking about is simply exceptional and temporary… So I do not think it is opportune to try contacting Rome, I think we must still wait. Wait, unfortunately, for the situation to get still worse on their side. But up till now, they do not want to recognize the fact… That is why what can look like a concession is in reality merely a maneuver to separate us from the largest number of faithful possible. This is the perspective in which they seem to be always giving a little more and even going very far. We must absolutely convince our faithful that it is no more than a maneuver, that it is dangerous to put oneself into the hands of the conciliar bishops and Modernist Rome. It is the greatest danger threatening our people. If we have struggled for twenty years to avoid the conciliar errors, it was not in order, now, to put ourselves into the hands of those professing these errors. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Interview, Fideliter, 1989)

“Eminence, even if you give us everything–a bishop, some autonomy from the bishops, the 1962 liturgy, allow us to continue our seminaries–we cannot work together because we are going in different directions. You are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them.” (Archbishop Lefebvre to Cardinal Ratzinger, 1987)

“And we must not waver for one moment either in not being with those who are in the process of betraying us. Some people are always admiring the grass in the neighbor’s field. Instead of looking to their friends, to the Church’s defenders, to those fighting on the battlefield, they look to our enemies on the other side. “After all, we must be charitable, we must be kind, we must not be divisive, after all, they are celebrating the Tridentine Mass, they are not as bad as everyone says” —but THEY ARE BETRAYING US —betraying us! They are shaking hands with the Church’s destroyers. They are shaking hands with people holding modernist and liberal ideas condemned by the Church. So they are doing the devil’s work.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Address to his priests, Econe, 1990)

True and False obedience Part 3 of 4

5/13/2013

    In the Diocese of Campos in Brazil, practically all the clergy have been driven out of the churches after the departure of Bishop Castro-Mayer, because they were not willing to abandon the Mass of all time which they celebrated there until recently.

    Division affects the smallest manifestations of piety. In Val-de-Marne, the diocese got the police to eject twenty-five Catholics who used to recite the Rosary in a church which had been deprived of a priest for a long period of years. In the diocese of Metz, the bishops brought in the Communist mayor to cancel the loan of a building to a group of traditionalists. In Canada six of the faithful were sentenced by a Court, which is permitted by the law of that country to deal with this kind of matter, for insisting on receiving Holy Communion on their knees. The Bishop of Antigonish had licensed them of "deliberately disturbing the order and the dignity of religious service." The judge gave the "disturbers" a conditional discharge for six months! According to the Bishop, Christians are forbidden to bend the knee before God! Last year, the pilgrimage of young people to Chartres ended with a Mass in the Cathedral gardens because the Mass of St. Pius V was banned from the Cathedral itself. A fortnight later, the doors were thrown open for a spiritual concert in the course of which dances were performed by a former Carmelite nun.

    Two religions confront each other; we are in a dramatic situation and it is impossible to avoid a choice, but the choice is not between obedience and disobedience. What is suggested to us, what we are expressly invited to do, what we are persecuted for not doing, is to choose an appearance of obedience. But even the Holy Father cannot ask us to abandon our faith.

    We therefore choose to keep it and we cannot be mistaken in clinging to what the Church has taught for two thousand years. The crisis is profound, cleverly organised and directed, and by this token one can truly believe that the master mind is not a man but Satan himself. For it is a master-stroke of Satan to get Catholics to disobey the whole of Tradition in the name of obedience. A typical example is furnished by the "aggiornamento" of the religious societies. By obedience, monks and nuns are made to disobey the laws and constitutions of their founders, which they swore to observe when they made their profession. Obedience in this case should have been a categorical refusal. Even legitimate authority cannot command a reprehensible and evil act. Nobody can oblige anyone to change his monastic vows into simple promises, just as nobody can make us become Protestants or modernists. St. Thomas Aquinas, to whom we must always refer, goes so far in the "Summa Theologica" as to ask whether the "fraternal correction" prescribed by Our Lord can be exercised towards our superiors. After having made all the appropriate distinctions he replies: "One can exercise fraternal correction towards superiors when it is a matter of faith."

    If we were more resolute on this subject, we would avoid coming to the point of gradually absorbing heresies. At the beginning of the Sixteenth Century the English underwent an experience of the kind we are living through, but with the difference that it began with a schism. In all other respects the similarities are astonishing and should give us cause to ponder. The new religion which was to take the name "Anglicanism"
started with an attack on the Mass, personal confession and priestly celibacy. Henry VIII, although he had taken the enormous responsibility of separating his people from Rome, rejected the suggestions that were put to him, but a year after his death a statute authorised the use of English for the celebration of the Mass. Processions were forbidden and a new order of service was imposed, the "Communion Service" in which there was no longer an Offertory. To reassure Christians another statute forbade all sorts of changes, whereas a third allowed priests to get rid of the statues of the saints and of the Blessed Virgin in the churches. Venerable works of art were sold to traders, just as today they go to antique dealers and flea-markets.

PART 4

Those who have read the Third Secret....

5/13/2013

S. Cardinal Ottaviani:

The message was not to be opened before 1960. I asked Sister Lucia, “Why this date?” She answered, “Because then it will be clearer.”

Cardinal Ottaviani was the head of the Holy Office. He interrogated Sister Lucia in 1955.

Fr. J. Schweigl:
I cannot reveal anything of what I learned at Fatima concerning the Third Secret, but I can say that it has two parts: one concerns the Pope; the other logically (although I must say nothing) would have to be the continuation of the words: 'In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved' (The Whole Truth about Fatima, Vol. III, p. 74).

Pope Pius XII personally sent Fr. Schweigle to interrogate Sr. Lucia about the Third Secret in 1952.

Fr. Joaquin AlonsoIn the period preceding the great triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, terrible things are to happen.
These form the content of the third part of the Secret.
What are they? If 'in Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved' it can be clearly deduced from this that in other parts of the Church the dogmas are going to become obscure or even lost altogether.
Perhaps it even refers to the failures of the upper hierarchy of the Church.

Fr. Alonso was the official archivist of Fatima, 1965

J. Cardinal Ratzinger:
Yes, I have read [the Third Secret]. [It refers to] a radical call to conversion; the absolute seriousness of history; the dangers which threaten the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore (the life) of the world (Jesus, November 11, 1984).

Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict the XVI in 2005.

St. Nicholas von Flue (15th century)

“The Church will be punished because the majority of Her members, high and low, will become so perverted. The Church will sink deeper and deeper until She will at last seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and the other Apostles to have expired. But, after this, She will be victoriously exalted in the sight of all doubters.”

St. John Bosco (19th century)

“There will be an Ecumenical Council in the next century, after which there will be chaos in the Church.” [1862 Prediction]

Our Lady of Fatima, the third Secret found?

5/13/2013

A version of the Third Secret, as supposedly heard by a French priest in Germany in 1994, in the middle of listening to a CD of religious music. At one point the music faded into the background, and he heard a normal (not inner) voice say quite clearly, " The Church will bleed from all her wounds." Then he heard the following:

"A wicked Council will be planned and prepared which will change the face of the Church. Many souls will lose the Faith, confusion will reign everywhere. The sheep will seek in vain for their shepherds. A schism will rend my Son's tunic. It will be the end of the times, announced in Scripture and recalled by me in many places. The abomination of abominations will reach its peak and call down the chastisement announced at La Salette. The arm of my Son that I can no longer hold back, will come down on this world which will have to expiate its crimes. All that one will hear of is wars and revolutions. The elements of nature will be shaken and will strike anguish into the best (most courageous) of men. The Church will bleed from all her wounds. Blessed those who persevere and seek refuge in my Heart, for in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph..."

After which, all that the priest heard was, "That is the Third Secret of Fatima". The identity of this priest is known, but he prefers to remain unnamed. He is apparently Traditional, without belonging to the Society of St. Pius X or the Fraternity of St. Peter. He is always in a cassock. He is not sedevacantist. He passes for being worthy of belief.

more....

True and False obedience Part 4 of 4

5/12/2013

Only a few bishops pointed out that the Communion Service infringed the dogma of the Real Presence by saying that Our Lord gives us His body and blood spritually. The Confiteor, translated into the vernacular, was recited at the same time by the celebrant and the faithful and served as an absolution. The Mass was trans formed into a meal or Communion. But even clearheaded bishops eventually accepted the new Prayer Book in order to maintain peace and unity. It is for exactly the same reasons that the post-Conciliar Church wants to impose on us the Novus Ordo. The English bishops in the Sixteenth Century affirmed that the Mass was a "memorial"! A sustained propaganda introduced Lutheran views into the minds of the faithful. Preachers had to be approved by the Government.

During the same period the Pope was only referred to as the "Bishop of Rome". He was no longer the father but the brother of the other bishops and in this instance, the brother of the King of England who had made himself head of the national church. Cranmer's Prayer Book was composed by mixing parts of the Greek liturgy with parts of Luther's liturgy. How can we not be reminded of Mgr. Bugnini drawing up the so-called Mass of Paul VI with the collaboration of six Protestant "observers" attached as experts to the Concilium for the reform of the liturgy? The Prayer Book begins with these words, "The Supper and Holy Communion, commonly called Mass...", which foreshadows the notorious Article 7 of the Institutio Generalis of the New Missal, revived by the Lourdes Eucharistic Congress in 1981: "The Supper of the Lord, otherwise call the Mass ...". The destruction of the sacred, to which I have already referred, also formed part of the Anglican reform. The words of the Canon were required to be spoken in a loud voice, as happens in the "Eucharists" of the present day.

The Prayer Book was also approved by the bishops "to preserve the internal unity of the Kingdom." Priests who continued to say the "Old Mass" incurred penalties ranging from loss of income to removal pure and simple, with life imprisonment for further offences. We have to be grateful that these days they do not put tradionalist priests in prison.

Tudor England, led by its pastors, slid into heresy without realising it, by accepting change under the pretext of adapting to the historical circumstances of the time. Today the whole of Christendom is in danger of taking the same road. Have you thought that even if we who are of a certain age run a smaller risk, children and younger seminarians brought up in new catechisms, experimental psychology and sociology, without a trace of dogmatic or moral theology, canon law or Church history, are educated in a faith which is not the true one and take for granted the new-Protestant notions with which they are indoctrinated? What will tomorrow's religion be if we do not resist? You will be tempted to say: "But what can we do about it? It is a bishop who says this or that. Look, this document comes from the Catechetical Commission or some other official commission."

That way there is nothing left for you but to lose your faith. But you do not have the right to react in that way. St. Paul has warned us: "Even if an angel from Heaven came to tell you anything other than what I have taught you, do not listen to him."

Such is the secret of true obedience.

The Pope, is he a heretic?

5/12/2013

"Now I don't know if the time has come to say that the pope(Vatican II Pope) is a heretic. I don't know if it is the time to say that. You know, for some time many people, the sede-vacantists, have been saying "there is no more pope," but I think that for me it was not yet the time to say that, because it was not sure, it was not evident, it was very difficult to say that the Pope is a heretic, the Pope is apostate. But I recognize that slowly, very slowly, by the deeds and acts of the pope himself we begin to be very anxious. I am not inventing the situation; I do not want it. I would gladly give my life to bring it to an end, but this is the situation we face, unfolding before our eyes like a film in the cinema. I don't think it has ever happened in the history of the Church, the man seated in the chair of Peter partaking in the worship of false gods. What conclusion must we draw in a few months if we are confronted by these repeated acts of partaking in false worship? I don't know. I wonder. But I think the Pope can do nothing worse than call together a meeting of all religions, when we know there is only one true religion and all other religions belong to the devil. So perhaps after this famous meeting of Assisi, perhaps we must say that the Pope is a heretic, is apostate. Now I don't wish yet to say it formally and solemnly, but it seems at first sight that it is impossible for a pope to be publicly and formally heretical. Our Lord has promised to be with him, to keep his faith, to keep him in the Faith -- how can he at the same time be a public heretic and virtually apostatize? So it is possible we may be obliged to believe this pope is not the pope."

--Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991), "The Archbishop Speaks: Talks given by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on March 30 and April 18, 1986," The Angelus, July 1, 1986 (IX:7, pp. 3-4)

True and False obedience Part 2 of 4

5/12/2013

    In the first half of the Fifth Century, St. Vincent of Lerins, who was a soldier before consecrating himself to God and acknowledged having been "tossed for a long time on the sea of the world before finding shelter in the harbour of faith", spoke thus about the development of dogma: "Will there be no religious advances in Christ's Church? Yes, certainly, there will be some very important ones, of such a sort as to constitute progress in the faith and not change. What matters is that in the course of ages knowledge, understanding and wisdom grow in abundance and in depth, in each and every individual as in the churches; provided always that there is identity of dogma and continuity of thought". Vincent, who had experienced the shock of heresies, gives a rule of conduct which still holds good after fifteen hundred years: "What should the Catholic Christian therefore do if some part of the Church arrives at the point of detaching itself from the universal communion and the universal faith? What else can he do but prefer the general body which is healthy to the gangrenous and corrupted limb? And if some new contagion strives to poison, not just a small part of the Church but the whole Church at once, then again his great concern will be to attach himself to Antiquity which obviously cannot any more be seduced by any deceptive novelty."
    In the Rogation-tide litanies the Church teaches us to say: "We beseech thee O Lord, maintain in thy holy religion the Sovereign Pontiff and all the orders of ecclesiastical hierarchy." This means that such a disaster could very will happen.
    In the Church there is no law or jurisdiction which can impose on a Christian a diminution of his faith. All the faithful can and should resist whatever interferes with their faith, supported by the catechism of their childhood. If they are faced with an order putting their faith in danger of corruption, there is an overriding duty to disobey.
    It is because we judge that our faith is endangered by the post-conciliar reforms and tendencies, that we have the duty to disobey and keep the Tradition. Let us add this, that the greatest service we can render to the Church and to the successor of Peter is to reject the reformed and liberal Church. Jesus Christ, Son of God made man, is neither liberal nor reformable. On two occasions I have heard emissaries of the Holy See say to me: "The social Kingdom of Our Lord is no longer possible in our times and we must ultimately accept the plurality of religions." This is exactly what they have said to me.
    Well, I am not of that religion. I do not accept that new religion. It is a liberal, modernist religion which has its worship, its priests, its faith, its catechism, its ecumenical Bible translated jointly by Catholics, Jews, Protestants and Anglicans, all things to all men, pleasing everybody by frequently sacrificing the interpretation of the Magisterium. We do not accept this ecumencal Bible. There is the Bible of God; it is His Word which we have not the right to mix with the words of men.
    When I was a child the Church everywhere had the same faith, the same sacraments and the same Sacrifice of the Mass. If anyone had told me then that it would be changed, I would not have believed him. Throughout the breadth of Christendom we prayed to God in the same way. The new liberal and modernist religion has sown division.
    Christians are divided within the same family because of this confusion which has established itself; they no longer go to the same Mass and they no longer read the same books. Priests no longer know what to do; either they obey blindly what their superiors impose on them, and lose to some degree the faith of their childhood and youth,renouncing the promises they made when they took the Anti-Modernist Oath at the moment of their ordination; or on the other hand they resist, but with Unfeeling of separating themselves from the Pope, who is our father and the Vicar of Christ. In both cases, what a heartbreak! Many priests have died of sorrow before their time.
    How many more have been forced to abandon the parishes where for years they had practised their ministry, victims of open persecution by their hierarchy in spite of the support of the faithful whose pastor was being torn away! I have before me the moving farewell of one of them to the people of the two parishes of which he was priest: "In our interview on the the Bishop addressed an ultimatum to me, to accept or reject the
new religion; I could not evade the issue. Therefore, to remain faithful to the obligation of my priesthood, to remain faithful to the Eternal Church... I was forced and coerced against my will to retire... Simple honesty and above all my honour as a priest impose on me an obligation to be loyal, precisely in this matter of divine gravity (the Mass)... This is the proof of faithfulness and love that I must give to God and men and to you in
particular, and it is on this that I shall be judged on the last day along with all those to whom was entrusted the same deposit (of faith)."
PART 3

True and False obedience Part 1 of 4

5/12/2013

Taken from Open letter to confused Catholics
by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
1986 edition, pages 134 to141. Unedited.

Indiscipline is everywhere in the Church. Committees of priests send demands to their bishops, bishops disregard pontifical exhortations, even the recommendations and decisions of the Council are not respected and yet one never hears uttered the word "disobedience", except as applied to Catholics who wish to remain faithful to Tradition and just simply keep the Faith.

Obedience is a serious matter; to remain united to the Church's Magisterium and particularly to the Supreme Pontiff is one of the conditions of salvation. We are deeply aware of this and nobody is more attached to the present reigning successor of Peter, or has been more attached to his predecessors, than we are. I am speaking here of myself and of the many faithful driven out of the churches, and also of the priests who are obliged to celebrate Mass in barns as in the French Revolution, and to organise alternative catechism classes in town and country.

We are attached to the Pope for as long as he echoes the apostolic traditions and the teachings of all his predecessors. It is the very definition of the successor of Peter that he is the keeper of this deposit. Pius IX teaches us in Pastor Aeternus: "The Holy Spirit has not in fact been promised to the successors of Peter to permit them to proclaim new doctrine according to His revelations, but to keep strictly and to expound faithfully, with His help, the revelations transmitted by the Apostles, in other words the Deposit of Faith".

The authority delegated by Our Lord to the Pope, the Bishops and the priesthood in general is for the service of faith. To make use of law, institutions and authority to annihilate the Catholic Faith and no longer to transmit life, is to practise spiritual abortion or contraception.

This is why we are submissive and ready to accept everything that is in conformity with our Catholic Faith, as it has been taught for two thousand years, but we reject everything that is opposed to it.

For the fact is that a grave problem confronted the conscience and the faith of all Catholics during the Pontificate of Paul VI. How could a Pope, true successor of Peter, assured of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, preside over the most vast and extensive destruction of the Church in her history within so short a space of time, something that no heresiarch has ever succeeded in doing? One day this question will have to be answered.

continued......PART 2

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Beware of the Error of the 50's

Pentecost History And Customs

SSPX deal with Rome

True and False obedience Part 3 of 4

Those who have read the Third Secret....

Our Lady of Fatima, the third Secret found?

True and False obedience Part 4 of 4

The Pope, is he a heretic?

True and False obedience Part 2 of 4

True and False obedience Part 1 of 4

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