Conference of Archbishop Lefebvre
at Campbell, California
January
5, 1986
Mesdames, Messieurs,
I thank Father
Finnegan for having prepared on the occasion of my stop‑over
this conference and the ceremony which is going to follow. Indeed
I did not actually have any intention to give a special conference
here on my way back from the trip which I did with Father Black.
But it comes out to be a very propitious occasion.
This will allow
me to give you, during the few moments of this conference, some
more precise information on the present situation of the Church.
Because it is my impression that many Catholics do not understand,
cannot understand the real situation of the Church today. Now, in
order to take the decision to continue faithfully the Catholic Church,
to maintain our Catholic Faith, we must realize that the Catholic
Faith is in danger. Unless we reflect carefully on the present situation,
we may be led little by little to the complete loss of the Catholic
Faith! This is unfortunately the case of many Catholics who are
losing the Faith nowadays. And so I hope the short moments of this
conference will be helpful to you and that you may draw out of it
some personal fruits.
IN
YOUR PARISH
Remember your
reactions after the Council, and even during the Council, when you
saw that your priests had a sudden change of attitude, even of exterior
aspect. You saw your priests suddenly giving up their priestly garments.
You heard them saying: after all, we are men like everyone else,
we need not to distinguish ourselves from other Catholics. Then
they had more familiar attitudes with you, with the population of
their parishes; they were seen in cafes (or bars), in cinemas, without
any sign of their priesthood, and you were surprised; you said,
But why? What is happening? Why do our priests change their attitude
in such a way?
And it is not
only the priests attitude which surprised you, but when you went
into your parish church, you noticed that the priest had no longer
the soutane, he was putting the alb upon his civil garment, or he
did not put on sacred vestments; that the priest no longer did any
genuflections before our Blessed Lord. And suddenly you noticed
that the tabernacle disappeared from the high altar; you knew no
longer where the Blessed Sacrament was; then a table replaced the
altar, the statues of the saints were disappearing. And you wondered
What on earth is happening? Why all these changes? We did not ask
for all this! What is happening to these priests, for they are changing
out most holy religion? And you were right to be puzzled; all these
rapid changes at the end of the Council and in the few years after
were truly astonishing and bewildering. And you wondered: But how
all this could have happened?
And then you
saw little by little lay people taking practically the place of
the priest; men and even women reading the Epistle, the Gospel and
even distributing the Holy Communion. And the priest was sitting
while lay persons were giving Communion, and were giving the Most
Blessed Sacrament in the hands! Maybe you knelt down to receive
your Lord, and the priest gave you a sign to stand up, that now
you should receive Communion in the hands. And you wondered: but
does the priest still believe in the real presence of our Lord in
the Holy Eucharist?
And even worse,
one day you noticed that your priest was gone! He had left the parish
and got married! And you learned that there were not only one, not
only two, but thousands of priests who were gone and had married!
Recently a meeting took place near Castel Gandolfo, about three
months ago, a meeting of representatives of married priests. At
this meeting they claimed they were 70,000! Seventy thousand married
priests! That is one priest out of five who had married, abandoned
his priesthood. And you even learned that this one or that married
a nun! You learned that thousands of nuns were leaving their convents
and getting married. What is happening in the Church?
YOUR BISHOP
And so you
decided to write to your bishops. You told them: We cannot continue
like that, it is not lawful, these changes are not normal, not Catholic.
You decided to write to your bishop to ask for some explanations,
to ask: how can it happen that our priests are forsaking their
priesthood? How can it happen that our priests do not believe any
longer in their priesthood and are replaced by laymen? And you
did well.
But you were
surprised by the reaction of your bishop. Your bishop answered you:
But now one must follow the spirit of the Council. There has been
the Second Vatican Council, you must not forget this, so you must
not wonder if there are now some changes in the Church. Moreover,
you learned that the one who presided at the marriage of this or
that priest in the diocese was the bishop himself! The bishop himself
marrying his priests in his private chapel! And he was explaining
to his faithful that from now on this priest had found another
way to realize his Christian life, and thus he did not find any
difficulty to be present at this marriage.
And then you
learned that the little seminary was sold. They had sold the little
seminary because now there was no need for a little seminary; seminarians
must go in colleges like any other child, no need for a little seminary.
And even one day you learned that there was no longer a major seminary
of the diocese! The major seminary was sold; the government or the
town had bought it to make of it a house for students. But where
are our seminarians? Shall we still have some priests? Well, now,
our seminarians, they live in flats and they follow the courses
at the university because they must keep in touch with the world.
Priests ought to be in contact with the world. So in flats, they
can invite other young men, young girls, they can have contacts,
live as the other men. There is no need to make distinctions between
clerics and faithful. And then you learned that there were almost
no seminarians, that the bishop was ordaining only one or two priests
per year in the diocese while in the past it was usual to have fifteen,
twenty or thirty priests ordained.
And so you
were even more bewildered and said: So it is not only my parish,
it is now the diocese, the diocese is now contaminated! And one
day you decided to pay a visit to your bishop and you found him
in civil clothes, no more sign of his episcopate, no pectoral cross,
no episcopal ring, nothing, like a manager, a businessman.
And not only
this, but one day you learned through your children that the catechism
in schools was changed, that the Old Catechism was no longer taught,
that the bishop had now decided that the catechism had to be changed.
And so you took your childrens catechism, you looked into it and
exclaimed: but what is this? In this catechism they do not speak
of purgatory, they do not speak of the perpetual virginity of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, they do not speak of angels, they do not speak
of original sin! But the Faith, is the Faith changed? Shall our
children learn the Faith as we were taught it? What is this? Why?
ROME
So you decided
to write to Rome. And many did write to Rome to complain about their
bishops. They said: Do our bishops have the right to change the
Catechism? And in a little while we shall have no more priests,
because there is no longer any seminary! What shall the Catholic
Church become? Our children do not want to enter the seminary any
more, do not want to become priests, because why become a priest
if these priests marry and say they are men like others. So vocations
have disappeared. So you wrote to Rome and you did well.
You wrote to
Rome. Very often you do not receive any answer at all. So many letters
of complaints, of despair, reach Rome that they are not answered.
Or if they are answered, it is a very short answer: You must have
confidence in your bishop; you must have confidence in the episcopal
conference of your country . You must know from now on that there
has been the Second Vatican Council and so you must adapt to the
spirit of the Second Vatican Council.
And then you
learn that in Rome also there are unbelievable ceremonies. One day
charismatic groups were received in St. Peters basilica, and thus
in St. Peters truly scandalous manifestations happened: all these
charismatics lifting their arms in the air, shouting, screaming,
falling down, embracing each other in a shameful way, scandalous
way, in St. Peters basilica itself! And even recently in St. Mary
Majors basilica, the great and beautiful church dedicated to the
Blessed Virgin in Rome, we were told that the same charismatics
sang their songs as usual and did the same scandalous exterior corporal
manifestations.
And if you
tried to go during the week at Mass at St. Peters, you could see
that in St. Peters also the Cardinal in charge of the Vatican basilica
says Mass on a table, a marble table but still a table; it is no
longer the beautiful Altar of the Blessed Sacrament or the beautiful
Papal Altar or the beautiful Altar of the Four Doctors of the Church
in the back of the sanctuary of St. Peters basilica, no, it is
on a table facing the people, without consecrated stone for the
Sacrifice, with little respect for the Blessed Sacrament.
And one must
say it, it was in the newspapers, I do not invent it. We have all
learned that the Pope went for a ceremony, participated in a ceremony
with the Lutherans in Rome, in the Lutheran temple of Rome! And
we recently learned that the Pope had sent some delegates for the
laying down of the first stone of the Mosque in Rome!
And we learned
recently that with the change of concordate in Italy, Rome was no
longer a holy city. Up until now, Rome was considered as a sacred
city, a holy city by the Italian government. From now on, Rome is
not a holy city; therefore, anything can be done in it, the most
scandalous things from the government, from the mayor of Rome, the
Pope can no longer say anything while before he could intervene
in order, for example, to forbid precisely the building of a mosque
or the building of a temple; he could forbid this because Rome was
considered as the Holy City of Catholicism.
And we understand
that, in his travels, the Pope accepts practically all that he is
asked to do. Some ceremonies have truly no longer the Catholic character:
the way Holy Communion is sometimes distributed is painful; the
Blessed Sacrament is put into plastic bags and those who distribute
the Holy Eucharist take them under their arms, as it happened in
Paris, as it happened in Canada, they put the plastic bags under
their arms and then distribute the Sacred Hosts as one distributes
ordinary pieces of bread or any kind of food! So these kinds of
things are truly unheard of and we ask ourselves, But what on earth
happened to Holy Mother Church? Because we can see considerable
changes even in the highest places, even in Rome.
THE
PERSECUTION
So if you know
someone in Rome, as I personally know some cardinals who are traditional,
who have the traditional spirit, you go and see them; Cardinal Pallazini,
for instance, Cardinal Oddi. What do these cardinals say about the
situation of Rome? What do these cardinals say about the situation
of the whole world, of the whole Catholic world? They also are frightened,
in desolation. But what can we do? and they say: If we speak,
if we raise our voices we shall be eliminated, we shall be expelled
from our places! Indeed, there is a persecution of the Traditionalists,
a persecution of all those who want to keep the Tradition, from
the cardinals even to the bishops, to the priests, to the faithful.
ALL those who are traditionalist are persecuted. The poor
Cardinal Ottaviani passed years after the Council in true sorrow,
feeling that he was despised, he who was a man of such wonderful
rectitude, of such a wonderful firmity in the Doctrine; even during
the Council he was despised in a shameful way. And all the other
traditional cardinals have been eliminated. And progressive, modernist
cardinals were put in their stead; they are for the changes, for
the novelties in the Church. Thus now in Rome you have these cardinals:
Cardinal Casaroli, Cardinal Baggio and Cardinal Polletti, the Cardinal
Vicar, and you have as Secretary to the Congregatio to the Divine
Worship Virgilio Noe, people who are entirely against Tradition;
they do not want to see it at all, they are against, absolutely
against. As soon as someone is attached to the Tradition, he must
be eliminated, he must be pushed outside of the services of the
Church.
Thus many traditional
bishops gave their resignations. I know many bishops; I would take
the example of Bishop MacQuett, Archbishop of Dublin who felt despised
after the Council because he was attached to Tradition. He gave
his resignation and six weeks later he died. I am sure he died out
of sorrow, sorrow for what was happening in the Church, sorrow to
feel that he, a man so dedicated to the Pope, dedicated to the Church
for all his life, was despised in such a way by Rome itself. This
had bewildered him and practically killed him. Also here (in California)
I think of Cardinal McIntyre, who was also very attached to the
Tradition. He also was put aside. Cardinal Siri, who is still the
Cardinal of Genoa, was president of the episcopal conference in
Italy before the arrival of Pope Paul VI. When Pope Paul VI arrived,
he took him off the presidency of the Italian Episcopal Conference
because he was attached to the Tradition. One could quote similar
cases everywhere, in every country. Priests - and you certainly
know some priests and you have some of them here among the older
priests, you know some of them - were persecuted by their bishops
because they were keeping the Tradition.
And if I, myself,
am persecuted, and I have been and still am persecuted in my seminaries,
in my Society, if I am persecuted it is because I am attached to
Tradition, and they hate me because I keep Tradition in my seminaries.
And all the lay faithful have a similar case: lay people attached
to Tradition are thrown out of their parishes. You have there, my
dear brethren, a very tragic situation in the Church.
As I see that
the time now is getting long, I will conclude the conference. I
feel it necessary to say that all of these changes which we have
considered this morning have been the result not of hazard or just
pure accident, but they are the result of the application of a doctrine,
the doctrines of modernism and of liberalism which have been introduced
into the Church. And Pope Saint Pius X had predicted it. Pope Saint
Pius X said: Now the enemy is within the Church, the enemy is in
the seminaries. He said that himself. So from these seminaries
came forth some priests; from these priests came forth bishops and
even a Pope, with these liberal ideas, with the modernist ideas.
WHAT
IS MODERNISM
If one tries
to give a definition, or at least a clear idea of these modernist
and liberal ideas, of what do they consist? The Church is no longer
the only true religion. Here you have one of the truths denied
by all these modernists and liberals now. The Church is no longer
the only way of salvation. This is very grievous, because for twenty
centuries the Church has affirmed this: I am the only way of salvation.
The Church was saying: Our Lord Jesus Christ gave me all means
of salvation; He did not give them to any other group. He gave His
Sacrifice of the Mass, His Sacraments, His teaching and all the
care of the salvation of souls to His Apostles, to the Church, and
to no other group. Therefore, one cannot be saved outside the Church,
at least through Baptism of Desire; one must be baptized, baptized
by water or at least by desire; this is necessary to go to Heaven.
This is what the Church has always preached. Why did She send missionaries
throughout the world? To preach: you must be converted to our Lord
Jesus Christ, you must become Christian, you must be baptized and
become Catholic if you want to be baptized! Many missionaries have
been killed, slaughtered, all the Apostles have been martyred because
they have preached this Gospel, because they have preached the Gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ. But now they say: No! All religions are
ways of salvation. My dear brethren, this is false, absolutely
false! And it is precisely this which changes everything inside
the Church. This influence comes from Protestantism and from Freemasonry;
one must say it, these are Masonic ideas that the Church must not
claim to be the only way of salvation. If the Church wants to be
friend with Protestants and Freemasons, She must give up saying
that She is the only way of salvation. She must accept to say that
all religions are ways of salvation. But this is contrary to what
our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said! Our Lord said: Go, teach all
nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost; he who shall believe shall be saved, he who
shall not believe shall be condemned. No other choice!
Today we celebrate
the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. Now if there is an example
which is given to us today and which contradicts the errors which
are spreading in the Church, it is in this feast of the Holy Name
of Jesus. St. Peter said at the very beginning of his apostolate:
there is no other name given to men on earth by which men ought
to be saved than the Name of Jesus. Thus there is no other name
by which we can go to Heaven than the Name of Jesus! And the Church
is the Mystical spouse of our Lord. There is only ONE Mystical Spouse
of our Lord; it is through Her that we may be saved. This is what
has always been the Catholic Faith.
So now we are
in a very grievous situation in the Church, because everywhere within
the Church is spread the idea that all religions are ways of salvation
and that the Holy Ghost is working in all of them. Now I do not
know how the Good Lord will solve Himself this grievous problem,
but for us the conclusion which we ought to draw from all the facts
which I quoted, from the present situation, is that we must remain
Catholics, we must believe in the Catholic Church. We say it in
our Creed: Unam Sanctam Catholicam Apostolicam Ecclesiam."
Unam: One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. ONE, there are not two,
but ONE! We must believe this, and absolutely refuse to follow these
false ideas which are spreading everywhere in the Church, that one
may be saved in any religion; this would be to ruin the Church.
The Church would no longer have Her raison dê‑tre, reason
for being. If one may be saved in any religion, why the Church?
Why? She has no longer any reason for being. This was the very raison
dêtre of the Church - to be the Way of Salvation and to work with
all Her strength to convert souls so that they may become Catholic
in order to go to Heaven, to be saved.
So in this
feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, let all of us here present take
the resolution to keep the Faith as the Tradition kept it, the traditional
Faith as the Church has always given it to us, to keep Her teaching,
to keep Her Catechism of the Council of Trent in which are summed
up all the truths of our Faith, to keep the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass, to keep the Sacraments as before for you, for your children,
and above all, gather yourselves around priests who are keeping
the Faith. Do not hesitate, do not listen to criticism neither from
modernist bishops nor from modernist priests in your parishes. Do
not listen; follow the Catholic priests, those who are keeping the
Catechism, those who are keeping the Faith. These are in the Truth,
these shall save your souls. Do not be afraid, otherwise you will
do as, for instance, the Catholics in England did when they passed
to Anglicanism. They followed their priests, they followed their
bishops, and they became Anglicans, they became heretics, they went
out of the Catholic Church. If you also follow your progressive
priests, if you follow your progressive bishops, you shall become
progressive and that is no longer Catholic. This is a new error,
a new heresy. Let us remain Catholic! In order to know what is Catholic,
let us look at what the Church has done for twenty centuries, had
taught; let us keep what the Church has done for twenty centuries.
It is not possible that the Church would have been wrong for twenty
centuries. So let us attach ourselves to twenty centuries of Tradition
and we continue to do the same.
I ask you to
pray during this ceremony asking for the grace of remaining Catholic
and that we may continue our work in our seminaries for our priests,
to make Catholic priests, to continue the work and encourage religious
Monks and Nuns to remain true Monks, true Nuns. Here in America
you have the priory at Campbell with your priests, you have the
Seminary at Ridgefield; some seminarians from around here are in
Ridgefield. You have the Carmel recently opened at Philadelphia
with American Sisters, you have the College of St. Marys in Kansas,
where a group of priests and nuns are keeping the Tradition. The
College is wonderful and is working very well; I wish that you support
it. And there will soon be at Armada, Michigan, near Detroit, a
novitiate of the Sisters who are now at St. Marys; they will have
a Novitiate for the Sisters of the Society. This is encouraging
news, this shows that there are still vocations, there are good
vocations, but they must be led according to Tradition.
So let us ask
the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in the end, let us ask her to help
us to remain Catholic, to love her Divine Son. She is not ecumenical;
the Virgin Mary believes that there is only one Savior, her Son
Jesus, Whose Mother she is. She knows that it is by Him that every
soul may be saved. If one asks the Blessed Virgin Mary whether there
is another name by which one may be saved than the Name of her Divine
Son, she would answer: No! This is impossible! Every time she
came on earth, that she appeared, she appeared either with her Divine
Son, or she encouraged souls to come to her Divine Son in order
to be saved. So we ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to make the Church
remain Catholic and during this Mass I promise you to pray for you,
for your families, for all those who are in hesitation that they
may come to the Truth, that they may return to the Truth, that they
remain attached to the Tradition.
My dear brethren,
I thank you for your attention..
Someone asked
that I give in a few words what is my situation, the situation in
which I find myself in the Church, in which you find yourselves
also. Well, I think that the shortest answer, the simplest answer,
is this: we are in the situation in which St. Athanasius found himself.
I am not St. Athanasius, I am not a saint, but he found himself
in the same situation. All the Church had passed to Arianism; the
great majority of bishops, the Pope himself was favorable to a certain
kind of semi‑Arianism. Well, St. Athanasius was excommunicated
by the Pope! And Athanasius became a saint. He was visiting everywhere,
he was going everywhere. He was saying Mass in chapels everywhere
in order to maintain the Catholic Faith against Arianism. We are
in a situation fairly similar. It is not Arianism but modernism;
modernism which is, as Pope Pius X himself said, the synthesis collecting
all heresies. Now this modernism is underneath everywhere, is spreading
everywhere in the Church, even in Rome. Well, we defend our Faith,
we defend the Catholic Faith. As St. Athanasius was saying to those
who attacked him, you have kept the churches, you have kept the
monuments, we have kept the Faith! Faith is more important than
monuments! Well, we are in the same situation. So let us pray to
St. Athanasius that he may give us the courage to follow him so
that one day Holy Mother Church may find again Her good Tradition.