4 July 1976
My Dear Monsieur l'Abbé,
My Dear Friends,
My Dear Brothers,
It is not in this Exhibition Hall that your first Mass should have taken place, you being a child of this city. It is in a large and beautiful church of the City of Geneva that you should have celebrated this ceremony so dear to the hearts of all the Catholics of Geneva. But, as Providence has decided otherwise, here you are before the crowd of your friends, of your relatives, of those who want to share your joy and the honor which God has done you of being His priest, a priest forever.
This history of your vocation is the implementation of a plan.
And I shall say what our plan is.
You were born of Protestant parents in this City of Geneva, and in childhood and youth you followed the teaching of the Protestant religion. You were well educated, and you had a profession which gave you all the world can hope for here below. Then, all of a sudden, touched by the grace of God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you abruptly decided, under the influence of that grace, to direct: yourself to the true Church, the Catholic Church; and you desired not only to become a Catholic but also to become a priest. I can still see you arriving for the first time at Econe; and I confess that it was not without a certain apprehension that I received you, asking myself if so rapid a passage from Protestantism to the desire of becoming a Catholic priest was not an inspiration with no future. That is the reason why you stayed some time at Econe reflecting more deeply on the desire within you, your aspiration to the priesthood. We all admired your perseverance, your will to reach that goal, despite your age, despite a certain weariness of ecclesiastical studies, of the study of philosophy, theology, Scripture, Canon Law -for you were a scientist. And now, by God's grace, after those years of study at Econe you have received the grace of sacerdotal ordination. It seems to me to be difficult for anyone who has not received that grace to realize what the grace of priesthood is. As I said to you a few days ago at the time of the ordination: You can no longer say that you are a man like other men; that is not true. You are no longer a man like other men: henceforward you are marked with the sacerdotal character which is something ontological, which marks your soul and puts it above the faithful. Yes, whether you are a saint, or, which God forbid, whether you are like priests who are, perhaps, alas, in hell: they still have the sacerdotal character. This sacerdotal character unites you to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to the priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in a very special way, a participation which the faithful cannot have; and that is what permits you, which will permit you in a few moments, to pronounce the words of consecration of Holy Mass, and in a way to make God obey your order, your words. At your words Jesus Christ will come personally, physically, substantially under the species of the bread and wine; He will be present on the altar, and you will adore Him; you will kneel to adore Him, to adore the presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what the priest is. What an extraordinary reality! We need to be in heaven-and even in heaven shall we understand what the priest is? Is it not St. Augustine who says: "Were I to find myself before a priest and an angel, I should salute the priest first, before the angel"?
So, then, here you are, become a priest. I said that the history of your vocation is a whole plan, it is our plan. That is profoundly true, because we have the Catholic Faith and are not afraid to affirm our faith; and I know that our Protestant friends, who are perhaps here in this assembly, approve of us. They approve of us: they need to feel the presence amongst them of Catholics who are Catholics, and not Catholics who appear to be in full accord with them on points of faith. One does not deceive one's friends; we cannot deceive our Protestant friends. We are Catholics; we affirm our faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we affirm our faith in the divinity of the Holy Catholic Church, we think that Jesus Christ is the sole way, the sole truth, the sole life, and that one cannot be saved outside Our Lord Jesus Christ and consequently outside His Mystical Spouse, the Holy Catholic Church. No doubt, the graces of God are distributed outside the Catholic Church; but those who are saved, even outside the Catholic Church, are saved by the Catholic Church, by Our Lord Jesus Christ, even if they do not know it, even if they are not aware of it, for it is Our Lord Jesus Christ Him- self who has said it: "You can do nothing without me -nihil potestis facere sine me." You cannot come to the Father without going by me, so you cannot come to God without going by me. "When I shall be lifted up from the earth, " says Our Lord Jesus Christ, meaning He will be on His cross, "I shall draw all souls to me." Only Our Lord Jesus Christ, being God, could say such things: no man here below can speak as Our Lord Jesus Christ has spoken, because He alone is the Son of God, He is our God- Tu solus altissimus, tu solus Dominus. He is Our Lord, He is the Most High, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is for that that Ecône remains in being, it is for that that Econe exists, because we believe that what the Catholics have taught, what the Popes have taught, what the Councils have taught for twenty centuries, we cannot possibly abandon. We cannot possibly change our faith: we have our Credo, and we will keep it till we die. We cannot change our Credo, we cannot change the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we cannot change our Sacraments, changing them into human works, purely human, which no longer carry the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is because, in fact, we feel and are convinced that in the last fifteen years something has happened in the Church, something has happened in the Church which has introduced into the highest summits of the Church, and into those who ought to defend our faith, a poison, a virus, which makes them adore the golden calf of this age, adore, in some sense, the errors of this age. To adopt the world, they wish to adopt also the errors of the world; by opening on to the world, they wish also to open themselves to the errors of the world, those errors which say, for example, that all religions are of equal worth. We cannot accept that, those errors which say that the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ is now an impossibility and should no longer be sought. We do not accept that. Even if the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ is difficult, we want it, we seek it, we say every day in the Our Father: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." If His will were done here below as it is done in heaven-imagine what it would be like if God's will were really done here below as it is done in heaven: it would be paradise on earth! That is the reign of Our Lord which we seek, which we desire with all our strength, even if we never achieve it; and, because God has asked that from us, even if we have to shed our blood for that kingdom we are ready. And that is what the priests are whom we form at Econe, priests who have the Catholic faith, priests such as have always been formed.
Do you not think there is something inconceivable, unbelievable? Take my example, which is like yours. I have now been a priest for fifty years and a bishop for thirty. That means I was a bishop before the Council, a priest before the Council. In my career as priest and bishop I was made responsible for the formation of priests. In the beginning when I went as a missionary to Gabon I was appointed to the seminary of Gabon in Equatorial Africa. I formed priests, one of whom became a bishop. I was recalled to France, and again I was appointed to form seminarians in the seminary of Mortain with the Holy Ghost Fathers. I then went back as bishop of Dakar, in Senegal. I set myself again to form good priests of whom two are bishops and one has just been named Cardinal; and when I was at Mortain in France I formed seminarians, one of whom is now Bishop of Cayenne; so amongst my pupils I have four bishops, one of them a cardinal. I form my seminarians at Econe exactly as I have always formed my seminarians for thirty years; and now, all of a sudden, we are condemned, almost excommunicated, thrown out of the Catholic Church, in disobedience to the Catholic Church, because I have done the same thing that I have done for thirty years. Something has happened in Holy Church. It is not possible! I have changed not one iota in my formation of seminarians, on the contrary I have added a deeper and stronger spirituality, because it seemed to me a certain spiritual formation was lacking in young priests, as, in fact, many have abandoned the priesthood, many, alas, have given the world appalling scandal in their leaving of the priesthood. So it seemed to me necessary to give these priests a deeper , stronger, more courageous spiritual formation to enable them to face difficulties... 1
So, something has happened in the Church: the Church since the Council, already some time before the Council, during the Council, and throughout the reforms, has chosen to take a new direction, to have Her new priests, Her new priesthood, a new type of priest as has been said; She has chosen to have a new sacrifice of the Mass, or rather let us say a new eucharist; She has chosen to have a new catechism, She has chosen to have new seminaries, She has chosen to reform Her religious congregations. And what have we now come to? A few days ago I read in a German paper that in the last few years there are three million fewer practicing Catholics in Germany. Cardinal Marty himself, he who also condemns us, Cardinal Marty, Archbishop of Paris, has said that Mass attendance is down fifty per cent in his diocese since the Council.
Who will say that the fruits of that Council are marvelous fruits of holiness, fervor, and growth of the Catholic Church?
They have chosen to embrace the errors of the world, they have chosen to embrace the errors which come to us from Liberalism, and which come to us -alas, it must be said -from those who lived here four centuries ago, from those reformers who have spread Liberal ideas throughout the world; and those ideas have at last penetrated to the interior of the Church. This monster which is at the interior of the Church must disappear, so that the Church may find Her own nature again, Her own authenticity, Her own identity. That is what we are trying to do, and it is why we continue: we do not want to be destroyers of the Church. If we stop, we shall be certain, convinced, that we are destroying the Church, as those are engaged in destroying Her who are steeped in that false idea. And so we wish to go on with the construction of the Church; and we cannot do better to get the Church built than to make these priests, these young priests -showing always the example of a deep Catholic faith, of an immense charity. I think I can say that it is we who have a true charity towards Protestants, towards all those who do not have our faith. If we believe our Catholic faith, if we are convinced that God has really given His graces to the Catholic Church, we have the desire of sharing our riches with our friends, giving them to our friends. If we are convinced that we have the truth, we should exert ourselves to make it known that that truth can benefit our friends as well. It is a failure in charity to hide one's truth, to hide one's personal riches and not let those profit from them who do not have their own. Why have missions, why set off to distant countries to convert souls, if not because one is certain of having the truth and desirous of sharing the graces received with those who have not yet received them? It is indeed Our Saviour who said: "Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. He that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be condemned." That is what Our Saviour said. Strengthened by these words, we continue our apostolate, trusting in Providence: it is not possible that this condition of the Church should remain indefinitely.
This morning, in the lessons which Holy Church has us read, we read the story of David and Goliath, and I thought to myself: Should we not be the young David with his sling and a few stones which he found in the stream to strike down Goliath clad in special armour and with a sword capable of splitting his enemy in two? Well, who knows if Econe is not the little stone which will finish by destroying Goliath? Goliath believed in himself; David believed in God and invoked God before attacking Goliath. That is what we are doing. We are full of confidence in God, and we pray God to help us to strike down this giant who believes in himself, who believes in his armour, his muscles, and his weapons. That means the men who believe in themselves, who believe in their science, who believe that by human means we shall succeed in converting the world. As for us, we put our trust in God, and we hope that this Goliath who has penetrated into the interior of the Church will one day be struck down, and that the Church will truly discover Her authenticity, Her truth such as She has always had. Oh, the Church always has it; She does not will to perish; and we hope, precisely, to cooperate with that vitality of the Church and that continuity of the Church. I am convinced that these young priests will continue the Church. That is what we ask them to do, and we are sure that with the grace of God and the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Priesthood, they will succeed.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
My Dear Monsieur l'Abbé,
My Dear Friends,
My Dear Brothers,
It is not in this Exhibition Hall that your first Mass should have taken place, you being a child of this city. It is in a large and beautiful church of the City of Geneva that you should have celebrated this ceremony so dear to the hearts of all the Catholics of Geneva. But, as Providence has decided otherwise, here you are before the crowd of your friends, of your relatives, of those who want to share your joy and the honor which God has done you of being His priest, a priest forever.
This history of your vocation is the implementation of a plan.
And I shall say what our plan is.
You were born of Protestant parents in this City of Geneva, and in childhood and youth you followed the teaching of the Protestant religion. You were well educated, and you had a profession which gave you all the world can hope for here below. Then, all of a sudden, touched by the grace of God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you abruptly decided, under the influence of that grace, to direct: yourself to the true Church, the Catholic Church; and you desired not only to become a Catholic but also to become a priest. I can still see you arriving for the first time at Econe; and I confess that it was not without a certain apprehension that I received you, asking myself if so rapid a passage from Protestantism to the desire of becoming a Catholic priest was not an inspiration with no future. That is the reason why you stayed some time at Econe reflecting more deeply on the desire within you, your aspiration to the priesthood. We all admired your perseverance, your will to reach that goal, despite your age, despite a certain weariness of ecclesiastical studies, of the study of philosophy, theology, Scripture, Canon Law -for you were a scientist. And now, by God's grace, after those years of study at Econe you have received the grace of sacerdotal ordination. It seems to me to be difficult for anyone who has not received that grace to realize what the grace of priesthood is. As I said to you a few days ago at the time of the ordination: You can no longer say that you are a man like other men; that is not true. You are no longer a man like other men: henceforward you are marked with the sacerdotal character which is something ontological, which marks your soul and puts it above the faithful. Yes, whether you are a saint, or, which God forbid, whether you are like priests who are, perhaps, alas, in hell: they still have the sacerdotal character. This sacerdotal character unites you to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to the priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in a very special way, a participation which the faithful cannot have; and that is what permits you, which will permit you in a few moments, to pronounce the words of consecration of Holy Mass, and in a way to make God obey your order, your words. At your words Jesus Christ will come personally, physically, substantially under the species of the bread and wine; He will be present on the altar, and you will adore Him; you will kneel to adore Him, to adore the presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what the priest is. What an extraordinary reality! We need to be in heaven-and even in heaven shall we understand what the priest is? Is it not St. Augustine who says: "Were I to find myself before a priest and an angel, I should salute the priest first, before the angel"?
So, then, here you are, become a priest. I said that the history of your vocation is a whole plan, it is our plan. That is profoundly true, because we have the Catholic Faith and are not afraid to affirm our faith; and I know that our Protestant friends, who are perhaps here in this assembly, approve of us. They approve of us: they need to feel the presence amongst them of Catholics who are Catholics, and not Catholics who appear to be in full accord with them on points of faith. One does not deceive one's friends; we cannot deceive our Protestant friends. We are Catholics; we affirm our faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we affirm our faith in the divinity of the Holy Catholic Church, we think that Jesus Christ is the sole way, the sole truth, the sole life, and that one cannot be saved outside Our Lord Jesus Christ and consequently outside His Mystical Spouse, the Holy Catholic Church. No doubt, the graces of God are distributed outside the Catholic Church; but those who are saved, even outside the Catholic Church, are saved by the Catholic Church, by Our Lord Jesus Christ, even if they do not know it, even if they are not aware of it, for it is Our Lord Jesus Christ Him- self who has said it: "You can do nothing without me -nihil potestis facere sine me." You cannot come to the Father without going by me, so you cannot come to God without going by me. "When I shall be lifted up from the earth, " says Our Lord Jesus Christ, meaning He will be on His cross, "I shall draw all souls to me." Only Our Lord Jesus Christ, being God, could say such things: no man here below can speak as Our Lord Jesus Christ has spoken, because He alone is the Son of God, He is our God- Tu solus altissimus, tu solus Dominus. He is Our Lord, He is the Most High, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is for that that Ecône remains in being, it is for that that Econe exists, because we believe that what the Catholics have taught, what the Popes have taught, what the Councils have taught for twenty centuries, we cannot possibly abandon. We cannot possibly change our faith: we have our Credo, and we will keep it till we die. We cannot change our Credo, we cannot change the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we cannot change our Sacraments, changing them into human works, purely human, which no longer carry the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is because, in fact, we feel and are convinced that in the last fifteen years something has happened in the Church, something has happened in the Church which has introduced into the highest summits of the Church, and into those who ought to defend our faith, a poison, a virus, which makes them adore the golden calf of this age, adore, in some sense, the errors of this age. To adopt the world, they wish to adopt also the errors of the world; by opening on to the world, they wish also to open themselves to the errors of the world, those errors which say, for example, that all religions are of equal worth. We cannot accept that, those errors which say that the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ is now an impossibility and should no longer be sought. We do not accept that. Even if the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ is difficult, we want it, we seek it, we say every day in the Our Father: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." If His will were done here below as it is done in heaven-imagine what it would be like if God's will were really done here below as it is done in heaven: it would be paradise on earth! That is the reign of Our Lord which we seek, which we desire with all our strength, even if we never achieve it; and, because God has asked that from us, even if we have to shed our blood for that kingdom we are ready. And that is what the priests are whom we form at Econe, priests who have the Catholic faith, priests such as have always been formed.
Do you not think there is something inconceivable, unbelievable? Take my example, which is like yours. I have now been a priest for fifty years and a bishop for thirty. That means I was a bishop before the Council, a priest before the Council. In my career as priest and bishop I was made responsible for the formation of priests. In the beginning when I went as a missionary to Gabon I was appointed to the seminary of Gabon in Equatorial Africa. I formed priests, one of whom became a bishop. I was recalled to France, and again I was appointed to form seminarians in the seminary of Mortain with the Holy Ghost Fathers. I then went back as bishop of Dakar, in Senegal. I set myself again to form good priests of whom two are bishops and one has just been named Cardinal; and when I was at Mortain in France I formed seminarians, one of whom is now Bishop of Cayenne; so amongst my pupils I have four bishops, one of them a cardinal. I form my seminarians at Econe exactly as I have always formed my seminarians for thirty years; and now, all of a sudden, we are condemned, almost excommunicated, thrown out of the Catholic Church, in disobedience to the Catholic Church, because I have done the same thing that I have done for thirty years. Something has happened in Holy Church. It is not possible! I have changed not one iota in my formation of seminarians, on the contrary I have added a deeper and stronger spirituality, because it seemed to me a certain spiritual formation was lacking in young priests, as, in fact, many have abandoned the priesthood, many, alas, have given the world appalling scandal in their leaving of the priesthood. So it seemed to me necessary to give these priests a deeper , stronger, more courageous spiritual formation to enable them to face difficulties... 1
So, something has happened in the Church: the Church since the Council, already some time before the Council, during the Council, and throughout the reforms, has chosen to take a new direction, to have Her new priests, Her new priesthood, a new type of priest as has been said; She has chosen to have a new sacrifice of the Mass, or rather let us say a new eucharist; She has chosen to have a new catechism, She has chosen to have new seminaries, She has chosen to reform Her religious congregations. And what have we now come to? A few days ago I read in a German paper that in the last few years there are three million fewer practicing Catholics in Germany. Cardinal Marty himself, he who also condemns us, Cardinal Marty, Archbishop of Paris, has said that Mass attendance is down fifty per cent in his diocese since the Council.
Who will say that the fruits of that Council are marvelous fruits of holiness, fervor, and growth of the Catholic Church?
They have chosen to embrace the errors of the world, they have chosen to embrace the errors which come to us from Liberalism, and which come to us -alas, it must be said -from those who lived here four centuries ago, from those reformers who have spread Liberal ideas throughout the world; and those ideas have at last penetrated to the interior of the Church. This monster which is at the interior of the Church must disappear, so that the Church may find Her own nature again, Her own authenticity, Her own identity. That is what we are trying to do, and it is why we continue: we do not want to be destroyers of the Church. If we stop, we shall be certain, convinced, that we are destroying the Church, as those are engaged in destroying Her who are steeped in that false idea. And so we wish to go on with the construction of the Church; and we cannot do better to get the Church built than to make these priests, these young priests -showing always the example of a deep Catholic faith, of an immense charity. I think I can say that it is we who have a true charity towards Protestants, towards all those who do not have our faith. If we believe our Catholic faith, if we are convinced that God has really given His graces to the Catholic Church, we have the desire of sharing our riches with our friends, giving them to our friends. If we are convinced that we have the truth, we should exert ourselves to make it known that that truth can benefit our friends as well. It is a failure in charity to hide one's truth, to hide one's personal riches and not let those profit from them who do not have their own. Why have missions, why set off to distant countries to convert souls, if not because one is certain of having the truth and desirous of sharing the graces received with those who have not yet received them? It is indeed Our Saviour who said: "Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. He that believeth shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be condemned." That is what Our Saviour said. Strengthened by these words, we continue our apostolate, trusting in Providence: it is not possible that this condition of the Church should remain indefinitely.
This morning, in the lessons which Holy Church has us read, we read the story of David and Goliath, and I thought to myself: Should we not be the young David with his sling and a few stones which he found in the stream to strike down Goliath clad in special armour and with a sword capable of splitting his enemy in two? Well, who knows if Econe is not the little stone which will finish by destroying Goliath? Goliath believed in himself; David believed in God and invoked God before attacking Goliath. That is what we are doing. We are full of confidence in God, and we pray God to help us to strike down this giant who believes in himself, who believes in his armour, his muscles, and his weapons. That means the men who believe in themselves, who believe in their science, who believe that by human means we shall succeed in converting the world. As for us, we put our trust in God, and we hope that this Goliath who has penetrated into the interior of the Church will one day be struck down, and that the Church will truly discover Her authenticity, Her truth such as She has always had. Oh, the Church always has it; She does not will to perish; and we hope, precisely, to cooperate with that vitality of the Church and that continuity of the Church. I am convinced that these young priests will continue the Church. That is what we ask them to do, and we are sure that with the grace of God and the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Priesthood, they will succeed.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
