Conference
of His Excellency Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
to
Priests, 29 October 1984 at Stuttgart, Germany
My
dear brethren:
I
would like to speak to you today on three things in particular:
first, a little bit about the general situation of the Church, next
a few words on the spirituality of the priesthood, and finally,
a few thoughts on the decree which has just appeared.
First,
I would like to give you a little overview of the general situation
of the Church, and particularly of Rome, especially the Pope, because
it is the Pope, I would say, who leaves his particular influence
on the actual state of the Church. In our present epoch it is difficult
to deny that we find the Church in a painful state - for nearly
twenty years - because the principles of Liberalism have penetrated
the Church.
Journalists
often say to me: “But, Monseigneur, you should have better relations
with Pope John Paul II because he is a traditionalist. He stresses
the importance of the cassock or religious habit; he is very devoted
to the Blessed Virgin Mary; he wants discipline in the seminaries.
He gives the impression of 'reacting' against the changes of Paul
VI - you should certainly have better relations with him!”
It
is indeed true that on some particular points Pope John Paul II
does desire a certain return to the old discipline in the seminaries,
in religious life, in certain exterior aspects of the Church. Unfortunately,
however, we would not be correctly judging the mind of the Holy
Father were we to judge only by these kinds of things, which are
certainly secondary. It cannot be denied, and he himself said it,
that one of the principal goals of his pontificate would be religious
liberty - he himself says it - and ecumenism as well, He said it
again in Canada when he was there. He said it to the World Council
of Churches: "Ecumenism cannot be turned back, thus we must
continue towards this end," and, for him, as he often repeats,
it is one of the principal ends of his pontificate. One can see
it also in his discourses published in Documentation Catholique:
"One of the goals of my pontificate is ecumenism, and religious
liberty."
Ecumenism,
such as it is actually practiced, and religious liberty, are principles,
which come from the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It is written
in the constitution of the Rights of Man that every man has the
right to his religion according to his conscience, and thus he has
the right to express and publicly practice it according to his conscience.
It is one of the rights contained in the Declaration of the Rights
of Man, condemned by Pope Pius VI (1775-1799).
Now,
it is clear that it is the Freemasons who drew up this document,
against the Ten Commandments - their own answer, as it were, to
the Ten Commandments - against the will of God, against the authority
of God. It is, for all that, a very serious thing to believe, and
rightly so, that it was the idea of the Liberals to introduce that
into the Church. And when the head of the Church himself begins
to propagate these ideas - and he has frequently praised the principles
found in the Constitution of the Rights of Man; he did it at Berne
before all the members of the Swiss government - that is serious,
very serious, because that goes absolutely against the rights of
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
We
are not "free" in religious matters any more than we are
free in moral questions; we do not have the right to follow whatever
morality our conscience suggests; we do not have the right to follow
whatever kind of faith conforms to our temperament and way of thinking.
Faith and morals are imposed upon us by God, and Our Lord Jesus
Christ is God. It is thus inadmissible to give the impression that
all religions are equally good, that all moral teachings are equal.
We
must not forget that the conciliar reforms of the liturgy, the reforms
of the Bible, the changes in the internal structure of the Church,
of the constitution of the Church - all these things are a result
of the ecumenical spirit. That is clear, since Protestants were
present for the changes in the Mass - six Protestant ministers were
photographed with Pope Paul VI who thanked them for having come
to participate in the liturgical commission, which transformed our
Catholic Mass! Everything was done in this ecumenical spirit: liturgical
reforms, catechetical reforms, an ecumenical Bible - which is sold
in the bookstore at the Vatican. There was then, a considerable
Protestant influence.
And
the Pope himself says that he is the spiritual son of Pope Paul
VI, that he must continue the Council, to put the Council into practice.
He has repeated this more than once.
"Well,
the consequence of all this is that the abuses start to appear as,
for example, catechetics in France. When it becomes too obvious
that the consequences are disastrous, the Pope takes notice. He
sends Cardinal Ratzinger to stop, to finally put a limit, a certain
limit, to this destruction of the catechism. But since the principles
are still there - the principles behind this catechetical reform
have not changed - they find themselves in an ongoing contradiction.
They do not have the courage to go to the logical conclusion. They
ought to have suppressed these new catechisms, but since they, themselves,
said that a change was necessary, to transform these things according
to the modern spirit, to modern man's way of thinking, they are
caught in contradiction.
The
same is true of liberation theology. Liberation theology is Marxism
pure and simple - communism, and that frightens the Pope a little.
Yet, what is this liberation theology if not the conclusion, the
putting into practice, of the Rights of Man; it is the Constitution
of the Rights of Man that liberates him, liberates him from all
authority, from the authority of God, from the authority of the
States, from the authority of parents, of godparents ... And so
the Pope, on the one hand, praises the Rights of Man and, on the
other hand, opposes liberation theology. He find himself in a contradiction,
and that is why one gets a strong impression that he conducts this
battle against liberation theology without a firm conviction, and
thus he does not follow through on it. All you need is for a few
bishops to stand up and say: No, no, liberation theology is not
that bad; besides, we must support the people, the rights of the
people, the rights of man, etc., and the Pope backs off.
It
is the same thing with the new catechetics in France. The bishops
stood up, showed their displeasure, and Cardinal Ratzinger backed
off as well. Why? Because they don't have real conviction, they
are using false principles to combat the errors of liberalism, and
so they are in a constant inconsistency. Until they go back to the
principles of tradition, they will not succeed in stopping the progress
and the consequences of the Council and the conciliar reforms.
THERE
IS ALSO another aspect of the situation
of the Church which is very serious, an idea which is spread far
and wide within the Church, the concept of the salvation of man:
salvation which from now on is for all men in all religions. That
is no longer the old conception of the Church, which demands Baptism,
which restores the soul, which takes away Original Sin and provides
a remedy for souls, which have fallen sick. The Holy Ghost comes
as a remedy to save us, and the sacraments are to help us save ourselves,
and give us health of soul. That is no longer what they believe,
but rather, the Protestant notion is little by little entering the
Church, the idea that the whole world is saved. Just look at the
burial rites now: they are joyful ceremonies, the soul is evidently
saved, there are no prayers said for it; instead they have chants
of thanksgiving to God, or praise, etc. No more purgatory - that
doesn't exist anymore.
And
they no longer have the notion of asceticism, of a spiritual combat.
The idea of a spiritual combat has practically disappeared in the
Church, and they have done away with all the prayers, which made
mention of the enemies of the Church, or enemies of our souls. All
that has been suppressed in the liturgical prayers, or any notion
of contempt for the world, for example: "contemnere terrestria
et amare caelestia - to despise earthly things and to love heavenly
things." That has been eliminated from the orations as if to
say that we must not despise the world, that it is an error to eschew
the world. Now in the spirit of the Church, to take no heed of the
world is in the same spirit as Our Savior, Who said that He did
not pray for "the world" since the world is under the
influence of Satan. It was in this spirit that the Church spoke
that way. All these things have been changed; now there is a completely
different attitude.
You
may have noticed this in the Pope's Wednesday conferences - I don't
know if you read them - but, if you read them, you can see: for
well-nigh five years almost ad nauseam, he has spoken of
the theology of the human body; we have really had our fill of it,
we must say. There is no ascetical theology in it, and for him it
seems that marriage will be sublimated right up to heaven and become,
I don't know, some sort of celestial mysticism. Incredible! Incomprehensible!
I don't think
anybody understands what he says; so mysterious is all this theology
of the human body. One searches in vain for the old asceticism.
All he does is praise marriage, praise the union according to the
flesh, without a single mention of concupiscence, it's unbelievable,
since we must never forget that even after receiving Baptism, as
St. Thomas says, we still have four profound wounds in our soul.
He calls them the fomes peccati (remains of sin), which are:
ignorance, malice, weakness and concupiscence; these are the four
wounds which remain in us and of which we stand in need of a cure,
and for this cure we need the merits of Our Lord. Well, all that
is over with, finished. They say Baptism remits our sins and, most
importantly, makes us members of the Christian community. There
it is, exactly like the Protestants.
Now
this different vision of Christian spirituality is exceedingly grave
because it excludes once and for all the Cross, it excludes sacrifice,
it casts aside the Cross and the Sacrifice and the Redemption of
Our Savior.
ANOTHER
GRAVE PROBLEM now undermining the Church
is found in the new Canon Law. The new Canon Law is very serious
for it goes much further than the Council itself.
In
the Council they succeeded, for example, in avoiding the creation
of two supreme powers in the Church: the Pope on the one hand, and
on the other hand, the Pope and the bishops as two ordinary powers
in the Church, which is contrary to the doctrine of the Church.
There is only one supreme ordinary power in the Church and that
is the Pope. The Pope communicates his supreme power in extraordinary
cases like a council, but the Pope and the bishops are not an ordinary
power in Holy Church. Besides, it is contradictory because the bishops
could claim this power from the Pope if the Pope acts alone, saying:
"We also have supreme power with you, therefore you must consult
us." The Pope could say, "But I alone have the power"
- "Yes, but we have it with you," and thus he would be
in continual conflict with the bishops. That is inadmissible. Our
Lord did not found the Holy Church in such a way that there would
be a continual conflict between the Pope and the bishops.
Then
another thing, which is very seriously flawed in the new Canon Law,
is the definition of the Church. For me, that is perhaps what best
characterizes the new theories of the Church since the Council:
the Church is the "people of God." The Church no longer
consists of clerics and the laity, with only the clergy exercising
the ministry from which all the graces are communicated to the laity,
while the laity must receive these graces from their ministry. No,
now it is all one "people of God," everyone is admitted,
according to his function, according to his capacities, to different
ministries, as if there were no more distinction between the clergy
and the laity.
This is extremely
serious. It is, fundamentally, the destruction of the Church. Now
one could say, "No, look at the following chapter and there
is, all the same, a distinction made between the clergy and the
laity." Yes, but that does not take away the contradiction.
The error exists. It is there even if later on it is more or less
"corrected" by an affirmation of the distinction between
clerics and laypeople. Notice however that it is precisely this
which becomes the leit motif of the following chapters, when
they speak of the munus docendi - in the chapter on
the Church's Teaching Office - the Teaching Office is given to the
People of God, it is not given to the priests; the mission of sanctifying
is given to the People of God; it is incredible! What power will
they leave to the priests then? There remains only the power of
jurisdiction; that is a little more difficult to change; so they
published an article in L'Osservatore Romano on the powers
which the laity now has in the new Canon Law, in which they said:
you may have taken notice of the fact that the Teaching Office and
the mission of sanctifying have been attributed to the People of
God; as for the power of jurisdiction, that is a bit more delicate,
what they say about that is less precise. There you are! These are
grave errors. For example, with the Teaching Office and the mission
of sanctifying, they make an absolute link between the role of a
parent with respect to his children, and the role of the priest.
The priest has a role: the Teaching Office and the mission of sanctifying
with regard to his parish. The father of a family has a role: a
teaching office and mission of sanctifying of his family. All this
comes from a false vision of the Church. It will mean the definitive
disappearance of the essential distinction between the priesthood
of the faithful and the sacramental priesthood.
The
priest has received a sacrament, the Sacrament of Holy Orders, which
confers a character on the priest and which gives him alone the
power to pardon sins, the power to pronounce the words of consecration
at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the power to administer the
sacraments. It is really unbelievable to have made this kind of
comparison between the priests and the faithful.
THERE
IS ALSO MORE and more of this democratic spirit in the Church. You are aware of
all the councils they have - although they are only "consultative"
- but they still have them all the same: a parish council, a bishops'
council - at least two councils in the parish and one or two for
the bishop - there is the Synod of Bishops at Rome, which is now
a recognized institution in Canon Law, so that the authorities,
in practice, are obliged to take them into account, and it is no
easy thing to govern when one is continually obliged to seek the
counsel of a majority vote, or to hold a vote to see what the assembly
thinks. Those in authority have their hands tied. Not that there
was no such thing as consultation in the old Code of Canon Law,
there were certain consultations which the bishop had to make, but
they were much more discreet, much more reasonable than now. Now
it has become an institution, which really limits the powers of
the bishop.
All
this means that the new Code of Canon Law, to my way of thinking,
goes considerably further than the Council itself.
The
giving of Holy Communion to Protestants - eucharistic hospitality,
as they call it - is a dogmatic error. One does not have the right
to give Communion to someone who does not have the Catholic Faith,
that is a real rupture with what has always been most precious in
the Church: the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and faith in Our Lord
Jesus Christ. One does not give the Body and Blood of Our Lord except
to someone who truly has the Catholic Faith, faith in Our Lord Jesus
Christ, and not simply faith in the Real Presence while he perhaps
denies the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Before
passing to the second point, which will be somewhat shorter than
this one, I would like to make a little comparison between the preceding
and what Mgr. Bugnini said. Last year there appeared an enormous
book of his on the liturgical reform, published posthumously, by
one of his confreres. I recommend, if you ever come across this
book, that you read the general principles. They are very instructive,
and absolutely incredible - right in these general principles Archbishop
Bugnini says, this liturgical reform is a profound one, aiming at
restoring to its true place - for him, according to what he says
- the People of God. It is very curious to find here this notion
of the People of God, which is in the new Code of Canon Law, published
after the death of Archbishop Bugnini. He could not have gotten
it from the new Code, so these ideas must have been around well
before it. It is stupefying to read in the Documentation Catholique
that the Lutheran - Catholic Commission of the Secretariat for
Christian Unity, and thus an official Roman commission, said in
effect that numerous points in the Council were drawn from the teachings
of Luther, one of them being the notion of the People of God. They
say it explicitly; so with this doctrine of the People of God, they
are restoring the assembly to its true place, to give it an important
role in the liturgy, implying that before the assembly did not exist,
or that its role was minimal, that there was no participation; and
that, now, thanks to the new liturgy, there is finally participation.
There comes
to mind an objection made by a certain Benedictine Abbot at the
conference which Archbishop Bugnini gave before twenty-four Superiors
of Religious Orders - I myself was present at this conference -
at Rome, before the publication of the New Mass. When he introduced
to us his "normative mass," Archbishop Bugnini spoke to
us precisely about this participation of the faithful, active participation,
as if before Vatican II the faithful had never participated in the
Mass. And so an Abbot got up and said, "Father, if I understand
correctly, we should not say private Masses any more, since there
is no congregation, and thus no participation by the people in our
Masses." The response was, "Quite truthfully, we
have not envisioned that." Incredible! As he himself said,
this idea has inspired the liturgical reform, an idea which reverses
the roles, giving the greater role to the assembly, and no longer
to the priest and the sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Our Lord.
I
HAVE BEEN ASKED to give you a few reflections
on the spirituality of the priest. I cannot very well separate the
spirituality of the priest from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
To
my mind there are not two different kinds of priestly spirituality,
there is only one: that of his Mass, that of the Sacrifice of Our
Lord, because the priest is essentially the man of sacrifice. I
would say there is a transcendental relation between the priest
and the sacrifice, and between the sacrifice and the priest. One
cannot imagine sacrifice without a priest, and the priesthood without
sacrifice. And so there is a relation there that is more than essential,
transcendental really, a relation that goes beyond even the essence
of the priest. So, we must go back to the idea of the Sacrifice.
One can say that our sacrifice, the sacrifice which Our Lord has
put into our hands, the sacrifice which Our Lord has left us, is
a thing without limit, inexpressible, so divine and mysterious is
it, that it surpasses everything we can imagine.
To
think that we are really "other Christs," and that it
is His words, His words that produce His presence, that we recite
these words each morning, that it is not simply a narrative but
also an action, and that we say, "This is My Body," we
do not say, "This is the Body of Jesus Christ." But we
say, "This is My Body," "This is the chalice of My
Blood" - it is we ourselves who pronounce it! Consequently
we are truly in the Person of Christ, it is truly Christ that we
represent. It is no longer we who speak; it is Our Lord Who makes
use of our lips, Who makes use of us to pronounce these words anew.
There it is, I truly believe, the great program of the priest, the
program of priestly life: his Mass. That is why the Mass is so important.
And this program, it is not really complicated, it is very simple.
The
first part of the Mass consists in teaching: "to teach all
nations," that is our role. We have to teach precisely because
we have the Teaching Office. Our Lord said to us, to priests, "Teach
all nations." He did not say that to just anybody, He said
that to His Apostles, and so we have this role and we must teach.
That is what we do in the first part of the Mass, more especially
than in the other parts. May we be solicitous that our teaching
truly be the teaching of the faith, that our teaching truly be the
teaching of the Church! And may I point out that the faith is essentially
connected with Revelation, and Revelation is essentially connected
with Tradition: Faith, Revelation, Tradition! And that is why, when
we say we are traditionalists, we are right. We must be traditionalists;
there can be no Catholics who are not traditionalists. Tradition
is part of our faith. We should not forget that there was a time
of prophecy, as St. Thomas says. There was a prophetical epoch which
began with the first prophets, continuing right up to the Prophet
Who is Our Lord Jesus Christ: He is the Prophet, there is none greater,
none holier, none more perfect, than this Prophet.
Thus
the prophetical epoch continued right up to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Apostles were joined with Our Lord Jesus Christ to announce
the Gospel. After the death of the last Apostle, the prophetical
epoch came to a close, was finished; there is no other prophet,
there can be no other prophet after Our Lord. Who could surpass
Our Lord? Who could say: "I come after Our Lord to complete
what Our Lord said"? Who could say such a thing? God Himself
has come, who can make himself greater than God? There are no more
prophets; the time of prophecy is finished, terminated.
St.
Thomas goes on to say: "Then followed the dogmatic epoch,"
the time of definitions, that is, the time in which the contents
of Revelation were defined, that which was revealed, that which
is in the deposit of faith. And the Popes have no other role than
to define what is in the deposit of Revelation - not to add a single
truth, but simply to say: "This is in the deposit of revelation."
That is where Tradition comes in: Tradition, from generation to
generation, from Pope to Pope, from council to council, the tradition
of the Faith, of what has been defined, and to the extent to which
it is defined it is untouchable, one can no longer touch this truth,
it is defined for all times.
When a Pope
uses his infallibility, it is the deposit of faith, the treasure
of our faith, there is thus a tradition, which we cannot avoid,
which we must keep, hence the importance for us to always refer
to the past, to refer back to what the Church had always taught.
Now, this is the great error of Cardinal Ratzinger, the great error
of those who are in the Church today, who say to us: "The Church
is a living body and so it evolves, always changing, always in evolution,
the Church is not a corpse." Truth is always the same. When
I said to Cardinal Ratzinger, "Look, religious liberty and
Quanta Cura are incompatible," "Oh," he said,
"we are no longer in the times of Quanta Cura." We
are no longer in the times of Quanta Cura, then tomorrow
we will no longer be in the times of their own new truths - this
is not possible!
Now in this
first part of the Mass, which, I would say, is the model for our
own teaching, we must refer back to that, to Tradition. The essence
of what St. Paul said is: "Tradidi vos quod et accepi -
I have passed on to you what I have myself received."
Already in his time he said that, and he said: “If an angel himself
says the contrary of what I have handed on to you, or if I say the
contrary of what I have passed on to you, may I be anathema!"
And that is serious! And so neither do we have the right to deny
what was handed down to us.
THERE
ARE TWO other parts of Holy Mass, the part with the consecration, the Sacrifice,
and then the part where the priest communicates, which are united
because we are united to our Victim, Our Lord.
First,
the Sacrifice. I now make a distinction between gratia sanans
(grace healing) and gratia elevans (grace elevating),
the grace which Our Lord gives us in Baptism, which He also gives
us in the Sacrifice of the Mass. The augmentation of this grace
has the aspect of "healing" and "elevating.” - Grace
healing that is the sacrificial, penitential aspect, of compunction
for our faults, of everything that heals us. It is the Blood of
Our Lord, it is in the Sacraments, in the Sacrament of Penance ...
then, there is "grace elevating” which lifts us up, the Holy
Ghost Who elevates us with Our Lord Jesus Christ in contemplation,
in the love of the Father, in the love of the Holy Trinity. In the
Sacrifice of the Mass we find ourselves as it were on the Cross
again with Our Lord. That is the sacrificial and penitential aspect,
the healing aspect, but also the aspect of love, of charity, of
the contemplation of Our Lord.
Next
comes the third part: the communion of the faithful. Fundamentally
we cannot give them more than Our Lord Jesus Christ, but we must
prepare them, precisely by teaching, and then we are the doctors
of their souls by the Sacrament of Penance, by the advice we can
give. We must do this in such a way that souls receive Our Lord
Jesus Christ under the best conditions, so that they can receive
this gratia sanans and gratia elevans, and unite themselves
with Our Lord the Victim, Our Lord Who praises His Father for eternity.
These
are, in summary, the chfferent aspect of the Most Holy Sacrifice,
which are very important, essential, and which are an entire program
of life, this is practically our entire program of priestly life.
I wish that we could always gain a deeper understanding of the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass. There you can see the change on the perspective
on the Mass: if one insists only on the meal, as the progressives
do now, on the meat the table, the table of the eucharistic banquen
the sharing of bread, the sharing of the word-they leave aside the
aspect of the Cross, the sacrificial aspect which URs us up to heaven.
Let us not separate the aspect of Our Lord which lifts us right
up to the bosom of the Trinity, in the midst of praise, the propitiatory
aspect of sacrifice which covers us with the Blood of Our Lord,
which heals us of out maladies, precisely this "healing grace."
We ought not to forget that there is "healing grace" and
"elevating grace"-there are these two aspects of grace.
I
WILL FINISH THIS TALK with a few words
on the new decree which has just come out. Is it a boon, or not?
It would be difficult to say that it is not a good thing, since
many people have asked Rome for this liberty, that those who say
the Old Mass not be persecuted. I myself also during these years
have not ceased asking of Rome: leave us this liberty! And so, faced
with the insistence of many people, and mine also, they finally
decided to do something. Unfortunately however they have added to
it incredible conditions. It's absolutely unimaginable, after all
this, to be interrogating people on their opinion: Do you reject
the New Mass? If you reject the New Mass, then you don't have the
right to say the old one. That surpasses the imagination. For as
I said to my confreres, if one of you were asked, or, if for example,
we take the Abbey of Fontgombault in France, the Benedictines, they
like the Old Mass, but they have accepted the New Mass out of "obedience."
Now they will surely ask for the Old Mass again. And they could
ask them: "Why do you opt for the Old Mass?" "Ah,
because we prefer the Old Mass. You see, the New Mass has certain
features . . ." "Ah! You don't like the New Mass! Neither
then shall you have the Old!"
That
is ridiculous, because if we choose the Old Mass it is because we
find it better than the new one. If you reject the new one, you
don't have the right to the old one! They could quibble back and
forth like that.
To
my mind, this decree is a typical example of the present mentality
at Rome, the progressive mentality. This is a progressive decree;
it is not a traditional decree where Rome would act out of consideration
for the holiness of the Mass, for the holiness of the faithful,
for the apostolate and good of souls, the glory of God. No, it's
not that. It's pure politics. They conducted a referendum ... a
poll ... to see who were in agreement; because there was still a
small group holding out, they decided to make a concession, but
to also add some conditions. That is politics, the same kind they
practice in democracies - it's not supernatural at all. Be that
as it may, I think Providence has willed this nevertheless for now
we have a foot in the door and never again will they be able to
shut it! The old era is finished, now we have a foothold, and I
think that the good God will permit, little by little, that there
will be a return to Tradition. It has triggered the common sense
of many of the faithful who say, "Finally this business is
over with! Finally we can go to the Old Mass! Finally the dispute
is over!"
They
aren't really taking the conditions into account. There was even
a radio station in Switzerland that said, "Pope Paul VI condemned
Archbishop Lefebvre and now John Paul II has condemned Paul VI."
That is not altogether accurate, but that is the impression the
faithful will get from this decree.
Will
we, in our priories, in our traditional groups, will we lose much
support? Personally, I don't think so; on the contrary. For one
thing, we must say, this decree will unfortunately be difficult
for those priests who have charge of a parish, for example, to have
the Old Mass when their faithful are divided. Some want the Old
Mass, some want the New; some want Communion in the hand, some don't
want Communion in the hand; some want Mass facing the people, some
don't want Mass facing the people. That will cause interminable
divisions. Thus it will be very difficult to have the Old Mass in
this environment. And so I believe that many of our faithful, even
if they were accustomed to going to an environment like that, where
they see the faithful receive Communion in the hand, where they
see the priest celebrate the Old Mass facing the people, they will
say: No, no, we will go to those who keep Tradition in its entirety.
I don't believe that we will suffer losses. If that is what they
figured, I believe they are mistaken. If they calculated beforehand:
we will isolate the Society, we will isolate their priests, we will
drive the faithful from them - for my part, I believe they are mistaken;
I believe, on the contrary, that we will have more support than
ever. Already some have said to us, "Oh, now we will be able
to come to you." Before they were afraid and thought it would
be disobedience to the priests, to the bishops who said to them:
"You disobey if you go to those Masses." Now that issue
of disobedience is over, so now we can go there, the faithful believe.
That
is why, after all is said and done, we must look beyond the actual
text of the decree, and the divisions it will cause, and the difficulties
it will cause with the bishops: look at it as the good God sees
it. I believe it is providential, a first step on the road back
to Tradition and so, I hope, God will see to it that other steps
will follow. ++
|