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Newsletter of the District of Asia April - May 1998 Editorial "At this moment, the issue of the crisis depends solely on the priestly action. If the priest doesn't transform society, one must despair of the future." These words, not written by Archbishop Lefebvre, but by his and St. Pius X's mentor, the great Cardinal Pie of Poitier, France, were written 150 years ago. They are a proof that human nature doesn't change no matter what people may say. Human nature doesn't change, that means it has been, is and will always be a wounded nature, a weak, feeble, nature incline to evil, to break God's Ten Commandments. It is then a nature in need of help, of these passing helps called actual graces and especially of the more permanent help, the habitual grace, called also the state of grace. What Cardinal Pie meant was precisely this: the crisis, either in 1849 or 1998 or 2030, affecting human societies, will always be a struggle between man's free will and temptation, whether from the flesh, the world or the devil. The issue of this struggle lies ultimately in man accepting or rejecting God's grace which is always offered to us. Now, it is precisely the priests of the Catholic Church who are the key-holders of the source of graces, the sacraments. Therefore, it is up to priestly action to open the divine reservoir or to close it, to irrigate our souls and our societies dried up by the scorching winds of human passions... "Si scires donum Dei ... If thou didst know the gift of God!" The great princes of the Church, Cardinal Pie, St. Pie X and Archbishop Lefebvre, to mention only three of the last 150 years, always look at things "sub specie aeternitatis," "from the angle of Eternity. "They knew the vital importance of priests in the religious and in the civil domain. They knew the importance of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which only validly ordained priests can offer. They knew the infernal rage of the devil at the sight of good Catholic priests, like St John Marie Vianney, like Padre Pio... Pius XII in his sermon of the canonisation of St. Pius X, in 1954, spoke with the same inspired wisdom: "In the Church alone, and through her in the Holy Eucharist, which is a life hidden with Christ in God, is to be found the secret and the source of the renovation of social life." The priories of the Society of St. Pius X, scattered to the four winds, are a perfect example of the influence a few priests can have when they seek to be real priests. Some time, there are not even a handful of Society priests in a whole country and these few priests alone manage to make the whole Catholic Hierarchy tremble. In Sri Lanka, for instance, our two priests are engaged in a written battle which is disturbing the Church authorities. With their bimonthly newsletter, publishing in a serial form, Archbishop Lefebvre's Open Letter to Confused Catholics in Sinhalese, with their half page or sometime full page article in the secular newspapers, the clergy has been forced to take notice and to react. In Gabon, the presence of our four priests was enough, some years back, to oblige the Bishops to describe the work of the Society of St. Pius X as one of the top three problems affecting the Catholic Church in Gabon. Yes, dear readers, the grace of God alone can save the world. Let us pray for the sanctification, the recruiting and the increase of priests, the channels of this divine grace and we will see the deserts turning into green fields, the desertic spiritual state of the world turning into the green fields of Catholic civilization.
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