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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1982 Conference at Martigny - The Drama of the Church Today |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 09:58 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Archbishop Lefebvre at Martigny
21 March 1982
My dear friends,
I am sure the Blessed Virgin Mary is happy today, that she is looking upon us with joy and that she has been much consoled with the prayers offered to her throughout the night just past. You have certainly been most obedient to the wishes of the Blessed Virgin Mary, following the initiative of some true and faithful Catholic laymen.
In all her apparitions and particularly at Fatima, she asked us to pray and do penance. This is why you are here, many of you coming from far away. In spite of inconveniences you have willingly taken on this penance and have come here to pray. To pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose wish we shall fulfill in a few minutes when we repeat, in the words of Pope Pius XII, the consecration of the world and of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
What Christian today, what faithful Catholic, does not feel the need to pray and do penance, in present world circumstances? We are a little like those who invited their friends to the wedding feast at Cana and, when they ran short of wine, turned to the Virgin Mary with anxious looks, asking the Mother of Jesus to put in a word with her Divine Son to relieve them of this worry of having no more wine to serve their guests. So Mary turned to Jesus and said to Him, "They have no wine." And Jesus performed the wonderful miracle of transforming water into wine. A mirror image of the situation we find ourselves in today!
We too turn to the Blessed Virgin, where we can still today find the grace of God, where we can still find divine life in this world. The wine symbolizes precisely the Blood of Christ, which transmits divine life to us. We shall listen to the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary saying, "Do whatever He tells you." So now, we too are making a resolution to listen to the Blessed Virgin and to do whatever Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us.
And what is He telling us? What is He revealing? His Revelation tells us that the most beautiful, the most admirable, the most perfect of His creatures did not make good use of the freedom which Our Lord, as God, gave them. Yes, He has shown us that this extraordinary conflict took place in heaven between the good angels and the wicked angels, between those who wanted to become like God and St. Michael the Archangel at the head of all the angels loyal to God. Quis ut Deus? "Who is like God?"
So He plunged the wicked angels into hell. This is what God tells us. Not only on earth, therefore, do men misuse their freedom, this extraordinary gift which God gave them to do good and not evil. It has already happened in heaven.
So the situation is that, henceforth and for all eternity, there will be, on the one side, the glory of Our Lord Jesus Christ united to the Father and to the Holy Ghost, which will shine in the hearts of all the elect, of all who are united to God: the holy angels, the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, all the saints, the martyrs, all who follow the law of God and love Him here below.
And then there is hell. Hell, the place forever of those who tried to resist God, tried to make themselves God a state of eternal separation from God. This is what Our Lord teaches us.
He dwelt among us to make reparation for the sin of our first Parents, who had abused their freedom and disobeyed God. So He too found Himself in confrontation and opposition to those who wanted to put Him to death. Because Satan, if he can do no more in heaven, because he has been confined to hell once and for all, can still work here below and try to populate hell in ever greater numbers. God permits him to do this. We have seen Our Lord Jesus Christ persecuted by Satan, by the devil himself. Satan believed that his definitive victory had been achieved. He had succeeded in crucifying God Himself, body and soul. God seemed dead. He had breathed His last.
Satan cried victory, because it was Satan who wanted to crucify Him. This is in the Gospel. When Judas went off to betray Our Lord, having taken the Bread which Our Lord had given Him, the Gospel says, "Satan entered into his soul." So it is indeed a struggle, a struggle between Our Lord and all who wanted to crucify Him. And who showed up as the means of the crucifixion of Our Lord? False religions and bad governments. This is in the Gospel. The Scribes and the Pharisees said, "What do you think? He has blasphemed, because He makes Himself the Son of God, and because He has blasphemed, He must be crucified."
Yes, from that moment Israel abandoned the religion which Jesus had taught them. And instead of recognizing the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, they rejected the Messias and crucified Him. There are also those who said, in the name of pagan governments, as Pilate hesitated to crucify Him, "If you do not put Him to death, you are no friend of Caesar, because everyone who makes himself king sets himself against Caesar." So you see, it is perfectly clear: in the Gospel there are false religions and bad governments which crucify Our Lord Jesus Christ. But, as you know, Our Lord escaped them. Satan thought He was dead once and for all, the Scribes and Pharisees too. And Our Lord rose, He ascended to heaven triumphantly, gloriously, henceforth for all eternity. He enters again into the glory of His Father and of the Holy Ghost in the Holy Trinity.
But He founded the Church, His Mystical Body which carries on the struggle, which henceforth will be open to all the attacks of the devil and of all those who wish to destroy Our Lord. Because Our Lord slipped past them, they will persecute members of the Church.
This is what Our Lord said to St. Paul to Saul on the road to Damascus, "Why persecutest thou Me?" Thus Our Lord considered persecution of His members as persecution of Himself. "Why persecutest thou Me?"
Yes, the Church is the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ. So, throughout the history of the Church, you have seen this struggle carried on by heretics, by every means at their disposal, in all the attacks which the Church has undergone in the course of her history, all the martyrs and all those who have been witnesses of the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Church. This conflict continues, it continues into our own day. And it continues with the Blessed Virgin Mary at our side, because she has entered the lists. She is no pacifist, the Blessed Virgin Mary. "She is powerful," says the Scripture, "as an army in battle array." She is represented crushing the head of Satan. So she is in the struggle. She is on our side to help us.
Now what shall we do, we Catholics of the twentieth century, members of the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Shall we lay down our arms? This is the drama of the Church today. They want us to lay down our arms. They want us to enter into a kind of pacifism which is nothing more nor less than cowardice. In the face of Satan, in the face of the enemy, in the face of all those who seek the destruction of the Church, in the face of those who want to crush all Christians, to finish off Our Lord Jesus Christ here below, we are supposed to lay down our weapons. First of all, the weapon of prayer. We are not supposed to pray any more. The churches will be empty. We will come no more to adore the Blessed Sacrament, no longer pray to the Blessed Virgin. So Satan will be happy, he will have won a great victory, and he will take millions and millions of souls to hell.
There you have it, my dear friends, the great drama which the Church is experiencing today, worse than the attacks of the Moslems in the time of Pope Saint Pius V; worse than Protestantism in the sixteenth century, worse than all heresies and schisms put together.
Today the evil is inside the Church. We must realize that, until the Second Vatican Council, popes, bishops, and priests fought courageously alongside the faithful, leading the faithful in the struggle against Satan and all his works.
Now we are astonished to see that, since the Council, because of two attitudes of those with responsibility in the Church, two attitudes which are contrary to this struggle, which undermine the Church, we are told we have now arrived at a time when we must have peace at any price.
So, vis-à-vis other religions, we have ecumenism. They are saying about all religions which are against the Church: "Now we must have unity, we must lay down our arms, we embrace you, in order to have union." The union of truth with error, the union of shadows with the Light, the union of Satan with God. This is what St. Paul says. How is it possible? It is part of what they call Ostpolitik. The Vatican has changed its policy. From now on we must cooperate with all hostile governments, hostile to the Church, governments which have only one end in view: to destroy Our Lord Jesus Christ in His embers, in His Church. This is their one aim. They use possible means, falsehood and with so much more effectiveness dialogue, if that will serve their purpose. This is the program: peaceful coexistence, detente, dialogue. We have handed over to these governments the poor priests and faithful who were fighting in defense of their faith.
At the present time in Czechoslovakia, in Rumania, there are bishops called Peace Priests, appointed by and answerable to the government, as in the Russian Orthodox Church, totally under the control of the communist government. And these bishops turn good priests out, turn good Catholics out, because they will not obey the communist government, because they want to have their children baptized, because they want their children taught the catechism, because the priests want to go out and visit the sick, to take Holy Communion to them, to teach catechism (secretly, if necessary), to hear confessions in homes, if people have difficulty in getting to church. All this is against the communist government regulations. This is why the bishops persecute these good priests.
And I say it is the same thing with us. I also say that these good priests, these good Catholics, are sacrificed on the altar of Ostpolitik and of dialogue with wicked governments, just as we are sacrificed on the altar of ecumenism, in maintaining our Catholic Faith, which teaches that there is only one Church.
There are not two religions, there is only the religion of God, the religion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ is God. He came to earth to found His religion. There are not two religions, there is only one religion, the Catholic religion, and so, if we believe there is only one religion, we should pray and do penance for the conversion of souls, for their conversion and not to embrace them with all their errors and vices. This is not doing them a favor. It is deceiving them. This has always been the attitude of the Church: to send missionaries all over the world, even if they are martyred, to win souls for Christ and for the Church.
It has never been understood that henceforth there should be no more missionaries. We want to uphold and prolong the Catholic Church. We want to uphold the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We want to proclaim that the Catholic Church is the true religion and that everyone is called to convert to the Catholic Church. For this we pray, we do penance and we try with all means at our disposal to do good wherever we are, in order to convert souls.
There you have it, my dear friends, the resolution which we should make today, especially to have devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to her Immaculate Heart. With her we will fight, we will continue the combat. We will continue the fight against ourselves, against all that is evil in ourselves, all that is evil in our families, all that is evil in our cities, so that Our Lord Jesus Christ can reign everywhere and always. We will pray to the Good Lord and to the Blessed Virgin Mary to help us to continue the fight. We will not be taken in by this false ecumenism. This false ecumenism has completely transformed our holy liturgy. We reject this transformed liturgy which is supposed to turn us into Protestants, because we do not want to give the Eucharist to Protestants. They are not of our Faith. They cannot receive our Eucharist. We wish to convert them first, convert them to our Faith, and then they will be able to receive our Eucharist joyfully.
There you have, my dear friends, what I wanted to say to you. In a few minutes we shall join, shall we not, with our Lady of Fatima, with all those who have faith in Our Lady, especially to the great and venerated Pope Pius XII, who drew up this consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We shall repeat his very words and put our entire lives and souls under the protection of the Immaculate Heart and pray that the reign of Mary be established over the earth and over souls.
From Fideliter, May/June 1982 as published here.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1984 Conference on the 'Poisoned Chalice' of the New Code of Canon Law |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 09:46 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The poisoned chalice of the New Code of Canon law
Given by Archbishop Lefebvre in Turin, Italy - March 24, 1984
I want to speak to you of a very serious novelty: the New Code of Canon Law. I had not seen any necessity for a change. But if the law changes, the law changes, and we must make use of it, for the Church can ask nothing evil from her faithful.
However, when one reads this new code of Canon Law one discovers an entirely new conception of the Church. It is easy to be aware of, since John Paul II himself describes it in the apostolic constitution which introduces the new Code.
Quote:". . . It follows that which constitutes the fundamental novelty of Vatican Council II, in full continuity with the legislative tradition of the Church (this is to deceive), especially in that which concerns ecclesiology, constitutes also the novelty of the new Code."
Hence the novelty of the conception of the Church according to the Council is equally the novelty of the conception of the new Code of Canon Law.
What is this novelty? It is that there is no longer any difference between the clergy and the laity. There is now just the faithful, nothing else, on account of the "doctrine according to which all the members of the people of God, according to the mode which is proper to each, partake in the triple priestly, prophetic and royal function of Jesus Christ. To this doctrine is likewise attached that which concerns the duties and rights of the faithful and particularly the laity, and finally the Church's involvement in ecumenism!"
This is the definition of the Church (Canon 204):
Quote:"The faithful are those who, inasmuch as they are incorporated in Christ by baptism are constituted as the people of God, and who for this reason, having been made partakers in their manner in the priestly, prophetic and royal functions of Christ, are called to exercise the mission that God entrusted to the Church to accomplish in the world..."
We are all faithful, members of the people of God, and we all therefore have ministries! It is clearly said in the Code: all the faithful have ministries. They therefore all have the responsibility to teach, to sanctify and even to direct.
Let us continue our commentary on this Canon 204:
Quote:"...having been made partakers in their manner in the priestly, prophetic and royal function of Christ, they are called to exercise the mission which God entrusted to the Church to accomplish in the world, according to the juridical condition proper to each one."
Hence everyone without exception, without distinction between clergy and laity, inasmuch as they are the people of God, has the responsibility of this mission entrusted by Jesus Christ properly to the Church. There is no longer any clergy. What, then, happens to the clergy?
It is as if they said that it is no longer parents who have the responsibility to give life to children but the family, or rather all the members of the family: parents and children. This is exactly the same thing as saying today that Bishops, priests and laymen have all responsibility for the mission of the Church. But who gives the graces to become a Catholic? How does one become faithful? No one knows any more who has the responsibility for what. It is consequently easy to understand that this is the ruin of the priesthood and the laicization of the Church. Everything is oriented towards the laymen, and little by little the sacred ministers disappear. The minor orders and the subdiaconate have already disappeared. Now there are married deacons, and little by little laymen take over the ministry of the priests. This is precisely what Luther and the protestants did, laicizing the priesthood. It is consequently very serious.
This is quite openly explained in an article in the Osservatore Romano of March 17, 1984:
Quote:"The role of the laity in the new Code." "The active function that the laity has been called on to exercise since Vatican II by participating in the condition and mission of the entire Church according to their particular vocation is a doctrine which, in the context of the appearance of the concept of the people of God has brought about a reevaluation of the laity, as much in the foundation of the Church as for the active role they are called on to develop in the building up of the Church."
Such is the inspiration of the whole new Code of Canon Law. It is this definition of the Church which is the poison which infects the new laws.
The same can be said for the Liturgy. There is a relationship between this new Code of Canon Law and the entire liturgical reform, as Bugnini said in his book The Fundamental Principles of the Changing of the Liturgy.
Quote:"The path opened by the Council is destined to change radically the traditional liturgical assembly in which, according to a custom dating back many centuries, the liturgical service is almost exclusively accomplished by the clergy. The people assist, but too much as a stranger and a dumb spectator."
What? How can one dare say that the faithful are present at the sacrifice of the Mass as simply dumb spectators so as to change the Liturgy? How must the faithful be active in the sacrifice of the Mass? By the body or spiritually? Obviously spiritually. One can draw a great spiritual profit from assisting at Mass in silence. It is, in effect, a mystery of our Faith. How many have become saints in this silence of the true Mass!
Quote:"A long education will be necessary for the Liturgy to become an action of all the people of God." Without a doubt. Then he adds that he is speaking of "a substantial unity but not a uniformity. You must realize that this is a true break with the past."
This past is the twenty centuries of prayer of the Church.
Bugnini was the key man in the liturgical reform. I went to see Cardinal Cicognani when this reform was published and I said to him: "Your Eminence, I am not in agreement with this change. The Mass no longer has its mystical and divine character." He replied:
Quote:"Excellency, it is like that. Bugnini can enter as he likes into the Pope's office to make him sign what he wants."
This is what happened to the Secretariat of State. This is how all these changes happened. They agreed on it beforehand, and then obtained signatures for some changes, and then others, and then others. I said to Cardinal Gut:
Quote:"Your Eminence, you are responsible for Divine Worship, and you accord permission for the Blessed Sacrament to be received in the hand! They will know that this was published with the agreement of the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship!"
He replied:
Quote:"Excellency, I do not even know if I will be asked for it to be done. You know, it is not I who command. The boss is Bugnini. If the Pope asks me what I think of Communion in the hand, I will cast myself on my knees before him to ask him not to do it."
You see, then, how things happened at Rome: a simple signature on the bottom of a decree and the Church is ruined by numerous sacrileges ... The real presence of Our Lord is ruined, for it is no longer respected. Then, nothing sacred remains, as was seen at the large reunion at which the Pope was present, where the Blessed Sacrament was passed around from hand to hand between thousands of persons. Nobody genuflects anymore before the Blessed Sacrament. How can they still believe that God is present there?
It is this same spirit which inspired the changing of the Canon Law as that which inspired the changes in the Liturgy: it is the people of God, the assembly, which does everything. The same applies to the priest. He is a simple president who has a ministry, as others have a ministry, in the midst of an assembly. Our orientation towards God has likewise disappeared. This comes from the Protestants who say that Eucharistic devotion (for them there is neither Mass nor sacrifice: this would be blasphemy) is simply a movement of God towards man, but not of man towards God to render Him glory, which is nevertheless the first (latreutic) end of the Liturgy. This new state of liturgical mind comes likewise from Vatican II: everything is for man. The bishops and priest are at the service of man and the assembly. But where is God then? In what is His glory sought? What will we do in heaven? For in heaven "all is for the glory of God," which is exactly what we ought to do here on earth. But all that is done away with, and replaced by man. This is truly the ruin of all Catholic thought.
You know that the new Code of Canon Law permits a priest to give Communion to a Protestant. It is what they call eucharistic hospitality. These are Protestants who remain Protestant and do not convert. This is directly opposed to the Faith. For the Sacrament of the Eucharist is precisely the sacrament of the unity of the Faith. To give Communion to a Protestant is to rupture the Faith and its unity.
Source
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1980 Sermon on the Feast of Our Lady of Compassion |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 09:34 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Sermon of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Given to the Oblates of the SSPX - Feast of Our Lady of Compassion - April 10, 1981
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Our Lady at the Foot of the Cross
It is written in the Holy Gospel that a sword shall pierce the Heart of the Virgin. This Heart, pierced by a sword, of course, means nothing else than her association with the Passion of her Divine Son. The Gospel also says that the Blessed Virgin Mary was standing beside Our Lord Jesus Christ during His Passion and at the moment of His death: "Stabat Mater iuxta Crucem."
Therefore we must not deny that Divine Providence wanted to associate the Blessed Virgin Mary not only with His birth, to His coming on earth and to His infancy, to His hidden life and to His public life, but above all to His Passion. Indeed, if the most important moment - "the hour" of Our Lord Jesus Christ - was the moment of His death on the cross, the hour of His Passion, that of the Blessed Virgin Mary was that of her Compassion, of her intimate union with the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Devotion to the Sorrows of Our Lady
This devotion is very old in the Church. We do not know exactly when the feasts of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady and of the Compassion of the Blessed Virgin began. However, in the Church, some religious societies were founded through the direct intervention of the Virgin Mary herself, in order to meditate on her sorrows and especially on her compassion. The Servites of Mary are a good example, established by the Seven Founders upon a request of the Blessed Virgin Mary herself; they are particularly dedicated to meditation on her sufferings, to union with the Sorrowful Virgin.
Another society dedicated to this contemplation is that of the Passionists of St. Paul of the Cross. The Passionists have had many saints in their congregation. It was a most fervent congregation. One of their saints, St. Gabriel of the Addolorata, took the name of " Addolorata" precisely because he wanted to spend his life meditating on the sufferings of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To Associate Ourselves with Jesus Suffering
Why this meditation? Why this union with the Blessed Virgin Mary in her Compassion, in her suffering, in her transfixion? In order to associate ourselves more intimately with the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ!
Indeed, if there were ever a Heart, which suffered with the Heart of Jesus pierced on the cross, if ever there were a soul whose thoughts were united with those of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, it was the Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary! She had never sinned, and like Our Lord, she did not need to make reparation for herself. Yet both wanted to suffer, to suffer horribly, to suffer deeply, to suffer in their bodies.
Two Hearts Burning with Charity
Let us then try to penetrate the sentiments of these two Hearts, the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. It is obvious that both the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Compassion of the Blessed Virgin Mary were profoundly motivated by Charity.
Their Hearts were devoured by charity, burning with love of the Holy Ghost. Our Lord, Word of God, one substance with the Holy Ghost, was devoured by the love of the Holy Ghost, by this Holy Spirit who set on fire all His Being. The person of the Word but also His Soul, His Body, His Heart of flesh, were inflamed by the Holy Ghost. The Virgin Mary imitated her Divine Son and she too tried to model her sentiments on those of her Divine Son. She too was filled with the Holy Ghost. This was so for her whole life but without any doubt, in a very particular way during the Passion.
To Restore the Honor of the Father
We must never forget that the first and main goal of these two Hearts inflamed by the Holy Ghost was the love of the Father.
Indeed, love of the Holy Ghost, this "Consuming Fire," leads to the Father. It is none other than the love of God: "God is Charity." Therefore, the Holy Ghost can do nothing other than lead us to God, to lead us to the Father. Thus Jesus was suffering first of all in order to restore the honor of God the Father. The Virgin Mary, too, was united with the sufferings of her Divine Son in order to restore the honor of the Father.
The Father receives infinite glory, really infinite, from His Divine Son. And He also receives the greatest created glory from a privileged creature. This creature was the Blessed Virgin Mary, united with her Divine Son. She was the first to be truly redeemed. She was perfectly redeemed, in the sense that she has not even known sin. It was in consideration of the Incarnation of Our Lord that she was Immaculate in her Conception and thus has never known sin.
At the foot of the Cross, she sang the glory of the Father in suffering; in sorrow she sang the glory of God; she wanted to restore the honor and the glory of God upon earth.
Merciful Love
This love, which devoured both of them, made them full of mercy. Indeed, the immediate consequence of a great love, of a great charity, is mercy. For this love these Hearts possessed wants to be spread about, wants to be communicated to those who do not have it, to all those who are lacking it.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, seeing all sinful mankind since Adam and Eve, all men who were to be born in this world - Our Lord Jesus Christ had a clear vision and full knowledge of this by His Divinity because He is the Creator and Redeemer of mankind - He knew all this misery, all these men far from God who don't think of the Father, of their Creator and Redeemer. Our Lord saw all this and His Heart was filled with mercy. This mercy leads to sacrifice. Mercy is a source of sacrifice. It leads all the way to sacrifice because it is ready to give itself totally so that charity be re-established in the hearts of men.
Thus Our Lord suffered; He suffered in His Body - in the Garden of the Agony drops of blood were dripping from His forehead. Our Lord was filled with mercy. And the Blessed Virgin wanted to share the sufferings of Our Lord precisely for the same reason. She too thought of all these souls. Both of them suffered together and wanted to suffer, even unto death, unto martyrdom.
And if Our Lord Jesus Christ truly gave His last breath for the glory of His Father and for the redemption of souls so that the Holy Ghost may inflame all hearts and all souls with the love of the Most Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary did not die herself at that moment, but she offered her life and she suffered martyrdom. She is truly called the Queen of Martyrs. She too gave herself, all her blood, all her life, all that she had and, in particular, her Divine Son. She gave all to the Good Lord for the redemption of souls. Mother of Mercy, Mater Misericordiae. Such are the origins of the Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Suffering with Peace and Joy
Far from us to think that in the Passion there is sadness leading to despair and that this sadness would have put Jesus and Mary's souls in a certain kind of despair. No, not at all! Since it was precisely charity which was the origin of these sufferings, charity produced in their Hearts peace and joy: Though it might seem unbelievable to unite passion, suffering and mercy with a profound joy, yet the Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ was filled with joy indeed; and so was the Heart of the Virgin Mary, united with that of Our Lord.
They were filled with the joy of the Most Holy Trinity, the joy given by a great Charity; the peace, which Charity produces in souls, is an ineffable peace. Jesus and Mary were not in a torture like many souls who suffer in their bodies, and who have feelings of deep sorrow and despair. No, Jesus and Mary did not suffer in this way. They suffered, but their Hearts were truly in serenity, in peace, which allowed the Blessed Virgin to remain standing at the foot of the Cross. If she had not had this peace, if she had not had this Charity, if she had not had this intimate and profound joy of associating herself with the sufferings of her Divine Son, of associating herself with His Charity, of being filled with the Holy Ghost, she could not have remained standing and the Gospel would not have said “Stabat Mater." The persons who surrounded the Blessed Virgin most likely showed more than the Blessed Virgin their exterior suffering - through tears and exterior feelings. The Virgin remained calm, in peace.
Patroness of the Oblates of the Society of St. Pius X
Here you have your patroness, my most dear Sisters. And you chose to come here to unite yourselves with us, you chose to come here particularly to this house of Econe where almost all the Oblates, have come or with which they are at least all united; you came to associate yourself with the priests, because the priest is another Christ. The priest must associate himself with the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ particularly through the Sacrifice that he offers; he must thereby espouse the feelings of the Heart of Jesus, and also the feelings of Mary; he must ask the Virgin to make him understand these feelings in order to feel them more and to espouse them better.
Thus be helpers of the priests, not only helping them with your hands, but with your soul and with your spirit, helping in the Priesthood, in the spirit of sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Cross for the extension of His reign, for the extension of His love.
In this way you will unite yourselves in a very special way with the Blessed Virgin Mary as she was united with her Divine Son, and you will share His sufferings. You shall contribute in a very powerful way to the redemption of souls, according to the measure in which you are able, to the measure, which Divine Providence shall give to you. You will associate yourselves in a more profound way to the priesthood, praying for the priests, for the seminarians whom you serve, that they may become true priests, that they may become truly other Christs, that they may associate themselves in an even more profound and more perfect way to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
You will ask the Blessed Virgin Mary for this grace. Then offer your sufferings, offer your sacrifices for this intention, so that the Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ may be extended.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Source
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1980 Sermon at the First Solemn Mass of Fr. Alain Lorans |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 08:05 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Sermon pronounced by His Excellency Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
at the First Solemn Mass of Father Alain Lorans,
In Honor of Our Lady of Pointet
13 July 1980
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
Dear Father, from now on you are a priest. You no longer face years of formation, but rather a burden of responsibility. The great honor of the priesthood is yours, with the grace of God, with the support of those who love you and of all those who, already in heaven, put their mantle of protection around you so that you may be able to carry out a wonderful apostolate.
As we all know, you have been chosen to lend a helping hand to all those who will come to the Catholic university soon to be opened in Paris, where you will have a special apostolate, marked by a special enthusiasm and a special importance, because this is what Our Lord Himself did. He chose a small group, He formed His Apostles, and with these twelve Apostles He transformed the world. An apostolate based on a chosen few is a very important apostolate. You will have to bring these souls, especially chosen by God, to an understanding of the ideal they are searching for, and to make of it a Christian ideal, so that, whatever the vocation to which they are called, they will fulfill it in a Christian manner, a Catholic manner, in union with Our Lord, according to the teachings of Our Lord, in the light of Our Lord Jesus Christ, because Our Lord came to you too, as to us, when He said to His Apostles and His disciples: “You are the light of the world."
And so, particularly in this task to which you have been assigned, you will be the light of the world. Now what is the light of the world? Where is this light of the world? Our Lord Himself gives the answer: "I am the Light of the world." We don't have to look for it; it is already there. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, Light, that is to say, from God. Could we have a light more clear, more dazzling than one which comes from God Himself, which is God? Our Lord is God, so we will find the light in Him, and He is what you will teach. You will act as St. Paul, who said, "I have wanted to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified." This is what St. Paul said; his entire message is summed up in this – to speak of Christ, Christ Crucified.
Your task will be to show these chosen souls how to know Christ, how to unite themselves with Our Lord, meditating on His words, on His life, on what He is; and in this way they will find the light of their life. What a beautiful apostolate! How I hope these souls entrusted to you may profit from your ministry and give to the world the basic principles it needs, the basic principles of our first catechism, the catechism which summarizes the teachings of the Church, all the teachings of Our Lord. This should be the foundation of the life of every individual, of family life, of social life, political life. We must lay this foundation which is so necessary for people and for families, so that peace and prosperity and the truly Christian life which ours should be, may flourish.
And you will not only be the light of these souls; you will also give them life – the life of Our Lord. Not only His light, but His own life, the supernatural life of grace, grace which you will give them in the sacraments and especially in the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion – sacraments which we need almost every day to sustain us in the spiritual life. You will make them understand that they need these sacraments, this life, this divine life. Today, alas, it is so hard to lift oneself up to these spiritual realities, as we are caught up in the material world, the materialistic world which wants to know only earthly joys and closes its eyes to eternal realities.
It is hard to understand that the supernatural life, the divine life of Our Lord in us, is the one thing necessary. It is what will get us to heaven. We should be already in eternity, at this moment. Our soul is eternal and imperishable and therefore we must bathe our soul in the life of Our Lord, in the supernatural life and make it truly full of eternal life. The day God calls us and tells us that our life here below is over, that life will continue, as it says so well in the Preface of the Requiem Mass, "Life is not taken away but changed.” God does not extinguish our life. It goes on, with a change. It changes, yes, in incidental ways, but it does not end; it goes on, if we have been careful to imbue it with the eternal life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. So this is what you will do; you will build this bridge between the life of God, the life of Our Lord, and these souls who will come to you, searching for true life.
And finally you will set an example. As Our Lord said, you are not only the salt of the earth, you are not only the light of the world, but you act in such a way that the world may give glory to God when they see your works: “…and seeing your good works they will glorify the Father Who is in heaven.”
You will set this example, therefore, and exemplify the virtues of Our Lord by gentleness, goodness and perseverance in the priestly life, in the apostolate. And you will do good for souls, for all who come to you. This should be your ideal.
I am sure you already understand this, and I am sure that you realize that what I have been talking about is nothing more than an extension of your Mass. Live your Mass every day, every second of your life, prolong it through the course of the day, that is, prolong the teaching you give us in the words of the Epistle and Gospel, the words of Our Lord. Prolong this life of sacrifice which you will make present, in a few moments, on the altar, by the presence of Our Lord, who is prolonging His Sacrifice of the Cross and showing us His love. Here it is: you will love souls, you will give yourself to souls, you will sacrifice yourself for souls, for love, for love of God and love of your neighbor. This is the whole Sacrifice of the Mass. You will give yourself to souls as you give Communion. You will give Christ to souls through knowledge of Him, Christ in His life. This is your Holy Mass, this is the Communion you will give, this is the Christ you will give to souls. Thus your whole priestly life is a continuous Mass. You are a priest. You have begun your first Mass. But your Mass must never end. Your whole life now will be a continual Mass. May God give you the grace to live your Mass and encourage all around you to do the same, and to understand that our whole lives should be a Mass, an oblation which is complete and continuous, a continuous sacrifice of ourselves for love of God and love of our neighbor.
This is your ideal, this is what we are going to pray for all together, today, pray for you that this joy of yours, the profound joy of offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, may remain in you, that you may continue in this joy, in this spiritual peace which will make you a true priest.
I must not end without putting you under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary was with the Eternal High Priest throughout His life, right up to His complete self-sacrifice on the Cross. She was there. So then, be assured that Mary, Mother of the priest, will be with you too, all the days of your life.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Ghost. Amen.
Source
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1972 Sermon for the Reception of the Cassock |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 07:57 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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His Excellency Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
on the Feast of the Epiphany - 7 January 1972
Given at Ecône, for the Ceremony of The Reception of the Cassock
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
My dear friends, my dear brethren,
In think that in this ceremony today the very angels of heaven are assisting along with the saints, and along with your parents and friends who have already gone to the eternal dwelling of the Father. Today they are all rejoicing with us, giving thanks at the thought that today, my dear friends, you are going to put on Our Lord Jesus Christ. This means nothing else than this very habit with which you will be girded in a few moments. You have come to this house like the Magi, the Three Kings. Drawn by the star, the star of your vocation, in the midst of a world that is troubled, disoriented, no longer knowing where it can find the solution to its problems. In the midst of priests who are themselves equally disoriented, no longer knowing what the priesthood is, you have received a special grace - whether through the influence of your parents, or through priests friendly to us - you have received this extraordinary grace of a priestly vocation.
What drew you to come here? Why have you come and why have you chosen this seminary? Why have you come to these mountains, to this out-of-the-way place in Ecône? You have not come here to find any posh resort, in a purely human and material sense. Nor have you come to pursue the human sciences. These you could have found elsewhere, and many of you have already done studies in the universities, where you were called to work, to study.
You have come here to seek Our Lord Jesus Christ, He Who is the solution to all problems. And after a few months of reflection, some of you told me in the letters you wrote to apply for this year, you understood that in this house what is given you above all is the knowledge of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He is your Master. He is the Object of your science, He is the source of your sanctification. That is what we and all your professors desire to give you above all - the knowledge and love of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore this habit which you will put on will be nothing more or less than the echo of the words of St. Paul: "Induimini Dominum Iesum Christum - Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ!"
Therefore from the very beginning when this seminary was founded at Fribourg, already back then it seemed to be wise and necessary to place the Crucifix into the hands of those especially who were beginning the Year of Spirituality, so that during this year of meditation, during this entire year of reflecting on their vocation, they many find in the Crucifix the solution to all their problems, a firm perseverance in their vocation, firmness in the faith, which is the reason for everything we shall ask of them during the course of this year, and the years to follow.
To follow Our Lord Jesus Christ, to imitate Him, to "put Him on," is no small thing, especially in our modern world, especially in the present time. My dear friends, the present time cries out for heroes, at a time when everything seems to be vanishing in the structure of society, and even in the structure of the Church. This is no time for tepid souls, for souls who give themselves in the face of the troubles or doubts which are circulating all over the world, even on the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, even throughout the Catholic Church. The time belongs to those who believe - believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, who believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ by His Cross has given the solution to all the problems of our life, even personal problems.
You have meditated on these things during the good retreat given by Frs. Barrielle and Riviere. You have seen that you must undergo a conversion, you must do penance as Our Lord Jesus Christ give us an example on the Cross, but you have understood that this must be done through love, out of charity, for the love of God, for the love of souls, for the love of your own soul. For the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ is a Cross which breathes love. The Office for Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows says it explicitly in the beautiful liturgy for that day: "Dilectus meus rubicundus, candidus, totus desiderabilis... omnis figura eius amorem spirat - (These words are put on the lips of the Blessed Virgin) - "My beloved is all resplendent in white, but also red, reddened by his own blood," for He is covered with His own blood. Thus does He draw us - He is for us the object of an immense desire, an immense love. "Omnis gifura eius amorem spirat - His whole attitude inspires love," and this evocation of the liturgy continues, "Caput inclinatum...manus extentae....pectus perforatum." Yes, His head bent over, His arms stretched out, His pierced Heart all breathe love.
This is what you must come to understand, my dear friends. You will come to understand through meditation, through prayer, through everything which is taught you, that it is Our Lord Jesus Christ Who gives us charity, true charity, the charity of God, the charity which above all attaches us to God. And so you will detest your sins, your own failings, you will always have a spirit of sorrow for your sins, but this spirit of sorrow will be provoked by the love of God, by the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It will not be an inefficacious penance, a somber and sad kind of penance which will depress your heart, but on the contrary, it will dilate your heart through the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Here is something you must never forget, that in the Christian life there are always two fundamental aspects - the penitential aspect, the detestation of sin and flight from it, and the desire for God, the love of God. And as St. Thomas said so well, there are two aspects of the Christian life in the same act of charity, for if one loves God one will flee whatever separates us from Him. Now sin separates us from God; hence by the act of charity which we have for God and for Our Lord, we must at the same time detest our sins, detest everything that renders our path to God difficult, and always love more He who is the Author of our own being and of the grace we have.
Hence the Crucifix will be your model, the source of your Faith, to which your glance shall be directed, but it will also be for you the source of your apostolate. Hence you are not afraid to put on the soutane, you are not afraid to put on Our Lord Jesus Christ, to loudly proclaim Him, to demonstrate and manifest Him to the world. The world needs this manifestation of Our Lord Jesus Christ more than ever. The more the world sinks into this dung-heap of vice and disorder, doubting and abandoning the Truth, the more do the noble-hearted need light, charity, and order. And this cassock which you will wear will signify these things in the eyes of the world.
Therefore you will surely be a sign of contradiction - signum cui contradicetur - yes, certainly you will be, like Our Lord, a sign which shall be contradicted. You will be loved - or hated, you will be persecuted. You will have well-wishers. The noble-minded will wish you well, but those who are possessed by the spirit of Satan will persecute you - as Our Lord was persecuted.
Be proud, then, of wearing your cassock, your habit which manifests Our Lord Jesus Christ to the world, and fear nothing, for God is with you, the holy angels are with you, all the saints of heaven are with you, as well as all those who have worn this habit, who sanctified themselves by this habit, and who sanctified others.
Know, that just as Our Lord Jesus Christ is the solution to all problems, the priest also, who is another Christ - sacerdos alter Christus - must also be the solution to all problems. I make no exception, even for economic problems, even social problems; all problems must be resolved by Our Lord Jesus Christ. And if today these economic and social problems seem insoluble, it is because they have lost the true solution which is Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Crucifix has been suppressed everywhere, it has been driven from the public places, from schools, from courts, from public buildings, from the hearts of children, from houses. The Crucifix is no longer present and that is why they are no longer able to solve these problems.
I will give you a single example: the economic and social problems would be resolved if the virtue of temperance - perhaps even more so than the virtue of justice - would be practiced by everybody. Now does not Our Lord Jesus Christ on His Cross preach to us the virtue of temperance, contempt for the things of the world? Temperance is simply moderation in all things, in everything which must be used here below. Thus if everybody practiced temperance, the problems concerning questions of justice would be quickly resolved. But because they no longer want to practice the virtue of temperance, because everybody is looking for more goods, always for more enjoyment at whatever price, they no longer think of the spirit of penance, of moderation in using the goods of this world; hence jealousy and envy arise in the hearts of men, and fighting spreads all over the world. Just as those who possess these goods could understand that they too must use the goods of this world with moderation, they could be more generous with the "have-nots" - here is an example to show you how Our Lord Jesus Christ by the example of His Cross, by the example of His Blood which was shed - can and must be the solution to all problems.
Well, you will be the ones to preach Our Lord Jesus Christ. You will bring with you the true solution to all the problems of this world. But to do that, stay priests, abandon not that which makes you a priest. Of course you are not yet priests, but you have made a first step which manifests your desire to become one. I wish with all my heart that you finally do become priests, and already the world will judge you as such - when you wear the cassock, from now on the world will judge you as though you were already priests. So be sure to conduct yourselves as if you were already such. By your example, by your deportment, by your attitude, by your charity, by your goodness and wisdom - already you must act like men who bring with them the solutions to problems. Thus the honor of God will be saved. The glory of God will spread throughout the world, and thus souls will be converted to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Behold, my dear friends, the meaning of this ceremony we will perform in a few moments with you. I hope you will understand it, that you will keep its signification in your heart, and that you will be always more and more convinced of it. Then you will truly be "the light of the world."
We will ask this especially today on this feast of the Epiphany, like the Magi, the Kings who came to seek the Light of the Child Jesus. They found Him, in the company of Mary and Joseph - we will ask Mary and Joseph to give you conviction in these sentiments which I have tried to evoke these morning, so that they remain in you. And I am convinced that at your prayers, and the prayers of your parents and all those present here, and the prayers of all who love you and follow your progress with so much affection, that the grace of Our Lord will be abundant in you.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Source
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| The Catacombs: Re-platforming Updates and Notices |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 07:53 AM - Forum: The Catacombs: News
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A Notice on the 'Archived Catacombs' Posts
Dear friends,
As you may have noticed, I am slowly bringing over onto this newly re-platformed Catacombs many of the important articles and resources that are on the old/archived Catacombs.
In doing this, many times I am copying over important contributions made by different members. For clarity's sake I am prefacing these posts as coming 'From the Archived Catacombs' with the original link, to give the authors the credit due to them whenever possible.
Please let me know if you have any questions - contact@thecatacombs.org
God bless!
-Admin
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1983 Statement Against False Ecumenism |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 07:32 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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From the Archived Catacombs:
Archbishop Lefebvre's Public Statement against False Ecumenism
Written in October 1983, it was not actually made public until June 1988 in conjunction with the Episcopal Consecrations.
Albano
October 19, 1983
We read in the twentieth chapter of Exodus that God, after having forbidden His people to adore strange gods, added these words: "It is I who am the Lord thy God, a mighty and jealous God, visiting the iniquity of fathers on their sons to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me." In chapter thirty-four of Exodus we read: "Thou shalt not adore any strange god. A jealous God, that is the name of the Lord."
It is just and salutary that God should be jealous of what belongs to Him alone and from all eternity: jealous of His infinite eternal almighty being, jealous of His glory, of His truth, of His charity, jealous of being the only Creator and Redeemer, and so of being the end of all things, the sole way of salvation and happiness for all angels and men, jealous of being the Alpha and the Omega.
The Catholic Church founded by Him and to which He entrusted all the treasures of salvation is for her part also jealous of the privileges of her sole Master and Lord, and teaches all men that they must turn towards her and be baptized by her if they wish to be saved and partake of the glory of God in a happy eternity. Thus the Church is essentially missionary. She is essentially one, holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman.
She cannot admit of there being any other true religion outside of her; she cannot admit that one may find any way to salvation outside of her since she identifies herself with her Lord and God who said: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life."
Hence she has a horror of any communion or union with false religions, with heresies, and with errors which put a distance between souls and her God who is the one and only God. She knows only unity within her fold, as does her God. For that she gives the blood of her martyrs, the life of her missionaries, of her priests, the sacrifice of her religious and nuns, she offers the daily Sacrifice of Propitiation.
But with Vatican II a spirit of adultery has been blowing through the Church, a spirit which in the Declaration on Religious Liberty allows of the principle of religious liberty of conscience for internal and external acts, with exemption from any authority. This is the principle of the Declaration of the Rights of Man against the rights of God. The authorities of the Church, the State and the Family partake of the authority of God and hence they have the duty to contribute to the spread of the Truth and to the application of the Decalogue, and to protect their subjects against error and immorality.
This Declaration provoked the laicizing of Catholic States which is an insult to God and to His Church, reducing the Church to the status of equality with false religions. This is exactly the spirit of adultery for which the people of Israel were so often rebuked (see Note 1, the declaration of Pope Paul VI, L'Osservatore Romano, April 24, 1969). This spirit of adultery is also made clear in the ecumenism instituted by The Secretariat for the Unity of Christians. This aberrant ecumenism has brought in its train all the reforms of the liturgy, of the Bible, of canon law, with the collegiality that destroys the personal authority of the Supreme Pontiff, of the episcopacy and of the parish priest (see Note 2).
This spirit is not Catholic; it is the fruit of the Modernism condemned by St. Pius X. It wrecks all the institutions of the Church and especially the seminaries and the clergy, in such a way that one may ask who is still integrally Catholic among the clerics who submit to this adulterous spirit of the Council! Hence nothing is so urgent in the Church as to form a clergy repudiating this adulterous and Modernist spirit and saving the glory of the Church and her Divine Founder by keeping the integral Faith and the means established by Our Lord and by the Tradition of the Church to keep this Faith, and to transmit the life of grace and the fruits of the Redemption.
It will soon be twenty years now that we have been striving with patience and firmness to get the Roman authorities to understand this need for a return to sane doctrine and Tradition, for a renewal of the Church, for the salvation of souls and for the glory of God.
To safeguard the Catholic priesthood which perpetuates the Catholic Church, we need Catholic bishops. We find ourselves constrained, because of the spirit of Modernism invading today's clergy, an invasion reaching even to the highest summits within the Church, to undertake the consecrating of bishops, this principle having been accepted by the pope...
But a deaf ear is continually turned to our entreaties - nay, more, we are being asked to recognize the wisdom of the whole Council and of the reforms ruining the Church. No one wishes to pay any heed to our present experience of, with the grace of God, maintaining the Tradition which produces true fruits of holiness and draws numerous vocations.
To safeguard the Catholic priesthood which perpetuates the Catholic Church and not an adulterous Church, we need Catholic bishops. So we find ourselves constrained, because of the spirit of Modernism invading today's clergy, an invasion reaching even to the highest summits within the Church, to undertake the consecrating of bishops, the principle of this consecration having been accepted by the pope, according to Cardinal Ratzinger's letter of May 30. These episcopal consecrations will not only be valid, but given the historical circumstances, most probably also licit. However, be they licit or not, it is sometimes necessary to abandon the letter of the law in order to observe the spirit of the law.
The Pope can only desire the Catholic priesthood to continue. Hence it is in no way in a spirit of rupture or schism that we are carrying out these episcopal consecrations, but in order to come to the help of the Church which finds herself no doubt in the most sorrowful situation of her whole history. Had we found ourselves in the times of St. Francis of Assisi, the pope would have been in agreement with us. There was not an occupation by Freemasonry of the Vatican in its happier days.
Hence we declare our attachment and our submission to the Holy See and to the pope. In accomplishing this act of consecration we are aware of continuing our service to the Church and to the papacy exactly as we have striven to do ever since the first day of our priesthood.
The day when the Vatican will be delivered from this occupation by Modernists and will come back to the path followed by the Church down to Vatican II, our new bishops will put themselves entirely in the hands of our Sovereign Pontiff, to the point of desisting if he so wishes from the exercise of their episcopal functions.
Finally we turn towards the Virgin Mary who is also jealous of the privileges of her Divine Son, jealous of His glory, of His Kingdom on earth as in heaven. How often has she intervened for the defense, even the armed defense, of Christendom against the enemies of the Kingdom of Our Lord! We entreat her to intervene today to chase the enemies out from inside the Church who are trying to destroy her more radically than her enemies from outside. May she deign to keep in the integrity of the Faith, in the love of the Church, in devotion to the successor of Peter, all the members of the Society of St. Pius X and all the priests and faithful who labor alongside the Society, in order that she may both keep us from schism and preserve us from heresy.
May St. Michael the Archangel inspire us with his zeal for the glory of God and with his strength to fight demons.
May St. Pius X share with us a part of his wisdom, of his learning, of his sanctity, to discern the true from the false and the good from the evil in these times of confusion and lies.
† Marcel Lefebvre
P.S. [this post script is from the June 1988 issue of The Angelus magazine when this text was made public—webmaster] This statement, drawn up in 1983, is still valid today. It needed only one correction concerning the agreement with Rome for the consecration of a bishop in the letter of May 30, 1988. If the conversations of the months of April and May did not reach a conclusion, that is because they showed the will of Modernist Rome to make us accept the spirit and reforms of Vatican II.
Note 1: Declaration of Paul VI, L'Osservatore Romano, August 24, 1969:
Quote:"The new position adopted by the Church with regard to the realities of this earth is henceforth well known by everyone... and here is the most important new principle to be put into practice... the Church agrees to recognize the world as 'self-sufficient,' she does not seek to make the world an instrument for her religious ends..."
This is a declaration contrary to the Catholic Faith, against which I protested in a letter to what used to be the Holy Office. The reply was, coming from the Secretary of State, that is to say Cardinal Villot, that I should quit Rome immediately; to which I answered that he would have to send a squad of Swiss guards to force me to quit Rome. The reply was silence. That is what has happened to the Vatican and what it still is today with regard to the defenders of the Catholic Faith. All the popes in their encyclicals stated the opposite. Not only the Faith, but also sane philosophy rises up in protest against this declaration which laicized all the Catholic States.
Note 2: Secretariat for the Unity of Christians at the Council. It is suitable to recall the important role played by the members of the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians in the Council. Cardinal Bea entered into official relations with the Masonic Jewish Lodge of B'nai B'rith of New York in the United States. It was Cardinal Bea who drew up the projects for the schemas on Religious Liberty, on the Jews, on non-Christian Religions, on ecumenism, in collaboration with Cardinal Willebrands, Secretary of the Secretariat, and Bishop De Smedt, Vice-President of the Secretariat and reporter at the Council on the Declaration on Religious Liberty.
Cardinal Willebrands formed part of the Vatican Commission for Judeo-Christian relations and of the Commission which maintains relations with the ecumenical Council of Churches, and of the Commission which concerns itself with relations with Moscow through the intermediary of the Orthodox Church of Moscow. To them are to be joined Cardinal Etchegaray, Msgr. Maller, the Dominican Fathers de Contenson, Bernard Dupuy, and a number of others. The influence of the Protestants of Taize is not to be neglected either, who were able to come and go as they liked in the Vatican. Nor should we forget the presence of six Protestant pastors in the Liturgical Commission. The harmfulness of all these Commissions is considerable. The Commissions are paralyzing all the normal activity of the Roman Curia. The Rome of the Commissions is the present active-day Rome, Modernist and Masonic. Popes Paul VI and John Paul II have wanted these commissions and have become their slaves just as they are prisoners of the Roman Synods, fruits of the collegiality recognized by the new Canon Law. To read the long article in the Dictionary of Catholic Theology, listed in the index under the title "Ecumenism," and written by Father Charles Boyer, S.J., who was the Secretary for the Secretariat for Unity after Cardinal Willebrands, is very instructive in uncovering the ecumenical spirit presiding over all the reforms.
Source - archives.sspx.org/archbishop_lefebvre/public_statement_ab_lefebvre_june_1988.htm
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| A microchip-based program backed by Bill Gates and the WEF is tracking millions |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 07:22 AM - Forum: Global News
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A microchip-based program backed by Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum is tracking the COVID status of millions
Since 2015, the Gates Foundation has supported Khushi Baby, a microchip-based project in India that helps monitor children's vaccination through attachable NFC microchip necklaces.
December 15, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – On November 17, LifeSiteNews reported that the Gates Foundation has been a major backer of Microchips Biotech, a company that designs a kind of contraceptive microchip commissioned directly by Bill Gates.
In June, Gates lied about his involvement with Microchips Biotech in a CBS interview, saying, “I’ve never been involved in any sort of microchip-type thing.” Ten days later, his foundation gave Microchips Biotech another $1 million grant.
In fact, Gates lied not only Microchips Biotech, but about another microchip project - one with strong ties to COVID-19 tracking initiatives.
Khushi Baby
Since 2015, the Gates Foundation has supported Khushi Baby, a microchip-based project in India that helps monitor children's vaccination through attachable NFC microchip necklaces.
Khushi Baby necklaces hold immunization history, GPS location at time of vaccination, and biometric data from children and their parents. The information can be read by an app that the the company created and can be uploaded to a cloud service to be “accessed seamlessly by NGOs, MOHs [Ministries of Health], and other health officials.”
The group claims to have tracked at least 50,000 mothers and children through their microchip- necklace program.
According to Khushi Baby, the Gates Foundation, along with 3ie, a Gates-backed international NGO, provided seed funding for the start-up's initial trial in 2015.
No information about Khushi Baby can be found on the Gates Foundation website, although Melinda Gates promoted the start-up on Twitter in 2014. Nevertheless, Khushi Baby, 3ie, and UNESCO attest to the foundation’s involvement with Khushi Baby.
In 2016, Khushi Baby also partnered with Gavi, the multilateral vaccine distributer that Bill Gates co-founded and that the Gates Foundation has supplied with over $4 billion. Gavi, one of the world’s most prolific vaccination groups, reports having facilitated the immunization of more than 800 million children. Gavi currently co-leads COVAX, the UN’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution program, which aims to deliver two billion doses of coronavirus vaccines by the end of 2021.
Khushi Baby received $500,000 from Gavi in 2017 and another $250,000 last year. Their collaboration with Gavi landed Khushi Baby an addition Gates Foundation pledge of at least $1.5 million in matching funds.
The specific Gavi program that Khushi Baby participates in is called INFUSE, which was launched at and has been hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the organization behind the “Great Reset.”
In June, the WEF announced the “Great Reset,” a pro-LGBT, socialistic scheme to “revamp all aspects of our societies and economies” in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Archbishop Carlo Viganó slammed the Great Reset as a “global conspiracy against God and humanity” in an open letter to President Trump. Cardinal Raymond Burke recently condemned the project, as well, linking it to an “evil agenda,” realized by means of “manipulation of citizens and nations.”
The WEF, which also helped develop a popular COVID-19 travel pass and works with the controversial ID2020, has promoted Khushi Baby multiple times.
COVID-19 status tracking
Last year, Khushi Baby adapted their platform to develop a new health tracking app for Rajasthan, India’s sixth largest state. The government of Rajasthan plans to deploy the app, called Nirogi Rajasthan (“Healthy Rajasthan”), to 50,000 state health workers, who will go “door-to-door to collect details of the family members and their health.” The CEO of Gavi has voiced his support for the initiative.
Participants will be given “NFC-enabled health cards” and may be require to suppply personal data, like “GPS location” and facial biometrics, according to Khushi Baby. Nirogi Rajasthan seeks to track more than 50 million people over the next three years.
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Khushi Baby joined the Rajasthan government to design yet another app, called Mission LiSa. This “active surveillance” software again allows Khushi Baby to collect GPS data, in addition to “contact history” and biometrics.
Personal information is “processed using artificial intelligence” and GIS technology to track the spread of COVID-19. Around 100,000 Indians are surveilled each day through the app, which reported over 10 million “household screenings” by September. Khushi Baby has declared that “the Mission Lisa deployment has achieved pan-state status.”
Last week, a writer for an Indian government website noted that Mission LiSa “will be extended moving forward to longitudinally track community health, including the forthcoming delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to the population at large.” This announcement, which was retweeted by Khushi Baby, follows similar suggestions by Rajasthan health ministers.
While it’s not clear if Mission LiSa employs microchip technology, Khushi Baby said that the program “will be used as the base to integrate longitudinal modules RMNCH tracking." Khushi Baby’s larger “RMNCH” (reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health) goals features “GPS, Near Field Communication (NFC), and facial biometric accountability at all points of care.”
Ultimately, Khushi Baby doesn’t just want to track tens of millions of Indians. In line with Bill Gates’ call for “digital certificates,” the start-up’s co-founder said in 2017, “Our broader mission is to take our NFC-enabled necklace and unlock its full potential as a digital passport.”
“We are building and scaling in India, but also have an eye to make a sustainable, global impact by selling our integrated service and products to other countries’ Ministries of Health and INGOs,” he declared.
[Emphasis mine.]
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| Leaked Chinese Communist Party list reveals infiltration of COVID vaccine manufacturers |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 07:16 AM - Forum: Socialism & Communism
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Leaked Chinese Communist Party list reveals infiltration of COVID vaccine manufacturers
'There is an espionage emergency,' declared Gordon G. Chang, long time international commentator on Asian affairs.
December 14, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – A leaked list of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members suggests a massive infiltration of western corporations and governments, including the major pharmaceutical corporations developing vaccines for COVID-19, the virus which originated in China and has held the entire world hostage for nearly a year.
The list containing the names of 1.95 million CCP members was leaked to The Daily Mail in the United Kingdom, The Australian in Australia, and De Standaardin in Belgium. It raises serious questions about the operational integrity of western firms employing these individuals.
“There is an espionage emergency,” declared Gordon G. Chang, long time international commentator on Asian affairs in a tweet.
“China's influence, intelligence and infiltration attempts are overwhelming America,” said Chang, writing at GateStoneInstitute.org.
“NEVER take any vaccine that has been within missile range of Bill Gates,” tweeted attorney Lin Wood. “I also have serious concerns about Pfizer & its CCP connections.”
Quote:NEVER take any vaccine that has been within missile range of Bill Gates.
I also have serious concerns about Pfizer & its CCP connections.
Be prudent. Be cautious. Talk at length to your medical doctor. Do research. Demand answers.https://t.co/9BiaNB2cxb
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) December 14, 2020
After conducting a detailed analysis, The Daily Mail said that “pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and AstraZeneca – both involved in the development of coronavirus vaccines – employed a total 123 party loyalists.”
GlaxoSmithKline also employs members of the CCP.
The primary allegiance of these individuals is not to the west or to the companies employing them but to communism and the CCP.
CCP members swear a solemn oath to
Quote: “carry out the Party’s decisions, strictly observe Party discipline, guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party, work hard, fight for communism throughout my life, be ready at all times to sacrifice my all for the Party and the people, and never betray the Party.”
Other CCP members work for companies such as Boeing and Airbus which supply equipment and technology used by the U.S. military and the armed forces of other western nations, creating the potential for security breaches.
These companies “make some of our most advanced weaponry and are trusted to guard top-secret designs for our most sensitive assets and facilities,” reported National File.
Quote:“Yet collectively they employ hundreds of Chinese Communists who have pledged to serve the Party above all else.”
An intelligence officer who asked to remain anonymous told The Australian that the CCP members in government and corporations that work with government “is a totally unacceptable security risk.”
Quote:“Party members are often expected to do the bidding of the state, and especially when they are overseas,” he said. “In some cases, they go beyond being a security risk, and actually do the bidding of China in attempting to influence governments overseas. The recent raids in Sydney are an example of this.”
“Chinese nationals have compromised the security of global companies which form part of the military supply chain for the West,” continued the intelligence officer. “Allowing members of the CCP to work for such companies risks their stealing technology, providing intelligence to China on forthcoming weapons systems and capabilities, or on force structures built around those capabilities.”
Boeing produces not only commercial airliners; it is the second-largest defense contractor in the world, manufacturing jet fighters, bombers, and missiles for the U.S. military. The company also has a contract to deliver two new 747 aircraft for use as the president’s Air Force One, beginning in 2024.
Other CCP members can be found working for global banking giants, representing a potential threat to western economies.
John Ratcliffe, the U.S. Director of National Security, warned of the grave threat the CCP represents to the U.S. and the rest of the world in a commentary earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal:
Quote:As Director of National Intelligence, I am entrusted with access to more intelligence than any member of the U.S. government other than the president. I oversee the intelligence agencies, and my office produces the President’s Daily Brief detailing the threats facing the country. If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point, it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.
The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.
I call its approach of economic espionage “rob, replicate and replace.” China robs U.S. companies of their intellectual property, replicates the technology, and then replaces the U.S. firms in the global marketplace.
“This generation will be judged by its response to China’s effort to reshape the world in its own image and replace America as the dominant superpower,” said Ratcliffe.
Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate who is now being referred to by mainstream media as “president-elect,” said that the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent endorsement of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is a “bright light in a needlessly dark time.”
Biden’s relationship with China has been the object of suspicion since troubling details about his and his son’s dealings with the communist nation – and associated attempts by U.S. intelligence agencies to cloak the Bidens’ dealing with China – have been revealed.
His advocacy on behalf of the CCP reaches back decades to his days as a U.S. Senator, voting against all legislation aimed at curtailing China’s ambitions, including fostering American dependence on Chinese-manufactured pharmaceuticals.
“The Biden Family is owned by the Chinese Communist Party,” declared White House advisor and former New York City Mayor Rudy Gulianni in October.
[Emphasis mine.]
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| ‘We are not alone’: A 2020 recap by Archbishop Viganò |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-16-2020, 06:59 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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‘We are not alone’: A 2020 recap by Archbishop Viganò
The months that we leave behind represent one of the darkest moments in the history of humanity: for the first time ever, since the birth of the Savior, the Holy Keys have been used to close churches and restrict the celebration of the Mass and the Sacraments, almost in anticipation of the abolition of the daily Sacrifice prophesied by Daniel, which will take place during the reign of the Antichrist.
December 15, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The following reflection by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is available in Italian HERE.
NOLITE TIMERE - a Meditation in expectation of the birth of the Most Holy Redeemer
Sleep, O Celestial Child:
The nations do not know
Who has been born;
But the day will come
When they shall be
Your noble heritage;
You who sleep so humbly,
You who are hidden in dust:
They will know You as King.
- Manzoni, Il Natale
In less than two weeks, by the grace of God, this year of Our Lord 2020, which has been marked by terrible events and great social upheavals, will draw to a close. Allow me to formulate a brief reflection with which to turn a supernatural gaze both towards the recent past as well as the immediate future.
The months that we leave behind represent one of the darkest moments in the history of humanity: for the first time ever, since the birth of the Savior, the Holy Keys have been used to close churches and restrict the celebration of the Mass and the Sacraments, almost in anticipation of the abolition of the daily Sacrifice prophesied by Daniel, which will take place during the reign of the Antichrist. For the first time ever, at the Easter celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection, many of us were forced to assist at Mass and Holy Week services through the internet, depriving us of Holy Communion. For the first time, we became aware, with pain and dismay, of being deserted by our bishops and parish priests, who were barricaded in their palaces and rectories out of fear of a seasonal flu that claimed about the same number of victims as in other years.
We have seen – so to speak – the generals and officers abandon their army, and in some cases they even joined the enemy ranks, imposing on the Church an unconditional surrender to the absurd reasons for the pseudo-pandemic. Never, down all the centuries, has so much faint-heartedness, so much cowardice, so much desire to pander to our persecutors found such fertile ground in those who ought to be our guides and leaders. And what most scandalized many of us was the realization that this betrayal involved the highest levels of the Hierarchy of the Church much more than the priests and the simple faithful. Precisely from the highest Throne, from which we should have expected a firm and authoritative intervention in defense of the rights of God, of the freedom of the Church and the salvation of souls, we have received instead invitations to obey unjust laws, illegitimate norms, and irrational orders. And in the words that the media promptly spread from Santa Marta, we recognized many, too many, nods to the insider language of the globalist élite – fraternity, universal income, new world order, build back better, great reset, nothing will be ever be the same again, resilience – all words of the new language, which testify to the idem sentire of those who speak them and those who listen to them.
It was a true act of intimidation, a thinly-veiled threat, with which our Pastors ratified the pandemic alarm, sowed terror among the simple, and abandoned the dying and the needy. In the height of a cynical legalism, it even reached the point of prohibiting priests from hearing Confessions and administering the Last Sacraments to those were abandoned in intensive care, depriving our beloved dead of religious burial, and denying the Blessed Sacrament to many souls.
And if on the religious side of things we saw ourselves treated as outsiders and barred access to our churches like the Saracens of old – even as the implacable invasion of illegal immigrants continued to replenish the coffers of the self-styled humanitarian associations – on the civil and political side we discovered that our rulers had a vocation to tyranny: using a rhetoric now disproven by reality, they wanted to make us think of them as representatives of the sovereign people. By heads of state and prime ministers, by regional governors and local mayors, the fullest rigors of the law were imposed on us as if we were rebellious subjects, suspects to be placed under surveillance even in the privacy of our own homes, criminals to be chased even in the solitude of the woods or along the seashore. We have seen people forcibly dragged by soldiers in anti-riot gear, elderly people fined while they were going to the pharmacy, shopkeepers forced to close their doors, and restaurants that first took costly measures in an effort to comply with the government’s demands only to then to be ordered to be closed.
With bewilderment, we have heard scores of self-styled experts – most of whom are lacking any scientific authority whatsoever and largely in grave conflict of interest due to their ties to pharmaceutical companies and supra-national organizations – pontificating on television programs and on the pages of newspapers about infections, vaccines, immunity, positive tests, the obligation to wear masks, the risks for the elderly, the contagiousness of the asymptomatic, and the danger of seeing one’s family. They have thundered at us, using arcane words like “social distancing” and “gatherings,” in an endless series of grotesque contradictions, absurd alarms, apocalyptic threats, social precepts and health ceremonies that have replaced religious rites. And as they have terrorized the population – all while being paid lavishly for their pronouncements made at every hour of the day – our rulers and politicians have flaunted their masks in front of all the television cameras, only to then take them off as soon as possible.
Forced to disguise ourselves as anonymous people without a face, they have imposed a muzzle on us that is absolutely useless for avoiding contagion and actually harmful to our health, but indispensable for their purposes of making us feel subjugated and forced to conform. They have prevented us from being cured with existing and effective treatments, promoting instead a vaccine that they now want to make obligatory even before knowing if it is effective, after only incomplete testing. And in order not to jeopardize the enormous profits of the pharmaceutical companies, they have granted immunity for the damage that their vaccines may cause to the population. The vaccine is free, they tell us, but it will actually be paid for with taxpayers’ money, even if its producers do not guarantee that it will protect from contagion.
In this scenario that is similar to the disastrous effects of a war, the economy of our countries lies prostrate, while online commerce companies, home delivery companies, and pornography producers are booming. The local shops close but the large shopping centers and supermarkets remain open: monuments to the consumerism in which everyone, even those with Covid, continue to fill their carts with foreign products, German cheeses, Moroccan oranges, Canadian flour, and cell phones and televisions made in China.
“The world is preparing for the Great Reset,” they tell us obsessively. “Nothing will ever be the same again.” We will have to get used to “living with the virus,” subjected to a perpetual pandemic that feeds the pharmaceutical Moloch and legitimizes ever more hateful limitations of our fundamental liberties. Those who since childhood have catechized us to worship freedom, democracy, and popular sovereignty today govern us by depriving us of freedom in the name of health, imposing dictatorship, arrogating to themselves a power that no one has ever conferred on them, neither from above nor from below. And the temporal power that Freemasonry and the Liberals ferociously opposed in the Roman Pontiffs is today claimed by them in reverse, in an attempt to submit the Church of Christ to the power of the State with the approval and collaboration of the highest levels of the Hierarchy.
Out of this whole humanly discouraging scenario, an unavoidable fact emerges: there is a chasm between those who hold authority and those who are subjected to it, between rulers and citizens, between the Hierarchy and the faithful. It is an institutional monstrum in which both civil and religious power are almost entirely in the hands of unscrupulous people who have been appointed because of their absolute ineptitude and great vulnerability to blackmail. Their role is not to administer the institution but to demolish it, not to respect its laws but to violate them, not to protect its members but to disperse and distance them. In short, we find ourselves facing the perversion of authority, not due to chance or inexperience but pursued with determination and following a pre-established plan: a single script under a single direction.
We thus have rulers who persecute their citizens and treat them as enemies, while welcoming and financing the invasion of criminals and illegal immigrants; law enforcement officers and judges who arrest and fine those who violate social-distancing rules, even as they ostentatiously ignore criminals, rapists, assassins and treacherous politicians; teachers who do not transmit culture or the love of knowledge but instead indoctrinate students into gender and globalist ideology; doctors who refuse to treat the sick but impose a genetically-modified vaccine whose efficacy and potential side-effects are unknown; bishops and priests who deny the faithful the Sacraments but who never miss an occasion for propagandizing their own unconditional adherence to the globalist agenda in the name of Masonic Brotherhood.
Those who oppose this overturning of every principle of civil life find themselves abandoned, alone, and without a leader who would unite them. Loneliness, in fact, allows our common enemies – as they have amply demonstrated themselves to be – to instill fear, despair, and the feeling of not being able to stand together to resist the assaults to which we have been subjected. Citizens are alone in the face of the abuse of civil power, the faithful are alone in the face of the arrogance of heretical Prelates given over to vice, and those who wish to dissent, raise their voice, or protest within institutions are likewise alone.
Loneliness and fear increase when we give them ground to stand on, but they vanish if we think of how each one of us merited that the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity became incarnate in the most pure womb of the Virgin Mary: qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis. And here we come to the Mysteries which we are preparing to contemplate in these coming days: the Immaculate Conception and the Lord’s Holy Nativity. From these mysteries, dear friends, we can draw renewed hope with which to face the events that await us.
Above all, we must remember that none of us is ever truly alone: we have the Lord at our side. He always wants our good, and so he never fails to send us His help and His grace, if only we ask for it with faith. We have the Most Blessed Virgin at our side, our loving Mother and our secure refuge. We have near us the hosts of Angels and the multitude of Saints who from the glory of Heaven intercede for us before the Throne of the Divine Majesty.
The contemplation of this sublime community that is the Holy Church, the mystical Jerusalem that we are citizens of and living members, should persuade us that the last thing we ought to fear is being alone, and that there is no reason to be afraid, even if the devil rages to make us believe that there is. True loneliness is in Hell, where the damned souls do not have any hope: that is the loneliness we should truly fear, and before it we must beg for the grace of final perseverance, that is, to be able to merit the grace of a holy death from the Mercy of God. A death for which we ought to always be prepared by keeping ourselves in a state of grace, in friendship with the Lord.
Of course, the trials that we are facing in this moment are tremendous, because they give us the feeling that evil is triumphing, that each of us is abandoned to ourselves, that the wicked have managed to get the better of the pusillus grex [little flock] and of all humanity. But was not our Lord perhaps alone in Gethsemane, alone on the wood of the Cross, alone in the Tomb? And returning to the mystery of Christmas that is now fast approaching: were not the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph perhaps alone when they found themselves forced to take refuge in a stable because non erat locus illis in diversorio [there was no room for them in the inn]? Imagine how the putative father of Jesus must have felt seeing his Most Holy Spouse ready to give birth in the cold of the night of Palestine; think of their worries during the Flight into Egypt, knowing that King Herod had unleashed his soldiers to kill the Infant Jesus. Even in these terrible situations, the solitude of the Holy Family was only apparent, while God arranged everything according to His plans. He sent an Angel to announce the birth of the Savior to the shepherds.
He moved no less than a Star to call the Magi from the Orient to adore the Messiah. He sent choirs of His Angels to sing over the cave of Bethlehem. He warned Saint Joseph to flee in order to escape the massacre of Herod.
Also to us, in the solitude of the lockdown which many of us are forced to endure, in the abandonment of the hospital, in the silence of the deserted streets and the churches closed to worship, the Lord comes to bring his company. Also to us He sends His Angel to inspire us with holy purposes, his Most Holy Mother to console us, the Paraclete to give us comfort, dulcis hospes animae.
We are not alone: we are never alone. And it is this, in the end, that the authors of the Great Reset fear most: that we become aware of this supernatural – but no less true – reality that makes the house of cards of their infernal deceptions collapse.
If we think of how we have at our side She who crushes the head of the Serpent, or the Archangel who has drawn his sword to drive Lucifer into the abyss; if we recall that our Guardian Angel, our Patron Saint, and our dear ones in Heaven and Purgatory are with us: what can we ever be afraid of? Do we want to believe that the God of armies drawn up for battle has any hesitation about defeating any servant of the eternally defeated one?
She who in the year 630 saved Constantinople from siege, terrorizing the Avars and Persians by appearing tremendous in the heavens; who in 1091 at Scicli in Sicily was invoked as Our Lady of the Militia and appeared on a shining cloud chasing away the Saracens; who in 1571 at Lepanto and again in 1683 at Vienna was invoked as Queen of Victories and granted victory to the Christian army against the Turks; who during the anti-Catholic persecution of Mexico protected the Cristeros and repelled the army of the Mason Elias Calles – She will not deny us Her holy assistance; She will not leave us alone in the battle; She will not abandon those who have recourse to Her with trusting prayer in the moment in which the conflict is decisive and the confrontation is nearing an end.
We have had the grace to understand what this world can become if we deny the Lordship of God and replace it with the tyranny of Satan. This is the world that is rebellious against Christ the King and Mary the Queen, in which each day thousands of innocent lives in the wombs of their mothers are sacrificed to Satan; this is the world in which vice and sin want to cancel every trace of good and virtue, every memory of the Christian religion, every law and vestige of our civilization, every trace of the order that the Creator has given to nature. A world in which churches burn, Crosses are knocked down, statues of the Virgin are decapitated: this hatred, this Satanic fury against Christ and the Mother of God is the mark of the Evil One and his servants. In the face of this total Revolution, this accursed New World Order that would prepare the way for the kingdom of the Antichrist, we cannot still believe that any brotherhood is possible if not under the Law of God, nor that it is possible to construct peace if not under the mantle of the Queen of Peace. Pax Christi in regno Christi.
The Lord will give us the victory only when we bow down to Him as our King. And if we cannot yet proclaim Him as King of our Nations because of the impiety of those who govern us, we can nevertheless consecrate ourselves, our families, and our communities to Him. And to those who dare to challenge Heaven in the name of “Nothing will be the same again,” we respond by invoking God with renewed fervor: “As it was in beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.”
Let us pray to the Immaculate Virgin, Tabernacle of the Most High, asking that in our meditation on the Holy Nativity of Her Divine Son which now draws near, She may dispel our fear and solitude, gathering us together in adoration around the manger. In the poverty of the crib, in the silence of the cave of Bethlehem, the song of the Angels resounds; the one true Light of the world shines forth, adored by the shepherds and the Magi, and Creation itself bows down, adorning the vault of heaven with a shining Star. Veni, Emmanuel: captivum solve Israël. Come, O Emmanuel, free your imprisoned people.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
13 December 2020
Dominica Gaudete, III Adventus
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| December 16th - St. Eusebius of Vercelli |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-16-2020, 12:42 AM - Forum: December
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Saint Eusebius of Vercelli
Bishop
(† 370)
Saint Eusebius was born of a noble family on the island of Sardinia, where his father is said to have died in prison for the Faith. He was brought up in Rome in the practice of piety, and studied in Vercelli, a city of Piedmont. Eusebius was ordained a priest there, and served the Church of Vercelli with such zeal that when the episcopal chair became vacant he was unanimously chosen, by both clergy and people, to fill it.
The holy bishop saw that the best and principal means to labor effectually for the edification and sanctification of his people was to have a zealous clergy. Saint Ambrose assures us that he was the first bishop who in the West united the monastic life with the clerical, living and having his clergy live almost like the monks of the East in the deserts. They shared a common life of prayer and penance, in a single residence, that of the bishop, as did the clergy of Saint Augustine in his African see. Saint Eusebius was very careful to instruct his flock in the maxims of the Gospel. The force of the truth which he preached, together with his example, brought many sinners to a change of life.
When a Council was held in Italy, under the influence of the Emperor Constans and the Arian heretics, with the intention of condemning Saint Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, Saint Eusebius courageously resisted the heretics. He attempted to have all present sign the Nicene Creed, but the paper was torn out of his hands and his pen was broken. With Saint Dionysus of Milan, he refused to sign the condemnation of the bishop of Alexandria. The Emperor therefore had him banished to Scythopolis in Palestine with Saint Dionysus of Milan, then to Cappadocia, where Saint Dionysus died; and finally he was taken to the Upper Thebaid in Egypt, where he suffered grievously. The Arians of these places loaded him with outrages and treated him cruelly, and Saint Eusebius confounded them wherever they were.
At the death of Constans in 361, he was permitted to return to his diocese, where he continued to combat Arianism, concertedly with Saint Hilarion of Poitiers. He has been called a martyr in two panegyrics appended to the works of Saint Ambrose. Two of his letters, written from his dungeons, are still extant, the only ones of his writings which have survived. One is addressed to his church, the other to the bishop of Elvira to encourage him to oppose a fallen heretic and not fear the power of princes. He died in about the year 370. His relics are in a shrine in the Cathedral of Vercelli.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1972 - On the New Sacraments |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-15-2020, 11:24 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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A Bishop Speaks to Us
August 1972
My dear Friends,
You have asked me to speak to you of the priest. Since we have already discussed the subject at length in the course of today, all the wise counsels, all the sound principles then set before us have clearly been a source of edification and encouragement. All I can do is confirm them.
I should like to stress, not perhaps all the points raised during the day–I should merely be repetitious–but the matter treated in our discussions and conversations from the beginning, since it seems to me of capital importance for the understanding of the situation today. Indeed, it seems to be impossible to explain the situation in which we find ourselves without tracing it back to the Council.
I am reverting to it because it seems to be indispensable to read and study carefully all the schemata of the Council in order to disclose the doors which it opened to modernism, as Fr. Simon said so well. I shall stress the fact that the Council steadily refused to give exact definitions of the matters under discussion. It is this rejection of definitions, this refusal to examine philosophically and theologically the questions under discussion, which meant that we could do no more than describe them, not define them. Not only were they not defined, but very often in the course of discussions on the subjects, the traditional definition was falsified. I believe that is why we are now confronted with a whole system that we cannot manage to grasp, and can keep in check only with difficulty because the traditional definitions, the true definitions, are no longer accepted.
Take, as an example, the question of marriage. Marriage was always traditionally defined by the first end of marriage, which was procreation, and by the secondary end, which was conjugal love. Well, at the Council, there was an expressed desire to change that definition and state that there was no longer a primary end, but that the two ends of procreational and conjugal love were equivalent. It was Cardinal Suenens who launched this attack on the very purpose of marriage, and I still remember how Cardinal Browne, Master General of the Dominicans, rose to cry “Caveatis! Caveatis! Beware! Beware!” He declared vehemently:
Quote:“If we accept this definition we are running contrary to the whole tradition of the Church, and we are about to pervert the meaning of marriage. We have no right to go against the traditional definitions of the Church.”
And he gave many examples.
So great was the emotion aroused in the assembly that Cardinal Suenens was asked, I believe by the Holy Father, to make some slight alteration in the terms he had used, or even to change them all together. That is only one example, but you can see that now everything said on the question of marriage ties up with the false conception expressed by Cardinal Suenens, that conjugal love, now called quite simply and far more crudely “sexuality,” is henceforth an end of marriage, not procreation only. The result–in the name of sexuality all acts are permissible: contraception, birth control, the use of marriage with all that can hinder birth, and, ultimately, abortion. So it goes on.
One bad definition, then, and we are plunged into confusion, or lack of definition. We have asked repeatedly for a definition of collegiality; none has yet succeeded in defining it. We have asked repeatedly for a definition of ecumenism; we are told, through the mouths of the commission secretaries and rapporteurs themselves:
Quote:“But we are not holding a dogmatic Council, we are not making philosophical definitions. This is a pastoral Council aimed at the world as a whole. Consequently, it is pointless to frame here definitions which would not be understood.”
But it is surely the height of stupidity to think that we can meet and yet fail to define the very terms we are discussing.
The definition of the Church has been equally falsified–even of the Church! There was an unwillingness to name the Church as the necessary means of salvation. Thus, insensibly, in the wording of the texts, the Church was no longer a necessary means, but a useful means, useful merely. Christians ought to penetrate the mass of humanity, which is, itself in its entirety, moving towards its salvation, and Christians should bring to it an additional element of union, of charity, etc. And that is all. It is to destroy the whole missionary spirit of the Church at its roots.
It is thus that the schema on missions has been literally undermined by the idea. Today we see many missionaries who have come back from their missions loath to return to them. In refresher courses, sessions, and reunions they have been fobbed off with twaddle. French delegates told them:
Quote:“Above all, beware of proselytizing. You should realize that there is considerable worth in all the religions you encounter; missionaries should concern themselves only with the development of these countries and, as a result, with social progress”
–no longer with true evangelization and sanctification. Those missionaries had gone overseas to preach the Gospel and save souls, saying to themselves, Some souls will be saved because I went on a mission. We have always been taught that souls in original sin and all the personal sins that follow were in great danger of failing to find salvation, and that we must therefore do everything in our power to go and bring them the Gospel. That is no longer true! If I had the text here, the first text of the schema which treats of the Church in the world, Gaudium et Spes, I would read it to you so that you might gather what there is in the other schemata on the same subject.
The first schema is inadmissible. It is there explicitly stated that all humanity is on the way to its final end–to its happiness. There is no allusion to original sin, no allusion to baptism, no allusion to the sacraments. Indeed, it is an utterly new conception of the Church. Here too, the Church is nothing but a useful means. The faithful are repeatedly reprimanded since Christians must not think themselves better than others or believe that they alone have the whole truth. Christians should make themselves useful to humanity but should not believe that they, and they alone, are the way of salvation.
That was the spirit which went to the making of Gaudium et Spes. It begins with a long description of the changes which have taken place in humanity. It is a postulate constantly repeated to justify all the changes now proposed to us: the world evolves, everything evolves, times change, humanity changes. Humanity progresses, it is in a state of continual progress. For the compilers, the consequences follow of themselves. We can no longer think of religion as it was conceived in the past. We can no longer conceive the relations of the Catholic religion with other religions in the same way as in the past. We must therefore develop a wholly different conception of our religion. I assure you that it would be useful to republish these schemata to discover the wrong spirit which inspired its editors.
There is another subject which should normally have been defined with great precision–episcopal assemblies. What is an episcopal assembly? What does it represent? What are its powers? What, then, is the purpose of an episcopal assembly? Well, no-one has ever succeeded in defining an episcopal assembly. The Pope himself has said that it will emerge, in the process of time, in practice, how the powers of episcopal assemblies can be defined and delimited. There was a rush into action and practice without having a definition, without knowing where one was going. The gravity of such a step was incalculable. It is obvious that the bigger these episcopal assemblies are, and the greater their rights, the more the bishops are reduced to nonentities. Thus, the episcopate, the true framework of our Lord’s Church, disappears with these episcopal assemblies.
It is happening today. There is still an absence of definitions. In May of last year I went to see a cardinal and explained to him what I was doing. I described the seminary, with its spirituality directed above all towards the deepening of the theology of the sacrifice of the Mass and towards liturgical prayer.
He said to me:
Quote:“But, Your Excellency, that is the exact contrary of what our young priests want today. Today the priest is defined in terms of evangelization, not in those of sanctification or the holy sacrifice of the Mass.”
I replied:
Quote:“What evangelization? Unless it bears a fundamental and essential relation to the holy sacrifice of the Mass, what is the meaning of that evangelization? Political? Social? Humanitarian? On what will the evangelization dwell?”
Yes, but that is how things stand today. It is evangelization which predominates, no longer sanctification So, yet another bad definition of the priest, and so long as the true definition is no longer given, all the consequences must be borne.
The same is true of all the sacraments. Consider all the sacraments one after the other; they are no longer defined as in the past. Baptism is no longer redemption from original sin, but simply the sacrament that unites you to God, or rather makes you belong to the community. There is no longer mention of the remission of original sin. Marriage has already been discussed. The Mass is now defined as the Lord’s Supper, as an assembly, no longer as the true sacrifice of the Mass. The consequences flowing from that are all too obvious. Extreme Unction is no longer the sacrament of the infirm, the sacrament of the sick; it is now the sacrament of the old. It is no longer the sacrament which prepares for our last moment, which wipes away sins before death and is a true preparation for our final union with God.
And the sacrament of Penance? Now, with the new decree, I sincerely believe that the very definition of the sacrament of Penance is affected, because one cannot make the exception into the rule. What was an exception was general absolution given in the case of shipwreck or war–an absolution, moreover, the validity of which is debated by the authors.One comes up against the definition and very essence of the sacrament of Penance, which is a judicial act, a judgment. No judgment is possible where no case has been heard. Every man’s case must be heard if it is to be judged for the remission or retention of sins. As I see it, this practice will end by destroying the very essence of the sacrament of Penance, and it is a practice which will certainly spread rapidly. Confessors will find it far easier to say to the people waiting outside the confessional, “Listen, I haven’t time to hear your confession. You realize that I am now authorized to give you general absolution. I give you general absolution.” In principle, one should confess grave sins if there are any; but psychologically, one need no longer confess mortal sins if such exist, that is absurd; people will not go afterwards to confession and show themselves to the others as having grave sins. Then those who have already been to Holy Communion after receiving absolution will say, “I cannot see why I should go to confession since I have already received Communion.” It is grave indeed. We are on the way to the abolition of the Sacrament of Penance.
I sincerely believe that it is the Council which is at the back of all this since many of the bishops, above all those chosen to be members of the commissions, were people who had studied an existentialist philosophy but had never studied Thomist philosophy and so do not know what a definition is. For them, there is no such thing as essence; nothing is defined any longer; one expresses or describes something, but never defines it. Moreover, this lack of philosophy was patent throughout the whole Council. I believe this to be the reason why the Council was a mass of ambiguities, vagueness, and sentimentality, things which now clearly admit all interpretations and have left all doors open.
But we should return to the Mass, which most closely concerns priests. The Mass, as the Council of Trent so well expressed it, is the heart of the Church. An attack on the Mass is an attack on the Church as a whole and, by that very fact, on the priest. The priest is the person who is ultimately most affected by all these reforms, for he is at the heart of the Church with the duty of spreading the faith and the holiness of the Church. He is the true responsible minister by virtue of his sacerdotal character. The Church is essentially sacerdotal. Thus, when anything in the Church is touched, the priest suffers the consequences. That is why the priest is today in the most tragic of situations, the most dramatic imaginable. Seminaries are non-existent, since the definition of the priest and the true concept of the priesthood have been abandoned.
I admit that I find myself incapable, truly incapable, of founding a seminary with the new Mass. Since the priest is defined precisely by the sacrifice, the priest cannot be defined without reference to sacrifice, nor can one define sacrifice without reference to the priest. They are ideas indissolubly linked by their very essence.It follows that where there is no longer a sacrifice there can no longer be a priest. I do not see how one can make priests if there is no longer sacrifice. And, for example, there is no longer a sacrifice if there is no longer a victim, and there is no longer a victim if there is no longer a Real Presence and no longer transubstantiation.
Thus, where there is no victim there is no sacrifice. What, then, is there to hold the priest or seminarian? I would say, what is it that makes his fervor, his piety? What gives him his very reason for being in the seminary? It is the Sacrifice of the Mass. I think it was true of all of us during our seminary days that our happiness, our joy, was to look forward to the tonsure, to minor orders, to going to the altar, to becoming a subdeacon, deacon, and, at last, a priest. To be able at last to offer the divine Victim! To be able at last to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass! As seminarians, that was our whole life.
Now doubt is cast on the Real Presence, doubt is cast on the Sacrifice of the Mass: it is a supper, it is a meal, it is a presence–the Lord is present as when we are together. But that is not the Presence of our Lord in the Eucharist; it is the Presence of the Victim, the same Victim as on the Cross. That explains why there are seminarians, why there are vocations; it is worth while to be a priest to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, the true Sacrifice of the Mass.
It is not worth while being a priest to bring together an assembly where the laity may all but concelebrate, where the laity may do all things. Nothing is left in this new conception of the Mass, a Protestant conception leading us to Protestantism. That is why I cannot see how one can make a seminary with this new Mass. It can neither hold seminarians nor raise up vocations. There, it seems to me, lies the fundamental reason why there are no more vocations–there is no more Sacrifice of the Mass. Without the sacrifice there is no priest; the priest cannot be defined save by the Sacrament. There are no other grounds. Until the true Sacrifice of the Mass is re-established in all its divine reality there will be no more seminaries and no more seminarians.
You will tell me, “But there are other rites.” Certainly, there are other rites–Coptic, Maronite, Slav, take your choice; but in all these Catholic rites you will find the concepts of sacrifice, of the Real Presence, and of the sacerdotal character. Some rites, of course, might have been changed, but by laying yet more stress on the three or four fundamental notions of the Mass. So be it. Let there be a change for the better, a yet greater and stronger affirmation of these fundamental truths; agreed. But there must be no watering down, no doing away with them. It cannot be done.
Lately, it was well said, and I wholeheartedly agree, that concelebration goes counter to the very purpose of the Mass.
The priest, himself, individually, has been consecrated as a priest to offer the sacrifice of the Mass, his sacrifice, the sacrifice for which he himself, not an assembly, has been given the sacerdotal character. It is he himself who has been consecrated. There was no massive and global consecration of all priests. Each has severally been truly and personally consecrated, and they have received a character not given to the assembly. It is a sacrament received personally, hence the priest is made to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass individually.
There is, therefore, no doubt that concelebration has not the worth of the totality of Masses which would be celebrated individually. It is not possible. There is but one transubstantiation, consequently there is but one Sacrifice of the Mass. Why multiply the Sacrifices of the Mass if one transubstantiation alone has the worth of all the Sacrifices of the Mass? In that case, there should never have been more than one Mass in the world after our Lord’s, did it still serve a purpose. The multiplication of Masses is useless if the priests who concelebrate perform an act which is equivalent to ten distinct Masses. It is false, utterly false. Why should we say three Masses at Christmas and on All Saints’ Day? It would be an absurd practice.
The Church rightly requires that multiplication of the sacrifice of the Mass, both for the application of the sacrifice of the cross and for all the ends of the Mass–adoration, the act of thanksgiving, propitiation, and entreaty. All these new practices show a lack of theology and a lack of the definition of things.
From this point of view I am grateful to Fr. Deen for having written his little work on the celibacy of the clergy, stating that celibacy was practised from the earliest times, for it is untrue to say that celibacy was required after a certain number of centuries. There, too, I believe there to be a lack of theological reasoning. Celibacy is not demanded of the priest solely to facilitate his apostolate and make him more available to his people; it is a supererogatory reason, but not the true cause.
I think the priest should be compared with the Blessed Virgin Mary. Why is the Blessed Virgin Mary a virgin? By reason of her divine motherhood, because she is the Mother of our Lord. She has thus been so closely united with the Word of God, with God Himself, that it was meet that she should be a virgin. Well, fundamentally the priest likewise re-enacts what the Virgin Mary was called upon to do. The Virgin Mary brought our Lord down to the earth, in her womb, by her Fiat. The priest, by his own words, brings our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. Hence it is fitting that the priest should be a virgin because of his intimate relation to our Lord, through which he has power over the physical body of our Lord, over His divinity, over the whole Person of our Lord. The priest is so close to Him, has such power over Him, that he ought properly to be a virgin. If any exceptions are made, it is by the tolerance of the Church. In the Near East for instance–if one knows them really well and talks to priests of the Eastern Church, they are always exceptions. Married priests may not be appointed to important posts in the dioceses. Bishops may not be married. It is therefore a question of sufferance, pure sufferance.
But it is fitting and, I should say, in some ways and to some extent, that the priest should be a virgin, since it is he who speaks the words of Consecration. Therein lies the mystery, the great mystery of the priest, at once his greatness and his humility. Before the Sovereign Priest, the Supreme Pontiff, who is our Lord, Jesus Christ, the priest is nothing. It is Christ who is the Priest, He who is the Victim, He who offers Himself anew. The priest, of course, is only His minister and should therefore humble himself before our Lord, but it is nevertheless that which makes his greatness, the greatness of the priesthood. We should always meditate on this. We shall never succeed in reaching the depths of the great mystery of the Mass.
It is therein that the Mystery of Faith lies. It is indeed that, not the mystery of Jesus, which comes with the end of the world. It is wrong to contemplate the coming of our Lord at the end of time when the great mystery of our faith has just taken place. How could such an idea arise? The words “Mystery of Faith” have been introduced simply to stress the mystery accomplished in the words of the Consecration.
You have asked me to suggest subjects for your meditation, I should say for your sanctification. If one there be, it is indeed our resemblance to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Blessed Virgin Mary is not a priest, but she is the Mother of the priest, as near as possible to the priest. No greater resemblance is possible nor any closer union between the Mother of God and the priest, since both bring our Lord Jesus Christ to earth, both give our Lord Jesus Christ to the world and for that reason are virgin. In that, I think, there is a subject for meditation that can help us in all our difficulties and conflicts. It is strictly necessary that our sacrifice of the Mass be a true sacrifice in order that we may keep our priestly holiness. In the same measure as our sacrifice of the Mass vanishes, in just that measure we lose the source of our sacerdotal holiness.
The present problem of the Mass is one extremely serious for the Church. I believe that if today our dioceses, our seminaries, and our religious activities are stricken with sterility, it is because our recent deviations have brought down upon us the curse of God. All the endeavors to recapture what is being lost, to reorganize, reconstruct, and rebuild, have been stricken with sterility since we no longer have the true source of holiness, which is the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Now that it has been profaned it no longer gives or channels grace. How many priests do we see today who no longer celebrate the Mass when they cannot concelebrate, or when there are none present to form a congregation. They no longer celebrate Mass alone. This happens very often, even in our religious orders.
Think, too, of all the sacrileges now committed through this scorn of the Real Presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. Yet it was the Council of Trent that declared that our Lord was present in the smallest particles of the Eucharist. Think, then, of the lack of respect in those who can take particles of the Eucharist into their hands and return to their places without purifying their hands! When there are few Communions and a Communion plate is used, some fragments are always left on the plate. As a result, these fragments remain in the hands of the faithful–that constitutes contempt for the presence of our Lord, which is sacrilege. St. Thomas numbers among his examples of sacrilege the taking of the Eucharist in their hands by the laity.
No doubt that is now authorized, but the ecclesiastical regulation forbidding it was so important that faith in it has certainly been shaken in many Catholics and even in children. How can children still believe in the Real Presence? How can they still have any respect for the priest when the priest no longer respects himself? How can they have a proper conception of the sacrifice of the Mass when there is no longer even a crucifix on the altars? It has clearly lost its meaning.
Now I will say nothing more. I do not want to trespass on your patience. Besides, I believe that over and above the desire to keep our Holy Mass intact, we must wish to keep our breviary. Its definition also has been changed. It is said in the preface to the famous Prayers for Today that, from now on, these prayers will be altered to allow the laity, on occasion, to recite the breviary with the priest. That involves falsifying the very definition of the breviary! The breviary is the prayer of the priest. The priest alone, under penalty of mortal sin, was bound to recite these hours–not the laity. The priest is God’s religious, he is a man of prayer, therefore he is given a breviary so that he may pray all day long, make his acts of thanksgiving and give praise to God, thus, in some way, continuing his Mass.
Now he is suddenly told:
Quote:“No, no, no! That is no longer the case. The priest’s prayers are prayers so composed that, on occasion, he may recite them with the laity.”
It is a complete illusion. Just think! People have no time to come to the parish church to say the breviary with the priest. Only someone with no experience of the priestly ministry could make such a suggestion.
Certainly, one might sometimes say evening prayers with the faithful, but all these prayers and often all those psalms, which are hard to understand! If one is bent on saying evening prayers with the faithful, it is better to choose very simple prayers the faithful understand; or else the true Latin, the beautiful Latin, sung as at Compline. People are united by the chant, by melody, and that lifts up their souls.
Nevertheless, we must keep our breviary. I assure you that it is a necessity. The more we give up our breviary, the fewer will be the sources of grace for our sanctification. You realize that we have gone back to the old psalter, with only those changes introduced in the revised version of St. Jerome’s Abbey. That was the wish of Pope John XXIII. He did not like the new psalter. He said so openly to the preconciliar central commission. He said to all of us who were there: “Oh, I’m not in favor of the new psalter.” He liked the old psalter. It now seems that the new breviary has reverted to the old psalter as modified by the study carried out by the monks of St. Jerome’s. That shows that there is sometimes a return to the sound solutions of the past.
I have heard that the Committee on Liturgy is preparing yet another decree on the Holy Mass. The priest will be free to act as he pleases, save to alter the words of the Consecration, which, however, have already been changed! Then everything will have been changed. The new decree will only give a few directions for framing new Canons. Each may frame the Canon as he please, a Canon that will be said to be adapted to his congregation.
Do you realize what they want to achieve! We should then be wrong to allow ourselves to be swept along by the current which leads to nothing other than the complete and absolute ruin of the holy sacrifice. I do not know what the bishops will think of it all. Will they be satisfied with this new reform, if it comes? It means the end of any conception of the liturgy. A liturgy without rules is no longer a liturgy.
It is for that reason that we must stand by our preconciliar position without fear of seeming to disobey the Church by carrying on a Tradition two thousand years old. That is impossible.
What should be the criterion of the ordinary magisterium if we are to know whether or not it is infallible? It is its faithfulness to all Tradition. To the extent to which he does not cling to Tradition, to that extent we are not bound by the acts of the Holy Father. The same is true of the Council. To the extent to which the Council is in line with Tradition, because it is the ordinary magisterium, we must conform. But to the extent to which that teaching is new or not in conformity with Tradition, there is greater liberty of choice. Hence, we must not refrain from judging things now since we cannot allow ourselves to be swept into the current of Modernism, risking the loss of our faith and unwittingly becoming Protestants.
It is that which is serious, and it is that which is happening to our poor faithful, unhappy people dragged unawares towards a new Protestantism, a “neo-modernism” as the Holy Father himself called it; serious for many priests, too! Then let us thank the good God who gives us the grace to see with some clarity in the unrest in the Church. Then let us stay united, as we have been united today, united in prayer, united in endeavor, united in our undertakings.
God is there. That is why we must not lose heart. God is there, keeping watch over His Church. It is for us to ensure that she shall endure through all the grievous trials that beset her.
Lefebvre, Marcel, A Bishop Speaks: Writings and Addresses 1963-1976. Kansas City: Angelus Press, E-Book
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1980 Ordination Sermon - An official Church which is not the real Church |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-15-2020, 09:51 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Angelus - September 1980
The Archbishop Speaks: Ordinations Sermon June 1980
The Sermon of His Grace Monseigneur Marcel Lefebvre on the Occasion of the Ordinations to the Holy Priesthood 27 June 1980, Ecône
My dear brethren:
Is it not a profound joy, for all of us, to be assembled here again, for the annual ordinations to the priesthood? Many of you are faithful pilgrims who come each year to share our prayers, our joys, and our pains, but each time also numerous pilgrims come for the first time, and this year we have the special joy of receiving a group from the New World, 1who are attending this ceremony for the first time and getting acquainted with our seminary here at Ecône. I am sure they will return home full of consolations and great joy, full of assurance and conviction that they have seen the living Church, the Church Militant, the immemorial Church. They will go back and take with them what they have seen and heard and will therefore rejoice the hearts of the faithful who have not come, but who are with us in prayer, in thought, and in spirit.
My dear brethren, on the occasion of this ordination to the priesthood, we cannot help thinking that it was ten years ago that the Society of Saint Pius X was founded—ten years. The approval of Bishop Charriere for our Society was given to us on November 1, 1970, and here we are in 1980. In glancing back over these ten years, we can only sing a hymn of thanksgiving. Not to sing a hymn of thanksgiving today in our hearts, would be to ignore the favors of God, to fail in recognition and gratitude toward God himself, to Our Lord, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to our patron saints and especially to Saint Pius X.
Yes, thanksgiving for all the favors, for all the blessings we have received, we, in particular, members of the Society of St. Pius X, and also, I would add, those who, for one reason or another, have thought it best to leave us; they have themselves paid tribute to the Society, they themselves have written us: "We will remember all our lives the favors and graces we received in the seminary at Ecône."
We cannot help thinking that today we should thank God and we in particular, dear friends, members of the Society of Saint Pius X; priests, those who are about to be ordained priests and subdeacons today, and all seminarians here present, not to mention all those who would like to be with us, from America, from Buenos Aires—priests of the Society who could not be present, but who had to remain in their priories or in their districts; they are certainly united with us today in thought and in prayer. So we thank God for the graces we have received under the protection of our holy pope, Pope Saint Pius X, and the Blessed Ever Virgin Mary, Our Mother in heaven.
What graces, my dear friends, above all the grace to have kept the treasures and the gifts which Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself gave to His Church, because that is the Society of Saint Pius X; it is nothing else, to keep us, to receive us, to do us good and to sanctify us by the gifts which Our Lord Jesus Christ put into the hands of His Apostles, which His Apostles bequeathed to Holy Church and which the Church has always given to us.
But today, when we consider the general condition of the churches, i.e., the parishes, the seminaries, the religious orders, then these gifts take on a value infinitely greater, because we could have been in that utterly baffling situation, thrown into total confusion. We could have found ourselves in that situation. Why has God chosen us? Why has God given us the grace to keep the Church going, and to preserve all these treasures of the Church? The treasure of faith, the treasure of grace, the treasure of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the treasure of the sacraments, treasures incomparable.
That is what we have received, my dear friends, and that is why we must thank God today; and I think I can include all who are joined to the Society of Saint Pius X in one way or another. I am thinking of our Sisters, our Sisters from Saint-Michel-en-Brenne; I am thinking also of all our oblates, religious and lay; I am thinking of all those who live with us, in our houses, everywhere and who are deeply united to the Society, and who therefore also share in the graces of the Society. And I must not forget all those who in one way or another have kept their fidelity to the Church and who are united with us. Is it not because we are united in this unity in the Faith of the Church, and in the sacraments of the Church and in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?
I think of those monasteries where today some will receive priestly ordination—the monastery of Dom Augustine, the monastery of Dom Gerard, both here present. I think of all those monasteries and convents of nuns who have also tried to keep the Faith, to keep Tradition and therefore are united to the priests who have remained faithful and who look in a sense to us, asking us to support them by our prayers and our encouragement: Dominican nuns at Brignoles, Fanjeaux, Poncallec, Carmelites, nuns here present; also nuns from Mainz, nuns from Schellenberg who are united with us in prayer. They could not come, because they are cloistered. All these nuns, and I could not forget how many nuns are united with us in thought and in their conviction that they must keep the immemorial Faith!
So then, all the graces received, all the vocations realized—priestly vocations, religious brothers and sisters, active and contemplative vocations: this is the Church, the Church which goes on. I think of all those priests who are here present, all who have shown us by example of faithfulness, who have encouraged us, and who themselves, I think, find encouragement in the example of the Society—all this is the Church, the Church which goes on.
And if we should thank God for the graces which have been given to the Society, I think we should also thank God for the graces given by the Society. I cannot help thinking of all the houses, scattered across the world, forty or more houses of our priests, and besides these, many places of worship which have been opened and which are served by our Fathers every Sunday.
And of course I do not forget all that is done by those dear priests who, like us, defend the Faith and who dedicate themselves with their whole heart and soul to celebrating the holy and immemorial Mass, administering the immemorial sacraments to their faithful people and thus preserving the Catholic Faith. Oh, I cannot forget them, but I think above all of what has been accomplished by the grace of God by the Society of Saint Pius X, the tenth anniversary of which we are celebrating; and so we can scarcely contemplate the graces which have been poured out upon us.
When I think of all the dying who have had a real priest, a priest who came to help them to die a holy death, who came to bring them the consolation of the sacraments of Extreme Unction, Communion, Viaticum—these souls have been strengthened and prepared to receive the grace of final perseverance. And all the children, all the schools that we have, by the grace of God, been able to open or to develop, so many children preserved from the contamination of the world, and who have kept the Faith. And all those families who gather in thousands upon thousands around our churches, often makeshift little churches like catacombs, where the sanctuary lamp shines—small, but always well kept, decorated with flowers, well arranged, little churches worthy of the Holy Mysteries which are celebrated, where everything is beautiful, even in poverty, by the care of the priest who faithfully preserves the ceremonies of the Church and who sees to it that his chapel is beautiful, beautiful for Our Lord Jesus Christ, beautiful for the holy angels who dwell there, beautiful for the Blessed Virgin Mary; so the faithful come into these chapels, into these churches, are consoled, strengthened, and feel there the grace of God, the grace of the Holy Ghost; and they go home refreshed, reassured that they have received into themselves the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by Holy Communion, the Eucharist, and thus the Church goes on.
There, my dear brethren, is what the Society is: schools, priories, parishes, chapels scattered over the world. And tomorrow, again with the grace of God, since all this is happening almost miraculously, tomorrow, the opening of a university in Paris. To tell the truth, I am astonished myself; I can't get over it. Of course we were dreaming, hoping some day to open and begin a university. And today in Paris, tomorrow in Rome, day after tomorrow perhaps in the United States, we would like to give the Truth, to communicate the Truth to those who no longer have it, who have lost it, who have been led astray by false modern philosophies.
What will happen to this world tomorrow if there is no longer any ability to recognize the Truth? To recognize the truth about philosophy, the truth about theology, the truth about Sacred Scripture and thus to recognize Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. What a joy then for us to think that these young men and women who will come to get this university education, will be pillars of the Truth, luminaries of Truth—everywhere they will be, and probably in important positions, which will make them a beacon for the spread of Truth.
So we thank God again that He Himself has sent us the professors we needed. These professors themselves came to us in Paris and told us: "It is this year or never for us; either you take us this year or we get other jobs and you can no longer count on us." What was I to do? Good professors, committed, who said: "From now on, after all that we have been through, we wish to be under the Society of Saint Pius X; we wish to teach under the authority of the Society of Saint Pius X; we wish one of your priests there, to direct and counsel us, because we feel that there, at least, the Church will be, and the Truth." So what was I to do? Faced with this proposition, in spite of the difficulties which that could mean, we decided to open this university; that is what God wanted, a unique, extraordinary occasion, which God has given us, something like a tenth anniversary gift. Let us thank him.
There, my dear brethren, is what God has done by means of the Society of Saint Pius X. And tomorrow, what will we be? Well, we will always be the same, we do not have to search out our path; we can only remain the Church; we can only keep the Church going; we can only keep preaching Our Lord Jesus Christ, preaching the Truth, teaching the Truth, and tomorrow, well, if God wishes (and I think He does wish it and will wish it), He will integrate us into the official Church, just as we are, just as we are.
It is not a question of changing, of going either to the right or to the left; we wish to remain the Church and we wish to remain what we have always been since the beginning of the Society, because we have no other motive than to keep the Church going; and thus we have always thought that one day, when God wills it, when He decides, then we will go back into the official Church, since they have put us out of an official Church which is not the real Church, an official Church which has been infested with Modernism; and so we believed in the duty of disobedience, if indeed it was disobedience! To obey, but to obey the immemorial Church, to obey all the Popes, to obey the whole Catholic Church.
So we thought it our duty to disobey those cardinals who asked us to adopt, in part, Modernist errors, because we did not want to poison our souls and our hearts with the errors which have been condemned by our holy patron, Saint Pius X, and we remain faithful to the anti-Modernist Oath—the oath which Saint Pius X requires us to take. We remain faithful to that. They will receive us with the oath in our hands, or we will remain what we are.2 And we are convinced, we hope, we pray for this, and perhaps, my dear brethren, things will soon work out. This goal which seems impossible—to be taken as we are, with what we are doing, with what we are accomplishing, with our Faith—this seems almost impossible. But God can do the impossible, and we are more hopeful than ever, we are perhaps closer than ever to being recognized officially in Holy Church, as the Society of Saint Pius X, with all that we are, all that we think, all that we believe, all that we do.
And so, by the same token, all those who, like us, have defended the same Faith, the same Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the same sacraments, will come with us, will be accepted by us. There is no doubt about it. So we must pray today, in a very special way, for this intention, because you can imagine what we would be, how many we would be here, if we were not persecuted by certain members of the Church. Not five or six thousand, but twenty thousand, fifty thousand would profit by the graces that God gives us, that the Church gives to us, whereas now they are dying of Christ, perishing, losing the Faith, abandoned. We must think of all these souls and hope these unjust persecutions against us may cease.
I CLOSE, MY DEAR FRIENDS, with a few words to you who are about to be ordained priests, and to you I say, "Keep your faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ." Everything depends on Our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing exists without Our Lord Jesus Christ, nothing in the material world, nothing in the supernatural world. Without Jesus there is nothing. Jesus is the Creator of all things, Jesus is the Redeemer of all souls. Without Him, there is no hope. Without Him, there is no being, no possible existence. So what is Our Lord Jesus Christ? What are the essentials that you have studied in your theology? Jesus Christ is Savior; Jesus Christ is Priest; Jesus Christ is King. These are the three essential attributes of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the very fact of His hypostatic union, i.e., His union with God Himself in One Person.
So these three attributes: Savior-Redeemer, Priest and King, where are they made concrete? Where do we live them? Where do we grasp them? In Holy Mass. In Holy Mass, Our Lord Jesus Christ is Redeemer. Who can deny that? The sacrifice of the Cross is His Redemption, the Redemption of Our Lord. Thus in offering your Holy Sacrifice of the Mass you contribute to the Redemption of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Redemption which Our Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished.
Priest. But where is He more priest than in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? He is the Priest, you are only His ministers, you act only in the person of Christ, Who is the true Priest; thus your Sacrifice of the Mass is still Our Lord Jesus Christ in one of His essential attributes.
And finally, King. "God reigned from the Cross." Our Lord reigned from the wood of the Cross; that is His throne, that is His crown. There He has conquered the world, and there He has a right to His Kingship. So it is also in he Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that His Kingship shines forth irresistibly; we must all submit to Him and revere, adore and thank Him as King.
And so—Redeemer, Priest and King—this is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; all the days of your lives you will discover Our Lord in His essential attributes, and you will share in them.
Poor creatures that we are! To share in the essential attributes of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to share in His Redemption, to share in His priesthood, to share in His kingship what a responsibility! What a responsibility to all His faithful people! What a profound joy for you! With what humility and what joy you should perform the sacred mysteries! You should also bring your people to share in these attributes of Our Lord, by Holy Communion, by giving Jesus Christ Himself in the Eucharist. What a joy! Nothing is more beautiful than the priest distributing Holy Communion, nothing is greater, more sublime, nothing richer in virtues, in gifts, in graces. The faithful expect this of you.
Therefore, be faithful, my dear friends, be faithful to all you have been taught here at Ecône. It is only the echo of what the Church has always taught. Remain close to your seminary, remain close to what has made you a priest, remain close to the Society of Saint Pius X ;in this way you will be truly priests and through you Holy Church will go on, while waiting for your reward from the hands of your Mother in heaven, the Mother of the Priesthood, who has been by your side, here at Ecône, every day.
Oh, how touched we are, every evening, when we see you kneeling before the Blessed Virgin Mary before taking your rest; you say some prayers to the Blessed Virgin Mary, commending yourselves to her, asking her to sustain you, asking her to help you to become holy priests. And now, here you are ready to be sent out, ready to go, as Our Lord said, "Go forth, preach the Gospel." That is what you will do, and all our prayers today will go with you, the prayer of your parents, your friends, and all those who love you and who are united with you here below and in heaven.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
1.TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The Angelus Pilgrimage
2. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: At this point His Grace was interrupted by the applause of those in attendance.
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