11-21-2020, 06:34 AM
Archbishop Lefebvre
Letter to Friends and Benefactors
7 March 1976
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Amidst trials and opposition our Work goes serenely ahead, trusting in God and based on the Faith which does not change and cannot be shaken.
On April 3rd there will be 11 more deacons at Ecône, and many seminarians will on the same day be receiving Minor Orders. Together with the dozen seminarians doing military service, Ecône now counts 110 seminarians. We already have some 40 applications for next October.
In Weissbad, as in Armada in the United States, applications are so numerous that both houses will soon be filled.
Our Sisters in Albano include four Novices and five Postulants. The latter will receive the habit on Easter Sunday, and if one counts the four Americans who will be joining them soon, plus the ten or so applicants for October, then the House where they train will already be gathering together some 23 aspirants to the religious life.
They will be moving to France in October because the house at Albano, originally intended for young priests, will be occupied by the newly ordained sixth-year students.
Our Brothers have two Novices and seven Postulants. They will be gladly received in our various houses, increasing in number: four in the USA (Armada, New York, San José and Houston); two in England (Highclere and Sanderstead); one in Brussels; five in France, one in Germany (Munich); three in Switzerland; one in Italy (Albano).
It is thanks to your prayers and your generosity that in a year’s time we shall be able, please God, to have 26 priests at your disposal: 13 are already at work training students or ministering to souls.
How does it come about that a Work thus resembling all those of its kind existing before the Second Vatican Council should be harshly and pitilessly hounded down by the Roman Authorities, unjustly and illegally suppressed, accused of breaking off communion with Rome, etc.?
The reason is precisely that we are continuing to believe and act as the Church always has believed and acted. Hence the truth is that modern Rome has changed. And yet it was clear to see where the novelties already repeatedly condemned by the Magisterium of the Church would lead.
The balance-sheet for the ten years following the Council is catastrophic in all departments. Churchmen, herein following numerous bad examples, thought that they could replace what Our Lord instituted with institutions better suited to the modern world, forgetting that Jesus Christ is God “yesterday, today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8), and that His Work is suited to all times and to all men.
Saint Pius X condemned them in his masterly Encyclical Pascendi. Such innovators pervert the faith, bring supernatural means down to the level of man and destroy the hierarchical constitution of the Church.
For a long time now we have been warned by the Popes. Pius IX had the Documents of the Alta Vendita of the Carbonari published in which we read:
Quote:“In a hundred years’ time…bishops and priests will think they are marching behind the banner of the keys of Peter when in fact they will be following our flag.” (Masonic Infiltrations in the Church, Barbier.)
Fogazzaro at the beginning of the century, founder of the Modernist lodge of Milan, used to say: “
The Reform will have to be brought about in the name of obedience.” (The Church under Occupation, Ploncard d’ Assac.)
Now, when we hear in Rome that he who was the heart and soul of the liturgical reform is a Freemason, we may think that he is not the only one. The veil covering over the greatest hoax ever to have mystified the clergy and baffled the faithful is doubtless beginning to be torn asunder.
Now is the time then to hold more faithfully than ever to Tradition and the unchanging Church, and to pray to God, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to St. Michael the Archangel to free the Church from the scandalous occupation of which She is victim.
“This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” (I John 5:4.)
May God bless you through the intercession of His Holy Mother, and I wish you all a Holy Eastertide!
†Marcel Lefebvre
Source
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]