Albano
October 19, 1983
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| Archbishop Lefebvre |
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: "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.
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