Mysterium Fidei

“WE look upon the Ancient Latin Mass as the perfect liturgical expression of Catholic dogma. We believe that this Holy Sacrifice is the great labour of the Lord Jesus, on which the salvation of the world depends. We declare: No, nothing is more important than Holy Mass. Our eternal life depends on it being maintained.” Not a single word of this quotation from 1970 has to be changed in 2021!● 

“We believe that our personal salvation, the life and missionary fruitfulness of the Church, and even the temporal future of the world depend first and foremost on maintaining the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This sacrament is subject to furious assaults both in its dogmatic definition and in its liturgical celebration. It is impossible not to see that the intention and result of the bouleversement of rites was the destruction of faith in the Holy Sacrifice and the abolition of true divine worship. This is the exact opposite of the whole restoration or peaceful enrichment of the forms of worship, which the preparation of a liturgical reform under Pope Pius XII was announcing.● 

In fact, Paul VI did not explicitly, firmly, legitimately or canonically abrogate the millennial custom or the solemn prescriptions and perpetual concessions promulgated by Saint Pius V. Our Mass remains intangible. Paul VI gave the Church a New Ordo Missæ that he wanted to be published and wished to be a success. That is all.

Without denying that the old Mass was good, Paul VI thought that the New Mass was so much better that it would be received by all and would put an end to the ‘experiments’ of the innovators and would rapidly console those ‘nostalgic’ for the Counter-Reformation Tridentine Mass.

He also hoped to rally the ‘separated brethren’ to the new rite, especially the six attentive Protestant ‘observers’ to encourage everything that helped to highlight and foster the ecumenical movement. To this end, great care was taken not to give too much prominence to novelty, and to insinuate rather than clearly declare the new definition and spirit of what would henceforth be called ‘the Eucharistic Supper.’ A parable that Father de Nantes often used for many other reforms, makes the manoeuvre clear: the Catholic train had crossed an important railroad switch in 1517, deliberately closing the track leading to Lutheranism and its ‘Holy Lord’s Supper,’ continuing to advance along the path of the Apostolic Tradition of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Now the second ‘Reformation,’ under a wide range of influences and for reasons, whether declared or concealed, reversed direction and backtracked to before the switch.

In this position of retreat, the train is still on the Catholic track, but the Lutheran track is still open. Therefore, how can we not suspect that the switchman brought the train back to kilometre 1517 only to launch it on a track other than that of the Counter-Reformation, on the track of the Lutheran Reformation?

The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, given at Rome on July 7, 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI, came into effect on September 14. It rehabilitated, restored the ancient Roman liturgy after thirty-eight years of proscription! Article 1:

“It is, therefore, permissible to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass following the typical edition of the Roman Missal promulgated by John XXIII in 1962 and never abrogated.”

One could apply to this authorisation what Father de Nantes had already written concerning the Indult for the use of the Roman Missal of 1962, which the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship published in 1984: it “gives the lie completely to the fifteen years of explanations and justifications for the insane prohibition of the old Roman Mass by Rome herself. All the paraliturgies, all the reformed Masses including the most preposterous, the most scandalous and, I have no hesitation in saying, the most blasphemous, and quite simply the most vulgar, by which I mean common, ugly, insipid and meaningless; including formally invalid Masses – for such there have been of public notoriety and no doubt there still are –, all these were officially allowed, or at least tolerated without their authors being sanctioned, barred or even delayed in their pursuit of honours and prebends. All these Masses, or these sacrilegious travesties, were in line with the Conciliar and pontifical reformation; they agreed with the reformed doctrine, worship and religion of Vatican II.

“The only liturgy that was forbidden, earning its sectaries (!) its faithful, fierce denunciations, enforced retirement, withdrawal of powers of jurisdiction and sometimes even the power of faculties, was this Mass referred to as that ‘of Saint Pius V’ or the ‘Tridentine rite,’ which in its almost unchanged form goes back to more than a thousand years before that holy Pope and before the holy Council of Trent. We are given to believe that it was their invention. That liturgy did not square with the conciliar Reformation; to be attached to it was a sufficient avowal of intransigence, of disobedience to the Pope and rebellion against the Church; in short, of a bad spirit bordering on schism and heresy, doubtless the worst, at a time when Rome was rehabilitating all the others.

“Full permission was given to whoever changed, disrupted the atmosphere, spirit and religion of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as well as its words and rites. In this permanent revolution and this universal reformation, however, it was forbidden to hold firmly to the prayers and rites of the ancient Roman liturgy, of the traditional Mass, in order to maintain the atmosphere, spirit and religion of the past. We had it dinned into us, although it was all too clear to us, that to be for the old Mass was to be against the new religion, against the Conciliar Church and therefore against the ‘Spirit’ blowing a storm within it.

“The Mass of all time, it was well established, wore the cap of disobedience and made the hounding and the outlawing of suspects easy: ‘What Mass does he say?’ ‘Well, what need have we of further witnesses! He deserves death!’ ”● 

Father de Nantes compared this indult of 1984 to the “destalinisation of the 1960s in Moscow” and John Paul II to the tyrant who was reigning there: “When another Father of the peoples, Khrushchev, ‘as a sign of the concern he had for all his children,’ granted to all those who had been banished the freedom, recognised, moreover, as inviolable and sacred by the USSR Constitution. Those who believed it and who, in order to profit by it, made all the necessary acts of allegiance to the regime (the letter of the trads to Pope Francis!) and all the self-criticism, confessions and retractions desired, then came up against so many obstacles and traps set by the Muscovite administration that they found themselves at last back in the Gulag, or forced into the underground, exile or death.”

Continuing his comparison, Father de Nantes then warned that he had understood very well the “duplicity in this manoeuvre.” It consisted, on the part of Pope John Paul II, “in drawing to himself all those innocents who were still resisting his charm, out of love of the Tradition and fidelity to the true religion. He grants them the Mass that they love, in Latin and in Gregorian, on condition that they turn their backs on us and adhere to the heretical, schismatic and apostate Reformation of Vatican II. The Mass is worth an apostasy, a rallying round! Thus, we shall be theologians without an audience (the conspiracy of silence!), priests without a ministry, opponents without voice [...].

“This oblique manoeuvre must lead, without any doctrinal condemnation (impossible!) and consequently without any canonical sentence, to our de facto excommunication, by detaching from us the last of those who are faithful to the Mass and therefore to the religion of all time, by means of specious promises of freedom.”

In a quarter of a century, we have seen Father de Nantes’ forecast come true to the letter: John Paul II’s pontificate decimated traditionalism.

Benedict XVI’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of July 7, 2007, totally different in spirit, seemed to respond to Father de Nantes’ wishes. He was no longer able to react (three years before his natalis dies.)

LIKE IT OR NOT, ROME IS TURNING BACK

Under this title, he in fact wrote in 1984:

“Now imagine that the Indult had been calmly drawn up by Bishop Mayer [who at that time was Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship] in all holiness and good will. He would have refrained from interposing all those restrictive conditions (which we read in Pope Francis’ Traditionis Custodes), between the Holy Father’s liberality and its application, still less would he have left its execution to episcopal caprice. In this text, there is the musty smell of intimidation, of revenge and of civil war.” We find the same today in Pope Francis’ Traditionis custodes.

There is nothing of this sort in Benedict XVI’s motu proprio that Pope Francis has just abolished. Faithful to his plan of encouraging a “hermeneutic of continuity,” Benedict XVI decided what follows:

“Art 1: The Roman Missal promulgated by Paul VI is the ordinary expression of the Lex orandi of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite. Nonetheless, the Roman Missal promulgated by Saint Pius V and reissued by John XXIII is to be considered as an extraordinary expression of that same Lex orandi, and must be given due honour for its venerable and ancient usage. These two expressions of the Church’s Lex orandi will in no way lead to a division in the Church’s Lex credendi. They are, in fact two usages of the one Roman rite.”

Thus abolishing all contradictory dispositions, even those taken by his predecessor, Benedict XVI decided:

“Art 2: In Masses celebrated without the people, each Catholic priest of the Latin rite, whether secular or regular, may use the Roman Missal published by Pope John XXIII in 1962, or the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970, and may do so on any day with the exception of the Easter Triduum. For such celebrations, with either one Missal or the other, the priest has no need for permission from the Apostolic See or from his Ordinary.”

With the people? As well! (Art. 4).

The only requirement is to avoid discord and to favour the unity of the whole Church (Art. 5 § 1).

If the priest is unwilling? Appeal to the bishop! If the bishop is unwilling? Appeal to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei (Art. 7-8.)

Father de Nantes furthermore wished that any member of the faithful could request “without being refused, except when necessitated by just and serious reasons, the celebration of Masses according to the ancient Roman rite, and in particular for the great events of family life, such as marriages, baptisms, solemn Communions and funerals.”

Benedict XVI consented to it (Art. 5 § 3).

Furthermore: “The pastor, having attentively examined all aspects, may also grant permission to use the ancient ritual for the administration of the Sacraments of Baptism, Marriage, Penance, and the Anointing of the Sick, if the good of souls would seem to require it.” (Art. 9 § 1)

“Ordinaries are given the right to celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation using the ancient Roman Pontifical, if the good of souls would seem to require it.”

Finally, “all clerics ordained in sacris constitutis may use the Roman Breviary promulgated by John XXIII in 1962.”

This is precisely what Father de Nantes requested in 1984, and we can say today that if Pope Francis had confirmed and not abolished Pope Benedict’s motu proprio, we would then have known “that the Roman Church was mindful of her ‘Catholicity’ and renounced the sectarianism of the reformers. Even if dogmatic disputes and divergences would not have been thereby abolished, at least charity would once more have shone from Rome over the whole world…”

That is why I wrote: “Benedict XVI reigning and the Immaculate Heart of Mary assisting, it seems that charity is in fact beginning to burn anew in the Roman Catholic Church. If not, to whom will we go? Let us also wish that the difficulties experienced by some in accepting this motu proprio show Benedict XVI that ‘two religions have been battling within the one Church of Christ” since the Second Vatican Council, because certain affirmations are unquestionably in rupture with “‘the previous doctrine of the Church.’” I added:

“Against his will, new proof of this has just been provided by the Holy See.”

CATHOLIC.

In fact, three days after Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio of Saturday, July 7, 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith felt the need to affirm unequivocally that the Catholic Church, “governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him” is “the one Church of Christ that we confess in the Creed as one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic.”

It does this in response to “errors and ambiguity” that have characterised “theological reflection” since the Second Vatican Council. In five questions – answers, like in a catechism.

“First question: Did the Second Vatican Council change the previous Catholic doctrine on the Church?”

“Response” No! Then why not say quite simply that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church instead of “subsists in” the Catholic Church as is stated in the ‘Dogmatic Constitution’ Lumen gentium (no. 8)? Because the “separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from deficiencies, are not at all deprived of significance and value in the mystery of salvation. In fact, the Spirit of Christ does not refuse to make use of them as means of salvation, the value of which derives from that fullness of grace and of truth that has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.”

In this case, it is to be feared that this “response” will let “errors and ambiguity” subsist insofar as it still seems to mean, in the first place, that the Spirit of Christ assembles a community larger than the Catholic community, which God alone knows, and which He regards as His own (Pope Francis!). Precisely what Pope Francis proclaims today.

Furthermore, it implies that the schismatic, heretical or excommunicated communities are still means of salvation because of the Christian riches that they conserve, notwithstanding their fundamental vice that sets them against the Church of Jesus Christ.

Now Benedict XVI knows perfectly well that these two consequences are obviously contrary to “the previous doctrine of the Church,” according to which “Jesus only wanted and only founded one Church, on a single Rock, visible and easily identified, unshakable, which is Peter, and this Church is incontestably the Roman Church of which the Pope is the head. She is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. She alone. All those who have decided to leave her, individually or as a group, have separated themselves from Unity, but Unity subsists without them.”● Benedict XVI is indeed aware of this! He is fully aware of it since, in 1996, when he was still only Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Sacrosanct Congregation for (the defence and illustration of) the Doctrine of the Faith, he wrote:

“We are manifestly witnessing today a profound change of paradigm (to use this fashionable expression). An abyss divides the Church’s history into two incompatible worlds: the preconciliar world and the post-conciliar world.”

“What follows does not detract from the gravity of this outrageous (!) word: incompatibility. Thus, our Father continues, ‘for many, there could be no severer a verdict than to consider themselves justified to call a decision of the Church, a liturgical order, or a person ‘preconciliar.’ Did Catholic Christianity thus find itself in an absolutely alarming state before 1965?’ But already, Ratzinger withdraws; he does not answer the question:

“Further on, on the same page, he evokes ‘Pius X’s specific liturgical knowledge and experience,’ but in order to take the liberty of writing without too great a risk: ‘In Germany, Pius X is scarcely considered more than an antimodernist pope.’ Already in Rome, at the Holy Office, ‘Pius X’ has lost his halo and his title of saint! It is in ‘Un chant nouveau pour le Seigneur’ subtitled: ‘La foi dans le Christ et la liturgie aujourd’hui^’ (Desclée-Mame, 1996, p. 173-174).

He thus reveals his whole thinking. This is what decided our Father to flush him out!

“My status as a victim of exclusion allows me to think, speak, and write in my apparently perpetual reclusion, all that I want without prevaricating (in 1996!). Well, the cardinal thinks exactly what he says, but in a dialectic that the reader does not imagine. Here is my hermeneutic of his precious words: there is incompatibility between the Christian thought of the years 1900-1914, in particular the thought of Pius X, and the present thinking of the cardinal and his friends who, in fact, like to think of themselves as Modernists, and so they truly are. This incompatibility, however, is interesting, suggestive, edifying, if we show the continuity of the living tradition in which the profound identity of ‘life’ appears: Pius X’s thought responded to the aspirations and the demands of the beginning of the century as Cardinal Ratzinger’s thinking responds to those at our end of the century on the way to a renaissance for the century to come (for 2000). So, are we satisfied? For his part, he will only be fully satisfied on condition that the consequence concealed in the premises be drawn: Saint Pius X’s antimodernist Catholicism is rigorously impossible to tolerate today. Since it is incompatible with the modern spirit, it must be destroyed and its upholders reduced to powerlessness.”●

Well!

Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes dispels all ambiguity, it is clearly part of this revolutionary ‘tradition’:

“Article 1. The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi (the ‘the law of prayer’) of the Roman Rite.”

A letter from Pope Francis to his “brothers in the Episcopate” gives them explanations: “I instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to circulate a questionnaire to the Bishops regarding the implementation of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum (of Benedict XVI). The responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene. Regrettably, the pastoral objective of my Predecessors, who had intended ‘to do everything possible to ensure that all those who truly possessed the desire for unity would find it possible to remain in this unity or to rediscover it anew,’ has often been seriously disregarded. An opportunity offered by Saint (sic) John Paul II and, with even greater magnanimity, by Benedict XVI, intended to recover the unity of an ecclesial body with diverse liturgical sensibilities, was exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.

“At the same time, I am saddened by abuses in the celebration of the liturgy on all sides. In common with Benedict XVI, I deplore the fact that ‘in many places the prescriptions of the new Missal are not observed in celebration, but indeed come to be interpreted as an authorisation for or even a requirement of creativity, which leads to almost unbearable distortions.’ But I am nonetheless saddened that the instrumental use of Missale Romanum of 1962 is often characterised by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions  (yet these are sustained by three ‘Books of Accusation’ left unanswered) that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’”

UNAM SANCTAM

“I am a son of the Church,” Father de Nantes wrote in an editorial in July 1970.●

“I am a son of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church. Any other appellation offends Christian freedom and breaks Catholic charity. I want to be the Prisoner of Christ the Son of God, but not the slave of men and their sects. Post-conciliar Church, Church of the Poor, Church of the Miracle, Church of the Catacombs, Underground Church, Reformed Church, Faithful Church, New Church, these are unknown to me! All these particularisms wound Christ Who is undivided. It is necessary to break down the barriers, to tear down these walls so that only the firm, inviolable limits of the One Holy Roman Catholic Church, remain.

“Jesus took pity on the host of the poor of Israel oppressed by sects. He came to deliver them from the unbearable grip of the lay theologians of the time, the Pharisees, as well as from that of the licentious priests, the Sadducees. Jesus did not criticise their office, but their conduct. It is noteworthy that He deliberately ignored the Essenes, those Purest of the pure who had broken with the hierarchy, abandoned the liturgy of the Temple, and seceded from the common people to subsist as the only Messianic community and save the true religion, with visions, in the desert of Judah, on the shores of the Dead Sea. Jesus, was already and forever the One Good Shepherd.

“As a child of God and a son of the Church, I refused to be enslaved by men and imprisoned in sects on two memorable occasions, thus helping to defend Christian freedom and save Catholic charity. Both events took place in the same week of July 1969. They deserve to be recounted because they illustrate and define a possible and secure high ground for our Catholic Counter-Reformation.

I. THE ULTIMATUM OF THE CONCILIAR PARTY

“On July 7, 1969, Cardinal Seper, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent me the ultimatum enjoining me to submit within three days to the Pope and the Bishops in unconditional obedience and with boundless respect. I had to accept their Reformation, both conciliar and post-conciliar. I would have to retract all criticism, in particular the accusation of heresy made against the Pope and the suggestion I had made of his deposition by the proper quarter. The answer had to be yes or no. It would mean suffering under the yoke of Vatican II, the arbitrariness of Paul VI and that of the French episcopate, which are all things that have nothing to do with the Gospel or with the Apostolic Traditions. I replied no, on July 16, in a perfectly clear and complete Profession of Faith No one paid heed to it or dared to publish it in the official press.● It remains for the future a token of the believing Church’s faith faced with the heresy of men of the teaching Church. It is the reasoned refusal of this calamitous ‘permanent Reformation’ decreed by the Council and which has become the Pact of the Sect that today assumes all the hierarchical Power in the Church.

“This is how the Trial held against me came to an end, a trial demanded at my own request, on appeal against the threats of excommunication fulminated against me by the bishop of Troyes. It was necessary to know whether we who refuse ‘the conciliar evolution’ with all our strength, mind and heart, are still entitled to be called Catholics. Rome claimed to force me arbitrarily, I refused. Well, despite all, including the Pope, I was not condemned. That is a fact beyond dispute. I reject the new religion, I refuse Aggiornamento as an inspiration of the Devil, and I nevertheless remain a full member and son of the Church. The tyranny of the Reformers has been foiled.

“However, on August 9, a Notification of the Holy Office approved by the Pope announced Urbi et orbi my ‘disqualification.’ Where the Apostolic Magisterium could find nothing to condemn, neither error in faith nor rebellion against discipline, the arbitrariness of an illegal Magisterium defamed me, accusing me falsely of a categorical refusal of submission and indeterminate errors regarding ‘the Council, the Aggiornamento of the Church, the episcopate of his nation, the ‘heresies’ of Paul VI and the appeal addressed to the Roman clergy with a view to Paul VI’s canonical deposition.’ They appealed to public Opinion, because they could not appeal to the Authority of God and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.

“It is therefore certain that the Counter-Reformation is not criminal in the eyes of the Holy Church. It is a doctrine and an action that are not condemned and, by the way, of which it is not clear how the Magisterium could condemn them without condemning itself. But it is equally certain that the Counter-Reformation is abhorred by the Reformers, Popes, Bishops and priests who give it as insulting to their persons and contrary to their prophetic inspirations or their plans to save the Church. And to raise against us the popular...

“This is what Our Lords the Bishops object today to our friends who have come to inform them of the foundation of Counter-Reformation Circles in their dioceses. Thus Bishop Mouisset on June 12, on the front page of the News of Nice:

“About the ‘Catholic Counter-Reformation’ and Father Georges de Nantes.

“Several priests and faithful of the diocese received a circular letter from Father Georges de Nantes welcoming the creation in Nice of a diocesan Circle of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The letter states, and it is true, that a delegation of representative members of this Circle visited me, that I received it personally and that it declared to me its existence and intention.

“What the letter does not specify is my response to that delegation. I warned her of the danger of following Father Georges de Nantes, who is ‘suspens a divinis’ in his diocese of Troyes and who, to my knowledge (Catholic Documentation No. 1548 of October 5, 1969) refused to sign the formula of retraction that had been requested by the Sacred Congregation of the Faith (former Holy Office). For the time being, I have no reason to condemn the Circle that some Christians in the diocese want to found, but I will judge, from the point of view of faith, its activities. Nice, June 2, 1970. Jean Mouisset, Bishop of Nice.”

“If Bishop Mouisset judges the Circle from the point of view of faith, very well. He will not have to complain about it and we congratulate him for exercising his ordinary Magisterium on his diocesans. But will he be able to prevent himself from judging and condemning him from the point of view of the Reform pact of Vatican II?

“As for Bishop Pirolley of Nancy, he vituperates our friends. Publishing the statement of the Permanent Council of the Episcopate, he concluded: ‘I hope that the few faithful, abused, solicited, tempted by the founders’ apprentices of the Counter-Church – under the pretext of Counter Reformation – will hear the warnings that this text gives them. And no longer hesitate to pull themselves together’ (Our Church, June 28.) The same is true of the bishops of Dijon, Reims, Valence, etc.

“Well, no! In all truth as in all justice, Counter-Reformation is not Counter-Church: We can be of the Church in all tranquillity of conscience, we who are of the Counter-Reformation, and even demonstrating every day that it is the Reformation of the Church that is against the Church!

“For us, prisoners of Christ but free from all human slavery, we remain in the Church, oppressed, vexed, slandered no doubt, but our essential is safe. We only have to pray to God to shorten our trial, accepting it with patience, according to His Holy Will.

“II. THE APPEAL OF DISSIDENCE.

“On July 21, in the same week that I had sent my Profession of Faith to Rome, a group of priests came in the evening at House Saint Joseph. They came to ask me to dissent with them. On the one hand, they asserted stiffly the demise of the Pope and the Bishops, for notorious and formal heresy, ipso facto. There was no longer an official Church. On the other hand, they invoked the need of souls, the spiritual distress of the faithful no longer finding a true priest anywhere to baptise, marry and confess. I had to consent to exercise like them a priestly ministry without canonical and clandestine jurisdiction...

“I said no. With the same assurance that I had said no to Paul VI’s ultimatum. It was there, coming from another side, yet another outrage to the Holy Spirit, a disorder in the faith, a sin against Catholic charity. They claimed that the hierarchical Roman Church was abandoned by God. They saw the faithful Church reduced to rare islands remaining in the middle of an apostate world. In them the spirit of sect reappeared as in their reforming counterparts and opponents. I also opposed them to the One and Holy Church, unwavering. They laughed contemptuously. We left each other angry. Only one of them, back in Mexico, having reported on this conference to his priestly community, wrote to me on his order an admirable letter of retraction, affirming to me his hatred of schism and his full communion with our faith in the unfailing Roman Church.

“How difficult it is, therefore, in the era of this Reformation to remain just simply Catholic, without heresy or schism, without sectarian seclusion! I foresaw that, being rebels in the opinion of our bishops and Rome, we would soon appear to be allies and traitors to those whose dissent we had defeated. It did not take long...

“The crucial question of the New Ordo Missæ was to be an opportunity for this schismatic lobby to manifest itself and to lead the faithful who were disgusted by the very bad and very suspect invention of the Reformers to revolt. The secret passion of the clandestine schism was to poison from the very first day a difficult debate and push the priests and the faithful to the extreme parties, some to total revolt, and others to the blindest submission.

“Those who had already secretly pronounced the deposition of Paul VI and our Bishops, considering the hierarchical Church to be abandoned by God, were eager to find a new and striking proof of this in the heresy of the New Mass and hastened to conclude that it was invalid. They dared to forbid it to the faithful and sought to entice them to following them into ‘the catacombs’ where they indeed celebrated the ‘true’ Mass, albeit in a schismatic spirit.

“Firm in our faith, we took the opposite approach. Sure of the malignant intentions of its authors and its proclivity for heresy, we found this new Mass to be very bad. Regarding its controversial validity, however, we submitted our judgement to that of the infallible Church and our friends were quite wrong to see therein an appeal to the democratic concept and to the law of the majority! It was quite simply the exercise of the virtue of faith. For it is impossible to question the validity of a Mass promulgated by the Pope, accepted by the Bishops and practiced throughout the whole earth without concluding that the Catholic Hierarchy has universally erred and therefore that the visible Church of Christ has failed. That we will never do. It would be tantamount to denying our Mother.

“If those fishing in the troubled waters of the integrist schism had not intervened in this debate, causing havoc among us, it would have been very awkward for the Reformers to have a Counter-Reformation movement that is beyond suspicion of schism making a stand against them, asserting that this new Mass of their invention is bad although valid. Relatively bad, since the Sacrifice of Christ does take place there in all its sacramental reality. Yet absolutely bad in its relationship to the Ancient Roman Mass that it disfigures and that it must unjustly supplant. I think that it would have been impossible for the schismatics of the Reformation to impose this dubious, adaptable, Protestant, Modernist, Eucharistic Supper, on the entire Christian people if the schismatics of Dissidence had not made it the occasion for their unacceptable antipapal protest.

“So, on that side too I was disqualified, and in a manner as crude and deceitful as the other. People wrote, people told me to my face that I had sold myself to Rome, through Cardinal Daniélou (!) and that I was going to become a bishop in payment for my betrayal. Good Heavens! This goes to show that a sectarian spirit is rampant on both sides, with the same blind passion. This is to the detriment of the Church. For she is one where she is holy, in the virginity of her faith. Yet she is holy only where she is one, in the communion of her charity, the Heart of which is in Rome, with the Vicar of Christ, Paul VI, however evil he may be, but legitimate, as is the case for his Mass, in the expectation of his return to full awareness of his supreme function.

“THE CHURCH IS LOVE ITSELF!

“The more we go, the more we suffer from the contradictions that tear the Church apart, and the more it seems to us that we love her in her Mystery. ‘Alas!’ Saint Catherine of Siena already moaned, ‘how many see in the Church only the outer garment, that is, the temporal substance. How few seek in her the fruit of the divine Blood and understand that the Church is Love itself!’ Not the Church of the Reformation nor the Church of the Revolt: the Catholic Church!”

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary