2. The break at Rome : from Pius XII to John Paul II

THE break, the sign of heresy, schism and sectarianism at Cracow in Poland has therefore a date – 1962 – and a name – Wojtyla betraying Sapieha. It also has a motive or at least a reality: your revolutionary praxis. And this word praxis, which you use to designate your pastoral activity from this period, is sufficient proof that it is inspired by a theoria, even though it may not as yet show officially. So there lies the break with the tradition of St. Pius X.

In Rome, things proceeded less systematically but none the less surely from the death of Pius X in 1914 to this unhappy year of 1983, when the break has been consummated. Over essentials, there is still no question of opposing Pius XI to Pius X, nor even of opposing John XXIII to Pius XII. Even though the pontificates of this half century show a curious tendency to swing from right to left and from left to right again, a movement that has been noticeable since the French Revolution – in other words since the organisation of the world into a Counter-Church, one pontificate being for it and the other against it, with the occasional pope in transit – nevertheless, there was always only one faith, one religion and one law, such as were found perfectly taught by Pius XI in his encyclical Quas Primas. Such was the situation until 1958, perhaps even up to 1963.

Before the great Conciliar upheaval, no one would have dreamed of proclaiming his faith in man or of advocating the cult of man. Nor would anyone have thought of mobilising the Church in a combat on behalf of man. Had anyone risked such an idea, he would not have been taken seriously. The idea would have been condemned as at least madness, more likely as a wicked blasphemy !

PREPARATORY LOOSENING UP BY Paul VI AND THE COUNCIL

The announcement of the great break in the Catholic tradition of the Church of Rome, Mother and Mistress of all the churches, bears a date known to all. Hailed as the promise of a New Pentecost (!), it was to be the passing from the twilight of Christendom and of the Counter-Reformation to the full light of the Spirit. In short, it was to be a break only comparable to the passing from the Old to the New (and eternal) Alliance… That date is October 11, the day when the Second Vatican Council was opened with a speech pronounced by John XXIII, but written, according to more than one source, including Cardinal Colombo, by the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini !

But what this break and this renewal would consist in, nobody could rightly predict. No one tried more than I did, during and after this event, to pin down, analyse, understand and state what was happening, what was being undone and what would emerge from such a reform. My copious writings on this all-important subject bear witness to this (Monthly Lettres à mes amis, vols II-IV, years 1962-1967 – La Contre-Réforme Catholique au XX^e siècle, vols I-XIV, years 1968-1972. In particular Preparing for Vatican III, vol. IV, 1971-1972).

The incredible but true answer to such a question is that the rupture announced was – and until your arrival remained – without object. Which was devilishly clever. That alone was the hallmark of the devil himself ! They were going, therefore, to lay their hands on the Church, the hand of the beautician to make her more beautiful, the hand of the surgeon to heal her of her infirmities, to cut her here and there, to sew her up again to suit us, to amputate the odd organ considered to be worn out or cancerous, with no clear idea of what was being removed or corrected nor of the graft or of the artificial limb they were attempting to put in its place ! The Pope triumphantly opened an era of Church Reform without anyone knowing when or at what it would stop. The madder spirits were quick to announce a “ permanent reform ”…You were there; you know it all.

The reform proceeded in a such a way that even twenty years after the death of Pius XII, in 1978, when you were elected Pope, the break had still not been clearly made, nor had it been stopped. The work of Vatican II was still awaiting its theorist and programmer, the one who would put flesh on its dreamlike figures, the one who would give dogmatic, moral and disciplinary substance to what were no more than slogans and big words. Why hide the fact: it is my purpose in writing this Second Book of Accusation – as a sequel to the first such book against Paul VI – to show that You, Most Holy Father, are the theorist who was missing from the complete manifestation of the plan, that You are the wrecker of the Church and that the reason, object and goal of this foretold, irreparable break is to be found precisely in your philosophy – a break that Paul VI could only dream of and prepare for.

Paul VI THE TRAITOR

The Life of Paul VI, which I have studied and related in detail (The Great Crises of the Church. The Great Apostasy. Paul VI and his Masdu, English CRC 73, April 76) is a whole series of betrayals. It was also dictated, conducted and then constrained by certain secret and very unpleasant engagements, which have yet to be brought fully to light. Before him, his father Giorgio Montini, who had been an ardent supporter of the ideas and methods of Pius X, crossed over to the other side and offered his services to that great Pope’s adversaries, after his death. He joined the Italian Popular Party, the left wing of Christian Democracy, becoming one of its leading members and a deputy.

Having been reared in this school, John-Baptist put himself in the hands of the deputy of Brescia, Longinotti of the same Italian Popular Party, when still only a seminarian, about the year 1921 or 1922. Longinotti, – in exchange for what promise by him ? – recommended him to Cardinal Gasparri, his close friend, who secured his entry into the Academy of Noble Guards and from there to the Secretariat of State, where he was to make his career. It was a very dull career, first as a minutante, then as an auditor and then as an assessor. The only remarkable aspect in this career was his struggle against the fascist state. It was a long and stubborn democratic “ resistance ”, and insubordination to the legitimate state and a betrayal of the Nation, or else Christian morality has no meaning ! And during those last years before the War, Montini was at the centre – I dare not say he was the centre – of an international conspiracy, of the “ Crusade of the democracies ”, which was to lead to the outbreak of World War II. It was a war to bring about the fall of a detested dictator and to hand Italy over to Christian Democracy. Very dearly paid for !

I ventured to write of him one day, during his life time of course, “ Has betrayed, is betraying, and will betray ” (English CRC 70, January 1976). He was a traitor to St. Pius X in both spirit and action – and he was not the only one ! He was a traitor to Mussolini – but who was not from among that Italian Christian Democrat brood ? And later he was to betray the Sovereign Pontiff Pius XII, from his very anti-chamber, acting on his own initiative, but certainly also on the orders of those obscure powers who had favoured and protected his long and fortunate career. He deceived Pius XII in everything and he made no mystery of it as soon as signs of the Pontiff’s decline and of a world plot became apparent. That was in 1950… as revealed by Jean Guitton, his confidant, in October of that year. He held a conference in Paris before an audience of handpicked Modernists – and I was there ! The object of the conference was to let the assembly know that they had a supporter in a certain Monsignor occupying an office adjacent to the Pope’s and that the said Monsignor would guarantee total immunity for their rebellion.

Thereafter, his clientele expanded and diversified. It numbered left wing intellectuals, Modernist theologians and finally Soviet agents who had infiltrated into the Church, one of whom, the Jesuit Tondi, worked in his very office. No one can make me believe that the great works of the Holy Spirit are prepared for by such underhand dealings, by such clandestine betrayals and by such murderous treachery, even to the extent of concealing from the Holy Father the martyrdom of the Chinese Catholics and – supreme horror ! – of handing over to Stalin’s Checka those priests sent secretly from Rome to bring aid to the persecuted Christians of Russia !

When at last he was convinced of his close collaborator’s multiple betrayal by unimpeachable witnesses, Pius XII dismissed him by appointing him Archbishop of Milan and swore never to make such a felon a cardinal, lest he be elected as his successor at the next conclave. By what frightful blackmail did J-B Montini dodge his deserved downfall and obtain instead this incomparable base, from which he made his ultimate ascent ? What threat could be so great to alarm even the Pope ? At such giddy heights of evil the mind falters and the pen fails.

What kind of faith, what pastoral care could tally with such a record ? What doctrine, what grand design of Msgr. Montini’s accounted for his appearance in Milan ? None at all. His ambition as a lightweight functionary had turned into a personal messianism. Through having lived in the radiance of the great Pius XII, he came to imagine himself as the great Pope’s necessary successor. As great as, even greater than he. But in order to reach that high place, he knew that he would have to follow a course opposite to that of Pius XII, whose approaching end was assured, because the agitators, the malcontents, the world could no longer tolerate his teaching and his commands. On a much smaller scale and much more honestly, the same was true of that Cardinal, whom Pius IX had exiled to Perugia for his obvious manoeuvring, but whose career, far from being checked, ended in his being elected Pope. I refer to Leo XIII. So it was that the exile in Milan declared himself to be the great friend of the lontani, the workers and the innovators; he was the friend of the modern world and even of the men of the future ! So much was he their friend that he ended by becoming the candidate of every ambitious, utopian malcontent.

The break is half made when the wife separates from the husband, even though she may not yet have chosen another man. The generation responsible for Vatican II had known since 1950, whilst still under Pius XII and as a result of his encyclical Humani Generis, that it would betray and would break the Church’s centuries long fidelity to her pontiffs, doctors and saints in order to espouse the world. But how would they do it ? Montini was convinced that one only needed to go onto the streets, call the lovers and they would come.

See the example of your predecessor and father. From the day the Council was announced, he ran ahead and presented himself as John XXIII’s successor by practising the prophetism of the innovators: “ There is something prophetic in the air of these times. We must be on the alert. We have to try to understand the designs of God, the movement of history, the current of the Spirit and the hour of responsibility... To a world walking backwards towards Christ, without knowing it, pastors are needed who will say to it: Turn round and look – see Christ is here ! ” (I Concili Ecumenici nella vita della Chiesa p.17) The world is walking backwards towards a future where Christ is to be found ! Such formulas abound and they are grotesque.

We are confronted here with the most formidable problem of the Church’s history in our time. How is it that Msgr. Montini could continue to play such a leading role and could continue his climb to the top after Pius XII had dismissed him from Rome ? How is it that he was so much desired by the Conclave of 1958 that Cardinal Roncalli was elected on the understanding that he was to prepare the way for him ? How could Roncalli immediately raise him to the purple and entrust him with the most decisive responsibilities before and during the first session of the Council, thus signalling him as his successor ? How could the Conclave of 1963 designate him for the supreme office when it was public knowledge that the morality section of the Milan police had a file on him ? This fact was revealed to me and vouchsafed for on the eve of the Conclave by the Reverend Father de Saint-Avit of Saint-Paul-outside-the-walls, who vigorously countered my gloomy predictions. It would not be and it could not be Montini !

And yet it was Montini ! Here indeed is the break, but it was concealed in this powerful initiative whereby the supreme organ of decision was wrenched from the Church and has been held ever since by something that is not the Church – something whose name one trembles to utter.

Paul VI, YOUR PRECURSOR

Having arrived where he desired to be, what did Pope Montini do ? He did nothing, just as the Council did nothing. A great deal of noise was made and an extravagantly expensive good time, never before seen, was had, but that is nothing. It all adds up to nothing except a burdensome debt. There was a semblance of activity… There was great merry-making in ridiculing triumphalism. Every sack of grain in the loft was split open, every barrel of wine in the cellar was broached. There were celebrations and grave discussions. The idea was to destroy in order to rebuild. They were going to change the Church. Fortunately, however, the demolitionists lacked both the imagination and the strength. Despite all their efforts, the old building withstood them because it was solidly built. “ The walls are sound ”, which will make it possible to restore everything. If the demolitionists had had a clearer idea of their dream church, if they could have embodied it in a definite shape, our real age-old Church would be no more and the break would have dated from 1962-1965. The co-authors of the break would have been the Pope and the Council under the pretext of the “ aggiornamento ”. Providentially mole sua stat, which I translate: it subsists, it holds, not “ by its mass ”, but through its own inner consistency, its order, its structural vitality and organising power, in a word, through the Holy Spirit. The Catholic Church has continued to exist down to this day. Deo gratias !

Paul VI, as you know, was a man of culture rather than intellect, more emotional than intellectual. He was not really a leader but a solitary, morose, ambitious man who, in order to tolerate the pagan tedium of his life, needed to be loved, flattered and applauded. And from the day of his elevation, there was a multiplicity of loudly publicised initiatives and announcements of great reforms to come, some useless, some simply insupportable. The passing of time has exposed the utter and often ruinous futility of it all. Convinced that he would give great pleasure, he hastened to Jerusalem to meet the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, to Geneva and to Manhattan. He invented new secretariats in order to dialogue with the non-Catholic Christian brothers, with the non-Christian brothers and with the non-believing brothers. He forgave the whole world for its aggression and for its crimes against God and His Christ, even before the world had shown the least repentance. He humbly beat his breast for the faults of his predecessors – not for his ! – with regard to the active and living enemies of the eternal Church. And what did it all lead to ? To nothing except dishonour, ruin and decay. The world was said to be fascinated at the sight of all this, but the world could not care less !

No pope or no council ever loved the world more, we were told of Paul VI and of Vatican II. Loved in what sense ? By words empty of meaning and content. Neither Paul VI, nor for that matter the great mass of bishops of that generation, had taken part in any of the military, scientific, political, philosophical, colonial or missionary epics of history. Since 1917, the life of mankind has been painfully dull, apart from the leprosy of Bolshevism...

Neither Paul VI nor Vatican II had any real concrete love for persons, for peoples, for the poor or for civilisations; their innovations brought nothing but ruin and misfortune to all of these. All Montini knew of men was through the files of the Secretariat of State, and all he knew of civilisations was through the books in his library. The many declarations of infinite love addressed to all mankind at the Council did not proceed from divine love, for all their impassioned rhetoric, because, never once did they show any anguish for the salvation of souls or that true charity which is capable of inventing and realising the best means for the relief of suffering. Paul VI possessed the art of belles lettres, to give expression and publicity to the ineffectual sentiments of the beautiful soul confronted with human misery. Neither he nor any of the Council Fathers possessed any of those vast, protective, moralising or saving designs, whereby certain very great minds or certain inspired assemblies are able, amidst the chaos of human history, to deflect the great dangers already threatening and about to burst on mankind. They created nothing and did nothing. And after us, the Flood !

The speeches of Paul VI are enough to make one laugh. Ah ! said he, how powerful the modern world is ! How grandiose ! Man has even walked on the Moon ! (cf. The Hymn to the Glory of Man during the Angelus on February 7, 1973, on the occasion of one of the “ Moon voyages ”, ) And so catastrophe always took him by surprise. He hastened to welcome and to announce an end to catastrophe with remedies that were as unreal as they were utopian. Then, disconcerted and finding himself at a loss, he would pay no further attention to the catastrophe – too bad for the poor people who were shipwrecked, famished, killed, persecuted and deported ! He would take his illusions to other parts of the globe, bringing misfortune and malediction on their inhabitants.

That is what I reproached him with, and I gave it a name to make it easy for the mind to grasp: it was the utopia of a religion entirely at the service of humanity and for the construction of a new Tower of Babel, which he adorned with the name of “ civilisation of love ”… I called it MASDU (Mouvement d’Animation Spirituelle de Ia Democratie Universelle – Movement for the Spiritual Animation of Universal Democracy – see Liber accusationis, Your Personal Heresy). It was in order to launch the Catholic Church into this enormous confusion that the Pope and the Council applied themselves to the Church’s “ reconversion ”, from anathema to dialogue, and from the work of redeeming the world to what they believed was the far easier and much more needed work of humanising the world !

It was to this end that they hastened, that he hastened, to proclaim religious liberty, to adhere to the Congarian project of unreserved ecumenism, and finally to desacralise and profane Christendom in accordance with Maritain’s design for an Integral Humanism. What destruction and what ruin ! And for what profit ? I have to admit that all these projects are not the work of German or Slav minds. Paul VI was the convinced disciple of those lightweight and vain French thinkers, the Maritains, Mouniers, Congars, de Lubacs and the inevitable Teilhard, whose glorious works are no longer read by anyone and whose names are forgotten even before their deaths. Little progressivist minds, not to be compared with the masters of German Modernism ! Fortunately, those German heavyweights were beyond the understanding of Paul VI. He was a Latin and his culture made him allergic to their profound nonsense.

Does such superficiality excuse a pope ? Does it excuse him ? One would hope so for his eternal salvation. But it was in disobedience to his predecessors and through infidelity to the dogmas and commandments of the Holy Roman Church that he begat the desire to launch this mad reform and to direct it from the top. He “ conveyed socialism with his eye fixed on a chimera ”, as St. Pius X had said of Marc Sangnier in his Letter on the Sillon. Had he been a Modernist, his work would have been more fearful and he would have given it no counterweight. But he lacked the breadth of an heresiarch… I think he was just a demagogue.

After an initial period of immense self-satisfaction (1963-1968), there followed a more difficult stage (1968-1973), and then a third, which was one of disenchantment (1973-1978). Anxious for his divine authority, terrified by the dangers that the Catholic faith and the morality of the Decalogue were undergoing, he had the courage to react once, and once only, with a certain firmness. In June 1968, he promulgated his Credo and issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae. Then, conscious of his powerlessness to do the least good, after having released evils that nothing would make him disavow, he melancholically withdrew to an apparent halfway position between the two extremes of progressivism and integrism. But such a position was, in fact, merely an impossible reconciliation of two contradictory demands: that of loyalty to the divine Church on the one hand and of openness to Satan’s counter-church on the other. He died without choosing between “ the religion of God made man ” and “ the religion (for there is such a one) of man who makes himself God ”, to use his own phrase, when he linked the two on a day of mad jubilation before the whole Council, the Church and the world, selling his soul to please the devil in the most reckless of blasphemies (see Liber Accusationis, The Cult of Man Who Makes Himself God).

With loving care he had drawn up his last will and testament to be published after his death. It is the literary work of a light-minded man, concerned with leaving us, after his passing away, the remembrance of an aesthete and professional man of letters, a melancholic like that of a pagan of ancient Roman, though Christian. But apart from myself, his indefatigable gainsayer, nobody read it and nobody celebrated it. It is a fine literary composition all the same.

JOHN PAUL I, THE BELOVED: THE MIRACULOUS RESURGENCE OF HOLY TRADITION

Suddenly, everything re-blossoms. On August 6, 1978, exactly fourteen years to the day after his first reformist act, the publication of Ecclesiam Suam the charter of his pontificate, Paul VI died amid general indifference. One could not but notice that he was not loved, and suddenly, the Church in her cardinals, in her bishops and perhaps in her faithful, woke up. They felt themselves to be on the brink of an abyss. There had to be a swing, quickly, firmly and without transition, to the right. Nobody puts it better than your friend Malinski, to whom praise be due !

“ I am sure ”, he said to his friend Karol on August 21, 1978, “ that no cardinal from the progressivist group will be elected Pope. It will be a conservative, perhaps a centrist, but right-wing. – ‘ I can see you are playing the prophet ’ – I simply think that for the moment at least the great majority of the cardinals have had enough of postconciliar experiments and they now look for a more or less solid stability and a deepening of all that the Council has brought. The Council and all the ferment it has brought are fascinating. But the man in the street, after all that he has read in the press, heard on the radio and seen on television, feels absolutely lost. He no longer knows what he ought to believe in or how he should live. This time the Pope will be a man of the right or of the centre. ” He already sees his friend Karol as pope ! On August 23, he returns to the point: “ He will be elected pope, first of all because he belongs to the Polish episcopate who have accomplished unprecedented things in the universal Church. It is sufficient to compare what happened in the Western Church at the end of the Council and after the Council. It is a greater tragedy than even the Reformation. The Polish Church emerged from that trial victorious. ”

But you yourself on the August 24 let slip this thought: “ It seems to me, and what is more it is confirmed by a whole number of opinions coming from various people, that the Church and the world stand in need of a very pious Pope. That must be his primary and indispensable characteristic, so that he can be the father of a religious society. ” You felt this universal need for a return to true religion.

And the Conclave chose, as though in a single bound, Cardinal Albino Luciani. It was a sign of Providence for those who had been driven to despair by the heresy, schism and scandals of the last Pope and of the Council and who thought that the tradition had already been broken. It was like 1903, when at the end of Leo XIII’s long pontificate, Giuseppe Sarto had appeared, sprung from the Heart of God, for the restoration of the Church ! And so with Albino Luciani. Through his whole life, admirable in every respect, and now through the Conclave’s choice of him, the world was astonished to discover that the spirit of St. Pius X, his piety, his manners, his mental and moral habits, were still dear to Roman authority, and were still capable, even after Vatican II and Paul VI, of bringing about the quasi-unanimity of the princes of the Church and of the faithful people of the entire world, without intrigue or dealing.

I have read his life and studied his writings and sermons. The Conciliar novelty is there but it is like loose luggage: it never appears as consubstantial with the Catholic faith nor of equal value, nor even as a necessary consequence of the Catholic faith, as the result of some evolution or historical acceleration. I shall just quote one text of his, taken from his allocution of 13 September. It is clear, precise and absolutely and firmly Catholic. It is neither banal nor naïve. Once again, on hearing him, one feels oneself to be Catholic with him !

“ I was present when Pope John opened the Council on October 11, 1962. He said then: ‘ With the Council we hope that the Church will make a great leap forward ’. We all hoped so, but along what road would she make this leap forward ? He immediately made that clear: along the path of certain and unchangeable truth. Pope John never thought that the truth could change. Truths are what they are. We have to follow the path of these truths, to understanding them better, to proceed with our aggiornamento, and to propose them in a way suited to new times. ”

I picked out so many of these words, said with such gentleness and humour – which showed that ideas thought to be discarded over the last fifteen years were finding their way back – that I firmly believed that preconciliar reform times had returned. The tradition, therefore, had only suffered a partial cut, more apparent than real. The Church was going to recover that “ wonderful Aladdin’s lamp ”, foolishly thrown away by his wife who had yielded to the magician. The Archbishop of Venice told this little story apropos of changes in the catechism:

“ The magician wants revenge on Aladdin and goes through the streets shouting ‘ New lamps for old ! New lamps for old ! ’. It seems a bargain, but in fact it is a trick. Aladdin’s credulous wife falls for it. As her husband is away, she goes up to the attic and gets the lamp – knowing nothing of its powers – and gives it to the magician. He carries it off, leaving some valueless shiny tin lamps in exchange.

“ The trick is still used: every now and then a magician comes along – mystical, philosophical or political – who offers to trade his goods. Be careful. Some magicians offer glittering ideas which may be tinny rather than solid – human, transitory, fashionable things. What are called old outmoded ideas are often the ideas of God, of which it is written that they shall not pass away... ”

I was amazed at such words, and I was not the only one. Everyone thought that this was the end of Paul VI and of Vatican II, or at least the end of the forced card, and that we were going to recover the freedom of living in peace in the joy of the Catholic faith. Did not you yourself, moreover, think the same ? And during those thirty-three days of grace, were you not tempted by the simple, chaste and pious fidelity to tradition ? You who said of this wonderful, unexpected Pope: “ I think he is the ideal man for this dignity. Thanks to his piety and his humility, he is fitted to welcome the action of the Holy Ghost. At the present time, the Church is in need of such a Pope. ”

We were persuaded, even after his strange death, that the wanderings and scandals of the last fifteen years of the Conciliar and postconciliar years would never ever return. The Osservatore Romano was of the same mind and sought to reassure a public opinion already anxious, on October 3:

“ Anyone who says that the next pope will in practice be the successor of Pope Montini is mistaken. He will on the contrary (on the contrary ! do you hear !) be the successor of Pope Luciani, for it now clearly appears that in the designs of God, a pontificate of thirty-three days is worth as much as a pontificate of thirty-three years. ”

Alas, the cardinals came to themselves again and thwarted the designs of God by electing – half misled and half decided, in opposition to the traditional tide that had momentarily returned – Your Holiness, to continue the work of Paul VI, to bring to life and to consolidate the gains of the revolution. A young, strong, virtuous, pious, energetic and authoritarian man was needed, yes ! But, let us be sure of him ! Let him not be a reactionary ! Cardinal Marty was to say, “ We must go forward. There can be no stopping. It would be an insult to those who made the Council. ” And so they chose You !