The evil of ecumenism, in today's Rome

Conference given to the faithful in Winnipeg, November 23rd 1999
By His Excellency Bishop Bernard Fellay
Note of the Editor: to keep the conversational style of this conference, we made a minimum of modifications in this written transcription.

The human and the divine aspects of the Church.

This conference will deal with the situation in the Church. Before starting, I would like to say one word: when we speak about the church, we always speak about a Mystery.

A Mystery is not something confused or confusing, although what happens today in the Church might be confusing. No, when we say a Mystery, that means a truth which is above our understanding.

A Mystery of the Faith is not something obscure or contradictory. But it is too clear for us: like too much light. If you try to look with your eyes at the sun you finally see just black. It is not the fault of the sun, it is just that our eyes are not able to look into such brightness.

The Mysteries of the Faith are such a type of brightness. But that means also that we are not able to explain the whole. We have to stick to some part of the Mystery but we do not have the definite and the final explanation. At a certain point we have to say: God knows.

So is it when we speak about the Church: we must always remember that. We cannot speak of the Church like we speak of, for example, a State. Because the Church is divine. It is not founded by men, but by God, Our Lord. The head of the Church is still Our Lord Jesus Christ who is God, Almighty God. He is not the visible head, but He is the true head. And He is still in control of His Church and will never lose this control.

This side of reality does not exclude another side, which is the human side. And when we speak of human, we speak of a certain weakness, of a possibility of falling down.

And this we have to say although God has given to his Church certain promises like this one: "The gates of hell shall not prevail." Or, about the Pope, if he speaks under certain conditions and in certain circumstances, he can be infallible! We have to keep all this in mind. What we are going to deal with tonight is not the pleasant or the nice side of the Church. And it can be really disturbing.

I would like to speak about the situation in the Church today . . . . In the year 2000. I have here a copy of a letter, in French, written four years ago by Mgr. Perl, the Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission. He is writing back on the 8th of April 1995 in the name of Cardinal Ratzinger to whom a letter was written by a Frenchman exposing all the troubles happening there.

"We can touch your suffering in your letter and one may well understand it. It is love of the Church which manifests itself so. There are so many things which go wrong that we may almost speak of an anarchical Church. As did Jean-Marie Paupert in his last book "Open letter to the Pope about an anarchical Church" which you may know. If not, you have to read it.

"In front of this anarchy, the Catholics which are called Traditionalist, look towards the Tradition of the Church as a wall of protection and conserve it with zeal in Faith and Liturgy. You know that the Pope has recognized this attitude as a legitimate aspiration which has to be respected everywhere. You know also that in fact this respect is very often failing and the contrary to this respect seems to be often the fact, either by faithful or priests, or even bishops.

"So what do we have to do in this situation? Do you think that an authoritarian act on the side of the Holy See could change everything? Unfortunately it would be an illusion."

It is Rome who writes it. They tell you the Church is in anarchy, and that if you think that Rome can do something, you are wrong!

"So what should we do?, continues Mgr. Perl in his letter "I see only three means. First our own fidelity to the total Catholic Faith. The New Catechism of the Catholic Church will help you to do that."

(This is already a wrong start!) "Concerning the liturgy of the Church: do it as the Church gives it to us. The question of the rites, either the official rite of Pope Paul VI, or the rite of Pope Pius V considered as an exception, is secondary. As long as it is celebrated as prescribed."

"And finally, faithfulness to the pastors of the Church, to the Pope and to the bishops". If somebody arrives in Rome and says: look at these bishops, they do anything, you cannot follow them. You have this answer: Yes it is anarchy. So what do you have to do? Follow them. That's Rome today! If you complain too much they say: well, convert them."

That letter was written in 1995 and we cannot say that things have bettered since then.

Some very recent happenings

Let me mention some very recent happenings in the Church. You may have heard that the Pope did kiss the Koran. He did embrace the book of the Muslims, the so called holy book of the Koran. He did that in May of this year in Rome. The Muslims do consider such an act as, we may say, an apostasy. Since then, things are precipitating. We are just getting close to a Holy Year, and they want to make out of this Holy Year a total ecumenical year with many gatherings with the Protestants, the Anglicans and many other religions.

They want to beg for forgiveness, to apologize for all the so-called evils of the past of the Church, and they will do this on Ash-Wednesday. There will also be a big gathering of religions on Pentecost. And several other gatherings with other religions. To prepare this they have begun to make some agreements. They have prepared an agreement with Anglicans, and, even more recently, an agreement with Protestants. I will just comment a little on these two ones.

1. Ecumenism with the Anglicans

With the Anglicans, they have made an agreement in which the Anglicans say: we do recognize the Primacy of the Pope. We may say: well, fine. But what is the Primacy of the Pope for a Protestant? For him, it is not what we call the Primacy of the Pope. It is something like: the head of a Parliament, or maybe like the Queen of England.

It is not like a monarch who has the power in his hands. And not only did they sign or propose this recognition of the Primacy of the Pope which they say it should be a collegial Primacy (which means, we should have a kind of a parliament around it), but they added: we have to go into action.

And so they proposed that next year (year 2000), starting at the spring, in certain places in Canada where you have Catholics and Anglicans, we will take all decisions jointly; either at the level of the parishes, or at the level of the dioceses.

Now what they don't tell you is that the Anglicans have women priestesses. And they didn't look into that problem, on purpose. So that they will mix and suddenly, you will have in the middle of Catholics, priestesses. It goes even worse. Right now in the Anglican diocese of Sydney in Australia, they have decided that lay people can do the mass.

The Anglican bishops have two weeks to decide to put their veto or not. That means that the Anglicans turn totally Protestant saying that a layman can consecrate and celebrate the mass,

So how can you imagine that such a position can go together with Catholicism? It is impossible. But they don't care. They want to mix. They want to come into action. Because they know very well that if at the level of ideas you cannot go forward because the distinction is clear, they will try to do it through action.

Ecumenism with the Lutherans: the doctrine on Justification

They just signed on October 31st a common declaration with the Protestants about Justification. It is something very important. Justification is a key point of Protestantism. It was Luther who attacked the Church, and he did that on October 31st 1534, the same day on which they signed this agreement. When we say Justification, it means the process going from the state of sin to the state of grace.

We call it Justification because the one who is in a state of grace is called by the Holy Scripture "Just."

For example St. Joseph is called "Just" and usually whenever you find the word "Just" in Holy Scripture, it means "saint."

So, Justification means to become a saint: to go from the state of sin to the state of grace. Luther had very strange ideas about that. So strange that the Council of Trent condemned his theories in 33 Canons.

There is a special decree in the Council of Trent which deals with this question. And now, the Catholic Church has signed an agreement with the Lutherans in which it is stated that all these condemnations are no longer valid.

They say these condemnations do not hit those who hold the doctrine of Justification as explained in this common declaration.

This declaration is the fruit of discussions between theologians - Protestants and Catholics-and it was proposed to the Catholic Church and to the Protestants in 1997. It is a fairly long text, with 44 chapters. The first part of each chapter is a summary of Holy Scripture.

Then they give a description of what we may say are the problems. Then they say: we have come now to a consent.

"We do agree on basic truths about Justification. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree enough to say that the differences which remain no longer fall under the condemnations of the Council of Trent."

Then they make a description of 7 points about Justification. For each one, they first show what is common, then what is the Catholic truth, and then what the Protestants think about it.

The heresy of Luther

This theory of Luther is, for a Catholic, absolutely crazy. Let me give you a key example. In 1998, under the influence of Cardinal Ratzinger, Cardinal Cassidy issued an official answer of the Catholic Church about this proposed text of 1997.

In this official answer, the Catholic Church declared that on several points there was a great confusion, and that on one point at least it was clear that the condemnations of the Council of Trent are still in force. This point is the affirmation of Luther that: "the Just is still a sinner."

In the Catholic wording you would say: "The one who is in the state of grace is still in the state of sin." Which is absurd. And you have here the big difference between the Catholic teaching and the Protestant one.

The Catholic versus the Lutheran doctrine on Justification

The Catholics say: "When you receive the grace, the pardon of God, this forgiveness is like the light

So, when you are in the state of grace, you have no mortal sin any more. It is away. It goes so far as the fact that by Baptism, all your sins are wiped away. It is like a rebirth.

A new life starts. You may still have human defects, bad habits or inclinations, and God does not take them away, normally.

You still have to fight against them. But, if you die just after Baptism, even with these defects, you go straight to Heaven.

This is the Catholic teaching. The power of Baptism is so strong that even a man who killed 1000 people when he was a pagan, if he is baptized (and believes) and dies immediately after, he goes straight to Heaven! Like a newly-born baby.

The past is just wiped out. Thanks to the Passion of Our Lord. Even if he has lots of bad inclinations, but if he doesn't make use of them after Baptism, he goes straight to Heaven.

The Protestants say: no: "These are bad habits, so he is a bad guy." So on one side they say: "He is justified," and on another side they say: "He is still a bad guy." So what is Justification for them? It is as if Our Lord would put a coat to cover the dirt of the sinner. God only looks at the coat, and doesn't care about what is under it. Poor Protestants!

They will never have the joy of the forgiveness of Confession. We Catholics know that when we come out of the confessional, we are clean, we start anew. But the Protestant, even if he claims to be justified, continues to say: "I am a dirty man." It's terrible. But this is their position.

They continue saying: "We can't help. We cannot do anything for our salvation. It's God who does everything."

Martin Luther went so far to say: "If somebody tries to do good works for his salvation, that is a sacrilege, an abomination," We, Catholics, say on the contrary: "You better cooperate. If you want to be saved, you have to do good works." We call this cooperation to grace. God has made us free - He has given us freedom, a reason and a will. And He wants us to use them with the help of His grace.

For the Protestants, the freedom is useless. It's rotten. It leads us to sin. So God does all the work, and you just turn your thumbs. As I say the whole picture is wrong in the Protestant way.

But what comes now to a terrible point is, when you look at the Declaration which will be signed by Catholics and Protestants where they say: "Now, we agree." And obviously they don't.

Last year the Catholic Church issued an official reaction to the proposed Declaration, saying: "The doctrine of the Protestants is still condemned, it still falls under the condemnations of the Council of Trent."

And now, this last October, they sign it. Last year

The false dialogue of ecumenism

What do we have to conclude? They say that this text is the fruit of dialogue. They say that dialogue means that you have two partners with equal rights. That means that the Protestants would have the same rights as the Catholic Church about a matter of Faith! It means that the Protestants, who are heretics, would have the same power to decide about the Faith as the Pope!

You see here how crazy it is. And how tragic! We say that the Catholic Church is infallible. It has received this power from God, not to decide whatever they want, but to say clearly what is revealed, what God has entrusted to the Church to be transmitted to the soul.

And now you have this Church which is the Mother and Mistress of Truth and which pretends to give the same rights to error. It is horrible. It's like a capitulation. We would like to say that it is impossible, but we have it in front of our eyes.

That is ecumenism. And you may touch here with your fingers how wrong is ecumenism. It has never been the Catholic attitude.

The Catholic attitude is: the Church of Rome has the truth, the whole truth. But they say: "The truth is so great that you can't have the whole." We answer: "The truth is like God, like the Holy Eucharist.

Jesus is in the Host. Jesus is God and God is everywhere."

But nevertheless in one Host we have the whole Jesus and the whole God. Nothing is missing, even though He is everywhere. When you receive a host you receive the whole God.

Almighty and infinite God is all there in the smallest particle of the Host. We can say the same about the truth, or the Faith: when you have the Faith you have the whole Faith even if the Faith is bigger than you.

And it is such that it cannot be divided. It's all there. If you try to divide it, you lose everything. Like if you try to cut a piece out of a balloon with a knife: the balloon explodes and you have nothing. That is like the Faith. You cannot have only one piece of Faith.- either you have it or you don't.

The Catholic teaching says that whoever refuses one article of Faith, or even puts it willfully in doubt, has lost the whole Faith. Either you have it all, or nothing.

And here the Ecumenists say: "Now we do agree on basics, on fundamental truths. But there are no fundamental truths (if you imply by this that you can have the Faith while rejecting so-called non-fundamental truths)." There is no division. It is very grave.

(to be continued in the next issue)