#65:
December,
2003
Dear
Friends and Benefactors,
The
Church has just celebrated 25 years of the pontificate of Pope John
Paul II, one of the longest pontificates of her entire history. It is
also a pontificate that has presided over one of the most decadent periods
the Church has ever experienced. The French Revolution, the two World
Wars and Communism caused less damage to the Church than the reforms
of Vatican II. This internal sickness has given rise to a greater loss
of faith, a greater spiritual devastation, especially in Europe and
North America, than all the ills brought about by the Church’s external
enemies. Are we not right to think that the Council has had the effrontery
to give the Church a new mission, a new goal: that of being “the
sacrament of the unity of mankind”? Hitherto the Church’s first
and sole purpose was to save souls, to wrench them from the hands of
sin and the devil, and lead them to God by faith and the grace of the
sacraments. Quite simply, concern for the unity of mankind is utterly
foreign to her. The Church, essentially supernatural both in her aims
and her means, has no business with any earthly and purely humanitarian
mission. Of course she is familiar with a supernatural unity, and she
does actually create a human unity among her faithful, but this is purely
accessory to her purpose; it is only a consequence of their union in
faith and charity. At the same time she knows how to appreciate the
proper value of the bond of peace, the vinculum pacis.
The
more we go on, the clearer it becomes that one of the keystones in the
vault of the Conciliar and post-Conciliar enterprise is ecumenism. The
Roman authorities constantly harp on it.
Most
of the reforms were made in the name of this ecumenism, and the greatest
“successes” are attributed to it. The liturgical reform, the new relations
with Christian and non-Christian religions, the ecumenical Bible: all
these things have infected the faithful with a number of attitudes and
a new vision which have very little to do with the Church’s teaching
and discipline that have come down to us through the centuries.
We
must go further, however. Cardinal Kasper, president of the Pontifical
Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, recently gave a conference
that throws much light on what ecumenism really is: it is a large-scale
enterprise to demolish all that is specifically Catholic in the Church.
It is quite clear that we are fooling ourselves if we think that ecumenism
is a dialogue-based movement with the aim of bringing the separated
sheep back to the fold of Holy Church.
He
takes it as axiomatic that the Church is meant to be the leaven of mankind’s
unity, and from that he goes on to examine the causes of division. Suddenly
it becomes plain that what divides Christians and men generally are
precisely the specifically Catholic things. (Wasn’t Our Lord himself
a sign of contradiction and a stumbling-stone?) Kasper tells us that
ecumenism is not a movement towards conversion; it is not the return
of wanderers who have left the one true fold. This idea of unity is
foreign to him. For him, ecumenism consists in bringing about a new
unity, a unity together with these wanderers who —all of a sudden —are
not wanderers at all! We must follow “a common path towards a unity
in a reconciled diversity.” As for this unity, the Cardinal tells
us that no one knows what it will be like, because “the Holy Spirit
is always able to come up with a surprise.” Clearly, this man, who
is responsible for the promotion of unity, does not know where he is
going; but he does know what he is doing: he wants to remove from the
Catholic Church everything that is specific to her. That means he will
have a big job!
The
first division, of course, comes from our profession of faith. Our good
Mother, Holy Church, has produced these dogmatic formulas —as it was
her duty to do —to protect the faith that saves and gives eternal life,
against the deceivers and false prophets who preach a gospel that is
equally new and false. Practically all the heresies have been stopped
in their tracks, blocked, by a succinct and incisive formula that shows
with the utmost clarity the abyss that exists between truth and error,
faith and heresy. Cardinal Ratzinger, following Urs von Balthasar, wrote
that the urgent issue of the moment was to “dismantle faith’s bastions,”
but Kasper goes further and says that today we must transcend these
“unfortunate” and divisive formulas and discover a unity that
we had never really lost… sharing the one faith under different creeds…
“This is the result of our efforts to reach nuanced agreements that
transform yesterday’s contradictions into complementary assertions…”
According to this view, the dogmas are nothing but antiquated polemical
formulas.
Once
Kasper gets to work, there is no stopping: the sacramental life, the
ecclesiastical ministries —including the episcopate itself —and, finally
the pontifical Primacy (the stumbling-stone par excellence in
the way of unity) are all given the same treatment: everything must
be changed in the Church and reduced to the lowest common denominator.
Kasper
does not know whether tomorrow’s pope should be held to possess a jurisdiction
or infallibility; it will depend on the needs of the moment. It is a
“variable geometry” kind of papacy, imposed by a dogma that is
now seen as historically conditioned and distinct from its permanent
content. This is pure modernism.
Cardinal
Kasper is the pope’s right hand man in what the latter regards as
“the most important duty of his pontificate.” Even if the Cardinal
gives this conference as his own personal vision, there can be no doubt
that it governs his official action; furthermore, he is not the only
one to think in this way. The way he presents his ideas is daring, but
he is only expressing the dominant view, the “official line.”
Here
is a very recent illustration of it: at the beginning of October a new
inter-religious meeting took place at Fatima. It is the same thing as
Assisi. But now it is at the heart of a Marian sanctuary. The building
of a great multi-religious temple there has been announced, under the
aegis of the Vatican and … (wait for it…) the UN!
How
can any agreement [with Rome] be possible under such conditions? How
can we pass over such aberrations in silence? We reject all “nuanced”
agreements, we affirm the contradiction between the true and the false,
and we assert our firm will to have nullam partem (no part) in
such an enterprise. Why? Quite simply, because we want to remain Catholics.
We must turn our backs with horror and disgust on such a way of seeing
the Church and living in “communion.” How can anyone claim that modernist
“Rome” has changed and is becoming favourable to Tradition? What delusion!
In
our struggle to maintain the Catholic identity we have been asked to
come to the aid of a group of Ukrainian priests. For some years now
we have been helping them, particularly by setting up a seminary, that
had been clandestine for a long time. This year our wholesome action
was brought under the spotlight. Their bishop, Cardinal Husar, summoned
the superior of the Fraternity of St. Josaphat and asked him to explain
himself and to make his position clear: “It’s me or Bishop Fellay.”
He has threatened him and all the priests (about ten of them), and the
faithful who follow them (more than ten thousand) with major excommunication.
This means many trials, penalties or persecution in a country where
Communism is not dead. We commend them to your prayers. In November,
in Warsaw, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais ordained the first priest to
have come from this seminary.
On
the eve of the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, let us
renew our adoration and our firm will to serve Him and follow Him to
the very end. Let us ardently implore His grace so that we may carry
out His holy desires. Be assured of the prayers of all our seminarians,
who have returned to the seminaries in good numbers this year. Taking
all our seminaries together, we have sixty new entrants beginning their
year of spirituality. May Our Lord deign to reward your faithful generosity
with His abundant graces, and may our good Heavenly Mother deign to
protect you throughout the New Year.
8
December 2003,
Feast of
the Immaculate Conception
+Bernard
Fellay
Superior
General
