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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.
+Bernard Fellay
Superior General |
