W. F. STROJIE Letter No. 18     UPON THIS ROCK               January 12, 1977

I will get to my main subject presently, approaching it indirectly.  It seems useful to write something first about that which most directly concerns Catholics who have been resisting the Vatican II revolution, the Mass.  And since in this Letter my remarks are addressed mainly to those who think of themselves as in some sense Catholic Traditionalists, to avoid confusion I will say here what I mean by that term.  By Traditionalists, capital T, I mean those Catholics who in their concern about the destructive Vatican II reforms, look outside the Papacy for a Leader and Solution.

It would be very foolish to suppose that the plan for total destruction now evident is not to be applied against those who resist the evil reforms, and who se up for themselves substitute arrangements for Mass and Sacraments.  It will be through this demand for Mass and Sacraments outside the law that the devil, always appearing as an angel of light, will approach these people.  He will send those who seem to give a guarantee of preservation of the Mass, valid Orders, etc.; and in this, of course, he lies.  Or he might arrange to lure them into the counter-church of Paul VI as a Traditionalist sect.  I have written this before but it bears repeating.  It is the final Great Deception for those who resist Vatican II.

In one of my early papers I expressed that it would be permissible to attend Mass at open-to-the-public Traditionalist chapels, but that these should be approached, if at all, with caution.  I was more definite in saying that chapel groups ought to stay clear of outside organizers.  I realized the danger of starting a schismatic chapel or movement regardless of original good intentions.  Of course early during the Vatican II Mass changes the thoughts of my wife and I, like those of many others, were of how we could satisfy our privilege and obligation to attend a certainly valid Mass somewhere.  In this first concern there was that which, if not restrained, would lead many in the name of Tradition into eventual rejection of the Church’s authority.  We are now in the last and greatest phase of that Traditionalist rejection.  It is my concern that by my writings I might have contributed something toward this rejection of the Law; and it is this which impels me in conscience to write against the rebellious movement from Eocene, Switzerland.  The issue is all the more confused because it is a law-destroying false pope who seems to oppose the Econe disregard of the Law.

The cautious approval I expressed about Mass arrangements outside parish churches and other approved places of public worship was based on the following considerations:  1, the right of a priest to continue to offer the Mass of Trent as given in the Quo Primum decree of Pope Pius V;  2, the precedent of house Masses in England, Ireland, and Mexico, and doubtless in other countries, in times of persecution by the civil authorities;  3, the proposition that the obligation of the Faith is prior to that of obedience;  4, the normal need we all have for the Sacraments.

So far so good; at least it looked good on paper, and we had the agreement of more than a few priests opposed to the corrupting changes in the Church.  Even so, I was never comfortable about this way of thinking, soundly based though it had once seemed to be.  But it was not until I turned my attention to a recent international movement to organize Traditionalist chapels that I saw clearly what now appears to be the truth – that there is no essential difference between the larger public chapel and the small house chapel with some outside attendance, all being apart from any legitimate authority, all opening up Mass and Sacraments to many abuses, as I well know from numerous letters received.

According to a reliable source at hand, during the early centuries Mass was offered in the larger private houses, but the Church put an end to this practice because of abuses—and what abuses and irregularities are to be expected now as compared to then!  Even so, abuses are not such an absolute thing and might with care be eliminated—at least theoretically.  Practically not, what with the present general low level of spirituality, the general confusion which prevails, the presence of Traditionalists who hold some heresy, and the unwillingness at worst, the inability at best, of traditionalist priests to act as responsible pastors; and, sad to say, because some of these priests are traditionalists for reasons not the best.  There is lacking not only authority but also sanctity of the kind the situation calls for.  I write this in no sense of blame for anyone, or as following the Donatists in their false doctrine of necessary priestly perfection, which none of them ever came near attaining, I’m sure.  I am concerned only with reality;  actual conditions.  St. Augustine imagined that in the Latter Days giants would arise to defend the Faith, which only shows how wrong even the great minds can be when exercising natural prediction.

I have said that the fact of abuses is not such an absolute thing; but lack of legitimate authority is, and I thereby come to the main Traditionalist temptation, which is not only schism but heresy, the belief that Mass and Sacraments can be had lawfully and priests be lawfully ordained outside the juridical order of the Papacy.  As I wrote in another paper, this is the heresy of Simon Magus.  It is not a sufficient answer to say the Paul 6 does not seem to be a true pope.  True pope or false, vacant Chair or not, the authority remains lacking for these attempts to set up substitute parishes, chapels, and seminaries.  The fact of a destroyer on the Papal Chair, and apparently apostate Bishops in seemingly all diocese, does not give anyone the right to disregard the Church’s laws or bend them to his own purpose.  This free interpretation of the Law, the putting of it aside as not now applicable, can serve to make any man – Bishop, priest or layman—a law to himself, and it opens a door for deliberate confusers and subversives.  I know that a few papers of mine contain sentences that might be taken as encouraging this kind of disregard of the Law.  I readily admit to some loose expressions and occasional unwise emphasis in one way or another, and this disturbs me.  But if my papers are examined as a whole, and distinctions are noted with regard to the particular applications as I made them, I think unbiased readers will concede that I have not encouraged any free-wheeling disregard of the Law on the presumption that a false pope and apostate Bishops can justify this.

We have on the one side an unCatholic attitude of “the pope is the pope” blind obedience, of Paul 6 as the way, the life, and the truth.  Against this attitude of the close followers of Paul 6 and the see-no-evil Moderates, are those of us who see the destructive reality of Montini’s works and speak of them plainly.  The Traditionalists have not closed their eyes but, noting Paul’s words and works destructive of the Church, they say he has unpoped himself and lacks authority, and that they may therefore set up their own Traditionalist thing.  According to this way of thinking, we are to suppose that any Bishop is free to set up what amounts to his own Church.  Not much imagination is needed to see what this can lead to.  With regard to a current claimant of this pseudo-pope status, Marcel Lefebvre, his followers assure us that we need not be concerned about his good intentions:  Have faith in Lefebvre is their message.  But all the faith in the world will not make him pope or do away with the Law.  As a non-residential Bishop he hasn’t an iota of authority over the least child in any diocese of the world.  They are fools who give their allegiance to a Bishop without jurisdiction, for the whole plan of Salvation is founded on Authority.  “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth…whose sins you shall forgive,” et.  No true Catholic ever questions this.  I myself have written that Paul 6 had unpoped himself;  I said more—that he had never assumed true papal authority, that he is Antichrist, but this is not to say or imply that there is no authority, that we are now free to do each his own thing.  This is a truth that can be obscured when a Bishop'’ miter and a whole barrage of words, including vague twists of Canon Law, enters the picture.

To return to the question of the Mass in our time, the Church’s official and public act of worship, until recently strictly governed as to manner of performance and place:  How can any layman or priest and group of laymen dare to set up a public chapel, large or small?  Let us examine here the four points previously mentioned, of possible justification.  First the right of priests as guaranteed by the Quo Primum  decree of Pope Pius V.  Was this intended as an absolute right, regardless, say, of a Bishop’s direct order to one of his priests to cease offering the Trent Mass?  Or did it only protect the priest in good conscience against orders to perform a heretical rite, such as the Novus Ordo of Paul 6?  I am not suggesting an answer here but only raise a question.  I would suppose priests have certain definite rights to offer Mass, which is what they were chiefly ordained to do.  Yet there does exist such a thing as an obligation to obey lawful authorities in what is not unlawful.  An instance of this was the order of Paul 6 to close the seminary at Econe, and to cease ordaining there.  I will get to the question of Pope Paul’s authority or lack of it presently.

Number two of my four justifications, the precedent of “underground” Masses in times of persecution in England, Mexico, etc.  Recall that this persecution was by civil authorities and that priests then were certainly acting under the authority of a true pope.  The Mass they performed was not forbidden, as the Trent rite is forbidden today.  Again I am only presenting a possible difficulty, possibly pertinent distinctions; two different situations.  My main purpose in this is to make the average reader aware of the law and of our obligation to take due account of it.

Number three, the truth that our obligation to keep the faith is prior to that of obedience.  This I do not see as applicable to the present Mass situation.  The Faith can be kept for a long time without the Mass; therefore disobedience on this principle cannot be justified.

Number four, the normal need for the Sacraments; their place in the divine scheme of salvation.  Here we are on more solid ground, again theoretically.  The Council of Trent condemns those who say that the Sacraments are not necessary for salvation, but this is not to be understood in an absolute sense, but as against the teachings of the Reformers’ doctrine of justification by faith alone.  But however that doctrine may apply, and practically speaking, how can a few priests provide Mass and Sacraments for thousands of scattered faithful?  And may they do this in disregard of the Church’s laws?  Those who are baptized and have received Communion have received the necessary Sacraments.  Baptism and Matrimony are possible without a priest.  Anyone may baptize in an emergency, which would surely apply in times or places where a doubtfully valid rite is being used in the parishes.  Canon Law provides for marriage in cases of a certain time without a priest.

Now, all the Traditionalists have heard about Canon 209 and the Church supplying jurisdiction.  They cite this frequently—even those who have never read it—against the Bishops who are presumed to have lost all jurisdiction because of their apostacy.  Let us see what 209 does say.  From Woywod, Vol. 1 “JURISDICTION SUPPLIED BY THE CHURCH.  161.  The Church supplies jurisdiction both for the external and the internal forum: (1) in common error; (2) in a positive and probably doubt whether of fact or law (Canon 209).  Common error consists in the erroneous belief of all or nearly all the people of a place, parish, community, that a man has jurisdiction.  The fact that the person knows that he has no jurisdiction, does not interfere with the validity of his acts if by common error he is believed to have jurisdiction.”

There follows in that first section, from which I have just quoted, a few sentences of comment on the old Canon Law.  The latter half of Canon 209, section 162, deals with doubtful situations, and I shall quote it in full; but first as to the above-mentioned essential part.  The plain sense of “common error” or “erroneous belief” concerning jurisdiction, surely applies to the Bishops today, including Paul 6, whose jurisdiction nearly all baptized Catholics accept without question.  Here is St. Robert Bellarmine’s doctrine made Canon Law, that a heretic retains jurisdiction until his heresy becomes notorious and he is deposed by lawful authority.  This law contradicts those who say that the Bishops have lost jurisdiction, and that, therefore, the Church will supply this authority to certain Traditionalist priests, most certainly to a Traditionalist Bishop if one comes along, acting on their own initiative.  Quite definitely Canon 209 indicates the opposite, that the Bishops retain their authority.

Certainly Canon 209 provides for jurisdiction in its more common application, to a Religious community where the jurisdiction of a superior is doubtful, and to a priest—any validly ordained priest--or absolving from sins, censures, etc. in danger of death, and probably it may be applied by priests to less extreme or less urgent cases in our time when the proper form of the Sacrament of Penance is being generally corrupted.  But the plain sense of Canon 209 does not support the claims of those who are citing this law as justification for a general disregard of the Law.

Section 162 on Jurisdiction Supplied by the Church reads as follows:
 “The Church supplies jurisdiction in a positive and probably doubt.  Authors do not agree on the interpretation of the terms, “negative” and “positive” doubt.  Generally speaking, a negative doubt means that one has no reason to serve as a basis for deciding a question, and it is about equal to ignorance on that question.  A Positive doubt means that one has a good reason for deciding a question one way, but that there is also a reason in favor of a contrary decision of the question.  For example, the reasons for and against the existence of jurisdiction in a certain case create a positive doubt; and, if the reasons on both sides are of such weight so as to create a bona fide doubt, the Church supplies the jurisdiction, even though the person did not possess it.”

So ends Canon Law 209.  I can see nothing in it to warrant a Traditionalist Movement with Mass and Sacraments, or the setting up of any kind of Sacraments-outside-the-law chapel or new Church, on the presumption that the works of Paul 6 have destroyed the true Church, now become a sect, as many Traditionalists are saying.  Paul 6 and his host of heretics are not the Church.  To imply that they are, is to fall into Paul’s own monstrous trap, in company with all those in the parishes that he has deceived.

A priest writing in The Voice, 18 Sept. 1976, has this to say:  “A few years ago Cardinal Ottaviani said that any priest who continues to offer the Latin Tridentine Mass has faculties anywhere in the world.  Canon 682 affirms this.”  Date, place and occasion of this supposed decree of Cardinal Ottaviani were not given; neither were the Cardinal’s exact words.  Quite certainly Cardinal Ottaviani, wise and prudent head of the Holy Office under four popes, did not and could not give any such blanket authority to priests.  And even were we disposed to believe this story, the writer conveniently omitted to mention the last part of Canon 682 which he cites in support of his argument.  I give the whole law here:  “The laity has the right to receive from the Clergy the spiritual goods and especially the necessary means of salvation, according to the rules of ecclesiastical discipline (Canon 682).”  As I say, the latter part was omitted by The Voice writer.  Those who are going to speak about rights and obligations should quote the whole law, not just the part which they can use.

I will not trouble the reader with other parts of Canon Law which I have seen mentioned as supposedly opening a gate for Traditionalist free-wheelers.  Doubtless those who are intent on that kind of thing will manage to discover, without help from me, other loopholes for their illicit operations.
Long before this, I’m sure, the reader will have gotten the idea that I think we must all abide by the Law, not joining in with the followers of Paul 6 in rejecting it or changing it to suit one’s own purpose.  After much observing of developments since Vatican II, I am convinced that the Law is for our protection, especially against various charlatans who falsely come in the name of Orthodoxy and Tradition, always with a hand extended for large sums of money.  Incidentally I have read recently that Cardinal Felice now has ready the Vatican II updated code of ‘Canon Law,’ ordered by “He who sits in the holy place, changing all laws.”

In more than one of my papers I begged for a few Bishops to speak out against the destructive works of Vatican II and Paul 6.  Two kinds of response are possible to such a plea:

 1.  From a Bishop who will speak out plainly against Paul 6 and his works, warning the faithful and demanding that Paul cease destroying the Church.

 2.  From a Bishop who sets up his own organization, in effect his own Church, for dispensing the Sacraments.

This first Bishop should be supported by good Catholics, but cautiously at first.  The second must be avoided like a plague.  He is schismatic and heretical, and this whether Paul 6 be false pope, invalidly elected, or what.  Such a bishop is, without question, doctrinally wrong, and he knows it.

So what of the papal authority today, of the divine promise, the Rock on which the Church was founded?  In other papers I have tried honestly to deal with this question.  Unlike some Traditionalists who have simply declared Paul 6 as a manifest heretic and therefore without authority, I have not set aside the doctrine of Christ’s promise to remain with the Church He founded, a visible Church with a visible head, nor have I closed my eyes to what is of the greatest significance and concern for Catholics today, the destructive program of the present occupant of the papal Chair.  I shall here sum of my opinion of the matter as set down in other papers of mine.

I have followed the doctrine of St. Robert Bellarmine, that Christ the invisible Head of the Church will supply or sustain the jurisdiction of a heretic pope, until such a pope’s heresy becomes notorious and he is induced to remove himself from office.  Cardinal Montini was elected to the papal office according to long establish procedure, and no Cardinal of the Conclave which elected Montini has protested his election as being invalid.  In any case, validly elected or not according to canonical procedures, Montini occupies the papal Chair, and although having no intention to act as true Vicar of Christ, he is the visible head all the same—visible head although a corrupted head.  Embarking on a program manifestly destructive of the Church, Montini is unlike any other pope.  How to fit this into Catholic doctrine?  We have the definition of infallibility given at the First Vatican Council, a true doctrinal Council, and Montini has not taught error ex Cathedra; we have the Scriptural prediction of a Great Apostacy, and Pope St. Pius X’s opinion that the Son of Perdition had already been born in 1903—the Antichrist, one totally, “perfectly” opposed to Christ, which only a pope can be, and the taking away of the Continual Sacrifice, which only a pope can do.  These things, I say, satisfy all the doctrinal requirements.  I have seen no other attempt to do this completely.

In my booklet POPE, COUNCIL AND CHAOS I wrote that Christ the invisible Head of the Church honors the arrangements for electing a pope that He has approved through the centuries.  He has given this privilege and responsibility to the chief officers of the Church, the Cardinals.  Christ does not interfere with their choice, and if in time the College becomes composed of corrupt Cardinals, rejecting the divine aid they will surely elect one of their own kind to the papal Chair.  Theoretically any male baptized Catholic can be elected pope, but with good reason the office had become open only to Cardinals.  According to Canon Law, a known heretic, schismatic or simoniac would be ineligible.  (Note the word “known” or “notorious” which legally amounts to proved as such.)  But suppose such a one were elected, would his election be invalid?  Quite likely, but the man would nevertheless occupy the Chair of Peter.  And as I have pointed out, according to certain theologians, he could exercise jurisdiction for the good of the Church, as already mentioned.  In other words, the evil election having been made, his jurisdiction would be sustained to the extent necessary for the maintenance of the juridical order within the Church, which is for the good of the faithful.  As I mention in another paper, this is not to deny the teaching of a well-known Bull of Pope Paul IV, but only to give its application as taught by Cardinal Bellarmine.

Here it might be well to consider the word “invalid,” so frequently spoken by the Traditionalists and others, including myself, opposed to the evil works of Vatican II and Paul 6.  We speak of a Mass as invalid, meaning no Mass at all.  The same with regard to, say, ordinations.  By an invalid ordination we mean the sacramental action did not take place, and the man is not made priest.  An invalid consecration of a priest leaves him a simple priest, no bishop.  But a Cardinal elected and crowned pope receives no such new character, no additional powers of the priesthood, but remains a bishop.  An invalidly consecrated “bishop” will not have the powers of a bishop to ordain; but an invalidly elected pope can carry on, set in motion, ratify, deputize, etc. the routine of the papal office.  What are we to think, for example, of the eight years or so the Antipope Anacletus II occupied the papal Chair?  Did the Church stop dead, with all action from the Papal Chair then made null and void?  Whether or not set down then as Canon Law, the provisions of that law for maintaining jurisdiction in cases of common error or of doubt, certainly applied.

In his article POPE in the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia, Fr. George Hayward Joyce, S. J., M.A., points out that according to Old Testament prophecy and Christ’s own words, Christ had attributed the foundation of the Church to Himself, and that it is in a secondary degree that He assigns to Peter a prerogative which is His own.  So, despite Montini, the papal office remains:  Christ remains as invisible Head, as He promised, until the end of time.  “Outside the Church there is no salvation…on this Rock, I will build My Church…the gates of hell shall not prevail…Behold I am with you all days.”  It is impossible that the sins of any man, even the total heresy of a pope and a thousand bishops with him, can change one iota of this doctrine.  “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words will not pass away.”  There is no place in all this for a Traditionalist Sacramental Movement for the saving of the Church; no place for a separate function of the priestly office.  Young men who go into such a thing do so at the peril of their souls.  Likewise those who accept their ministrations.

It has been the neatest of diabolic tricks to get both the blind-obedience followers of Paul 6 and the Traditionalists to equate Paul 6 with the Papacy.  The first group does this by approving or at least taking part in the destructive program of Vatican II and Paul 6, erroneously taking it to be the Law.  The second group looks for a Solution and Leader outside the Papacy, and sets aside such laws of the Church as found opposed to Traditionalist initiatives.  One enterprising young Traditionalist priest comes up with NECESSITY KNOWS NO LAW, grossly misrepresenting this from St. Thomas Aquinas, who applies it to a dying man’s need for absolution.  This twist of St. Thomas’s “Necessity knows no law” is in complete harmony with Montini’s action in completely ‘revising’ Canon Law.  The Traditionalists see themselves as the Church, with the law as obstacle or advantage, depending on Traditionalist requirements of the day.  In a talk at Portland, Oregon, an Econe priest repeated this idea, of Econe as the Church, several times; it was the main thrust of his talk, full of questionable statements.  I give here these exact words of his, uttered in criticism of the Cardinal in whose archdiocese the seminary at Armada, Michigan, is located:  “to attack us is to attack the Church.”  By “us” he meant Archbishop Lefebvre and Econe, as the manifest divinely chosen new instrument of salvation, obvious answer to Traditionalist prayers.  I marveled at the glib presumption of the young priest-speaker, but considered that he was only echoing headquarters.

One gentleman has suggested that I wait and see concerning the Lefebvre affair.  There is no need to see more.  Lefebvre has ordained outside the Church’s jurisdiction, he has gone into numerous diocese to confirm, a privilege only of Cardinals, and he has his priests operating as a separate Church in the United States and elsewhere, without jurisdiction.  He thereby has excommunicated himself.  This regardless of whether Paul 6 be validly elected or not, for it is the Church’s own Jurisdiction Lefebvre rejects, not merely (as Lefebvre obviously sees it) the orders of Paul 6.  Regardless of who occupies the papal Chair, and even if it be vacant, he who sets up a sacramental system on his own, puts himself outside the Church.  That is where the Econe supporters are putting themselves.

The Great Temptation of the Traditionalists is nothing new.  It is the ancient, so frequently accepted work of revolt, of disregard for Authority, doing one’s own thing, that Satan offered to Eve.  If those who resist the evil reforms of Vatican II and Paul 6 will not go to the left, Satan, appearing at a late hour as angel of light, will induce them to go with him to the right.  The respectable Moderates, once so self-righteously ‘obedient’ in their refusal to say a word against Paul 6, will mostly join in the late-hour revolt.  This will be a consequence of their failure to oppose the Montinian revolt—of their silence concerning the guilt of that evil revolutionist, Paul 6, of  their  resisting and  covering up for so many years the known truth about  Paul 6.

I write for those who simply want to remain Catholic.  Why then do I not stay in the parish and oppose those who are forcing on us the iniquitous changes?  The principle of Vatican II Dialogue is evil, meant to destroy the faith of those who take part in it, raise doubts concerning every doctrine and practice, so I will have nothing to do with it.

I might be asked how, considering my insistence on the Law, I can justify my refusal to attend the Novus Ordo of Paul 6.  The very words Novus Ordo, a New Order of Worship, ought to be sufficient reply.  A Novus Ordo does not follow from unchanging doctrine and the basic laws of the Church; certainly this of Paul 6 does not.  MORE LATER.

Part two, next letter:  More on Church and Papacy today; the Abbe de Nantes and his Counter Reform; Sacramental validity; more on the Econe schism.

W. F. Strojie
January 12, 1977
Letter No. 18
 
 

W. F. STROJIE Letter No. 19   THE MIND OF THE CHURCH      March 25, 1977
 

In recent Letters I raised questions about the application of the Church’s laws in this time of general disregard of the law by Paul 6 and his Vatican II Bishops.  I shall here add a few paragraphs on that subject, attempting to complete what I left unfinished concerning basic principles.

Two priests have directed my attention to the principle, “epikeia” or equity. Which looks to the mind of the lawgiver in doubtful cases.  In accordance with this principle there are times when we must ask: Does the law as presently applied obstruct or defeat the purpose of the lawgiver?  Have present circumstances rendered a particular law harmful, impeding or making impossible the work it was originally intended to regulate?

In question 120, First Article, St. Thomas, affirming the virtue of “Epikeia,” has this: “I answer that, as stated above (1-11, Q. 96, A. 6), when we were treating of laws, since human actions, with which laws are concerned, are composed of contingent singulars and are innumerable in their diversity, it was not possible to lay down rules of law that would apply to every single case.  Legislation in framing laws attend to what commonly happens; although if a law be applied to certain cases it will frustrate the equality of justice and be injurious to the common good, which the law has in view – In these cases it is bad to follow the law, and it is good to set aside the letter of the law and follow the dictates of justice and the common good.  This is the object of “epikeia” which we call equity.  Therefore it is evident that ‘epikeia’ is a virtue.”

St. Thomas thus states here what is in the mind of the Church on man-made laws.  Three come quickly to mind:       (1)  The law which obliges attendance at Mass on Sundays and Holydays;  (2) Canon Law requiring that religious writings be submitted to one’s bishop for approval;  (3) laws pertaining to residence in a Religious community by those who have taken vows, etc., With regard to Number 1, even in ordinary times many circumstances permit non-observance of this law on occasion.  It certainly can never oblige us to attend a questionable Mass, those that are on good authority, or quite evidently, heretical or sacrilegious, or such as might in time weaken a person’s Catholic faith.  As to Number 2, concerning religious writings, it cannot be according to the mind of the Church that error should be allowed freedom of expression, as happens today, while orthodox traditional teachings are to be suppressed.  With regard to number 3, no Religious is required to remain in a community which has lost the Catholic faith, or which in other ways no longer fulfills its original purpose of sanctifying its members.  With regard to these three laws and some others, the basic principle that the obligation of keeping the Faith is prior to that of obedience, and that truth should be taught and error exposed, certainly applies.

Notice that these are laws made by the Church’s officers for the Church’s individual members.   We have the right in certain circumstances to refuse to comply with one or more of such laws, holding to a higher obedience to God and the mind of the Church.  I think it helpful to mention here that nowhere does this obligation to NOT obey a particular law of this kind obliges anyone to initiate some other action to compensate.  For example, the obligation to refrain from taking part in a corrupted parish liturgy does not require that we join in with others in setting up a substitute church or chapel.  Actually it is forbidden to do this, for in this matter we come into conflict with that divine mandate by which the Church was made sole dispenser of the Sacraments.  “Thou art Peter–to thee I give the keys to the kingdom–whatever thou shalt bind on earth, will be bound in heaven,” etc., And so it has always been.  Catholics have always recognized the sole Jurisdiction–the necessity for it–in all those fundamental matters pertaining to worship and the sacraments.  This has nothing to do with the moral state of those who have received jurisdiction through the regular line of succession.   An unworthy or even heretic bishop may establish a parish church, which not even the holiest priest is permitted to do.  Many of those who resist the heretical reforms of Vatican II and Paul 6 think there has to be an alternative course in a time of corruption, of a great apostacy.   This is not so.  The mind of the Church is clear on this: “Behold I am with you all days, even until the end of the world.”  With regard to the present state of the Church under Paul 6, Christ Himself gives the example by His own compliance with what was lawful in the corrupt state of the Jewish hierarchy in His time.  St. Paul showed his regard for the office of the High Priest Ananias, a violent and rapacious man, who was then proposing an illegal outrage, very offensive from one Jew to another, against St. Paul.  If I have shown a lack of reverence for Paul 6 it is because Paul 6, unlike Ananias, has consistently shown his contempt for and rejection of his own office.  He has done this by consistently refusing to govern, by ostentatiously giving away the Tiara and Ring, symbols of the papal authority, by opposing himself to the popes of the past, and by abjectly putting himself at the service of the atheistic U.N.O. Assembly, calling that body the “last hope of mankind,” thus denying Christ before the whole world.

Does the Law, then, during the time of pope Montini, defeat the purpose of the lawgiver?  I think not, if the necessary distinctions are made.  Those laws made by the Church’s officers for her individual members present no difficulty for those whose faith is lively.  The divine mandate by which Christ gave exclusive jurisdiction to Peter and the Apostles, to be passed on to their successors, for regulating and dispensing the Sacraments, is another matter.  This we may not disregard, for it carries with it the divine promise of lasting until the end of time.
 

It is this promise which is a stumbling block to nearly all the conservatives and traditionalists who try to explain the Vatican II Church.  In a recent Traditionalist newsletter one writer quotes Christ’s promise to Peter that his faith with not fail. Just how this might apply to Paul 6 he does not clearly indicate.  Another writer in the same paper finds Paul 6 an “enigma.”  The Abbe Georges de Nantes who has filled a book with comments on Paul’s heresies, schism and scandals, apparently sees in Paul 6 a pope like all the others, only suffering from some kind of twisted notion which he might at any time remedy.  But of course it is quite obvious that never has the papal chair been occupied by a pope determined on a course of total change of the Catholic faith and practice, one who is on excellent terms with the Church’s ancient enemies, as shown so spectacularly by his visit and speech before the U.N.O., and in many other ways.  To apply Christ’s promise that St. Peter’s faith will not fail in Paul 6, renders that promise quite meaningless in a Catholic sense.  That Montini’s faith has not failed is evident enough, but it is certainly not the Catholic faith.

The trouble with most of the Traditionalist leaders is that they, like the moderates or conservatives, refuse to see the signs of the time.  The Abbe Georges de Nantes is a prime example in this, writing always of a counter-reform, a Vatican III.  While preaching against general apostacy these traditionalist leaders disregard the Scriptural prediction of a Great Apostacy and general spiritual blindness.  Were they to take due notice of the Scriptural prophecies they might come to a better understanding, for our time, of the Lawgiver.

We cannot fit Vatican II and pope Montini into the regular course of Catholic theology, not without closing our eyes to the facts of a total destructive reform, or by accepting the insane notion that the mind of Paul 6 has become the mind of the Church, which is what most baptized Catholics have come willy nilly to believe.  The traditionalists get around this by setting aside the doctrine of a visible Church with a visible head, to last until the end of time.  Resorting to “mind of the Church” arguments, they see themselves as having become a more or less visible, emerging Church, having lately acquired a Head and a dozen or so 30-year-old hieresiarchs.  And so it is that the mind of the Church is seen by many as manifest in the traditionalist “movement,” with a Head lacking in authority over the least child.  The mind of the Church easily becomes the mind of Father X or Fr. J or of Mr. B and so on without end.

There is never good reason to doubt that the mind of the Church is to be found at all times in her doctrines and laws, with a special Revelation which, while dating from the time of St. Paul and St. John, will, as St. Augustine believed, only be completely understood near the end of time; and then, according to St. Paul, only by a few, because of a great apostacy and general spiritual blindness.

Most of the traditionalists, no less than the conservatives and other followers of pope Montini, have been affected by the evolutionist fiction which sees this world as rolling on and on indefinitely.  This was not according to the mind of the Church in the time of the Apostles.  St. Paul corrected those who saw the Second Coming of Christ as imminent in his time, but was far from the modern attitude of putting the End out of mind.  I do not think it is supernatural hope but, as already mentioned, evolutionist influence, and success club optimism, which has taken hold of even most traditionalists as they look for Vatican III or the Great Leader and a millenium of peace and prosperity.  It is not mere chance that many of the traditionalists in the U.S. have a working agreement with a section of organized naturalism.

As regular readers of my papers know, I have written some things on the Latter Days.  Unfortunately any theologic approach to a study of the Church in the latter days has been confused in advance by the writings of those I have called “apocalyptic fantasy writers.”  The whole subject and all who venture to write on it has taken on an aura of insanity.  An advance trick of the devil for protecting his Antichrist from identification and rejection.  Anyway the latest of my writings on this subject is a brief Forward to my Letters 4, 7, 9 and 11, with parts from 10, on the Latter Days, a copy of which I shall enclose with this Letter.

Someone might reply that this is all very well, but it might not be true and, anyway, in the meantime, here we sit.  So what is there against a few faithful priests and people setting up some kind of chapel?  Wouldn’t this be acting in accordance with the mind of the true Church, against Paul 6?  This sounds very reasonable, especially if we can hold to an ideal vision of the noble traditionalists over here, apostates there.  But where is this “true Church?”  We are back into the invisible Church idea, which is not Catholic.  Yet I sympathize with the questioner.  There might be several reasons why I do not know the complete answer, the first and biggest of which is that I do not know completely the mind of the Lawgiver, Christ Our Lord.  “For who has known the Mind of the Lord, or who has been His counsellor.”  It was He who established the divine plan, to last until the end of time, for regulating and dispensing the Sacraments.  “To thee I give the Keys....”  We are concerned here with a divine mandate, not a man-made law.

But surely, someone objects (we can go round and round on this), it would be according to the Mind of Christ, and therefore of the True Church, that as many as possible be in position to receive the Sacraments at all times.  Not necessarily, for if some few faithful do not join in the general apostacy, all contribute in one way or another, if only by having failed to become the saints they should have become in the good times.  It is quite likely, too, I would suppose, that modern man’s prideful self-sufficiency demands in divine justice that all, including the scattered poor specimens of Catholic faithful, be subjected to a trial of total trust in God, a dark night, with very few external helps, and to this end the Continual Sacrifice taken away.  And of course the whole field of unregulated sacraments is wide open to evil influences in an age returning to devil worship.

When St. Paul spoke of those who would be lost in the latter days, he spoke of those who “had not sufficient love of the truth, that they might be saved.”  Certainly we have in these words of St. Paul an expression of the mind of the Church.  It might well be that the Traditionalists’ inordinate concern to get the Sacraments for themselves, not sufficiently caring for the truth and the general state of the Church, is not pleasing to God.  Anyway, as the great spiritual writers have indicated, we are not to be solicitous, even about our spiritual wants.  The greater virtue surely lies in resignation and complete abandonment to the will of God.  The mind of the Church is shown in this by her display at all times of the Crucifix, the Church’s standard.

What we have the right and duty to do is to expose and oppose the foul works of Paul 6 and his Vatican II bishops.  Generally avoiding this or playing it down, the so-called Traditionalist movement has been mainly one of setting up communities and chapels and let the devil take the hindmost.  The Abbe Georges de Nantes’s organization could serve as a model of what ought to be done in every country, except that Fr. De Nantes has his own Vatican III dream to promote and Montini’s Novus Ordo generally to defend.  But I’m getting into something here that, unless it be thoroughly explained, had better only be generally indicated as the correct course of action.

With regard to the individual priest and his privilege of offering the true Mass, I do not seriously question it.  And I’m sure that faithful priests may with discretion give spiritual aid and comfort to Catholic families, including the hearing of confessions in this time when the sacramental form is being corrupted in the parishes.  I dare not go beyond what is said or implied in those two sentences.

When I cautioned against open-to-the-public traditionalist chapels three or so years ago, I had in mind the potential use of these as nuclei for a large schismatic movement.  This concern of mine is shown to have been justified, by the fact that priests or eight or more such chapels in the United States all support the operation of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.  The rights and factions and law suits that have marred the operation of traditionalist chapels do not inspire confidence in this way of resisting the evil reforms of J. B. Montini.

With regard to this whole matter I do not think I can be justly accused of trying to make the mind of W. F. Strojie the mind of the Church, rather than the other way around, or that I am issuing instructions for priests.  The argument I have presented here on the mind of the Church might be summed up by simply saying that the Church’s doctrines and laws are a sufficient and sure guide through the present darkness.

THE GREAT PRAYER

From He-Who-Sits-Upon-The-Distant-Mountain the Waillanuit Tribes had received The Great Prayer.

To the Ten Tribal Chiefs with Walgainawa at their head, had been given authority to regulate and offer up the Great Prayer.  To the chiefs alone belonged the honor and complete responsibility for ordering the times, places, and manner of offering.  This authority and all the rites were to be passed on to their successors.

Long before the New Age, Waillanuit temples, chief of which was that of Ocholobos, had been located and adorned, and the altars set in areas restricted to the Chiefs.  By all the tribes the Sanctuary at Ocholobos was venerated as the Holy Place.  So it had been since time immemorial.

Then one October morning the high altar at Ocholobos was seen to have been defaced with crude black symbols, the whole partly covered over with trashy tree limbs, and there had been dug in the middle of the Sanctuary an animal roasting pit.  Later in the week, runners brought reports of the same kind of desecration in all the other temples of the Tribe.  Worse news yet, four of the ten Chiefs had gone over to the enemy who had done this; three were murdered, and three had fled in fear for their lives.  In the Holy Place at Ocholobos an evil intruder presided over an assembly of all the worst elements of the tribes.

Waillanuits faithful to the Great Promise and the Great Prayer consulted among themselves what action to take against the intruder, what to do about his abominations and his evil followers.  There was much debate among those concerned, and then a tentative agreement to move against the intruder, to take from him the Holy Place, and to restore the altars of their Fathers.  It was agreed that not only should the altars be taken back and the Great Prayer resumed; it was of even greater consequence, so it was said, that they should not tolerate this continuing insult to He-Who-Sits-Upon-The-Distant-Mountain.  How dare any Waillanuit ever lift his eyes to the Mountain who did not strive to eject the Intruder from the Holy Place!

At this time when the faithful were preparing to act there enters on the scene a little man, softly spoken, the Holy Man of the village of Ecu–Ecu.  “Let us not be hasty,” the Holy Man cautions certain of the faithful on the edge of the action.  “After all,” he speaks soothingly about the Intruder, “it is the Great Prayer which matters.  Let us go aside and set up our own temples, and leave the Intruder and his followers where they are–except perhaps we might make a deal for two or three of our old temples.”  The Holy Man from Ecu–Ecu hinted that he had “connections” which might help to bring about this return of a few temples.  The word spread, was taken up eagerly, until nearly all resistance to the Intruder had vanished.

But there remained a few Waillanuits faithful to the Great Promise.  These insisted desperately that the Great Prayer had been given by He-Who-Sits-Upon-The-Distant-Mountain, to be passed on only by the Ten Chiefs and their Successors; and so, they insisted, others of the tribes had no right to do this.  They had been promised that for so long as the Waillanuits remained faithful all would be well with them until the end of their days.

But such warnings were angrily rejected by the followers of the Holy Man; and those who spoke them were denounced as traitors having no concern for the Great Prayer, which the majority were eager to join in again.  This they did to their eternal disgrace as the Tribes declined into miserable quarreling factions.  In the end the Great Prayer itself was lost to those who thought to preserve it without regard for the Great Promise and He-Who-Sits-Jpon-The-Distant-Mountain.

Thunder and lightening have become incessant at Ecu-Ecu. And sulphur smoke arises from a growing great pit there.

Cardinal Leinart, Paul 6, Mgr. Lefebvre:

From Society of St. Pius X Letter No. 9 to Friends and Benefactors, page 10, the following by Marcel Lefebvre, who poses this question concerning his society.  “How do you justify your attitude towards the Pope?”  Answer: “We are the keenest defenders of his authority as Peter’s successor, but our attitude is governed by the words of Pius IX quoted above.  We applaud the Pope when he echoes Tradition and is faithful to his mission of handing down the deposit of the Faith.  We accept novelties intimately in conformity with Tradition and the Faith.  We do not feel bound by any obedience to novelties going against Tradition and threatening our Faith.  In that case, we take up a position behind the papal documents listed above.”

So speaks Mgr. Lefebvre about Paul 6, a pope who by his “Populorum Progressio” has provided a pernicious program for a complete Communist take-over, one who has tolerated every kind of heresy and heretic, who has radically altered every sacramental form.  Does he suppose Pope Pius IX would applaud an occasional word in defense of Tradition from such a pope?  Here is a deceitful use of Pope Pius IX who in a Syllabus of Errors condemned as Catholic and true Pope all that Montini stands for.  Here is that “praise and suppression” I have pointed out time and again as the Moderates’ contribution toward providing smokescreen for the operation of Paul 6.

From the Society of St. Pius X, Letter No. 10: “Now, when we learn in Rome that he who has been the mastermind of the liturgical reform is a Freemason, we may legitimately suspect that he is not alone,” writes Mgr. Lefebvre to his Friends and Benefactors.  Might it not be possible that he who appointed Bugnini could be of the same secret society with Bugnini?  Isn’t that the usual thing among their kind?  And doesn’t Lefebvre know that this “mastermind” of the new liturgy was only putting into effect the liturgy which Paul 6 outlined in a pastoral letter as Archbishop of Milan?  And isn’t it the pope who is completely responsible for the Liturgy?  It is very strange that a European Archbishop, one who was on the preparatory commission for the Council, would not know these things.

This quotation from The Remnant, 15 Sept. 1976, as reported by Mary Lejeune in her Sword of Truth: “...that we might be permitted to enter into dialogue with envoys which Your Holiness would choose from among those Cardinals who we have known for a long time; with the help of the grace of God the difficulties will then without doubt be overcome.”  These are the words of Marcel Lefebvre.

Incidentally, I know nothing about the Veritas photo about which so much commotion has been made.  I did not notice any date given to the photo.  But whether or not the photo was rigged or in any way altered by anyone, the above quotation expresses Mgr. Lefebvre’s own frequently stated attitude toward his “Holy Father,” which the photo merely affirms.

From a sermon of Mgr. Lefebvre, 27 May 1976, in Montreal, Canada:

“The Holy Father was educated in a Modernist environment...and, therefore, one cannot be surprised that, in the Council, the Pope did not react as Saint Pius X would have reacted, as Pope Pius IX would have reacted, or a Leo XIII.  As a consequence, an atmosphere prevailed at the Council of a kind that there was no resistance against this Modernist influence which exercised itself by a group of cardinals, in particular which was commanded, which was directed in some sort by Cardinal Leinart...Now, two months ago, in Rome, the traditionalist periodical “Chiesa Viva” published–I have seen it in Rome with my own eyes–on the back side of the cover, the photograph of Cardinal Lienart with all his Masonic paraphernalia, the day of his inscription in Masonry, then the date at which he arise to the 20th, then to the 30th degree of Masonry, attached to this lodge, at this place, at that place.  Meanwhile, about two or three months after this publication was made, I heard nothing about any reaction, or any contradiction.  Now, unfortunately I must say to you that this Cardinal Leinart is my bishop, it is he who ordained me a priest, it is he who consecrated me a bishop.  I cannot help it...Fortunately, the orders are valid...but, in spite of it, it was very painful for me to be informed of it.

This in the French also, from a completely reliable source.  So, Lefebvre would thus explain away the evil actions of Paul 6 by saying that it was all a difference in Montini’s environment from that of Popes such as Pius IX and St. Pius X.  Here is much more of that “taking the heat off Paul 6" that I have often noted as the work of the Moderates or Integrists.  I have many such soft-on-Paul 6 statements of Mgr. Lefebvre, none of the opposite kind.

Are the Archbishop’s Orders valid?  I do not concern myself about that.  His operation remains illegitimate regardless.  And those who won’t take heed of this for doctrinal reasons–well, let them go.  I am not trying to persuade Lefevrites who are madly intent on following their Leader, regardless of what he says or does, or omits to say or do.

Two more significant items: Cardinal Leinart was the leader of the “October Revolution”  –of those bishops who had pre-planned the take-over by the destructive forces within the Council.  Archille Cardinal Leinart of Lille was then president of the episcopal conference of France.  According to Abbe Georges de Nantes in his 1967 analysis of “Populorum Progressio,” it was Leinart and Bea who in the Conclave proposed Montini for pope.

W. F. Strojie, Letter No. 19, March 25, 1977
 
 
 

W. F. STROJIE LETTER NO.20 VERITAS AND THE MEXICANS        April 27, 1977

I have headed this Letter “Veritas and the Mexicans.”  Actually it should be “Veritas and Mgr. Lefebvre,” for it is this man who stands behind the latest “traditionalist” confusion and animosity, from whatever quarter it comes.  It is Archbishop Lefebvre who is the main subject of the 35 page Veritas edition called “The Mexican Packet.”
From Mexico, Australia, England and the USA come indignant protests from Lefebvre supporters, not refuting what is written against their man but castigating all those who dare to write against him.  One “traditionalist” priest writes that I am free to not be “with and for Bishop Lefebvre” but that I must be silent about him.  A simpler form of the message comes in this sample from today’s mail: “Thank you for the book.  Too bad you poured your gall over it.  Support the Holy Man.”  Certainly this French archbishop without a diocese has stirred up a great froth in the minds and emotions of diverse Catholic elements looking for a Solution to their Vatican II problems.

I was among those who received the Mexican Packet last December.  Reading it, I was rather startled to find, among other choice bits of news, that I am a Benedict Arnold, traitor to an unnamed cause, and that I and three other small publishers form a “team” against Marcel Lefebvre.  As my publications make plain enough, I am opposed to what Lefebvre is doing, but that I am part of a team scarecely needs denying.

What Veritas said is true–that they and I have never met, that neither of us knows what the other intends to write about.  The same goes for me with Mary Lejeune, as also with the fourth writer of the imaginary team.  Why can’t Mr. Anacleto Flores, member of a Mexican Catholic Union and author of this team nonsense, understand that three or more Catholic writers might agree on certain Catholic principles, and that we might write at about the same time against a current movement apparently departing from those principles?  Nothing is more likely.

“Oh, but this is Archbishop Lefebvre!  Have you checked with him to see if what you are writing is not blasphemous or something?”  That’s the way they write to me.  As Veritas points out, when Lefebvre’s own words are quoted contrary to what the Lefebvrites want to believe about their “fighting Archbishop,” they say it’s a lie, thus flatly calling liars all who write against him.  When it becomes inescapable that the man did say what he was accurately quoted as saying, then Lefebvre supporters reply that he didn’t mean it that way.  Their next step is to contact some little Econe seminarian or other; there is talk of inaccurate translations, but no proof of this forthcoming.  The whole operation is reminiscent of the tactics of Lefebvre’s “Holy Father,” Paul 6, another shadow operator who lets his front men do the hatchet work while he appears smilingly before the crowd.  Pardon me for writing bluntly here, but I am not favorably impressed by supposed to be defenders of the Faith who need to be constantly explained and interpreted.  It is the great merit of the recent Veritas issue on Econe that it gets through the bog and froth, the hassle and flap, and exposes the shiftiness of its leader.  The whole subject needed this treatment which I hadn’t the energy or sufficient knowledge to give it myself.  The reader of this recent Mexican Packet issue of Veritas might disagree with 25 per cent or more of it, and yet find inescapable proof in facts, in doctrine and the law, and in Lefebvre words and works to get around the law, that something is rotten in Econe.  I haven’t needed such proof, but I’m glad to see it made available for those who do.  I have been examining these various “traditionalist” Savers-of-the-Church long enough to recognize the poses, dodges, and half-truths they use to hoodwink at a profit, thousands of earnest Catholics.

When I read about an Archbishop defying a lawful order of a man he holds to be true pope, who in any case is speaking in accordance with the standing laws of the Church, I know that something has to be wrong, for no bishop could be mistaken in such a simple matter of moral theology.  When this Archbishop, suspended in accordance with Canon Law, arranges what in reality are public Masses of defiance, as at Lille, Hamburg, and places in England, his actions become even more scandalous to those confused Catholics who still regard Paul 6 as true pope.  And it encourages disobedience and disregard of the law in those who have until recently lawfully resisted the destructive reforms of Paul 6.  All of which makes it appear that this man is deliberately setting himself up as a dirty image of the true Ctholic resistance to Vatican II destructive reforms.  And we are now being given a false choice of Paul 6 or Mgr. Lefebvre.  There is no such necessity to choose.  As I have pointed out elsewhere, Lefebvre, a French archbishop now without a diocese, has no valid claim to our allegiance or support.  He is entirely wrong in what he is doing, and he knows it.

When this Archbishop without jurisdiction ordains young men illicitly for his international string of chapels, convents and seminaries, meanwhile continuing to speak his respect for “the Holy Father,” we must suppose that something is seriously wrong.  It is absurd to tell me, as my priest correspondent does, that I could read French I would see it differently.  No doubt Lefebvre’s French pretensions are more expert than his English, but the facts remain what they are regardless of language.
 

Veritas and Mgr. Lefebvre

The editors of Veritas have replied very well to the charges made in the Mexican packet.  Farther along in this Letter I shall comment on three items in Mr. Flores’s covering letter.  In this section I reproduce mostly factual parts on Lefebvre from Veritas. These will appear in boldface type.

Veritas editors comment on an action of Mgr. Lefebvre in 1970, in which he made an arrangement to have one of his men ordained in a Kentucky seminary.  I select only a few paragraphs on this, in which the editors first take up the questionable matter of “Valid Function.”

As the reader surely knows, the Econe seminary is not located in Kentucky, so why the arrangement to ordain in Kentucky–a Vatican iI style ordination, by the way?  Here is the answer:
 

 The bishop of the diocese where the young religious live (ordinarily, where the house
 of theology studies is located) is to be honored and recognized by the religious superior
 as the bishop having by law of the Church the right to ordain the students of a religious
 organization.  This law is substantially taken from a decree of the Sacred Congregation
 of the Council of Trent, March 15, 1596, promulgated by order of Pope Clement VIII.

 The aforesaid decree states that, according to the law of the Council of Trent, the
 religious superior must have his men ordained by the proper bishop, who is the bishop
  of the diocese wherein is located the religious house in which the candidates are
 stationed de familia.

 For a fact, Lefebvre knew he himself could not ordain.  For this we turn to Church
 information (Papal Yearbooks).

 For one thing, upon becoming the Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, April 11,
 1962, he lost the powers of a residential bishop when he left to be the Superior General.
 Secondly, in October 1968, when his mandate as Superior of his Order ended, Lefebvre
 thereby lost the juridical power as bishop in the Catholic Church.

Citing a letter from a young man who had requested Lefebvre to ordain him, Veritas continues:

 As Lefebvre himself accurately explained it in writing: “I have no permission....  I have
 no diocese....  I have no congregation.”

Before we proceed further, the following basic doctrine from Berthier–Raemers Compendium of Theology; Vol. 1, pages 81-82: “The rights of the primacy....  True, all the Apostles received from Christ the mission to preach the Gospel with infaallibility and to establish churches in all places, but it was an extraordinary power which they could not transmit to their successors...they were obliged to subject all to the authority of St. Peter.”

Page 76, same compendium: “The hierarchy of orders is constituted by the reception of Holy Orders, which confers the power to administer the Sacraments validly.  The consecration imparted by the Sacrament of Orders is never lost;  for this reason even heretical priests can validly administer those sacraments which do not imply jurisdiction.”

And for those who hold Paul 6 to be true pope, and who claim Lefebvre has a good case in Canon Law: “The Nature of the primacy.  From what we have said, the papal primacy is manifestly independent of all human power.  The pope, therefore, is above the canons...”  That from the same Berthier-Raemers, vol. 1, page 80.

+ + + + +

For years we heard of a Lefebvre arrangement with the Vatican for his Econe seminary, which presumably conferred on it canonical regularity.  I would suppose such assurance was deemed necessary to hold onto the majority of “moderates” who, despite all indications to the contrary, could somehow bring themselves to hope that either Paul 6 or someone else in the Vatican, perhaps Cardinal Wright, would be in sympathy with such a project, while these moderates waited for a break in the Vatican II nightmare.  In the past year or so we have heard claims of an “excempt” status for Econe, meaning that it was under papal, not diocesan, control.
 

Has Lefebvre been given this exempt status or not?  The following on that from Veritas:

 Has Lefebvre been given approval or at least “praise,” the “decretum laudis” or hasn’t
 He? as he exempt status or not?  He claims he has; the V-2 Vatican denies that he has.

 Lefebvre says Cardinal Wright’s letter written in 1971 can be construed as giving him
 and his fraternity praise and encouragement, which he considers equivalent to approval,
 bringing him under direct papal control, and thus gaining “exempt status” for his fraternity.
 One must suppose that if Wright waved to him from a window, Lefebvre would say this
  is proof of “exempt status”–that his gesture is at least his “decretum Laudis”–praise.”

 Cardinal Wright says that what he wrote in 1971 cannot be so understood.

 In a new booklet, prepared by Lefebvre and his men and published recently, Wright’s
 1971 letter appears, stating: “As for this Congregation of the Clergy, the ‘priestly
 fraternity’ could contribute greatly toward achieving the conciliar (V-2) goal of a wider
 distribution of the clergy throughout the world.”

A strange statement by Cardinal Wright, that one.  What did he mean by it?  Whatever it meant, it was to be tied in with “the conciliarist goal.”  I believe it was so meant by both parties, but that each of them failed in getting advantage of the other.  Veritas continues:

 Also included in the booklet is Wright’s remark made after having inspected statutes
 (Constitution and rules) of Lefebvre’s group back in 1971.  Wrote Wright: “The wisdom
 of the norms (Vatican II) which govern this institution makes one hope for the success
 of the association.”  (The National Catholic Register, Feb. 20, 1977, page 2).

 This letter from Wright was sent to Lefebvre following the original agreement between
  the Swiss bishops and Lefebvre.  By this agreement the V-2 bishops gave Lefebvre
 permission to open a seminary.  Wright in his letter was merely approving what these
 Swiss bishops and Lefebvre had agreed to, and that Lefebvre’s fraternity was therefore
 under direct diocesan control and not at all under exempt status.
 
 While in Switzerland in 1971 Dr. Kellner paid a visit to the Bishop of Sion who disclosed
 to him that he, and the Bishop of Lousanne, Geneva and Fribourg, gave to Mgr. Lefebvre
 permission to open a seminary in their diocese, but that this did not include any
 permission to ordain.  Kellner also states that in a telegram, Cardinal Wright denied that
 he gave Lefebvre permission for his seminary.

I would caution the reader against putting this most significant information aside because it comes from Veritas, Dr. Kellner, myself or from others not approved by the reader.  The truth for faithful Catholics is not so easily come by today, so that we should welcome it in whatever package it comes; at least that is my own practice.  With regard to the foregoing, notice especially the shady operation Lefebvre has conducted from the first.  To this day, and after a great deal of carefully looking into the matter, I cannot be sure just what Econe is all about, or who is behind it and Lefebvre.  More from Veritas:

 First, though, let us direct our attention to how Lefebvre has changed his tune from: “I
 cannot ordain,” to “my ordinations are irregular.”  He is now confessing to more than he
 puts into words.  Whereas in 1970-1971 he had written that he could not ordain–could not
 function validly–by 1976 he is stating publicly that he “has ordained regularly,” which
 means that, because he lacks valid function, he did it lawlessly and therefore, what he
 did is flagrantly unlawful.

 ...We find this admission in his own speech, publicly made, to the seminarians and the
 audience at Econe, during the course of his sermon on June 29, 1976...Said Lefebvre:
 These men “will be struck with an irregularity which in theory should prevent them from
 saying Holy Mass.  It is possible.”

So there it is, a public admission of his violation of canon law derived from the divine mandate Christ gave for regulating and dispensing the sacraments.  He has now reduced the standing laws of the Church to theory.  Then comes this quite obvious bit of misrepresentation of the Law of Quo Primum–Lefebvre speaking publicly at one of his ordinations:

 “Well, I appeal to St. Pius V–who in his bull Quo Primum said that, in perpetuity, no
 priest can incure a censure, whatever it may be, for saying this Mass.”

As a bishop, Lefebvre knows the plain meaning of Quo Primum–that it applies to regularly ordained priests who might be forced to perform a radically changed rite.  It does not apply to young men who are not priests.  It certainly does not apply to irregularly, illicitly ordained priests.  Here Lefebvre follows the modernist-communist method of falsely appealing to his uninformed followers, those who want to believe, while disregarding those who will see through his deceit.

 Three times in his “Reflections” he attempts to pretend the Code of Canon Law does not
 reach himself.  Three times he denies that Christ and his Apostolic Church can punish
 him by restricting his use of Her priestly powers.  He better believe the suspension invoked
 by the Law of the Catholic Church does indeed harm him...To be a Catholic is to bind
 onesself at the time of Baptism to the Laws of the Catholic Church.

 Lefebvre must convince his followers that he is ordaining properly.  Should that fail, he
 must at least convince them that “irregular and unlawful” ordinations are acceptable
 inasmuch as these are unusual times; that in such times the Church allows people to do
 anything that seems plausible, whether laws are broken or not.

 When the V-2 Marrano bigwigs step in to point out Lefebvre has broken the Canons of the
 true Church by ordaining irregularly and unlawfully, Lefebvre responds that the V-2ers
 say this because they don’t want Catholics to have the true Mass.   But this is not why
 they say it.  First of all they say it because it is true: he has broken Church Laws.  And,
 secondly, they say it because, as chieftan renegades of V-2, they are running the conciliar
 counter-church and his actions give them a perfect excuse for telling the world he is a
 breaker of Church Laws, and this in turn, prejudices the remnant’s holy cause against V-2.

So speaks Veritas on Lefebvre as lawbreaker.  Here let me clear up a possible misunderstanding of what I wrote recently, about the residential bishops retaining their jurisdiction.  This is certainly the meaning of Canon 209, apparently based on the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, that a heretic can exercise jurisdiction in lawful matters until he is lawfully removed from office.  This does not require that heretical bishops must be obeyed in what is not lawful; it does not mean that we must be loyal to these bishops as they go along with the destructive changes of Vatican II.  As a matter of fact, with their new Rite of Penance they have just about given up their last juridical claim on faithful Catholics.  Anyway, no matter how much pope and bishops depart from the law, no bishop without a diocese can give himself that jurisdiction which can only come from a lawful pope.  So it comes down to what I have been saying right along, that in the Catholic scheme of things, which comes from Christ, to last until the end of time, all corrective action to widespread disorder must begin with the papal office.  This is all the more certain when a destroyer sits in the papal chair.  Back to Veritas:

 According to the terms of the original agreement, and as approved by Wright, Lefebvre’s
  seminary was set up as a six-year V-2 “experimental” project.  This six-year period ended
  in 1975.  Wright, who was on a committee of cardinals, decided not to renew the project,
 and so, permission to continue the seminary terminated.
 
 Since 1975, Lefebvre has been operating on his own, all the while bedeviling Paul 6 to
 take him under his wing; give me what I want, bring my fraternity under your direct
 control; give me the “exempt status” for my fraternity.

And so the shady Lefebvre-Vatican arrangements have been brought into the open.  It was a work of putting bits and pieces together.  As a close observer of the scene, I say it is a job well done, that all the parts fit.  It has the ring of truth; is based on facts and doctrine.  I urge readers of these extracts from Veritas to send a few dollars and get the complete 35-page treatment.  Write to, Veritas, P.O. Box 1605. Louisville, Kentucky 40201.

I have often quoted Lefebvre’s sweet words with regard to his “Holy Father.”  Here is a bit more, from Page 4 of the Mexican Packet edition:

In a letter to Paul 6, dated July 17, 1976, Lefebvre refers to the bogus pope (G. B. Montini) as“most Holy Father” and “Your Holiness” and “express to you our sentiments of profound veneration.”  Commenting on his meeting with the usurper pope, Lefebvre acknowledges, “I took off my zucchetto, but the pope helped me up lovingly, interrupting the genuflection half way.”  This is Lefebvre’s own version given to newsmen.

Speech in Spain...Barcelona, December 29, 1975.  This speech boils down to an exercise in elocution on “Liberalism,” plus an encorsement of Paul 6 and an indirect plea to accept him as coming to us from God and so he exercises his authority from God.  The speech is a verbal cleansing of Paul 6 and Lefebvre himself from any guilt in the evil fruits and consequences of illegal V-2.

Lefebvre protests against “ecumenism;” he cries out against “equal collegiality,” and would have you believe that Paul 6 performs and functions as a robot would up and propelled by “His inferiors.”

As Veritas remarks, and as I have observed it myself, at these big public affairs he sets up.  Lefebvre could explain the truth to reporters; but after he gets through with his act, hardly anyone has any clear idea of what is the traditional cause, not even the traditionalists themselves.  In one of my Econe papers I suggest three courses of action Lefebvre might possibly be taking, none of them good.  In my Letter 15, September 10, 1976, Part two on Econe, I wrote this:  “I don’t like the stealthy, evasive kind of thing Econe has been from the first–shady arrangements with the Vatican, the misuse of Canon Law, various dodges for getting Econe men ordained, presumably licitly, but not certainly so at any time; now clearly not.  There has been nothing forthright, truly Christian in this kind of allegedly Catholic resistance to the crowd of crooks in the highest places.  I do not anticipate any good to come of it.”

Strojie and the Mexicans

As Mentioned in the first part of this Letter, I received a copy of the Mexican packet last December.  Months before that I replied with a few paragraphs to an expensively bound little booklet written against me, this also from Mexico.  The author of the booklet argued quite simply: Who is Strojie?  Mgr. Lefebvre knows more Canon Law than Strojie.  Therefore...All the Lefebvrites seem to be taken up with Canon Law, either trying to twist it to their purpose, or, failing that, in doing away with it.  I sent this gentleman a copy of my next Letter but heard no more from him.

I did not intend to reply to anything in the “packet,” but after having read the Veritas response to it, I reread Mr. Flores’ “Permission To Print” letter and noticed that it contains a few points of special interest for all who might wonder who or what is behind Mgr. Lefebvre and Econe.  Before writing of that, first a personal matter.  I quote here from Flores’ open letter: “The above paragraph can be applied to William Strojie, who is supporting Veritas, and claims that “instantly he noticed heterodoxy in Archbishop Lefebvre’s sermon, in Econe last June.  However, Strojie did not notice that in the Veritas photo Archbishop Lefebvre has ornaments to celebrate Mass, the pluvial cloak we mentioned.  Strojie did not notice that the father of the Veritas article against the sermon at Econe, was O’sservatore Romano.”

I wonder if Mr. Flores things I have nothing to do but read O’sservatore Romano (which I seldom see) and examine photos of Lefebvre to see what he is wearing.  The reader will see from the foregoing why I thought it a waste of time to reply to Mr. Flores.  I quote here from my Letter 17, the only reference to a photo I had made up until the time Flores made these wild charges: “I know by now that anything unfavorable to Lefebvre (even a photo) is met promptly, from places in the southwestern U.S. especially, with the flat charge, “It’s a lie.”  I put in the parenthetical “even a photo” because I had already received the  “It’s a lie” message on the photo, but mainly because I was just getting a bit tired of hearing “It’s a lie” about Econe doings that I knew to be fact.  I merely glanced at the Veritas photo, which the editors say they got from a French publication.  I noted that Lefebvre was kneeling before Paul 6–so what’s new?–and set aside the paper.

Now about Mr. Flores’ statement that I had claimed to have “instantly” spotted heterodoxy in the 29 June sermon.  That is not what I said, but that “I knew instantly, because disobedience–revolt–is the never-failing sign of the devil,” an opinion I hold to.  I did agree with the Veritas finding of heresy in the sermon.  So much for the reliability of Mr. Flores and his charges, which I attribute to that agitation of mind which seems to grip nearly all Lefebvrites in some degree.  As to myself, I’m a simple lay Catholic, writing on my own initiative, by myself, and Mr. Flores did not give in his letter a scrap of evidence to the contrary.

Veritas has sufficiently replied to the Imperfect Council mischievous nonsense in the Flores letter.  Here I only want to mention that I had heard more than a year ago, indirectly from someone at Econe, that my “How To Elect A Catholic Pope” would get into the hands of those who would know what to do with it–that the case of Anacletus II was being studied.  There is nothing in that paper of mine to encourage anyone to think I might favor a false council to elect an ineligible person, archbishop or other, pope.  Yet perhaps it was so misconstrued, or misused.  Perhaps this is the unnamed cause I am charged by Mr. Flores with being a traitor to.

The most significant item in the Flores letter appears to be appendix Note 2 which reads as follows: “TFP in alliance with the zionist group American Council for World Freedom, whose mastermind is Martin Libman, ex-Trotskyite and member of Irgun terrorist group, circulated in the U.S.A., and throughout the world, accusing Fr. Saenz of obsession with the jewish problem, and attacking Paul VI and Archbishop Lefebvre (!).  We have challenged TFP to have their accusations made public.”

That exclamation mark, what does it mean exactly? Yes, some things don’t fit.  Of course Mr. Flores knows about TFP and zionism.  Where does Lefebvre fit in?  Why is he linked with Paul 6 from that quarter?  Those who accuse Fr. Saenz who spoke out strongly against Paul 6, recognize that Lefebvre does not accuse Paul 6, not even while he ostensibly defies Paul 6.  Whatever other interests Mgr. Lefebvre might have in his Econe venture, he acts as neutralizer of Father Saenz and of all who speak plainly against pope Montini.  He confuses and stops dead such opposition as yet exists against the “Montinian church.”  This is a well known tactic of the Church’s old enemies.

What is the meaning of the Lefebvre friendly relations with TFP leaders?  Perhaps you will recall, Mr. Flores, a reference in my Letter No. 6 to Plinio Correa (See pages 67-68 of “Revolution and Counter Revolution”) and a New Theocracy.  Possibly you have read the criticism by Fr. Paul Crane, S. J., of a Lefebvre speech in Christian Order, and Crane’s quoting a Lefebvre aid in England as being “enthused over the merits of theocracy as an ideal form of government.”  You know what people have favored and schemed for that kind of government while doing all they could to destroy the Christian order.  So some TFP and Econe birds do wear similar feathers.

Here in the U.S. the priests friendly to agnostic R. Welch and his Jew-friendly JBS seem to have reached an agreement with Mgr. Lefebvre.  I have an ORCM chapel bulletin which announces the departure of a young man from that chapel to Econe for ordination, to return to this same ORCM chapel as assistant in two years.

I do not pretend to be a conspiracy expert.  With regard to Paul 6, his words and works are public knowledge, and this is what I have mostly concentrated on in my writings, warning against those works.  Archbishop Lefebvre is another kind of proposition.  His operation these past six or so years has been consistently shady.  One cannot pin him down.  Without authority over the least child he sets up an international string of chapels, seminaries, convents, while he pretends to be “rescuing the successor of Peter,” presumably his “Holy Father,” open destroyer of the Church.  Rescue and defiance go somehow together in the mind of this strange man.

Anyway, and whatever anyone might be inclined to think of motives in all this, since this man has no authority there is no justification for the commotion raised in defense of his pretensions.  It is a great presumption on the part of those who say, or strongly imply, that Mgr. Lefebvre is entitled to our loyalty and support.  This is simply not true.  And there is no possible way that I or anyone else could become a traitor to Lefebvre or to any Church-saving or pope-electing project of his or his followers.

The Voice

As its readers certainly know by now, H. McGovern’s The Voice has lately become The Voice of Lefebvre.  On March 25, I sent the publisher money to advertise my “Pope, Council and Chaos” and “The Mind of the Church,” Letter 19, and got back a rejection in these words: “Our views are no longer completely the same, particularly re Lefebvre.”  Not that word “completely.”  There’s nothing in the two items I requested McGovern to advertise, that traditionalists could disagree about on principle.  I take it then that the publisher believes my ad might lead to division among his readers.  This is what I was told, too, by the publishers of Twin Circle and Register, when they recently turned down the same ad–“divisive,” they said.

McGovern is now signing along with W. Matt and the CUF and Una Voce moderates whose line of compromise Lefebvre is certainly promoting.  In a recent issue of The Voice there appeared two articles reprinted from an ORCM Newsletter, in which one writer finds Paul 6 as somehow keeping the faith of St. Peter.  The Voice will soon be repeating with Mgr. Lefebvre, Oh, dear me, the Holy Father was raised in a modernist environment, therefore...he could no nothing at the Council.  (Approximate words of Lefebvre from his speech at Montreal, May 1976.  See Letter No. 19.)

Yes, one must agree completely with McGovern.  This is surely why he has had no letters, as he complains in his 21 March, for his last two Voice issues.  What reader has ever seen anything in The Voice that departed in the most traditional way from McGovern’s limited view of things–any letter critical of McGovern, or one that invited controversy?  Anyway, as McGovern’s rejection note to me indicates, The Voice now excludes those Catholics who are only concerned to keep the Faith.  It is a good example of the kind of censorship the Lefebvrites would like to impose everywhere on critics of Econe.

When about ready to take this Letter to the print shop, I received the 11 April Voice and was shocked to see that McGovern had published an advertisement of the malicious paper defaming Mary Lejeune; also an ad for the fumbling attempt by Fr. Marquette to explain away Lefebvre’s expression of Gnostic heresy.

W. F. Strojie, Apr. 27, 1977 Letter No. 20
 
 

W. F. STROJIE Letter No. 21   THE GATES OF HELL          May 25, 1977

The phrase “gates of hell” needs some explanation.  According to a scholarly article at hand, “gates in Hebrew is often used of the fortified city itself (Gen. 22:17; 24:60; Is. 14:31, etc.).  ‘Hell’ (Hades) the dwelling place of demons (four times in this sense in the Apocalypse; Luke 16:23) is not merely ‘death’ (an idea which would confuse the warlike image) but the activity of the forces hostile to the cause of Good.”

How to interpret Christ’s promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, even to the end of time?  The Catholic who has not wondered about that doctrine today is spiritually or intellectually asleep or dead.

The promise that the gates of hell will not prevail is theologically expressed by the word “indefectibility”–“that quality of unfailingness in the Church, her constitution and ministration, promised by Jesus Christ in the words ‘Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.’  Her indefectibility is seen externally by her triumph over the most terrible trials and dangers and her abounding life and health after nineteen hundred years of history; internally it has preserved her supernatural life and channels of grace through all the dangerous possibilities arising from human indifference, carelessness and ill-will.  This special providence of God is called assisentia; we are aware of it both by faith and sight, but the manner in which it works is a matter of speculation.”  This from “A Catholic Dictionary,” editor Donald Attwater.

Yes, a matter of speculation, especially with regard to that age of the Church generally called the Latter Days.  The reality of the post-Vatican II Church does not confirm the generally held expectation of an unbroken line of papal defenders of the Faith until the End.  But let us have another opinion of the kind which appears to uphold this idea of an unbroken line of orthodox popes and available true sacraments, from a long article on the Church in the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia, which reads as follows, all boldface emphasis by the present writer:

INDEFECTIBILITY OF THE CHURCH.  Among the prerogatives conferred on His Church by Christ is the gift of indefectibility.  By this term is signified, not merely that the Church will persist to the end of time, but further, that it will preserve unimpaired its essential characteristics.  The Church can never undergo any constitutional change which will make it, as a social organism, something different from what it was originally.  It can never become corrupt in faith or morals; nor can it ever lose the Apostolic hierarchy, or the sacraments through which Christ communicates grace to men.  The gift of indefectibility is expressly promised to the Church by Christ, in the words in which He declares that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  It is manifest that, could the storms which the Church encounters so shake it as to alter its essential characteristics and make it other than Christ intended it to be, the gates of hell, i.e., the powers of evil, would have prevailed.  It is clear, too, that could the Church suffer substantial change, it would no longer be an instrument capable of accomplishing the work for which God called it into being.  He established it that it might be to all men the school of holiness.  This it would cease to be if ever it could set up a false and corrupt moral standard.  He established it that it might proclaim revelation to the world, and charged it to warn all men that unless they accepted that message they would perish everlastingly.  Could the Church in defining the truths of revelation err in the smallest point, such a charge would be impossible.  No body could enforce under such a penalty the acceptance of what might be erroneous.  By the hierarchy and the sacraments, Christ, further, made the Church depositary of the graces of the Passion.  Were it to lose either of these, it could no longer dispense to men the treasures of grace.”  End of excerpt from the old Catholic Encyclopedia, article on the Church by Fr. George Hayward Joyce, S.J.

Few Catholics have thought to question the complete correctness of this line of thinking in its most consoling sense.  However great the Great Apostacy (if we thought of it at all) might be, nearly all Catholics, I’m sure, visualized the Holy Pope and his mostly faithful bishops and priests standing firm at all times against the forces of evil.  This is the theme of at least one well-known book by a Catholic priest on the Latter Days.  Not a single writer or theologian that I have ever heard of, has imagined the frightful near-total apostacy and insanity of today.  We see the signs of this insanity and apostacy in both “Catholic” and secular publications, in catechisms and otherw manuals of instruction, in parish churches, and in the enactments of pope and bishops.  The latest works by the Hierarchy are their new Rite of Penance, their condoning of divorce, and from the Vatican “annulments” by the bushel, so that we must certainly doubt the truth of several assumptions in Fr. Joyce’s optimistic opinion about the meaning of indefectibility.

Since Vatican II has the Catholic Church “preserved its essential characteristics?” as Fr. Joyce wrote that it would do until the end of time.  Has it lost the Apostolic hierarchy or the sacraments through which Christ communicates grace to men?”  Has it suffered substantial change?  The Vatican announced a few years ago the end of conversions, which accords with the “ecumenical” program of Vatican II and Paul 6.  The Catholic hierarchy thus no longer proclaims to men the message that they might “perish everlastingly,” as Fr. Joyce expressed it, but preaches a gospel of service to this world.  Has the Church erred “in defining the truths of revelation?”  There are many Catholics today who will answer “yes” to all these questions.  Who can blame he weaker members?  Certainly not the mod Clergy.  The spectacle of our updated clergy and their antics is bad enough; perhaps even more discouraging to informed Catholics is the silence and compromise of those priests who at least appear to be their old respectable selves. With regard to the sacraments, which Fr. Joyce sees as permanent and effective, the bishops are now in the last stage of phasing out the Sacrament of Penance.  All the others have been tampered with, so as to distort and make ambiguous their once-Catholic signification.

In September 1969, Cardinal Ottaviani, then head of the Holy Office, sent a Study of the New Order of the Mass (Novus Ordo) to Paul 6, copies of which were circulated in all countries.  This Study was made by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci and other Roman theologians, a point-by-point statement on Pope Paul’s “New Mass.”  I give here only a few summary excerpts:

In this Novus Ordo “the real presence of Christ is never alluded to and belief in it is implicitly repudiated...The position of priest and people is falsified and the Celebrant appears as nothing more than a Protestant minister, while the true nature of the Church is intolerably misrepresented...The Novus Ordo teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the purity of the Catholic religion and dismantles all defenses of the Faith.”  In this critique sent to Paul 6 there are about three times the amount of typespace as will be contained in this Letter, pointing out the various departures from the Catholic theology of the Mass in Pope Paul’s Novus Ordo.  The whole is summed up in these words: “It is evident that the Novus Ordo has no intention of presenting the faith as taught by the Council of Trent, to which, nonetheless, the Catholic conscience is bound forever.”  So from this too it would appear that the speculations of Fr. Joyce and others about how to interpret “the gates of Hell will not prevail,” must not be taken at face value.

As mentioned above, this Study, or Ottaviani Intervention, as it came to be called, was sent to Paul 6 in September, 1969.  Paul did not reply.  Was he bound to do so?  Not absolutely as pope.  But this public admonition had come from the one man, head of the Holy Office, whose official duty it was to admonish a pope in a matter of doctrine.  The matter having been called to the attention of Paul 6 and all the Clergy and laity who cared to listen, grave scandal and disturbed consciences must be presumed as a result.  On both these counts Paul 6 was morally obliged as priest and bishop, if not as pope, to answer such grave public charges.  But he did not then and has not since, unless we accept totally inadequate offhand remarks of Paul 6 about his Novus Ordo, such as, “Absolutely nothing has been changed,” which is manifestly false.

It would appear then that those (including the Abbe George de Nantes) who hold that “indefectibility” means that the sacraments can never be lost, are not necessarily correct.  That opinion seems false, too, when we consider the Scriptural prophecy of a time when the continual Sacrifice will be taken away.

What then will remain?  The Church will not err in her doctrine–within the limits defined by the First Vatican Council.  Not even a false pope, The Antichrist, will attempt to deceive ex cathedra.  (Incidentally, Pope Benedict XIV wrote that the Popes are not necessarily infallible in their canonization of Saints.)  What has been taught in the past, then, of doctrine, remains intact.  Christ does not abandon His Church, but nearly all the Clergy and laity abandon the Faith.

To destroy all the sacraments, or to render them ineffective in the parish churches, would be, of course, top priority on the program of The Antichrist, it being necessary to that perfect imperfection, or “perfection in evil,” as St. Thomas expressed it, symbolized by the number 666 St. John applied to him in his Apocalypse.

For further reading on this subject I suggest my Letters 4, 7, 8, 9 and 11, preferably in that order.  I know of no other attempt of this kind to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of “indefectibility” in the light of the present widespread apostacy.  I say that such a study is necessary if we are to hold to Catholic orthodoxy concerning the doctrines of a visible Church, lasting to the end of time.  That not much more than doctrine will remain is indicated by St. Paul’s prophecy that in the Latter Days only those will be saved who have loved the truth.  St. Paul did not say those who love the Church or the sacraments, possibly because selfish interest might be too much of a motive in such love; or it might be because only the Truth will remain, along with Christ the invisible Head of the Church.  And of course the Law of God and the Church’s laws derived from Christ’s promise to Peter of the Power of the Keys.

It is true, of course, that the gates of hell cannot prevail, for this is the promise of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  But the hour of darkness can be dark indeed.  It can bring many to despair, which is the reason why we must give thought to the prophecies concerning the Great Apostacy, a general spiritual blindness, and the coming of the “son of perdition.”  We need to do this so as to remain orthodox in our belief about the Papacy and Christ’s promise to remain always with us.  Unless we look to the Scriptural prophecies there is no way that one can doctrinally explain a pope who sets in motion a total reform of all discipline, of the sacramental forms and, indirectly, of doctrine–a “reforming mania” which Pope St. Pius X warned against but which only a very few of the Clergy care to consider as such.

It is not a sufficient answer to say that the man is an invalidly elected pope, thereby implying that Christ had overlooked this possibility.  However elected, he has occupied the papal chair now for fourteen or so years, long enough to cause heresy and confusion unbounded.  The general apostacy which has resulted exceeds, I’m sure, what any theological writer has ever imagined.

I do not pretend here to give a complete explanation of this whole matter; far from it.  I mainly intend to point out that we need not close our eyes to the present reality in order to hold faithfully to Catholic doctrine concerning Christ’s care of His Church, and that no institution of men could have survived for nearly two thousand years on its own wisdom and strength.

The papal guardianship of the Faith has become worse than meaningless in regard to Paul 6 and his Vatican II bishops.  Yet we may not say that the visible Church is gone.  There is only one reasonable answer: the visible Church remains, as the Temple and Sanhedrin remained in the time of Christ, corrupted in head and members.  The Son of Perdition occupies the Holy Chair, one totally opposed to Christ’s supernatural mission of the Church, which Paul 6 has distorted into a “this world” gospel, a “Cult of Man” as he has openly said.  The gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church but, as Holy Scripture has predicted, in a time of a great apostacy men will abandon the Church’s doctrine, and so will lose the sacraments for a time through their errors, in a general watering-down of the Catholic Faith.  On this I quote from my Letter No. 4, taken from Fr. Coleridge’s “The Return of the King,” concerning the Scriptural references to a great blindness in the latter days:

 You will observe, my brethren, that here we find no mention made of distinct heresies or false
 doctrines.  There is rather to be a general decay or denial of all faith, and a sort of practical
 paganism.  And thus we are prepared for what some old Christian writers tell us on this very
 subject of the future restoration of heathenism.  There is a mysterious vision in the Apocalypse,
 of a beast that was wounded, and, it seemed, slain, but which was brought to life again by the
 power of the false prophet, and adored by all men on earth whose names are not written in the
 Book of Life.  This vision is interpreted, by the writers to whom I allude, of heathenism, which
 has been, as it were, put to death by the Christian religion, but which will hereafter revive and
 reign for a short time.

Fr. Coleridge appears to believe that after a short reign of heathenism there will be a revival of the Faith.  This he possibly derives from St. John’s Apocalypse in which it is said that the Beast, which I take to be the secret world powers, will reign for “an hour,” that is, in the language of apocalypse, for a very short time.  But I need not go into that matter, for my present purpose is not to predict the End but rather to findan explanation of the present in terms of Catholic orthodoxy.

On the other hand I need not leave it at that.  In the foregoing paragraphs I have viewed the present and probably near future in the darkest light; elsewhere I have given doctrinal reasons against predictions of a millenium of peace and universal acceptance of the Faith.  But it does seem the full triumph of Christ requires that at the end, however small the number of her earthly members, the Church will again be visibly One, Holy and Apostolic, with a true pope at her head.

A last word on this subject: there are Catholics who, wanting to keep the Faith, demand immediate action, a human intervention in this affair of divine providence.  They talk and act as if God were dead.  I am not of their company.  I’m sure God will intervene in His own good time.  I do not profess to know how, but only that it will not be outside the juridical order Christ established, and which even at this time of neglect and abuse survives.  Were Christ to inspire any member of the Clergy to act outside that Order which he Himself established, He would be acting in opposition to His Own Divine Person and Purpose.

However corrupt the hierarchy, it is both foolish and perilous to look for rescue and the sacraments outside the juridical order established by Christ.  To do so would be to follow one who comes in his own name, without authority.  No matter what office such a person might have held at one time, or however much he may profess Catholic orthodoxy, or how holy he may contrive to appear, such a one ought not to be trusted, for the Church was founded on Authority, not on spiritual elitism.

MASONS IN THE VATICAN

For the past several months I have been receiving lists of Masons in the Vatican.  Not having mentioned this matter in my Letters, several readers have written to inquire if I don’t believe it.  I haven’t mentioned it because the outcry at this time comes from those I do not trust, who have their own thing to promote, and so their lists are not complete, leaving out Number One.  A young man sends the following: “I wrote to SI SI NO NO asking if they had any evidence of Montini being a Mason.  Their reply was brief: ‘The person you refer to is not on the Masonic roll.’” Maybe not, but SI SI NO NO surely knows about Montini and his U.N.O. speech.  The editor cannot be unaware that Popes John and Paul are highly praised in the foreward of a well-known book on Masonic Ecumenism, which is the program Montini has been promoting.  They surely know it was Montini who has practically done away with the Church’s strict laws against membership in secret societies, and so on.  So I don’t get excited by these “revelations.”

I have thought for some time past that the secret world powers, as they come into the open, would gradually do away with secret lodges–that these plotters who now dominate the lodges, would be most fearful of those who might later plot against them in secret, that this is part of what is behind the present froth about Vatican II Masons.  Masonic ecumenism is Vatican II ecumenism for a world church, using the Catholic Church as a base–the “Roman Stem” as Fr. Teilhard de Chardin called it for that purpose, in one of his private letters later published.

In my papers I have frequently used the term “counter church,” of the Vatican II takeover, an idea which has lately been confirmed by the revelation that Cardinal Leinart, leader of the “progressive” revolution at the Vatican II Council, was a 33 degree Mason.   In his “Papacy and Freemasonry” Mgr. Jouin quotes Freemason F. Limousin from his Masonic review  “L’ACACIA,” of October 1902.  Using the pen name Hiram, Limousin gives the following characteristic definition:

 “Freemasonry is an association...an institution...so it is said...but it is not that at all.  Let us lift
 up the veils, risking even to evoke numberless protestations.  FREEMASONRY IS A CHURCH:
 It is the Counter-Church, Counter-Catholicism: It is the other church–the church of HERESY, of
 Freethought.

 “The Catholic Church is considered as the arch-type church, the first church, church of
 dogmatism and of orthodoxy.”  So wrote this French Freemason many years ago”.

Since the time this was written, the plan of the lodges has been to take over the Catholic Church, which is what J.B. Montini is doing.  Those who know anything at all about Masons in the Vatican, know this, too.  So why are they silent about Montini?

My reply, then, to those who have written to inquire about this matter, is: the recent outcry against Masons in the Vatican has been raised by a fake opposition, which I decline to help along.  It is that face opposition which upholds Paul 6, pointing at the bishops and others but never at Montini.

PAUL 6 AND THE ANGLICANS AGAIN

I have combined and reprinted my “Dark Night of the Church,” part one, with “The Silencing of Catholics.”  Written in January 1974, “Dark Night” contains comments on Theosophy and the Anglican clergy, and the dealings of Paul 6 with their top men.  After about fifteen years of Vatican II, the new Reformers are now coming into final agreement with the Anglicans in England, at the same time in which they are beginning to rop off confessionals in America.  If that doesn’t tell you something, what will?  I have also had reprinted “Vatican II: A New Sanhedrin,” parts one and two together.  To the “Dark Night” reprint I have added three long paragraphs from Letter No. 1, October 1974, on the book by Bishop Graber, “Athanasius and the Church in our Time.”  This book is another work of the fake opposition to the Reform of Paul 6.  I have included it because of word that certain “moderates” in the U.S. are now promoting this deceitful work.  The publisher in his Preface writes of “such a delicate subject as is discussed in this book.”  Why delicate?  And he “feels that Bishop Graber will one day be rememered for having effectively brought to a halt the excesses of extremist views.”  What are these extremist views?  Surely he means the views of those of us who speak the plain self-evident truths about the responsibility of Paul 6 for the present “autodemolition” of the Church.  Later I read a news item concerning an ecumenical meeting of Protestant ministers to which Bishop Graber played host.

POPE PIUS IX (Pio Nono) AND MAZZINI

From a lady in California comes a letter of high praise for the book PIO NONO by E. E. Y. Hales.  I’m pleased to be reminded now of this book, more history than biography.  I took my copy from the shelf and found that I had marked three passages my correspondent found most significant, and which I shall quote.  With regard to the person of Pius IX, all I will say here is that, quite certainly, he ought to be numbered among the greatest, most warm-hearted and charitable of the popes.  Fiercely hated by the Church’s enemies, he is, oddly enough, maligned by certain “traditionalists.”  In my papers on the Latter Days I put him down as one of the Two Witnesses, Pope St. Pius X as the other.  It was these two great popes who named and listed the heresies that have taken over since Vatican II; it was they who condemned in advance Montini’s Cult-of-Man religion.

 From the section Mazzini and the Dogma of the People: “Those who contend, as many historians
 have, that the issue fought out between Mazzini and Pio Nono at Rome, 1849, was not a religious
 struggle between the Church and her enemies, because it was concerned only with the political
 fate of the Papal State, ignore the attitude of the principal protagonists on either side in the drama.
 These were the Pope, with Antonelli; and Mazzini, with Garibaldi.  All four men were quite clear
 what was at stake.
 ...certainly Mazzini held no merely political view of the contest.  The idea of the strict separation
 of religion from politics was always anathema to him–as though a political reawakening or revolution
 were not, for him, a religious manifestation governed by religious principles.  He was never tired of
 criticizing the “immorality of the English,” in particular, for clinging to the concept of such separation.
 But in any case, he was quite explicit about his purpose at Rome...Commissioned by the Roman
 Assembly...to reply to a message of congratulation from the new Republican Assembly at Paris,
 he wrote to the French:

 “You, citizens, have understood all that is great, noble, and providential in this flag of regeneration
 floating above the city that encircles the Capitol and the Vatican–a new consecration of eternal
 right; a third world arising upon the ruins of two worlds extinct....”

Before looking very carefully into the Vatican II upheaval, in my “The Enemy Within the Catholic Church” I had written that the Revolution in the Church and the world are one.  On page 112 of the “Image Book” reprint from which I’m quoting, author Hales writes that by 1830, progress was in the air, and that “the peculiarity of Mazzini’s conception of it was that he saw in it the evidence of God’s working in Humanity.  Humanity was the interpreter of God’s Law, and God’s Law was Progress.”  This is indeed the religiou of the Vatican II Progressives–in case you are wondering why they so named themselves.  It is Mazzini’s Dogma of the People, Montini’s Cult of Man.  On page 113:

 Niccolo Tommaseo, the Liberal-Catholic friend of Gioberti, had visited Mazzini when he was in
 exile in Switzerland in 1834.  Mazzini reports that:
 
 “...he talked religion to me, and politics–Christianity a la Mazzini.  Christianity is dying for me:
 Catholicism is dead.  I told him so straight...he asked me what I wanted in its place.  I told him
 it was not my role, nor that of any individual to do that, but rather that of the people which would
 or could constitute itself, in practice, the revealer of the moral law.”

Yes, the Cabala, the concensus of the rabbis, Vatican II Dialogue and consensus.

 Mazzini had immense hopes of Lamennais.  He called him “Our Saint.”  He was to be the Luther
 of the Nineteenth Century...But the Catholic concepts to which Lammais clung–Original Sin, the
 Fall, one Revelation and Redemption in Christ–did not harmonize well with the Mazzinian
  dogmas of Progress and Humanity...Nor did Lamennais approve of Mazzini’s attacks on the
 Papacy.  The Italian was surprised and shocked by this.  He assured the Breton: “The
 condemnation of the Papacy is decreed, not by us, but by God; by God who now calls upon
 the People do arise and found a new unity, embracing the two spheres of temporal and
 spiritual power...In our epoch humanity will forsake the Pope, and have recourse to a General
 Council of the Church–that is to say, of all believers–a council which will be alike Council of
 the Church and Constituent Assembly...”

And so we come to Vatican II and the abandonment of the Papacy.  Could Mazzini have possibly forseen how it would be brought about? –through the capture of the papal office by a Mazzinian, proclaiming a New Pentecost, Concensus and Dialogue starting with parish committees, priest’s senates and all the rest?  The whole thing is of the Synagogue, which does not separate the temporal and the spiritual.

As historian Hales writes on page 117, Mazzini had to fall back in the end, concerning Lamennais, upon a judgment he had himself made earlier:

 “Lamennais is a priest, and a priest who has devoted during half his life to Catholicism, to the
 Papacy.  It must have cost him much to destroy his idol.  If his strength had not been exhausted
 by that effort Lamennais would have been led by the force of his logic and of his instincts to deny
 the divinity of Christ and thus to bring back Christ into Humanity, and not Humanity into Him; that
  is the first approach to the Faith of Humanity, in which I believe.”

 Nowhere more clearly than in this letter did Mazzini define the heart of the difference between his
 own revolutionary faith, with its Saint-Simonian, Carbonari, and Masonic origins and allies, and
 the Christian revolutionary faith of the Liberal-Catholics of his generation.

Elsewhere I have quoted from the “Jewish Union for Civilization and Science,” to which Karl Marx, son of a Jewish rabbi of Cologne, belonged, that “The Jewish people taken collectively shall be its own Messias.  Their rule over the universe shall be obtained by welding together the other races”...etc.  Hales sums up the religion of Mazzini in this sentence: “The Faith of the Future was a collective faith in the destiny of Peoples, freely united as Nations...”  And so, “The United Nations.”  And so Montini’s trip to New York, bowing and scraping before that Assembly.

On page 113 again, I find the information that Mazzini’s feeling for republicanism was born at his home in Genoa.  His mother was Jansenist, and Jansenism in northern Italy was more Calvinist than it was in France, and thus, in spirit, if not always in policy, more republican: From what I have been able to observe, those “traditionalists” who malign Pope Pius IX are of a Jansenistic cast of mind.  It has been commented on by more than one observer that a Protestant fundamentalism is to be found among Catholic Traditionalists.  I think this is true, and that it is partly explainable, in that many Protestants turned to the Catholic Church when they saw their own churches going wildly “liberal” after World War II.  These people were good and sincere but it takes more than a few years–generations?–to develop a deeply Catholic mentality.  I don’t know if it can be managed completely in a non-Catholic country.  There must be something to what a South American once said, that “even our atheists are Catholic.”  Perhaps that explains Mazzini’s bodily remains in the Capuchin catacomb at Palermo, Sicily, where I once stood beside his casket.

As to Lamennais, he did not persevere in his earlier basic orthodoxy and loyalty to the Papacy, but gradually renounced his ecclesiastical functions.  He died rejecting all religious ministration, and requested that his body “be carried to the cemetery, without being presented at any church.”

What if Lamennais had lived until Vatican II and Paul 6?  I think he would have had second thoughts about the “Progressive” religion.  I don’t think he would have approved that end product of Vatican II “ecumenical” religion, the Novus Ordo.  Can it be said of Lamennais, as it will certainly be said of many today, that they know not what they do?  I always hope so.  The attractions of Apparent Good take so many forms.  At least he resisted Mazzini, in refusing to deny Christ’s divinity.

A KISS OF PEACE

It was Judas who betrayed Christ with a kiss.  I have a letter from New York with a clipping, a photo showing together Paul 6 and “the Most Rev. Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury,” who is no more archbishop than I am.  As I point out in “Dark Night of the Church,” Pope Leo XIII ruled Anglican orders invalid long ago.  But of course that means nothing at all to the crooked fellow who has usurped the Papal Chair.  The caption says “TOWARD UNITY–Pope Paul and the Most Rev. Donald Coggan embrace in a ‘kiss of peace’ following Christian unity service at the Sistine Chapel in Rome.”  My friend who sent the photo remarks that Henry VIII and Cranmer would enjoy this picture.  And he adds, “Each day my concern for the safety of our country grows deeper and more fretful.  The warning signs are up.  The more we hear about peace, the more dangerous things become.  Our leaders are acting like the fawning and helpless Carthaginians and you know the end.”

The betrayal begins with betrayal of Christ.  In words from Francis Thompson’s long poem, “all things between thee, who betrayest Me.”  Modernist apostacy and national treason go hand in hand, the Revolution in Church and world.  Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these other things shall be added to you.  Follow Vatican II in its seeking the world and the Kingdom of God will be taken away.  It will be taken away in the confusion of Babel, the Vatican II “ecumenical” religion.  Who, coming in his own name, will presume to offer better hope of deliverance from all this, than is to be found in Christ’s promise to remain with His Church until the end of the world.  History is strewn with the wreckage caused by those once-Catholic reformers, nearly all of the reverend Clergy, who came in their own name.  We suffer from the cumulative effect of this today.  As to peace, consider the following:

In the brief U.N.O. Charter the world “peace” appears twenty-nine times.  Paul 6 addresses the U.N.O., bubbling over with “peace, –peace, peace, peace, I come as a Pilgrim of Peace.”  The same on his world travels, especially in Africa, the same peace, peace, peace theme.  And of course there is the hippy “peace” thing, the bent upside down cross they call a peace symbol, and the “peace” shouts of agitators and revolutionists.

Where does it all come from?  Consider this bit of information by one Nathan Ausubel, THE BOOK OF JEWISH KNOWLEDGE, 1964: “No idea has been woven into the warp and woof of Jewish thought and sentiment as much as ‘peace.’  This word, together with all the many ethnical tonalities that it sounds for the attuned inner ear of the Jew, appears in all Jewish religious writings, in the prayers, and in everyday folk-usage more frequently than any other...”  I have written elsewhere about the influence of Jews on Vatican II and Paul 6.

Yes, the kiss of Judas with the Anglicans.  What next?

“When they shall say “peace and security,’ even than shall sudden destruction come upon them: So wrote St. Paul.  The Beast will rule for “an hour,” but the Gates of Hall shall not prevail.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: After I had sent this Letter to the printer I decided to see what the “Protocols” have to say about the future of secret societies: “Protocol XV: When we finally become rulers by means of revolutions...we will see to it that no plots are hatched against us...The establishment of any new secret society will be met by the death penalty, and those societies which now exist and are known to us and either work or have worked for us, will be disbanded...We will deal in the same manner with those Masons among the Goys who know too much–that is, by banishment or death.”

W. F. Strojie, April 27, 1977 Letter No. 21