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