Under The Bus

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

We are eyewitnesses to an incredible spectacle that is unfolding before our very eye as a Catholic bishop, Richard Williamson, is being hounded and harassed to leave one country, Argentina, and as he is being threatened with imprisoned in a second country, Germany, as leaders of a third country, the Zionist State of Israel, applaud the persecution of a man who has committed a "thought" "crime" that comes straight out of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

The conciliar Vatican itself is issuing no comment on the impending expulsion of Bishop Williamson from Argentina, where had been until January 31, 2009, the rector of the Society of Saint Pius X Seminary in La Reja, meaning, of course, that its officials must agree with the action taken by the Argentine government--or that its officials are too afraid to criticize the action for fear of offending the adherents of the Talmud, the people who deny the one and only Holocaust, that which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ offered of Himself to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins. Deny the "Shoah," my friends, and you are stripped of "human rights" according to the dicta found in conciliarism's Dignitatis Humanae and the endless conciliar "papal" injunctions praising "religious liberty" and the nonexistent civil rights of false religions to propagate their falsehoods publicly.

Just look at the glee being expressed by various Jewish leaders around the world over the "punishment" that is being meted out to Bishop Williamson as the conciliar Vatican leaves to the "autonomy" of civil officials the "right" to act as they want, meaning that the Bishop can be thrown "under the bus" with complete impunity and run over as many times as possible:

VATICAN CITY: The traditionalist bishop whose denials of the Holocaust embarrassed the Vatican and caused an international uproar was ordered Thursday to leave Argentina within 10 days.

The Interior Ministry said it had ordered the bishop, Richard Williamson, out of Argentina because he had failed to declare his true job as director of a seminary on immigration forms and because his comments on the Holocaust "profoundly insult Argentine society, the Jewish community and all of humanity by denying a historic truth."

Williamson's views created an uproar last month when Pope Benedict XVI lifted his excommunication and that of three other bishops consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as part of a process meant to heal a rift with ultraconservatives.

The controversy led the Vatican to demand that Williamson recant before he could be admitted as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. It also prompted the Society of St. Pius X, founded by Lefebvre, to dismiss Williamson as director of the La Reja seminary in Argentina and to distance itself from his views.

The Vatican spokesman, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican had no comment on the Argentine action.

But world Jewish leaders on Friday praised the decision to order the expulsion, with one group calling on other governments to follow Argentina's lead and crack down on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in their countries.

"The government of Argentina has advanced the cause of truth and has struck a blow against hate," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.

Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said "This decision is commendable, even more so because the government of Argentina makes it crystal clear that Holocaust deniers are not welcome in the country."

Although Williamson has been in Argentina since 2003, the government's secretary for religious affairs, Guillermo Oliveri, said immigration officials realized he had made an undeclared change of jobs only when the controversy made the news.

But Oliveri made clear that the Holocaust uproar played a key part.

"I absolutely agree with the expulsion of a man residing in our country following his statements," he said.

Argentina's Jewish community, estimated at more than 200,000, is the largest in Latin America and was besieged by attacks in the 1990s, when a bomb flattened the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29, and an explosives-packed van later exploded outside the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association building, killing 85.

It was not clear when or where Williamson would go. A person who answered the phone at the Society of St. Pius X said Williamson was still in the country, then hung up.

In an interview broadcast Jan. 21, Williamson told Swedish state TV that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust and that only 200,000 to 300,000 were killed, not 6 million.

Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany, where Williamson made the remarks last year that were later broadcast on Swedish television. State prosecutors in the German city of Regensburg are investigating him for incitement.

Williamson also questioned the Holocaust while serving as rector of the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minnesota, from 1988 to 2003.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Williamson declared in a 1989 speech that "Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil, and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism."  (Jews praise Argentina's expulsion of bishop - International Herald Tribune.)

 

So, the truth comes out as Argentine officials boast of the real reason for Bishop Williamson's expulsion: the views that he expressed in his interview that aired on Swedish television, the views that have made him an object of expulsion and possible criminal prosecution in several countries, the views that have prompted the conciliar Vatican to say nothing about depriving a man of legal residency in a country where he had been working without breaking any civil laws until he dared to commit the "thought crime" of our era: denying the claims of "mainstream" historians concerning the nature and the extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II.

Just look at this statement by Father Federico Lombard, S.J., the spokesflack for Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, on the "autonomy" of civil governments to act in matters of this sort:

Not infrequently, information outlets attribute to "the Vatican", meaning by this the Holy See, comments and points of view which cannot be automatically attributed to it. In fact, the Holy See, when intending to express itself authoritatively, uses particular means and related formats (communiqués, notes, declarations).

Any other pronouncement does not have the same worth.

Even lately, inopportune attributions have taken place. The Holy See, in its representative organs, expresses respect for the civil authorities, who in their legitimate autonomy have the right and the duty of providing for the common good. (NOTE OF FATHER FEDERICO LOMBARDI, S.J. )

 

Ah, so the impending expulsion of Bishop Williamson from Argentina is a "right and the duty" of the Argentine government to provide "for the common good," eh? Will the conciliar Vatican also support Bishop Williamson's prosecution for this "thought crime" by the governments of France and Germany with such a "no comment"?

Leaving aside, at least for a moment, the false ecclesiology to which Bishop Williamson and the other bishops and priests of the Society of Saint Pius X subscribe, I find it incredible that so few Catholics are outraged at the criminal behavior being visited upon Bishop Williamson, who is, according to the Reuters report pasted above, still in Argentina, although it is possible that he might at some point visit the former Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland, where Father Maximilian Kolbe, M.I., was starved and then drugged to death, as part of an effort to "nuance" his stated position concerning the numbers of Jews who were exterminated by the Third Reich in order to remain a member of the Society of Saint Pius X. (His Excellency has, most unfortunately, given "nuanced" positions about the validity of the Novus Ordo service and of the conciliar "rites" of episcopal consecration and priestly ordination that rival the paradoxes and contradictions of Ratzinger/Benedict himself for their inconsistency.)

Even absent a knowledge of Bishop Williamson's whereabouts at the present time, however, the mere fact that he has become a hunted man who has been expelled from one country and faces prosecution in France and Germany for a "thought crime" is scandalous. Even the conciliar officials in the Vatican are refusing to comment about Bishop Williamson's expulsion from Argentina. So much for "religious liberty" that is near and dear to the Modernist heart of Ratzinger/Benedict. So much for the rights of "illegal immigrant workers" that are so near and dear to many conciliar "bishops" in the United States of America, especially to Roger "Cardinal" Mahony, the conciliar "archbishop" of Los Angeles who is under investigation himself by the United States Attorney for the Central District of California for the role he has played in the protection of perverted priests. Bishop Williamson must be cast into the "outer darkness" by the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and hounded and harassed by the authorities in one government after another because he gave what he believed to be were honest answers to questions posed to him about the events that transpired during World War II.

Obviously, Bishop Williamson is "expendable" to some traditionally-minded Catholics yet attached to the false structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism as the "embarrassment" he is said to have caused Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI puts into jeopardy the false "pontiff's" plans for a "restoration" of Tradition. Such a self-delusional fable has no foundation in reality whatsoever, obviously. Ratzinger/Benedict is fully committed to the institutionalization of the apostasies and sacrileges of the "Second" Vatican Council, starting with the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, which Ratzinger himself once termed a "breach" with the Immemorial Mass of Tradition only to state in his explanatory letter to the conciliar bishops upon the issuance of Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, that such a rupture had never taken place, arguing in Milestones that the Missal of Pope Saint Pius V had been prohibited after the "Second" Vatican Council and declaring the contrary in his explanatory letter of July 7, 2007:

Consider the contrasting stands taken by Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger and Benedict XVI:

The second great event at the beginning of my years in Regensburg was the publication of the Missal of Paul VI, which was accompanied by the almost total prohibition, after a transitional phase of only half a year, of using the missal we had had until then. I welcomed the fact that now we had a binding liturgical text after a period of experimentation that had often deformed the liturgy. But I was dismayed by the prohibition of the old missal, since nothing of the sort had ever happened in the entire history of the liturgy. The impression was even given that what was happening was quite normal. The previous missal had been created by Pius V in 1570 in connection with the Council of Trent; and so it was quite normal that, after four hundred years and a new council, a new pope would present us with a new missal. But the historical truth of the matter is much different. Pius V had simply ordered a reworking of the Missale Romanum then being used, which is the normal thing as history develops over the course of centuries. Many of his successors had likewise reworked this missal again, but without ever setting one missal against another. It was a continual process of growth and purification in which continuity was never destroyed. There is no such thing as a "Missal of Pius V", created by Pius V himself. There is only the reworking done by Pius V as one phase in a long history of growth. The new feature that came to the fore after the Council of Trent was of a different nature. The irruption of the Reformation had above all taken the concrete form of liturgical "reforms." It was not just a matter of there being a Catholic Church and a Protestant Church alongside one another. The split in the Church occurred almost imperceptibly and found its most visible and historically most incisive manifestation in the changes of the liturgy. These changes, in turn, took very different forms at the local level, so that here, too, one frequently could not ascertain the boundary between what was still Catholic and what was no longer Catholic.

In this confusing situation, which had become possible by the failure to produce unified liturgical legislation and by the existing liturgical pluralism inherited from the Middle Ages, the pope decided that now the Missale Romanum--the missal of the city of Rome--was to be introduced as reliably Catholic in every place that could not demonstrate its liturgy to be at least two hundred years old. Wherever the existing liturgy was that old, it could be preserved because its Catholic character would then be assured. In this case we cannot speak of the prohibition of a previous missal that had formerly been approved as valid. The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences cold only be tragic. It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.

But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans. There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth. thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer living development but the produce of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused an enormous harm. For then the impress had to emerge that liturgy is something "made", not something given in advance but something lying without our own power of decision. From this it follows that we are not to recognize the scholars and the central authority alone as decision makes, but that in the end each and every "community" must provide itself with its own liturgy. When liturgy is self-made, however, then it can no longer give us what its proper gift should be: the encounter with the mystery that is not our own produce but rather our origin and the source of our life. A renewal of liturgical awareness, a liturgical reconciliation that again recognizes the unity of the history of the liturgy and that understands Vatican II, not as a breach, but as a stage of development: these things are urgently needed for the life of the Church. I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy, which at times has even come to be conceived of etsi Deus non daretur: in that it is a matter of indifference whether or not God exists and whether or not he speaks to us and hears us. But when the continuity of faith, the worldwide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ, are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. And, because the ecclesial community cannot have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds--partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart. This is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council. (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs: 1927-1977, published in English by Ignatius Press, 1998. pp. 146-149.)

As for the use of the 1962 Missal as a Forma extraordinaria of the liturgy of the Mass, I would like to draw attention to the fact that this Missal was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted. At the time of the introduction of the new Missal, it did not seem necessary to issue specific norms for the possible use of the earlier Missal. Probably it was thought that it would be a matter of a few individual cases which would be resolved, case by case, on the local level. . . .

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal.  In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture.  What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.  It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.  Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books.  The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness. (Benedict XVI,  Letter to the Bishops that accompanies the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.)

 

Some defenders of Ratzinger/Benedict have said that it was "necessary" for him to write as he did in order to convince the conciliar "bishops" who are hostile to any version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, including the modernized one promulgated by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII in 1961 and 1962, to accept the "liberation" of the modernized version of the Mass of Tradition that was "authorized" by Summorum Pontificum. However, the restoration of the Church Militant on earth is not going to take place as a result of "strategic lies." One can no more seek to restore right order in the Church Militant on earth by means of one false premise after another than one can seek to restore right order socially in the United States of America by making advertence to the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles of the American founding. "False ideas," as a speaker noted at a conference on Americanism I hosted at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Washington, D.C., in November of 1999, "lead to bad consequences, always and inevitably." This is indeed correct, which is why it is never a matter of "quibbling" to seek the truth and to insist upon an adherence to the truth in all things, both sacred and profane.

Conciliarism is in and of itself false. Efforts to "reconcile" its falsehoods with the Faith can never be the foundation of the restoration of the Church Militant on earth. To throw Bishop Williamson "under the bus" and to remain silent as he is hounded and harassed in order to aid and abet Ratzinger/Benedict's philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" as the foundation of a "restoration of Tradition is criminally irresponsible.

As has been noted in several recent articles on this site, Bishop Williamson can be criticized for subscribing to and and serving as a chief apologist for the false ecclesiology of the Society of Saint Pius X and all of its inconsistencies that His Excellency Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas reviewed once again in the current edition of Adsum (as His Excellency had done in a pastoral letter issued on the Feast of Saint Joseph, March 19, 2002, The Campos Defection and the Illogical Theology of the SSPX). Bishop Williamson can be faulted for the pivotal role that he played in convincing the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to expel "The Nine" from the Society of Saint Pius X (see The Nine vs. Lefebvre: We Resist You to Your Face). The views that he expressed on Swedish television about the nature and extent of the crimes committed by the agents of the Third Reich can be examined and criticized by trained scholars who have taken the time to review the facts with dispassion and with no other agenda than a pursuit of truth in a secular science, namely, the study of history. To make Bishop Williamson, however, a sacrificial lamb in a desperate effort to save the construction of a room in the crazy-house known as the One World Ecumenical Church of conciliarism as he, Bishop Williamson, is treated as a pariah by civil governments and by the "pontiff" he names in the Canon of the Mass each day is an incredible commentary on the obscene efforts that must be made to clothe the naked emperor of conciliarism and the falsehoods that he espouses.

Pope Gregory XVI, writing in Singulari Nos, June 25, 1834, explained that the Catholic Church can be tarnished by no kinds of errors and that she never promotes any kinds of innovations whatsoever:

As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth.

 

The falsehoods of the "New Theology" (that is, of Henri de Lubac, Maurice Blondel, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, Joseph Ratzinger, Johann Baptist Metz) can never "sustain and support the truth." They have been condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, based as they are upon a rejection of the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Yet it is to aid and abet  a disciple of these falsehoods, Ratzinger/Benedict, that Bishop Williamson must be cast into the outer darkness as he, who has the fullness of the priesthood indelibly impressed upon his immortal soul, is vilified and made the object of criminal investigations.

Bishop Williamson did not justify the crimes committed by the Third Reich. He gave a reasoned and articulate answer about the investigations that have been conducted by various historians who have attempted to apply the rigors of scientific research to judge the claims made uncritically by those who have appropriated the word used to signify the offering made of the God-Man to redeem us on the wood of the Holy Cross so as to stop all criticism of their Christophobic efforts to promote one abject evil after another, including abortion, and as their Zionist state treats non-Jews as callously as Adolf Hitler and his agents of naturalism treated their co-religionists. And for this Bishop Williamson is to be hounded to the far corners of the earth and to be threatened with expulsion from his own religious community if he does not recant his views?

Anyone who doubts that those who adhere to the Talmud run the "show" with the conciliar authorities in the Vatican and that they exercise disproportionate influence in civil governments around the world is denying the plain evidence that is being provided right now by means of what is happening to Bishop Richard Williamson. It will not be too long, I believe, before others of us are rounded up and harassed. The enemies of the Faith will round us up systematically regardless as to where we fall along the ecclesiastical divide if we do not admit the "enduring validity" of the Mosaic Covenant and if we do indeed believe in the necessity of seeking with urgency the conversion of all people, including those who adhere to the Talmud, to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

Saint Hippolytus believed that Pope Saint Pontian was too lax in readmitting to the Sacraments Catholics who had eaten meat sacrificed to the idols, having himself declared to be "pope." None of this mattered to the Roman authorities under Emperor Maximinus Thrax, who arrested both saints and had them sent at separate times to work as slave laborers on the island of Sardinia around 235 A.D. Saints Pontian and Hippolytus were reconciled to each other during their imprisonment. They had been arrested solely because they believed in the Catholic Faith and were thus deemed to be a threat to the officials of the Roman Empire.

Believe me, my friends, those who are throwing Bishop Williamson "under the bus" right now do not realize that they might be sharing the same jail cell with him sooner or later. We might indeed find some very strange pairings in prison cells to rival that of Saints Pontian and Hippolytus in the Third Century A.D. Those who believe that they can "win the day" with this strategy or another that is founded on an acceptance of any of the lies of conciliarism, starting with any and all efforts to "nuance" the offenses that are given to God in se by the very nature of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service, will live to see themselves hounded and harassed in the same manner that Bishop Williamson is being hounded and harassed at the present time.

The counterfeit church of concilairism has a long and fabled track record of oppressing even "conservative" priests who have tried to maintain the Faith as best they could in the midst of the onslaught of the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions of the past fifty years. Its revolutionary leaders have been only slightly less ruthless than the social revolutionaries in rounding up and sending off to psychiatric institutions priests and consecrated religious in the 1960s who failed to "go along" with the "program." Some of those priests and consecrated religious never saw the light of day as free men or free women thereafter, stigmatized as "psychotic" for their attachment to the Catholic Faith. According to one religious Sister who shall not be named at the present time, one physician told a Sister who has sent to a psychiatric hospital in the late-1960s for her refusal to go along with the Novus Ordo and who refused to remove her religious habit, "There's nothing wrong with you. Get out of her by the back door. I will show you how. You will never get out of here if you don't escape now." We will only know the full extent of these horrors on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead.

Those who want to aid and abet a mythical "restoration" in a false church that has done what the Catholic Church can never do, that is, to promulgate liturgies that are offensive to God both in their theological foundations and in their actual offerings and to place into question the perennial teachings contained in the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for their infallible explication and eternal safekeeping, have thrown a lot of true bishops and true priests "under the bus" to "save the day" for this "restoration." "The Nine" were thrown "under the bus" twenty-six years ago (and, as noted above, Bishop Williamson was indeed very instrumental in throwing "The Nine" "under the bus, casting them out into the outer darkness without any means of visible support in full violatino of the Canon Law of the Catholic Church). Indeed, anyone who takes seriously the canonical doctrine of the Church that those who defect knowingly from the Faith on even one point cannot hold ecclesiastical office legitimately has been thrown "under the bus" as conciliar "pontiffs" who have offended God mightily by esteeming the symbols of false religions and praising their nonexistent "ability" to contribute to the "better" world are portrayed as "martyrs" for the Faith because the ultra-progressives in the conciliar structures don't think that the revolution is proceeding fast enough.

Alas, the fact that "progressive" revolutionaries criticize older revolutionaries is no evidence at all that those older revolutionaries are the "friends" of the Faith. Such a belief is as patently absurd as the claim made by many histrionic conservatives that former President George Walker Bush's administration was "good' because it was criticized so relentlessly by naturalists of the leftist bent. The evils advanced by the former administration do not become "good" because they were criticized by angry naturalists of the "left" any more than Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's absolute, unwavering commitment to the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions of the "Second" Vatican Council and his equally absolute and unwavering commitment to the hideous precepts of his condemned "New Theology" become "good," no less the foundation of a "restoration" of the Church, because he is criticized by ultra-progressive conciliar "bishops" and theologians. One can throw anyone he wants "under the bus" to try to "save the day" for conciliarism and he will fail miserably as he gives others false hope that those who are enemies of God and thus enemies of souls are the agents of a mythical "restoration."

Pope Saint Pius X, writing in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, explained to us that, quite unlike the counterfeit church of conciliarism, the Catholic Church never tolerates errors as the foundation of a "better" world:

The same applies to the notion of Fraternity which they found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal. But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting.

Indeed, we have the human experience of pagan and secular societies of ages past to show that concern for common interests or affinities of nature weigh very little against the passions and wild desires of the heart. No, Venerable Brethren, there is no genuine fraternity outside Christian charity. Through the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ Our Saviour, Christian charity embraces all men, comforts all, and leads all to the same faith and same heavenly happiness.

By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, Democracy, far from being a progress, would mean a disastrous step backwards for civilization. If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead the people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.. . .

We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated these mischievous doctrines which ought not to seduce clear-thinking minds. The leaders of the Sillon have not been able to guard against these doctrines. The exaltation of their sentiments, the undiscriminating good-will of their hearts, their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel which they thought was the true Gospel of Our Savior. To such an extent that they speak of Our Lord Jesus Christ with a familiarity supremely disrespectful, and that - their ideal being akin to that of the Revolution - they fear not to draw between the Gospel and the Revolution blasphemous comparisons for which the excuse cannot be made that they are due to some confused and over-hasty composition.

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

 

Today is Quinquagesima Sunday. Lent is but three days away. We must be conscious of the fact that each one of our sins has worsened the state of the Church Militant on earth and the state of the world-at-large. We are far from being blameless about the situation that faces us today. We must, therefore, embrace the austerities of a good, well-lived Lenten of prayer, penance, fasting, almsgiving, mortification to attempt to make some small bit of reparation for our sins and those of the whole world, offering up our Lenten efforts to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, careful to pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit as we assist at true offerings of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at the hands of true bishops and true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism or to the nonexistent legitimacy of its false shepherds.

We must, as always, pray for our own conversion on a daily basis as we pray for the conversion of all those who are outside of the Faith, starting with the conciliar revolutionaries themselves, and remembering that we do indeed want to partake in the glories of an unending Easter Sunday of joy in Heaven with all of those from who the circumstances of the conciliar revolution have estranged us at this time. We pray for all of our fellow Catholics during this time of apostasy and betrayal, commending them to the Mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as we ourselves, through no merit of our own, remain steadfast in rejecting conciliarism and in refusing to throw Truth Himself "under the bus" in order to effect a restoration that will occur only as a result of the Triumph of the same Immaculate Heart out of which His own Most Sacred Heart was formed and with which It beats as one.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints