Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
February 7, 2018
As the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ election draws
near, we hear repeatedly that we are facing a dramatic and absolutely
unprecedented ‘page’ in the history of the Church. This is only partly true.
The Church has always experienced tragic times which have seen the laceration
of the Mystical Body since its very beginnings on Calvary right up to the
present day.
The younger generations don’t know and the older generations have forgotten how terrible the years that followed the Second Vatican Council were, of which the present age is the result. Forty years ago while the 1968 revolt was erupting, a group of cardinals and bishops, who were protagonists at the Council, sought to impose a radical change on the Catholic doctrine of marriage. The attempt was frustrated by way of Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae of July 25th 1968 which reaffirmed the prohibition of artificial contraception, restoring strength and hope to a disorientated flock. However Paul VI of Humanae Vitae, was also the one who caused a deep rupture with Catholic Tradition in 1969 by imposing the new rite of the Mass which is at the origins of all contemporary liturgical devastations.
The younger generations don’t know and the older generations have forgotten how terrible the years that followed the Second Vatican Council were, of which the present age is the result. Forty years ago while the 1968 revolt was erupting, a group of cardinals and bishops, who were protagonists at the Council, sought to impose a radical change on the Catholic doctrine of marriage. The attempt was frustrated by way of Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae of July 25th 1968 which reaffirmed the prohibition of artificial contraception, restoring strength and hope to a disorientated flock. However Paul VI of Humanae Vitae, was also the one who caused a deep rupture with Catholic Tradition in 1969 by imposing the new rite of the Mass which is at the origins of all contemporary liturgical devastations.
On November
18th 1973, the same Pope promoted Ostpolitik, by assumimg the grave responsibility of removing
Cardinal József
Mindszenty (1892-1975) from his office as Archbishop of
Esztergom, Primate of Hungary – and champion of Catholic opposition to
Communism. Pope Montini had hoped for
the attainment of a historical compromise in Italy, based in the agreement
between the Secretary of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro and the Secretary
of the Communist Party Enrico Berlinguer.
The operation was abruptly interrupted by the kidnapping and killing of
Moro in 1978, after which Pope Montini himself died the following August 6th.
Also this 40th anniversary falls this year.
During those
years of betrayal and blood, courageous voices spoke out which we of necessity
recall, not only for the record, but because they help us to orient ourselves
in the darkness of the present time. We remember two, prior to the explosion of
the so-called “Lefebvre Case”, the French Archbishop Monsignor Athanasius
Schneider highlighted in a recent interview on his “prophetic mission during an extraordinary dark time of general crisis
in the Church.”
The first voice belongs to a French Dominican priest,
Father Roger Calmel, who right from the very beginning in 1969 had rejected
Paul VI’s Novus Ordo and in June 1971
wrote in the magazine Itinéraires:
“Our Christian resistance of priests and laity
[is] very painful resistance as it forces us to say no to the Pope himself
about the modernist manifestation of the Catholic Mass; our respectful but
unshakeable resistance is dictated by the principle of total fidelity to the
living Church of all time; or, in other words, from the principle of living
fidelity to the development of the Church. Never have we thought of holding
back, or even less of impeding, what some, with very ambiguous words, for that
matter, call “progress” in the Church; we’d call it rather the homogenous
growth in doctrinal and liturgical matters, in continuation with Tradition, in sight
of the “consummatio sanctorum”. (…)
As Our Lord has
revealed to us in parables, and as St. Paul teaches us in his Epistles, we believe
that the Church, over the course of the centuries, grows and develops in
harmony through a thousand adversities, until the glorious return of Jesus
Himself, Her Spouse and Our Lord. Since we are convinced that over the course
of centuries a growth of the Church is occurring, and since we are resolute in
becoming part of this mysterious and uninterrupted movement as honestly as possible,
as far as it is up to us, we reject this supposed progress which refers to
Vatican II and which in reality is mortal deviation.” Going back to
St. Vincent of Lerin’s classical
distinction, the more we desire good growth – a splendid “profectus” - even more do we reject, uncompromisingly,
a ruinous “pennutatio” and any
radical and shameful alteration whatsoever; radical, since it comes from
modernism and denies every faith; shameful, since the denial of the modernist
sort is shifty and hidden.”
The second voice is that of a Brazilian thinker and
man of action, Plinio Correa de Oliveira, author of a leaflet of resistance to
the Vatican Ostpolitik, which appeared on April 10th 1974 under the name
of Tradition, Family and Property, with the title Vatican Politics of Distension towards Communist Governments. For TFP: not
to intervene or resist?
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira explained: “To resist means that we would advise
Catholics to continue fighting against the Communist doctrine through all legitimate
means, in defense of Country and Christian civilization under threat.”: and
he added “The lines of this declaration would
not be sufficient to contain the list of all the Fathers of the Church,
Doctors, moralists and canon lawyers – many of whom have been beatified or canonized
– who sustain the legitimacy of resistance. A resistance which is not separation,
nor revolt, nor acrimony, nor irreverence. On the contrary it is fidelity,
union, love and submission. “Resistance” is the word we have chosen on purpose,
as it has been used by St. Paul himself to describe his stance. Since the first Pope, St. Peter, had taken disciplinary
measures to retain practices in the Catholic Faith which survived the ancient Synagogue,
St. Paul saw in this a grave risk of doctrinal confusion and harm for the
faithful. So he rose up and “resisted” St. Peter “to his face” who did not see an
act of rebellion in this energetic and inspired action by the Apostle to the
Gentiles, but [an act] of union and fraternal love. Furthermore, knowing well where he was infallible and where
he wasn’t, he yielded to St Paul’s arguments. The saints are model Catholics. In the sense that St. Paul resisted, our position is resistance.
In this, our conscience finds peace”.
“Resistance” is not a purely verbal
declaration of faith but an act of love towards the Church, which leads to
practical consequences. Those who resist are separated from the one who has
caused the division in the Church, they criticize him openly, they correct him.
In 2017, along these lines they
expressed themselves with the Correctio
filialis to Pope Francis and the leaflet of the pro-life movement appeared
with the title: “Faithful to true
doctrine, not to pastors who are in error.”
Today, along these same lines lies
Cardinal Zen’s stance of no compromise in regard to Pope Francis’ new Ostpolitik towards Communist China. To those who object, and that it is necessary “to try to find common ground to bridge the
decades-old division between the Vatican and China”, Cardinal Zen replies: “But can there ever be anything in “common”
with a totalitarian regime? Either you surrender or accept persecution, but
remain faithful to yourself (can you imagine an agreement between St. Joseph
and Herod?)”. To those who ask him whether he is convinced that the Vatican
is selling out the Catholic Church in China, he says: “Decidedly, yes. If they are
going in the direction that is obvious in everything they have done in recent
months and years.”
On April 7th a conference has been
called, which many are still ignoring, but which ought to have as its object
the present crisis in the Church. The participation of some cardinals and
bishops, and above all Cardinal Zen, would give maximum importance to this
conference. We must pray that from the meeting a voice will be raised, full of
love for the Church and firm resistance to all the theological, moral and
liturgical deviations of the present pontificate, without being under the
illusion that the solution is that of insinuating the invalidity of Benedict
XVI’s abdication or Pope Francis’ election. Taking refuge in the canonical
problem, means avoiding debate of the doctrinal problem, which is at the roots
of the crisis we are experiencing.
Translation:
Contributor, Francesca Romana
