Dear Friends and Benefactors,

With the multiplication of murderous attacks in Europe and Africa, and with the bloody persecution of many Christians in the Middle East, these recent months show us how profoundly troubled the situation of the world is. In the Church, the recent Synod on the Family and the upcoming start of the Holy Year do not fail to cause legitimate worries. Given this confusion, it seemed helpful to us to inform you of our reflections by responding to your queries. We think that this presentation will make it possible to highlight more clearly how we who are devoted to Tradition should react to the problems facing us today.

On September 1st, Pope Francis, on his own initiative, decided to allow all the faithful to make confessions to priests of the Society of St. Pius X during the Holy Year. How do you interpret this gesture? What does it mean for the Society?

We were in fact surprised by this action of the Holy Father on the occasion of the Holy Year because we, like everyone else, learned about it through the press. How do we understand this gesture? Allow me to make use of an image. When a fire is raging, everyone understands that those who have the means to do so must endeavor to put it out, especially if there is a shortage of firefighters. So it is that through all fifty years of this terrible crisis that has shaken the Church, particularly the tragic lack of confessors, our priests have devoted themselves to the souls of penitents, invoking the case of emergency foreseen by the Code of Canon Law.

As a result of the Pope’s act, during the Holy Year, we will have ordinary jurisdiction. In the image I mentioned, this has the effect of giving us the official insignia of firefighters, whereas such a status was denied us for decades. In itself, it adds nothing new for the Society, its members, or its faithful. Yet this ordinary jurisdiction will perhaps reassure people who are uneasy or others who until now did not dare to approach us. For, as we said in the communiqué thanking the Pope, the priests of the Society wish for one thing only: “To perform with renewed generosity their ministry in the confessional, following the example of untiring devotion that the saintly Curé of Ars gave to all priests.”

On the occasion of the Synod on the Family, you sent a petition to the Holy Father, then a declaration. Why?

The purpose of our petition was to point out as clearly as possible to the Supreme Pontiff the seriousness of the present hour and the decisive impact of his ruling in moral matters of such importance. Pope Francis learned of our sentiments on September 18th, before his departure for Cuba and the United States, and he informed us that he would change nothing of the Catholic doctrine concerning marriage, particularly its indissolubility. But we feared that, in practice, the indissoluble character of the matrimonial bond would be disregarded. And this is in fact what happened, on the one hand with the motu proprio reforming the procedure for declaring the

nullity of marriages, and on the other hand with the final document of this Synod. Hence my declaration intending to recall to mind the constant teaching of the Church on a multitude of points that were discussed and sometimes called into question during the month of October. I will not conceal from you the fact that to me the sorry spectacle that the Synod presented seems particularly shameful and scandalous on more than one count.

Shameful and scandalous how?

Well, for example this dichotomy between doctrine and morality, between teaching the truth and tolerating sin and the most immoral situations. We understand that one should be patient and merciful with sinners, but how will they convert if their sinful situation is not denounced, if they no longer hear anyone talking about the state of grace and its opposite: the state of mortal sin, which inflicts death on souls and consigns them to the torments of hell? If someone were to measure the infinite offense caused by the slightest mortal sin against God’s honor and sanctity, he would die of astonishment. The Church must firmly condemn all the sins, vices, and errors that corrupt the truth of the Gospel. She must not compromise with scandalous behaviors or acknowledge a culpable acceptance of them or the public sinners who attack the sanctity of marriage. Why does the Church no longer have the courage to speak this way?

Yet there were some positive initiatives on the occasion of this Synod, such as the book by eleven cardinals (following one by five cardinals last year); and also the volume by the African prelates; one by Catholic lawyers; the handbook by three bishops, etc.

These fortunate initiatives that appeared recently promoting the defense of marriage and the Christian family give us a glimmer of hope. This represents a salutary reaction, even if certain responses leave something to be desired. Let us hope that this may be the beginning of an awakening throughout the Church that will lead to a rectification and real conversion.

Last spring, in a sermon given at the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris, Bishop de Galarreta said that the Church seemed to be in the process of producing “antibodies” to fight the aberrant proposals being made by progressives on the subject of marriage, who align themselves with current customs instead of seeking to amend them according to Gospel teaching. This reaction on the moral level is beneficial. And since morality is closely connected to doctrine, this could be the start of a return of the Church to her Tradition. We pray for this every day!

In the name of mercy, some prelates, like Cardinal Kasper, are trying, if not to change the doctrine of the Church about the indissolubility of marriage, at least to relax the discipline on communion for divorced-and-remarried persons, or to modify its judgment on unnatural unions. What should we think about all these so-called pastoral exceptions?

The Church can legislate, that is, establish its own laws, which are simply clarifications of the divine law. But in the area of marriage being debated today, Our Lord has already settled the question quite clearly: “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matt. 19:6),

and immediately afterward: “Whosoever shall put away his wife...committeth adultery” (Matt. 19:9). Therefore the Church has only one thing to do: tell the faithful of the divine law and enshrine it in ecclesiastical laws. In no case can the Church diverge in any way from it; that would be to fail in its mission, which is to hand on the revealed deposit of faith. In plain language, in the matter under consideration, the Church can only declare that there was no marriage to begin with, but in no case can it annul or dissolve a marriage that is valid in itself.

Of course ecclesiastical laws can add conditions necessary for the validity of a marriage, but always in keeping with the divine law. The Church thus can declare a marriage invalid due to lack of canonical form, but it will never be above the divine law to which it is subject. What is more, it is necessary to state that unlike human and ecclesiastical law, divine law allows for no exceptions, because it is not made by human beings who cannot foresee all possible cases and are obliged to allow room for exceptions. The infinitely wise God has foreseen all possible situations, as I wrote in the petition to the Pope: “the law of God, expression of his eternal love for mankind, is in itself the supreme mercy for all periods of history, all persons, and all situations.”

Is not the September 8 motu proprio that simplifies the procedure for declarations of nullity of marriage a way of recalling the principle of the indissolubility of marriage, while offering easy canonical terms for evading it?

The new motu proprio regulating canonical arrangements dealing with annulment processes claims, of course, to be an answer to a serious contemporary problem: that of numerous broken families. If you want to examine these cases in order to propose a swifter solution, insofar as it corresponds to the divine law on marriage, very good! But in the present context, that of modern secularized and hedonistic society, and of ecclesiastical tribunals already doing what is forbidden, this motu proprio runs the risk of becoming a legal ratification of the disorder. The result could be much worse than the recommended remedy. I very much fear that one of the key points of the Synod may have been resolved by creating a “back door” that opens the way to a supposed “Catholic divorce,” because concretely the Church is exposing itself to many abuses, especially in countries where the bishops, won over to progressivism and subjectivism, exercise precious little supervision...

In the Holy Year to begin on December 8th, is not a mercy without repentance or conversion being touted?

It is true that, in the current climate, an appeal to mercy too easily neglects the indispensable act of conversion, which requires contrition for one’s sins and a horror of sin as an offense against God. Thus I deplored in the last Letter to Friends and Benefactors (#84) the Honduran Cardinal Maradiaga’s complacent support of a new spirituality whose notion of mercy does not require repentance.

Nevertheless, if you read carefully the various documents published on the subject of the Holy Year, particularly the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee, you see that the fundamental idea of conversion and contrition for sins in order to obtain forgiveness is present. Despite the reference to an ambiguous mercy that is said to consist of restoring to a human being his “incomparable dignity” rather than the state of grace, the Pope means to promote the return of those who have left the Church, and he multiplies the concrete initiatives to facilitate recourse to the sacrament of penance. Unfortunately, he does not ask himself why so many people have left the Church and stopped practicing their faith, and whether there might be some connection to a certain Council, its “cult of man”, and its catastrophic reforms: unbridled ecumenism; a desacralized and protestantized liturgy; a relaxation of morals, etc.

Then can the faithful devoted to Tradition participate without risk of confusion in the Extraordinary Jubilee Year decreed by the Pope? Especially since this Year of Mercy intends to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II, which is supposed to have knocked down the “walls” in which the Church was enclosed...

Quite obviously there arises the question of our participation in this Holy Year. In order to resolve it, a distinction is necessary between: the circumstances that bring about a Holy Year or Jubilee and its very essence.

The circumstances are historical, connected with the major anniversaries of the life of Jesus, in particular of his redemptive death. Every fifty years, or even every twenty-five years, the Church institutes a Holy Year. This time around, the point of reference for the opening of the Jubilee Year is not just the Redemption — December 8th is necessarily connected to the redemptive work begun with the Immaculate Mother of God — but also the Second Vatican Council. This is most unsettling, and we reject it forcefully, because we cannot rejoice in, but rather must weep over, the ruins caused by this Council: the precipitous drop in vocations, the dramatic decline of religious practice, and above all the loss of faith described by John Paul II himself as a “silent apostasy”.

Nevertheless the essential components of a Holy Year remain: it is a special year in which the Church, upon the decision of the Supreme Pontiff, who holds the power of the keys, opens wide her treasures of graces so as to bring the faithful closer to God, especially by the forgiveness of sins and the remittance of the punishments due to sin. This the Church does in the sacrament of penance and by indulgences. Such graces do not change; they are always the same, and only the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, has power over them. We might also note that the conditions for obtaining the indulgences of the Holy Year are still the same: confession, communion, prayer for the intentions of the Pope — which are objective and traditional, not personal. Nowhere in the reminder of these habitual conditions is there any question of adhering to the conciliar novelties.

When Archbishop Lefebvre, with the whole seminary of Écône, went to Rome during the Holy Year of 1975, it was not to celebrate Council’s tenth anniversary, although Paul VI had mentioned that anniversary in the Bull of Indiction. Rather it was an opportunity to profess our Romanitas, our attachment to the Holy See, to the Pope who, as the successor of Peter, has the power of the keys. Following in the footsteps of our venerable founder, during this Holy Year we will concentrate on the essential components of it: repentance so as to obtain divine mercy through the intermediary of His one Church, despite the circumstances that some have thought necessary to invoke as requirements for celebrating this year, as was the case already in 1975 and again in 2000.

We could compare these two elements, the essential and the circumstances, to the contents and the packaging that surrounds them. It would be detrimental to reject the graces belonging to a Holy Year just because it is being presented in defective packaging, without considering the fact that this packaging does not alter the contents, unless the circumstances were to absorb the essentials, and unless, in the present case, the Church no longer had at her disposal the graces proper to the Holy Year because of the damage done by Vatican II. But the Church was not born fifty years ago! And, through the grace of Christ who is “the same yesterday, today and for ever,” (Heb. 13:8) it remains and will remain the same, despite a Council open to a world of perpetual change...

In several recent statements you seem to want to anticipate the one hundredth anniversary of Fatima by inviting the faithful to start preparing now. Why?

From the perspective mentioned in this letter and in order to insist on the urgency of conversion, we thought of connecting these corporal and spiritual works of mercy that we are invited to perform this year with the centenary of the apparitions in Fatima, in which Our Lady insisted so much on the necessity of conversion, of oneself and of the world, on the necessity for works of penance and on prayer, especially the Rosary. Imploring divine mercy is closely connected with the Fatima apparitions: the Blessed Virgin invited us to pray and do penance, and this is how we will obtain mercy, not otherwise. It seems to me quite beneficial to tie these two future anniversaries together this way by making them two years of efforts to draw closer both to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and to Our Lord, both to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to the merciful Sacred Heart.

The Society of St. Pius X will organize an international pilgrimage to Fatima on August 19th and 20th, 2017. But already we can and even must prepare ourselves, especially when Catholic morality is seriously being challenged.

More than ever, on this feast day of November 21st, which for us is a major anniversary of the Declaration by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1974—a veritable charter for our battle for the Church of all ages—let us maintain a Catholic attitude in all circumstances, whatever the difficulties and trials may be. Let us have the mind of the Church, let us be faithful to Our Lord, let us remain devoted to his Holy Sacrifice, to his teachings, to his examples. Yesterday I read that Cardinal Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, feared a “protestantization of the Church”. He is right. But what is the new Mass, if not a protestantization of the Mass of all time? And what are we to think about the Pope who, like his predecessors, goes to a Lutheran church? When we see how the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017 is being prepared, how the figure of Luther is now saluted, although he was one of the major heresiarchs and schismatics in history, ferociously opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, it is enough to make you lose heart! Truly, Archbishop Lefebvre saw correctly when he said that “the only attitude of fidelity to the Church and to Catholic doctrine, for our salvation, is the categorical refusal to accept the Reformation,” because between Luther’s reform and the one undertaken by Vatican II there is more than one point in common. And with him, we say again that, “without any rebellion, bitterness, or resentment, we pursue our work of priestly formation under the guidance of the never-changing Magisterium, convinced as we are that we cannot possibly render a greater service to the Holy Catholic Church, to the Sovereign Pontiff, and to posterity.”

You understand this very well, dear friends and benefactors of the Society of St. Pius X. Your fervent prayers, your admirable generosity, and your constant devotion are for us an invaluable support. Thanks to you, the work of Archbishop Lefebvre is developing everywhere. With all my heart I thank you for this.

We pray to Our Lady to obtain for you all the graces that you need. We ask the Good Lord to grant you His blessings for you and your families, so that you may prepare for the great feast of Christmas by a holy Advent, and that you may entrust the coming year, with its joys and crosses, to our Mother in Heaven.

On the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, November 21, 2015

+ Bernard Fellay

In a conference on January 20, 2015, Cardinal Mardiaga considers that mercy must give a new spirit to the reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council in order to open the Church to today’s world. Mercy without repentance for sins is used for this end; it appears to be nothing else than a complacent look on the sinner and his sins.

In view of the coming Holy Year, it is necessary to discern between this one-sided mercy and true mercy which fully invites to conversion, to the rejection of sin. Our prayers and penances during this year must be an answer to the request of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to Mary at Fatima, whose centenary we will celebrate in 2017.

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

It is not necessary to go on at length to note the crisis that our Holy Mother the Church is in. Nevertheless, in recent months there have been a number of worrisome signs suggesting that we are being thrust into an even more intense phase of troubles and confusion.

The loss of unity in the Church is becoming increasingly evident, with respect both to faith and morals on the one hand, and to liturgy and government on the other, and it is safe to assume that we have a very difficult time ahead of us. Short of a miracle, it is to be feared that now souls will be left on their own even more and will no longer find any support from the hierarchy as a whole, although that guidance is necessary.

New mercy to save the conciliar reforms

One example to illustrate what we mean: a conference was given by Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, the coordinator of the group of cardinals to whom Pope Francis entrusted the deliberation about the reform of the Roman Curia. This talk, given on January 20, 2015, at the University of Santa Clara in California, is helpful inasmuch as it offers an insight into the vision that guides the closest advisors of the pope.

The first point is that he intends to carry out his reforms—and by this we should understand the whole set of reforms undertaken since Second Vatican Council—in such a way that they become irreversible. This intention never to go backward is expressed, incidentally, in other passages of the same conference.

However the reforms already carried out are in danger, the Honduran cardinal acknowledges, because they have caused a serious crisis in the Church. The reason for this is that every reform must be animated by a spirit, which is its soul.

Now the conciliar reforms have not respected this principle. On the contrary, they were carried out, he tells us, while leaving the old spirit intact, the traditional spirit, and the result was that some of these reforms were not understood and were hardly ever followed by the effects that the reformers had counted on, to the point of causing a sort of schizophrenia in the Church.

Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga asserts that nevertheless we must not go back. In his opinion, a spirit corresponding to the reforms must still be infused, so as to motivate and energize them. This spirit is mercy. And the pope has just announced a Holy Year of Mercy....

True mercy according to the Sacred Heart

What exactly is this about? In itself mercy is a word that is dear to the heart of every Catholic, because it designates the most touching manifestation of God’s love for us. In past centuries the apparitions of the Sacred Heart were nothing but a more intense revelation of this mercy of God toward mankind. The same must be said about devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Nevertheless true mercy, which implies this initial, extremely touching movement of God toward the sinner and His misery, continues in a moment of the creature’s conversion to God: “God desires not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (cf. Ezek 33:11). Hence the Gospels insist on the duty of conversion, renunciation and penance. Our Lord went so far as to say: “Unless you do penance, you shall all perish” (cf. Lk 13:5).

This call to conversion is the heart of the Gospel, which we find in St. John the Baptist as well as in St. Peter. When sinners, touched by preaching, ask what they must do, they hear only this recommendation: “be converted and do penance.” The Blessed Virgin in her apparitions in recent centuries, both in La Salette and in Lourdes or Fatima, says nothing different: “prayer and penance”.

Now the new preachers of a new mercy insist so much on the first step taken by God toward human beings who are lost because of sin, ignorance and misery that they too often omit this second movement, which must come from the creature: repentance, conversion, the rejection of sin. Ultimately, the new mercy is nothing but complacency about sin. God loves you... no matter what.

New mercy with no repentance

The examples of mercy given by Cardinal Maradiaga unfortunately leave no room for doubt. Thus he asserts that Christians who have broken off their marriage and have started a “blended” family are fully entitled to a place in the life of the Church, with no further ado.... And he even proclaims that those who left the Church while they were in sinful situations will have a heaven equal to that of the saints.

Obviously he reproaches the Church’s ministers for having rebuked these poor sinners.... This is the new mercy, the new spirituality that is supposed to set in stone forever the reforms of the Church’s institutions and morals, both those that have been carried out since the Council and the new ones now being considered! This is extremely serious. But it may also help us to understand why we are so much opposed to what is called “the spirit of the Council”. Indeed, the reforms were introduced in the name of this new spirit, a spirit that is certainly not traditional. We say that this spirit spoiled everything about the Council, even the parts that can be understood in a Catholic way.... This spirit is an adaptation to the ways of the world; it is a complacent view of its falls and temptations, in the name of kindness, mercy and love.

Thus, for example, people no longer say that other religions are false—which is however what the Magisterium of all time has declared. They no longer teach about the dangers of the world, and even the Devil has almost completely disappeared from the Church’s vocabulary during the last 50 years.

This spirit explains the present sufferings of Holy Mother Church, whose authority is diminishing despite her overtures to the world; every day she loses more members, more priests, and finds that she has less influence on contemporary society. Ireland, once so Catholic, where “marriage” between persons of the same sex has just been legalized, is a distressing example.

Can you truncate mercy, cut it off from necessary repentance, as Cardinal Maradiaga does, for the stated purpose of giving a new spirit to the conciliar reforms and breaking with the traditional spirit? Certainly not!

Is he the interpreter of Pope Francis’ thought in this conference that was presented three months before the Bull of Indiction of the Holy Year? It is very difficult to tell, since for two years the messages coming from Rome have been so contradictory, as some cardinals acknowledge privately and several Vatican watchers openly admit.

Necessity to discern between one-sided mercy and true mercy

Must we then deprive ourselves of the graces of a Holy Year? Quite the contrary. When the floodgates of grace are opened wide, we must receive abundantly! A Holy Year is a great grace for all the members of the Church. We live, after all, by true mercy, as all the pages of the Gospel and of the traditional liturgy teach us. In keeping with the “preliminary discernment”[1] on which Archbishop Lefebvre based the conduct of the Society of St. Pius X, in these times of confusion, we reject a one-sided mercy and live by mercy in all its aspects.

A Latin word that we encounter so often and that obviously must be on our lips is miserere. This word indicates, for our part, the acknowledgment of our misery, and then our appeal to God’s mercy. The awareness of our misery makes us ask for forgiveness, fills us with contrition and is accompanied by the intention not to sin again. The true love that inspires this movement causes us to understand the necessity of making reparation for our sins. Hence the sacrifice is expiatory and satisfactory.

These various movements are necessary for the conversion that obtains the forgiveness of the God of mercy, who—in truth—does not want the death of the sinner but that he be converted and live. The claim to eternal happiness is completely illusory in someone who is unwilling to break with his sinful habits and does not seriously want to flee the occasions of sin or to make a resolution not to start sinning again.

Preaching a sort of mercy without the necessary conversion of poor sinners would be a message devoid of meaning for heaven, a diabolical trap that would tranquilize the world in its folly and its increasingly open rebellion against God, whereas heaven is quite positive about it: “God is not mocked” (Gal 6:7).

The lives of human beings in the world today are calling down the wrath of God on every side. The massacre of innocent children in their mother’s wombs, by the millions, the legalization of unnatural unions, and euthanasia are crimes that cry out to Heaven, not to mention all sorts of injustices....

Mercy according to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary

Let us take this appeal to mercy seriously, as the inhabitants of Nineveh did! Let us go in search of the lost sheep, let us pray for the conversion of souls, let us perform as much as we can all the works of mercy, both material and especially the spiritual works, for there is a serious shortage of the latter.

If Our Lady could say, more than a century ago, that it was all she could do to hold back the avenging arm of her Son... what would she say today?

As for us, dear brothers and sisters in the Faith, we must take advantage of this Holy Year to ask the God of mercy for an ever deeper conversion to holiness and implore the graces and pardons of His infinite mercy.

We will prepare for the centennial of the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima by practicing devotion to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart and propagating it with all our strength, as she demanded. We will keep begging that her requests, particularly the consecration of Russia, will at last be properly carried out.

There is no opposition between these thoughts turned toward Mary and the Year of Mercy, on the contrary! Let us not separate what God wants to see joined: the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary, as Our Lord explained to Sister Lucy of Fatima.

Every district of the Society will inform you of the particular works to be performed in order to benefit from all the graces that Divine Mercy will grant us during this Holy Year.

And in this way we will offer as well as possible our collaboration with the merciful will of God to save all people of good will.

May Our Lord bless you for your generosity and, on this Pentecost Sunday, grant to you abundantly His graces of faith and charity.

+ Bernard Fellay

Pentecost Sunday, May 24, 2015

1. In practice our attitude should be based on a previous discernment (…): when the pope says something that is consistent with Tradition, we follow him; when he says something that goes contrary to our Faith, or he encourages or lets something be done that harms our Faith, then we cannot follow him! The fundamental reason for this is that the Church, the pope, and the hierarchy are at the service of the Faith. It is not they who make the Faith; they must serve it. The Faith is not being created, it is unchangeable, it is transmitted.”
   They Have Uncrowned Him, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Angelus Press, 1988: Chapter XXXI, p. 229.

Communique of the General House of the Society of St. Pius X concerning the episcopal consecration of Fr. Jean-Michel Faure.

On March 19, 2015, Bishop Richard Williamson performed the episcopal consecration of Fr. Jean-Michel Faure at the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross in Nova Friburgo, Brazil.

Bishop Williamson and Fr. Faure have not been members of the Society of St. Pius X since 2012 and 2014, respectively, because of their violent criticisms of any relations with the Roman authorities. According to them, such contacts were incompatible with the apostolic work of Archbishop Lefebvre.

The Society of St. Pius X regrets sincerely that this spirit of opposition has led to an episcopal consecration. In 1988 Archbishop Lefebvre had clearly indicated his intention to consecrate auxiliary bishops who would have no jurisdiction, because of the state of necessity in which the Society of St. Pius X and faithful Catholics found themselves at that time. His sole goal was to make available to the faithful the sacraments which priests ordained by the bishops would offer. After having done everything conceivable to gain permission from the Holy See, Archbishop Lefebvre proceeded with the solemn consecrations on June 30, 1988 before several thousand priests and faithful and hundreds of journalists from around the world. It was abundantly clear from all the circumstances that, despite the lack of authorization from Rome, this action done in the most public manner was for the good of the Church and of souls.

The Society of St. Pius X denounces this episcopal consecration of Fr. Faure, which, despite the assertions of both clerics concerned, is not at all comparable to the consecrations of 1988. All the declarations of Bishop Williamson and Fr. Faure prove abundantly that they no longer recognize the Roman authorities, except in a purely rhetorical manner.

The Society of St. Pius X still maintains that the present state of necessity renders legitimate its action throughout the world, without denying the legitimate authority of those for whom it continues to pray at every Mass. The Society intends to continue its work of priestly formation according to its statutes. It has every intention to keep the deposit of the Faith and the purity of the Church’s moral teaching, in opposition to errors, from wherever they may come, in order to pass on such Faith and morals in the traditional liturgy and by preaching, in accordance with the missionary spirit of its founder: Credidimus caritati [1 John 4:16].

Menzingen, March 19, 2015

Bishop Fellay writes about Pope Benedict's "disastrous vision" for the Church, while offering certain remedies the SSPX provides to counteract present-day dangers.

As the state of the Church gets worse and worse, Bishop Fellay reminds us of the almost prophetical vision that the future Pope Benedict XVI had 17 years ago about the future of the Church.

In the midst of this disaster, the SSPX continues to expand and work for the sanctification of souls, with a particular attention to the Catholic family, schools, and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius; and above all to the formation and sanctification of priests.

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

Seventeen years ago now, the future Benedict XVI presented his vision of the future of the Church; at the time it seemed very pessimistic. He foresaw that the Mystical Body would be so fragmented that it would be reduced to a collection of small groups that were still lively, though surrounded by general decadence:

Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the Church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intensive struggle against evil and bring the good into the world...." ^[1]

The Church... will be less identified with the great societies, more a minority Church; she will live in small, vital circles of really convinced believers who live their faith. But precisely in this way she will, biblically speaking, become the salt of the earth again." ^[2]

Disastrous vision of the Church’s future

Is this vision the product of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s personal wisdom, or is it inspired by some other source, such as the Secret of Fatima? He alone can tell us. Whatever the case may be, gradually and especially since the Council we have been witnessing the slow disappearance of the Church as she appeared for at least 1,500 years, in other words, as a society that had profoundly permeated all of human life, the entire social organism, striving to shape a deeply harmonious whole with the temporal realm, even if the secular authorities often tried to encroach on the spiritual authority of the Church.

Since the French Revolution we have observed not only the separation of these two powers, but also an unceasing determination to combat and reduce the Church’s beneficent influence on human society. Since the post-conciliar period, with the bewildering reduction in the number of priestly vocations, with the loss of hundreds of thousands of men and women religious who had given their lives for God and neighbor, the Church’s presence in schools, in hospitals, and in social and political life has almost disappeared. No serious measure has been taken to check this catastrophic disappearance of the Church from society. By now she has practically been relegated to the sacristy. What is worse, in countries where the Church had lavished her good deeds, in the countries that once were called Christian, even the churches and sacristies are empty.... We are no longer very far from the almost prophetic vision of Cardinal Ratzinger.

But these external phenomena are accompanied by others belonging to the internal life of the Church; they are signs of weakness in the face of an enemy who is no longer outside, but now inside. The unity of the Faith and unity of the government of Holy Church are more and more thoroughly dissolving; and liturgical unity, with the “creative” options offered by the New Mass, particularly with the multiplication of Eucharistic Prayers, was long ago shattered. As for morality, the last Synod on the Family tragically demonstrated the proliferation of contradictory opinions that prevail in that area, which the authorities no longer seem capable of stemming, when they are not actively promoting it....

In the midst of this disaster, which has been noted by many observers, no doubt our modest Society seems like “[a] small, seemingly insignificant group that nonetheless lives an intensive struggle against evil and brings the good into the world....” If on the one hand the sight of the disfigured Church deeply grieves us, on the other hand we sing every day the Magnificat for the marvels that the Almighty still enables us to accomplish.

The Catholic family

In these few lines we would like to give you an insight into the current development of the Society, which, despite the hits that it has received on all sides, ceaselessly spreads the Good Lord’s grace and fortifies souls on their difficult, perilous pilgrimage to Heaven. For a long time we have realized that very special attention must be paid to the Christian family, the sacred hearth where children are born who are destined not only for life on this earth but for the life of Heaven. There is something terrifying and diabolical in the refined cruelty that is used to strike at this sanctuary, starting with the life of the unborn child in his mother’s womb.

Considering the number of large families who serenely cultivate virtue and seek the glory of God, without neglecting their duties toward their neighbors and society─quite the contrary!─we can only bless Our Lord and marvel at such mighty workings of grace! Yes, dear families, although Christian life has its demands, God’s help, and grace are unfailing, whatever the circumstances may be that often require of you a certain heroism. By the mere fact of your Christian life and your efforts, you give proof that this life is still possible today, and that those who abandon God’s commandments to seek other ways that cater to the modern world are defeatists who have lost the spirit of faith that ought to animate every Christian.

The Catholic school

This life of faith needs to be protected, and in order to develop, it needs the Catholic school. This has always been a major concern of the Church, so much so that she makes it a serious obligation for parents to watch over the Catholic education of their children, and even today threatens with a sanction those who fail in their duty! ^[3]

This is a serious, very specific concern: where nowadays are we to find authentically Catholic schools where the teaching of the Faith truly imbues all the subjects that are taught? Where do we find institutions that prepare future fathers and mothers for the battles that must be fought in this world in order to conquer Heaven?

This is why one of our major efforts concerns schools. Throughout the world we dedicate to them most of our resources, both human and material. And in fact a hundred or so schools of different sizes are forming thousand of staunch Christians for tomorrow.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius

Although family and school provide indispensable protection for young people who are being educated, what can be done to support those who leave their parents’ home and go out into the world? We are greatly concerned about the perseverance of these young adults on the path of good and virtue, keeping their souls in a state of grace in the midst of such a perverted world. And so we can find no stronger antidote than the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which we most assuredly consider as one of the greatest treasures and means of sanctification that has been placed in our hands─just after the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Holy Rosary. The Exercises were truly made for our times and are capable of providing the courage, strength and heroism necessary today for all souls of good will. This is why we insistently invite you not to neglect this means that has been placed at your disposal. Without a doubt, we consider the Spiritual Exercises as one of the spearheads of the Society, and the cause of that genuine miracle of grace which Christian life is today.

The priest and the Mass

But the supernatural life would not be possible without the priest, the privileged instrument who is willed and chosen by God to spread that life in the Mystical Body, particularly through the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The close bond that should unite the priest and the Mass is the testament that Archbishop Lefebvre left us. For the Mass is the source of all sanctification, and the priest, before all others, must drink deeply from that source so as then to make the souls entrusted to him benefit from it: “For them do I sanctify myself,” Our Lord said, “that they also may be sanctified in truth.” (Jn 17:19)

This mystery is at the heart of our seminaries. We jealously watch over it, and we carefully provide everything that can serve to beautify the liturgical ceremonies. The beauty of external signs reflects the sublimity of the mysteries by which our Redemption is wrought. Thus these ceremonies, which are grandiose and intimate at the same time, are like a prelude to Heaven.

The Mass is the joy and daily privilege of our approximately 200 seminarians, as well as the 40 or so pre-seminarians in our six seminaries on four continents. In the United States their growing number obliges us to build a new seminary, in Virginia. It should have a roof over it by next spring.

Moreover many churches are being built almost everywhere in the world, which shows the dynamism of the Faith. Yes, indeed, faith can move mountains! I firmly believe that only faith can explain this phenomenon, which surpasses human abilities. Thanks to God, your constant generosity and your ardent zeal make such achievements possible. Please accept our deepest thanks. Be assured of the grateful prayers of the seminarians, the priests, the brothers and sisters religious who each day ask God to reward your good works a hundredfold.

May Our Lady keep you in charity and peace, my dear friends, and may her Immaculate Heart lead you all to eternal happiness.

On the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady, November 21, 2014

+ Bernard Fellay

1. Le Sel de la Terre, Flammarion 1997, p. 16.
2. Ibid. p. 214.
3. Cf. Code de 1917, canon 2319, § 2-4 ; Code de 1983, canon 1366.

The Superior General Bishop Fellay explains the double problem behind the canonizations of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II due to take place on April 27th.

Dear friends and benefactors,

If on April 27th John XXIII and John Paul II are canonized, the act will present a double problem to the Catholic conscience. Firstly, the problem of the canonization itself: how can it be possible to offer to the whole Church as an example of sanctity the instigator of Vatican Council II and the Pope of Assisi and human rights?

But there is also the deeper problem of what will appear to be an unprecedented recognition of catholicity: how is it possible to put the Church’s stamp of approval and sanctity on the teachings of such a Council, which inspired all of Karol Wojtyla’s action and whose rotten fruits are the indisputable indication of the Church’s self-destruction? This second problem offers the solution: the errors contained in the documents of Vatican Council II and in the reforms that followed, especially in the liturgical reform, could not possibly be the work of the Holy Ghost, who is at once the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Holiness.

That is why it seems necessary to us to recall the principal errors and the fundamental reasons for which we cannot subscribe to the novelties of the Council and of the reforms that came of it, any more than to these canonizations that hope to “canonize” Vatican II.

For this reason, as we vigorously protest these canonizations, we wish to denounce the undertaking that has denatured the Church since Vatican Council II. Here are its principal elements.

I. The Council

Whereas the Council was prepared itself to be a shining light in today’s world (if those pre-conciliar documents in which we find a solemn profession of safe doctrine with regard to today’s problems, had been accepted), we can and we must unfortunately state that, in a more or less general way, when the Council has introduced innovations, it has unsettled the certainty of truths taught by the authentic Magisterium of the Church as unquestionably belonging to the treasure of Tradition. […] On all these fundamental points the traditional doctrine was clear and unanimously taught in Catholic universities. Now numerous texts of the Council on these truths will henceforward permit doubt to be cast upon them. […] Thus driven to this by the facts, we are forced to conclude that the Council has encouraged, in an inconceivable manner, the spreading of Liberal errors." ^[1]

II. An ecumenical conception of the Church

The expression “subsistit in” (Lumen gentium, 8) means that the Church of Christ has in the separate Christian communities a presence and an action that are distinct from the Church of Christ’s subsistence in the Catholic Church. Taken in this sense, the expression denies the strict necessity of identifying the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church, which had always been taught, especially by Pius XII, both in Mystici corporis ^[2] and Humani generis. ^[3] The Church of Christ is present and active as such, that is, as the unique ark of salvation, only where the Vicar of Christ is present. The Mystical Body of which he is the visible head is strictly identical to the Roman Catholic Church.

The same declaration (LG, 8) also recognizes the presence of “salvific elements” in non-Catholic Christian communities. The decree on ecumenism goes even further, adding that “the Spirit of Christ does not refrain from using these churches and communities as means of salvation, which derive their efficacy from the fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church.” (UR, 3)

Such statements are irreconcilable with the dogma “No salvation outside of the Church,” which was reaffirmed by a Letter of the Holy Office on August 8, 1949. A separated community cannot cooperate with the action of God, since its separation is a resistance to the Holy Ghost. The truths and the sacraments that it may maintain can have good effects only in opposition to the erroneous principles on which these communities are founded and which separate them from the Mystical Body of the Catholic Church, whose visible head is the Vicar of Christ.

The declaration Nostra aetate says that non-Christian religions “often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men,” although such men must find in Christ “the fullness of religious life;” it also “regards with sincere respect those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and doctrines.” (NA, 2) Such a claim must be criticized just as the preceding one. When coupled with heresy or schism, the sacraments, the partial truths of the Faith, and Scripture are in a state of separation from the Mystical Body. That is why, even though using such means, the sect as such cannot be a mediator of grace or contribute towards salvation, for it is deprived of supernatural grace. The same must be said for the ways of thinking, living, and acting that are found in non-Christian religions.

These texts of the Council already favor the latitudinarian conception of the Church condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium animos, as well as the religious indifferentism that was also condemned by all the Popes from Pius IX to Pius XII.^[4] All the initiatives inspired by ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue, the most visible example being the Assisi meeting in 1986, are only the practical application, “the visible illustration, the concrete lesson, a catechesis that can be understood by all” (John Paul II) of these conciliar teachings. But they also express the indifferentism denounced by Pius XI, when he reproved the hope

that it would one day be possible to lead the peoples without difficulty, in spite of their religious differences, to a brotherly agreement on the profession of certain doctrines considered as a common basis of the spiritual life. […]

Joining in with the partisans and propagators of such doctrines means turning completely away from the divinely revealed religion. ^[5]

III. A collegial and democratic conception of the Church

1. After having shaken the Church’s unity of Faith, the texts of the Council also disturbed the Church’s unity of government and hierarchical structure. The expression “subjectum quoque” (LG, 22) means that the college of bishops united to the Pope as to their head is also, besides the Pope alone, the habitual and permanent subject of the supreme and universal power of jurisdiction in the Church. This is an open door to a decrease in the Sovereign Pontiff’s power, or even to its being challenged, at the risk of endangering the unity of the Church.

This idea of a permanent double subject holding primacy is in fact contrary to the Church’s teaching and practice, especially to the constitution Pastor aeternus of Vatican I (DS 3055) and Leo XIII’s encyclical Satis cognitum. Only the pope holds in a habitual and constant manner the supreme power, which he communicates only in special circumstances to councils, when so doing appears opportune to him.

2. The expression “common priesthood” proper to all baptized souls, distinct from the “ministerial priesthood,” (LG, 10) does not explain that only the latter can be taken in the true and proper sense of the word, while the former can be taken in a mystical and spiritual sense only.

This distinction was clearly stated by Pius XII in his speech on November 2, 1954. It is absent from the texts of the Council and opens the door to a democratic orientation of the Church, condemned by Pius VI in the bull Auctorem fidei (DS 2106 [Denzinger]). This tendency of having the people participate in the exercise of power is seen also in the multiplication of all sorts of organizations, in conformity with the new canon law (canon 129 §2). It loses sight of the distinction between the clergy and the laity, a distinction which is of divine right.

IV. False natural human rights

The declaration Dignitatis humanae makes the false claim that men have a natural right in religious matters. Until now the Tradition of the Church unanimously recognized that non-Catholics have the natural right not to be forced by the civil power to adhere (by intention in the internal forum and by practice in the external forum) to the one true religion. It also authorized, at least in some circumstances, a certain tolerance for the exercise of false religions in the public external forum. Vatican II recognized as the natural right of every man not to be prevented by the civil authorities from practicing a false religion in the external public forum. The Council claimed that this natural right of freedom from constraint by the civil authorities was also a civil right. The only laws limiting this right would pertain to the purely civil order of secular society. Thus the Council obliged civil governments no longer to discriminate for religious motives and to establish a juridical equality between the true and false religions.

This new social doctrine is opposed to the teachings of Gregory XVI in Mirari vos and of Pius IX in Quanta cura. It is based on a false conception of human dignity as something purely ontological, and not moral. Consequently, the constitution Gaudium et spes teaches the principle of the temporal domain’s autonomy (GS, 36), i.e., the denial of the social kingship of Christ that was taught by Pius XI in Quas primas, and it opens the door to temporal society’s independence from the commandments of God.

V. The Protestantization of the Mass

The new rite of the Mass, “represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXIII of the Council of Trent.” ^[6] By its omissions and equivocations, the new rite of Paul VI attenuates the identification of the Mass with the sacrifice of the Cross to such an extent that the Mass seems much more a simple memorial than a sacrifice. This reformed rite also obscures the role of the priest, putting the accent on the action of the community of the faithful. It gravely diminishes the expression of the propitiatory end of the sacrifice of the Mass, which is expiation and reparation for sin.

These defects forbid us to consider this new rite as legitimate. On January 11th and 12th of 1979, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asked Archbishop Lefebvre the following question:

Do you maintain that a faithful Catholic can think and claim that a sacramental rite, particularly that of the Mass approved and promulgated by the Sovereign Pontiff, can be inconsistent with the Catholic Faith, or favens haeresim?”

He answered:

This rite does not in itself profess the Catholic Faith as clearly as the old Ordo missae, and therefore it can favor heresy. But I do not know to whom it should be attributed or whether the Pope is responsible. What is unbelievable is that a Protestant-leaning, and therefore favens haeresim, Ordo missae can have been issused by the Roman Curia.” ^[7]

These grave defects forbid us from considering this new rite as legitimate, from celebrating it, and from advising anyone to assist at it or participate positively in it.

VI. The New Code, expression of the Conciliar novelties

According to the very words of John Paul II, the new Code of Canon Law of 1983 represents “a great effort to translate into canonical language” ^[8] the teachings of Vatican Council II, including — and especially — the seriously faulty points we have already mentioned. “Among the elements which characterize the true and genuine image of the Church,” explained John Paul II:

we should emphasize especially the following: the doctrine which considers the Church as the People of God, and hierarchical authority as a service; the doctrine which considers the Church as a communion and which, therefore, determines the relations which should exist between the particular churches and the universal Church, and between collegiality and the primacy; the doctrine which teaches that all the members of the People of God, each in his proper way, participate in the threefold office of Christ: the priestly, prophetic and royal offices. To this teaching is attached the one concerning the duties and rights of the faithful, and particularly of the laity; and finally, the Church’s commitment to ecumenism.”

This new code of law underscores a false ecumenism of the Church by allowing the reception of the sacraments of penance, holy eucharist, and extreme unction from non-Catholic ministers (canon 844), and by encouraging ecumenical hospitality in authorizing Catholic ministers to administer the sacrament of holy eucharist to non-Catholics. Canon 336 repeats and accentuates the idea of a double permanent subject of the primacy. Canons 204 §1, 208, 212 §3, 216 and 225 stress the equivocal notion of the common priesthood and the correlative idea of the People of God. Lastly, there is also a false definition of marriage in this new Code, in which the precise object of the matrimonial contract and the hierarchy of its ends no longer appear. Far from encouraging the Catholic family, these novelties open a breach in matrimonial morality.

VII. A new conception of the Magisterium

1. The constitution Dei Verbum states imprecisely that,

“With the passing of time, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth, until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her. (DV, 8)”

This lack of precision opens the door to the error of a living and evolving Tradition, which was condemned by St. Pius X in the encyclical Pascendi and the Anti-modernist Oath. For the Church can “move toward the fullness of divine truth” only in that it gives a more precise expression of the truth, not in the sense that the dogmas proposed by the Church could receive “a different meaning from that which the Church meant and still means.” (Dei Filius, DS 3043)

2. Benedict XVI’s speech on December 22, 2005 attempted to justify this evolutionary conception of a living Tradition and thus to clear the Council of responsibility for any rupture with the Tradition of the Church. Vatican II wished “to redefine the relationship between the faith of the Church and certain essential elements of modern thought.” And in order to do so, its teachings

…reviewed or even corrected certain historical decisions. But in this apparent discontinuity the Council actually preserved and deepened the inmost nature and true identity [of the Church],”

which is that

of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us; it is a subject that increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”

This explanation supposes that the unity of the Church’s Faith reposes not upon an object (for there is a discontinuity, at least on the points we have underlined, between Vatican II and Tradition), but upon a subject, in the sense that the act of faith is defined much more by the believers than by the truths believed. This act becomes principally the expression of a collective conscience, and no longer a firm adherence of the intelligence to the truths revealed by God.

Yet Pius XII taught in Humani generis that the Magisterium is the “immediate and universal rule of truth in matters of faith and morals,” the objective truth of the deposit of the Faith, whose sources are Holy Scripture and Tradition. And the constitution Dei Filius of Vatican Council I also taught that this deposit is not “a philosophical invention that can be completed by human ingenuity,” but that it was “confided to the Spouse of Christ that she might guard it holily and declare it infallibly.” (DS 3020)

3. Pope John XXIII’s opening speech (October 11, 1962) and his allocution to the Sacred College on December 23, 1962, obviously attribute to Vatican Council II a very particular, so-called “pastoral” intention, by which the Magisterium is supposed to “express the Faith of the Church according to the modalities of investigation and literary formulation of modern thought.” Paul VI’s encyclical Ecclesiam suam (August 6, 1964) repeats this idea, saying that the Magisterium of Vatican II aims

to inject the Christian message into the stream of modern thought, and into the language, culture, customs, and sensibilities of man as he lives in the spiritual turmoil of this modern world (#68);”

in particular, in announcing the truth, there will be no

thoughts of external coercion. Instead we will use the legitimate means of human friendliness, interior persuasion, and ordinary conversation. We will offer the gift of salvation while respecting the personal and civic rights of the individual. (#75)”

The pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes maintained that

the Council, first of all, wishes to assess in this light those values which are most highly prized today and to relate them to their divine source. Insofar as they stem from endowments conferred by God on man, these values are exceedingly good. Yet they are often wrenched from their rightful function by the taint in man’s heart, and hence stand in need of purification. (GS, 11)”

From these values of the world came the three great novelties introduced by Vatican II: religious liberty, collegiality, and ecumenism.

4. So on the authority of this immediate and universal rule of the revealed truth that is the constant Magisterium, we contest the new doctrines that are contrary to it. That is exactly the criterion given by St. Vincent of Lerins:

The criterion of truth and, moreover, of the infallibility of the Pope and of the Church, is its conformity to Tradition and to the deposit of the Faith. Quod ubique, quod semper — That which is taught everywhere and always, in space and in time.” ^[9]

But Vatican II’s doctrine on ecumenism, collegiality and religious liberty is a new doctrine, contrary to Tradition and to the public law of the Church, which is itself based on divinely revealed principles, which are thus immutable. We conclude from this that the Council, having wished to propose these novelties, is deprived of a constraining magisterial authority, to the very extent that it proposes them. Its authority is already doubtful because of the new so-called “pastoral” intention mentioned in the preceding paragraph. It seems moreover certainly null and void in the matter of the various points on which it contradicts Tradition (see above, I to VII, 1).

Faithful to the constant teaching of the Church, along with our venerated founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and following his example, we have never ceased to denounce the Council and its major texts as one of the principal causes of the crisis shaking the Church from top to bottom, penetrating into her “very entrails” and her “veins,” to use the forceful language of St. Pius X.

The more we study the matter, the more we realize just how accurate was the analysis Archbishop Lefebvre presented with an extraordinary clarity in the Aula on September 9, 1965. Allow us to use his own words concerning the conciliar constitution on “The Church in Today’s World” (Gaudium et spes):

This pastoral Constitution is not pastoral, nor does it emanate from the Catholic Church. It does not feed Christian men with the Apostolic truth of the Gospels and, moreover, the Church has never spoken in this manner. We cannot listen to this voice, because it is not the voice of the Bride of Christ. This voice is not that of the Spirit of Christ. The voice of Christ, our Shepherd, we know. This voice we do not know. The clothing is that of the sheep. The voice is not the voice of the Shepherd, but perhaps that of the wolf.” ^[10]

The fifty years that have gone by since speech have only confirmed his analysis.

Already on December 7, 1968, only three years after the closing of the Council, Paul VI had to admit that: “The Church is in a time of anxiety, of self-criticism; one might even say of self-destruction.” And on June 29, 1972, he recognized that “By some crack the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God; it is doubt, incertitude, problems, anxiety, confrontation.” He realized it, but did nothing. He continued the conciliar reform whose promoters had not hesitated to compare it to the French Revolution of 1789, or the Russian Revolution of 1917.

We cannot remain passive; we cannot be accomplices to this self-destruction. That is why we invite you, dear friends and benefactors, to remain firm in the Faith, not to let yourselves be troubled by these novelties of one of the most terrible crises that the Holy Church must undergo.

May the Passion of Our Lord and His Resurrection comfort us in our fidelity, in our unshakeable love for God, for Our Lord, true God and true Man, for His Holy Church, divine and human, in an unfailing hope… in Te speravi non confundar in aeternum. May the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary deign to protect us all, and may her triumph soon come!

Winona, Palm Sunday, April 13, 2014

+ Bernard Fellay

1. Archbishop Lefebvre, Reply to Cardinal Ottaviani on December 20, 1966, in I Accuse the Council, Angelus Press, Kansas City, 1982, p. 82-83.
2. Pius XII, encyclical Mystici corporis, June 29, 1943, Enseignements pontificaux, L’Eglise, Solesmes-Desclée, 1960, vol. 2, #1014. [Editor’s translation.]
3. Pius XII, encyclical Humani generis, August 12, 1950, Enseignements pontificaux, L’Eglise, Solesmes-Desclée, 1960, vol. 2, #1282. [Editor’s translation.]
4. On indifferentism and latitudinarianism, see the following propositions (nos. 15 – 18) condemned in chapter 3 of the Syllabus: “Every man is free to embrace and profess the religion that he esteems true in the light of reason. Men can find the path to eternal salvation and obtain this eternal salvation in the practice of any religion. We must at least be confident of the eternal salvation of all those who do not live within the true Church of Christ. Protestantism is none other than a different form of the same true Christian religion, a form in which one can be just as pleasing to God as in the Catholic Church.”
5. Pius XI, encyclical Mortalium animos, January 6, 1928, Enseignements pontificaux, L’Eglise, vol. 1, #855. [Editor’s translation.]
6. Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, Letter to His Holiness Pope Paul VI in A Brief Critical Study of the Novus Ordo Missae, September 25, 1969.
7. Archbishop Lefebvre and the Holy Office”, Itineraires #233, May 1979, p. 146-147.
8. John Paul II, Apostolic Constitution Sacrae disciplinae leges, January 25, 1983, La Documentation Catholique, #1847, p. 245-246. [Editor’s translation.]
9. Archbishop Lefebvre, « Conclusion » in I Accuse the Council, Angelus Press, Kansas City, 1982, p. 85.
10. Archbishop Lefebvre, I Accuse the Council, Angelus Press, Kansas City, 1982, p. 68.