Superior General's Letter to Friends And Benefactors
The Society of St. Pius X
Rickenbach,
February 7,1986
O God, the heathens are come into Thy inheritance,
they have defiled Thy holy temple, they have made
Jerusalem as a place to keep fruit. (Ps. 78, v. 1)
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
The past few weeks and months have been dramatic for the Church. The Extraordinary Synod which took place in Rome from the 25th of November to the 8th of December, confirmed Vatican II with all its errors and ambiguities, despite the disaster which these have brought about over the last twenty years. Here is what can be read in the final overall report: "Unanimously and also joyfully we have verified that the Second Vatican Council is a legitimate and valid expression and an interpretation of the deposit of faith such as it is contained in Holy Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church." A further quote: "Unanimously we have celebrated the Second Vatican Council as a grace of God and a gift of the Holy Spirit: Numerous spiritual fruits spread from it throughout the Universal Church and through the particular Churches, as too for the men of our time."
And on the 25th of January, the Pope, in a sermon given in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, invited all religions to Assisi to pray together for peace.
It suffices to cast a glance over the events of the last three years to see just how close we are now approaching to the establishing of a great worldwide religion presided over by the Pope, having for its one and only dogma the liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution and the Masonic lodges.
- The new Canon law promulgated by the Pope himself on the 25th of January, 1983 abolishes the clerical state. Henceforth the Church is "The People of God" in a Protestant and egalitarian sense, without subordinates and without superiors. The hierarchy is no more than "a service" according to the explanation of Pope John Paul II in his Constitution, the Church is to be defined as "a communion" and by its "concern for ecumenism." Canon 844 explicitly allows intercommunion, Canon 204 confuses the priesthood of the priest with the spiritual priesthood of the laity, etc. . .
- On Sunday, December 11, 1983, the Pope preached in a Protestant church of Rome after having more or less invited himself to do so.
- The Bishop of Sherbrooke, Quebec (Canada), has repeatedly invited Protestants into his Cathedral for their false ordinations. He himself took part in one of these ceremonies and received "communion" from the hand of a newly ordained female minister.
- On February 19, 1984, a new concordat was agreed upon between the Holy See and Italy: henceforth, applying the Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty, Italy is no longer a Catholic State but a lay State; that is to say, an atheistic State; according to the same document, Rome is no longer the Holy City!
- On May 10, 1984, the Pope visited a Buddhist temple in Thailand; he took off his shoes and sat down at the feet of a Buddhist bonze, who himself was sitting in front of the altar on which there was a large statue of the Buddha.
- In their pastoral letter of September 16, 1984, the Swiss bishops came to the important conclusion that "the desire to receive together the same bread at the same table, that is to say, the desire that the Mass and the Supper be no longer separately celebrated, comes from God. However," add the bishops, "careful thought must be given to the timing of the realization of this desire." Moreover, they supported a project of law undertaking to change the marriage law and destroying, no more nor less, marriage and the family. Well, thanks to their support, this new marriage law was accepted in Switzerland on September 22,1985. Once more, the bishops are proving to be the grave diggers not only of the supernatural order but even of the natural order established by God.
- The French episcopate continues to impose the heretical catechism Pierres Vivantes (Living Stones) for religious instruction, to the great detriment of the children. "But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Mt 18, 6).
- A joint statement by Cardinal Hoffner and Mr. Lohse, president of the German Evangelical Church Council, signed on January 1, 1985, grants to the partners in a mixed marriage the freedom to marry, to have their children baptised and to raise them in either church. Now the Canon Law of 1917, canon 2319, punishes each of these three crimes with a special excommunication.
- In his book The Ratzinger Report (1985), Cardinal Ratzinger claims that in extreme cases the other religions are "extraordinary" means of salvation. No, your Eminence: Jesus Christ and He alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; nobody comes to the Father but by Him!
- In a note on how to present Judaism in the catechism, published on June 24, 1985, Cardinal Willebrands claims that, like the Jews, we are waiting for the Messiah! And he refers to the Pope's own words, who stated in front of the Jews on November 17, 1980 in Mainz, that the Old Testament is not yet abrogated.
- During the summer of 1985, the Vatican sent an official delegate to the laying of the foundation stone of a huge new mosque in Rome.
- In August of 1985, the Holy Father proclaimed to young Muslims in Casablanca that we Christians adore the same God as they do — as though there is a Most Holy Trinity and an Incarnation of God in Islam! A few days later, he went with some animist priests and their escorts to the outskirts of Lohomay, to a cult in the "holy forest" where "the force of water" and the divinized souls of the ancestors are invoked. And at least two times at Kara and Togoville — at Kara just before celebrating Holy Mass! — he poured water and cast corn flour into a dried-out cucumber skin, a gesture professing a false religious belief.
- A Catholic-Evangelical Commission, set up to close the visit of the Pope to Germany in 1980, declared in its final report published on January 24, 1986, that there are no more divergencies between the two confessions as far as justification, the Eucharist, the priesthood and the papacy are concerned. The attentive observer does not fail to notice that here is being openly proclaimed the unified ecumenical religion.
- And now on January 25, 1986, he called upon all religions to gather together in Assisi to pray for peace. According to the newspapers, the date of October 24, the anniversary of the founding of the UN, might be chosen. "What God are people going to pray to, who explicitly deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ? Truly the devil came up with that idea," commented Archbishop Lefebvre.
- Lastly, in the course of his journey to India, the Pope spoke only of dialogue and mutual comprehension between religions in order that they promote together human brotherhood and social well-being.
Do you think, my dear friends, that to lay out these things gives us joy? It fills us with grief to write them down, our sole concern being the welfare of Mother Church. Similarly, we are far from wishing to judge the Pope — we gladly leave this delicate task to a later judgment of the Church. We do not belong to those who hastily declare that the Papal See is vacant, but we let ourselves be led by the history of the Church. Pope Honorius was anathematized by the Sixth Ecumenical Council because of his false teachings, but no one has ever claimed that Honorius was not Pope. However, it is impossible for us to close our eyes in front of the facts.
And the secret instructions of the Carbonari like their correspondence around the year 1820 are also facts! This is what we read: "The work which we are going to undertake . . . may last several years, perhaps a century . . . what we must strive and wait for, like the Jews wait for the Messiah, is a Pope according to our needs. . . . With that, in order to smash the rock on which God built His Church . . . we have the little finger of Peter's successor involved in the plot. . . . To be sure of a Pope of the kind we wish, we must first of all make him a generation worthy of the reign that we are dreaming of for him. . . . Get yourself the reputation of being a good Catholic. . . . This reputation will gain easy access for our doctrines amongst the young clergy. . . . In a few years the young clergy will in the normal course of things have taken over all functions . . . it will be called upon to choose the Pontiff . . . and this Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will necessarily be imbued with the humanitarian principles . . . that we are going to put into circulation."
"We must little by little, very gradually, arrive at the triumph of the revolutionary idea through a Pope. . . . This project has always seemed to me a superhuman calculation."
Moreover, we read in the Little Exorcism of Leo XIII, in its original version: "Now most cunning enemies have filled with bitterness the Church, Bride of the Immaculate Lamb, have made her drink absinth, have laid their wicked hands upon everything beautiful within her. Where the seat of blessed Peter and the throne of Truth was established like a light for the nations, there they have set up the abominable throne of their wickedness, so that having once struck the pastor they might scatter the flock."
What are we to do, faced by this situation which from a human point of view is desperate? Pray, work and suffer with the Church. We are doing what lies within our power, which means first and foremost, in accordance with our statutes, forming holy priests for the Church. The ordinations of la Reja (Argentina), on the first Sunday of Advent, December 1, attended also by Mgr. de Castro Mayer and four of his priests, raised the total new priests ordained for the Society in 1985 to a figure of thirty. That is many and at the same time it is few if one thinks of the urgent appeals for help coming from the whole world.
Just a few weeks ago we were able to open a new house in Gabon. Soon the first two priests of ours will be installed in the priory which we have just acquired with a church in Santiago, Chile. We are envisaging further new foundations in the course of this year: in India, New Zealand, and probably in Brazil. Our outward and physical buildings are no other than signs of the inward and spiritual building up of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, His Church. That is why we shall be opening a seminary in France in the autumn, because Ecône is no longer large enough to receive the numerous vocations coming there.
However, our Sisters, too — our faithful collaborators in our apostolate in retreat houses and priories — are envisaging new foundations. They will take over the Novitiate already existing next to our Argentinean Seminary at la Reja, and in the month of July, they will found an English Novitiate at Armada, Michigan (United States). A German-speaking Novitiate should open in 1987.
Dear friends and benefactors! Be firm in the Faith, maintain your Christian hope, nourish your divine charity! Of holiness, and holiness alone, the world has need today: the holiness of priests and religious and nuns, holiness in the family and in marriage, holiness of youth and old age. "I shall give my children crosses," said the Blessed Virgin at Fatima, and she added, "I will give them numerous and heavy crosses." Undoubtedly, our task is to sow today in tribulations what others tomorrow will harvest in joys. Our present trials will come to an end. Sooner or later, progressive modernism will collapse like a house of cards. Let us start today preparing the future which belongs to Christ and His Most Holy Mother.
Do not let yourselves be taken in by false prophets, false apparitions and revelations, which are often a grave danger to the Faith, like the Pentecostal movement and the fabrications of the Charismatics. The old rosary, the true Mass, and the genuine Sacraments, these are the means given to us by God Himself to make our way to Heaven.
Of course, we are all the time counting upon the help of your charity, so as to be able to face the enormous expenses of each day. Strive to calm the sufferings of the Church bleeding through a thousand wounds, by a generous Lenten donation to the benefit of our various institutions. Almsgiving joined with fasting wipes out sins like water extinguishes fire.
We carry you all within our priestly heart. The charity of Christ makes us dwell day and night with you and your families gathered together to pray in our chapels and missions scattered throughout the world.
May Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, bless you and protect you.
Father Franz Schmidberger
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