January 1994 Print

This month's excerpt from the book Vatican Encounter: Conversations with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, by José Hanu treats the crisis of vocations and the crisis among the bishops who are "no longer free." 

Letter of a Dissatisfied Catholic

José Hanu: But Excellency, some members of the clergy often have a certain air which does not facilitate the task of the bishops. Some time ago, a friend brought me an issue of La Croix du Nord Dimanche, which is, presumably, the voice of the Archbishop of Lille. So many readers had apparently written to that paper with complaints that it had been necessary to publish at least one letter. It probably came from a good father of a family, who wrote:

“I am not a pimp nor a prostitute; I am just a Christian who is also rich. Therefore, I am a hypocrite. Does that give me the right to express myself in the columns of your organ?

“I would like to tell you what many see in our parishes.

“If you are a priest and if you wish to see your bishop in order to talk to him, a secretary will tell you that the bishop is very busy and one must not clutter up his appointments unnecessarily.

“But if you urgently want to be laicized, you will be immediately received by the bishop, who will say: ‘Fine, fine, my son.’

“If you are a pastor, ridicule devotions to the Blessed Virgin; refuse, with a wink, to bless a rosary; tell the young that they have to liberate themselves and that Mass attendance is no longer obligatory; preach a neo-exegetic theology about the resurrection of Our Savior and you are a participant in the pious work of stripping away from the Church what has been her shame throughout the centuries.

“But if you are a pastor who visits the sick, are in the confessional every day, have the rosary said during the month of Mary and sometimes celebrate a Latin Mass, you ‘smother the spirit of Vatican II.’

“If you are married, if you desire a private baptism, if you send your children to Catholic schools, if you want them to make their profession of faith with their colleagues and not in the parish, you unleash a severe homily. It will liken you to those Christians who have extinguished within themselves the ardor of the Spirit and who hold back the advance of the Church and by this give their blessings to the Marxist revolt.

“Your offer to serve as a lector at Sunday Mass will be refused; the epistle will be read by a young divorcee who has remarried and whose marital happiness gives a glow to the parish. Besides, she is very ‘receptive’ toward Peter (the pastor).

“If you are 16 years old, if your school work and your scouting activities absorb you and those of class delegate prevent you from going to teach the alphabet to the illiterate, you are already carrying ‘all the marks of capitalism.’

“But if at the same age high school junior—you have a liaison which ‘lends a sense to your life,’ even if your parents reproach you for it, and if you refuse to pray, in your disappointment, ‘that spiritual cancer that is the Sunday Mass,’ the vicar will give you his office every Saturday afternoon so that you can make points with your girl friend. He, himself, during that time, will go to a nearby coffee house and, with three militant Communists, will prepare his Sunday sermon.

“If you are hesitant about the kiss of peace, if you do not like the cocktail get-togethers after Mass, where the pastor, in light trousers and a red sweater, pats the bottoms of young girls whom one never sees at Mass, you are increasing the ‘ranks of those Pharisees at whom Our Lord has turned up his nose.’

“If you die as a lecturer of the Confraternity of St. Vincent de Paul after 40 years of devout attachment, the pastor will refuse to mention this devotion during the funeral sermon, because he considers it a sop which eases the conscience but, in pretending to aid the Church of the poor, hides social injustice.

“But if you are divorced, having left your spouse with two children, and are running around with a divorcee who has three, a priest will exalt your ‘family and Christian virtues.’

“If you ask the Church for a pop concert which will reveal to the young people ‘the true face of the Church,’ you will get permission with good will. The confessionals will even serve as alcoves.

“If you want to celebrate your 50th wedding anniversary with a nephew who is a priest, surrounded by your numerous and outstanding Christian family, and if you ask for this celebration to take place in your own parish, between two Masses, you risk being refused. ‘You must understand, sir, that we are to testify that this is the Church of the people of God, not a gathering of clans.’

“I therefore, demand of myself: Has Christ ever let his apostles and disciples down? Has He ever ridiculed and scoffed them in order to entertain prostitutes?

“I can put at your disposal all the proof for what I said above, with dates, addresses, witnesses.”

We may wonder what made a very “conciliar” newspaper publish such a letter, which is particularly fierce and defiant. The same issue of La Croix du Nord, February 15, 1975, also published a very long reply, which meant to combine “humor and compassion.” We read:

“That woman who was a remarried divorcee and, as you say, too willing to read the scriptures in public and to visit the ministers in private, reminds me of another, who was married five times and had the sixth husband on trial, and who came to draw water at Jacob’s well; we have heard of her from Jesus Christ by way of St. John.”

At any rate, that the letter and its reply were published at all is symptomatic of the uneasiness that is admitted even by the bishops, an uneasiness which has been a long time coming. It takes a few years of excess before the faithful start to complain.

That is why a participant of the press conference, called by the Bishop of Lille on the eve of your Mass to warn his flock against you, was able to say:

“Your position, Excellency, is quite understandable, but you have to admit that priests in your diocese have committed many errors. But you have never found it useful to call a press conference, as you do now, to point out their errors. Had you done so, maybe the actions of Archbishop Lefebvre, which concern us so much today, may not have found the vindication which they are finding now.”

On that day, the Bishop of Lille, who, among others, accused you and your followers of “intoxication,” was tempted to employ a ruse. He said he had received a very imposing amount of mail. That was true. But by singling out one that was hostile to you, he gave the impression that all of them were in the same vein. In fact, a great many faithful had taken advantage of your coming to Lille in order to write him, firmly but with respect, what they thought about certain events in today’s Church.

Captive Bishops

Take note, then, the Bishop of Lille is greatly respected by the faithful, who appreciate his humility, his radiant goodness, his extraordinary humanity. Even those who criticize him nevertheless sympathize with him. They certainly do not wish to be in his place. They find that, given the circumstances, he is doing his best.

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: It is true, many bishops complain that they are no longer free, that they feel chained down. Yet, if this prevents them from persecuting progressives, they certainly are not prisoners when it comes to finding fault with true priests and true Catholics. Some time ago—that is, until the Vatican Council—a bishop was master of his diocese. He was the direct representative of the Holy Father and thus had the complete confidence of the successor of St. Peter. He could, therefore, act himself or for his superior, according to the needs of Jesus Christ, depending on the territory in which he found himself. It is a pity that the Council introduced that new and pernicious idea of collective government. No bishop can henceforth make a decision by himself. He has to refer to the Conference of Bishops of his country.

This system, of which the skillful strategists can easily grab hold, given the half-heartedness of a great many bishops, favors demagoguery. It hurts and checkmates even the strongest characters and the most enlightened ones, who are already experiencing difficulties in their own dioceses.

You have to recognize all the consequences of the new ideas of church government which originated in and developed directly from Vatican II.

Many of the young curates do not see what the pastors, archpriests and bishops are really good for. They, therefore, undermine their authority. They apply pressure, so much so that these men sometimes really feel like prisoners. They prevent certain bishops from expressing themselves as they want to, and they carry the weaker ones with them on their way to dereliction. Now, this perversion has an imperceptible, but very concrete, effect on the whole of the Church. Acting like political cells, groups of ecclesiastics have banded together to pack the commissions and assemblies of bishops. The new bishops, therefore, have made their choices from their ranks.

As far as Econe is concerned, the result is distressing. I have reason to believe that several dozen bishops in Western Europe look favorably upon our seminary. But since they represent the minority and are tied to the majority, none of them can say anything. They try hard to let me know in all sorts of ways, by their encouragement and their prayers, indicating at the same time that they cannot do a thing to help me.

José Hanu: These lines of communication are unreliable. You may be mistaken about the meaning of the messages that reach you.

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: Sometimes I ask myself. . . . But when the concerned parents of one of my seminarians went to a bishop who has publicly condemned me to ask him to which other seminary they should send their son, he replied: “Tell him to stay at Econe, for only there will he get an education worth its name!” I cannot be mistaken about the meaning of that message! I regret that this bishop is obliged, at least for his public acts, to rely on the “collective conscience” rather than his own.

Priests “In Search”

The sorry condition of today’s bishops is demonstrated very clearly by the pitiful state of their seminaries, by their weak, if not nonexistent, recruitment for those seminaries, and for the type of teaching which goes on there. In this field, as in others, the Church has come to meet the world. But unfortunately, and this is very serious, its future is at stake.

There are two ways to analyze the crisis of the clergy. The proper way is this: One could have said with good reason that this crisis is simply a consequence of the ideas of Vatican II. Even at the time of Vatican II, however, priests were troubled by manifestations of pseudo-science, the dangerous attractions of the “consumer society,” and the false pretenses of liberalism and Marxism. Satan, who had ensnared many of them, so that they followed in the wrong way, made them demand more and more liberties. It was due to a lack of firmness on the part of the Church that it went so far and that priests prepared to claim even more in order to come to terms with the world.

Actually, they had a bad conscience. They knew well that the Church is not here to be a member of, but the head of the body. They expected, perhaps subconsciously, that the bishops assembled for Vatican II would redress the balance, would loudly proclaim the eternal truth, would let it be known that the Church would never buckle under, and would exhort the assembled flocks to follow their example.

In this way, they would have galvanized and organized the priests and thus regrouped the Catholic flocks around good and courageous pastors, and this in spite of what the demagogues might have said about it.

Some ecclesiastics, already corrupted, doubtless would have followed; but the Church would have moved away from them, showing that truth is eternal. At the same time, she would have given comfort to the priests and the faithful who were on the right path. Then the seminaries would have been filled again, for many young men in the world, let me stress this, are looking for purity and an ideal. They want to serve God. The vocations which present themselves at Econe, in spite of the serious questions stemming from the hostility of the Vatican, are an indication of this.

But bad shepherds have led the flocks into temptation, rather than away from it.

To flatter the new ideas of the world, one has been given to understand that the truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ is not the only one and, as the world has changed, the expression, the content, and even the nature of the faith should be changed. Thus, the door was open for disputes, interpretations, experiments, and doubt.

To express it differently, one has taken the compass away from the priests and faithful and then they started their search. They disputed, interpreted, experimented, only to lose themselves in the wilderness of doubt.

What can a priest do, who doubts and sees that the Church itself questions Herself, except abandon the priesthood?

This is the real tragedy of the Conciliar Church, the concrete sign of bankruptcy of hearts and souls. These desertions are becoming more frequent all the time and a matter of course. Some priests leave their ministry, their parish and their faithful with the attitude of an employee who has given an eight-day notice because of an impossible job situation. They explain over the radio and TV networks that they did not feel comfortable there, or they want to explain their cowardice in the name of “moral convenience.”

Have they abjured their vows of celibacy to marry? In order not to cause scandal and pain and to show publicly how little the Church cares about tradition, it turns out that their bishop agrees to be the godfather of their first-born!

Many consider themselves “charity cases.” They have betrayed the faithful, but they demand that these same faithful find a position “worthy” of them and their wives. Were they not a cadre, responsible for big businesses? (The big parishes often have a membership of 10,000 Catholics.) They need a gross income of 6,000-8,000 francs a month!

Can you imagine what demoralizing effect all this has on those saintly priests who have remained faithful to their vows of chastity and poverty and faithful toward their flock? What a scandal, even in the eyes of atheists!

We must tell you the story of a priest-worker who became the union spokesman for the far left in the shop where he was working. One day, he discovers love and announces that he is going to get married. Those militants, in general, don’t believe in God or the devil, but what do they do? They get the head of the workshop and they tell him: “Only a practicing and respected Catholic like you could make a comrade Priest understand that a priest simply does not do that!”

Even the atheists are very troubled by the delinquency of the Conciliar Church.

Unfortunately, the bishops, or in most cases their entourage, were not able to analyze the crisis of the priesthood in this fashion. They believed, and repeated it, that the massive desertion of priests was due to the fact that they had not been sufficiently in contact with the world, its appetites, its temptations and its truths. Instead of alleviating the crisis of the priesthood, they have only aggravated it.