Congratulations to "The Remnant"

Veritas prevalebit!

Your Excellency, Archbishop Lefebvre, Rt. Rev., Very Rev. and Reverend Fathers, dear Sister, and Friends:

I believe it is an understatement for me to say that the Church today is in desperate straits. I submit that the abysmal state of disorder and disarray in which the Church finds herself, with all semblance of authority and structure almost completely stripped from her, and with men, even supposed Catholics, even Bishops and high-ranking theologians, and even a few Cardinals, apparently trying to make one believe that white is black and black is white and good is evil and evil is good—in such a time, I say, it becomes exceedingly difficult for any of us who still try to adhere to the traditional teachings and truths of the Faith, not only to maintain these truths for ourselves but even to get a decent hearing from our own coreligionists. More often than not, those of us who still defend the ancient truths—even the truths taught us from our childhood by Holy Mother Church and by our own beloved fathers and mothers—are slandered and calumniated as "kooks," are dismissed out of hand as "divisive," "disobedient," or plain "trouble makers" who obstinately refuse to "up-date" and go along with the present scheme of things. Worse still, we must consider ourselves fortunate if, because of our fidelity to the Faith of our Fathers, we do not find ourselves threatened at once by the authorities with public censure or even "excommunication" from the Household of the Faith. Thus, our illustrious guest, Archbishop Lefebvre, a duly consecrated Successor of the Apostles, a recognized Prelate and Prince of the Church, a man whose distinguished career both before and after the Second Vatican Council requires no apology either by himself or by anyone else, finds himself suddenly all but disowned by many, if not most, of his ecclesial confreres—why?—what is his offense, his wrongdoing, his crime? Why is it that, for a man of his outstanding credentials as a true priest of God, as a canonically accredited Successor of the Apostles, such a man, though he is still free, for the moment, to travel about in the service of the Lord, cannot find—either here in the St. Paul Archdiocese, or in any diocese—even a single parish church that dares to bid him open welcome, a single chancery, a single priestly seminary that will permit him to tell his story, much less defend his reputation and honor against the ravenous wolves in the public media who have given him either the well-known "silent treatment" or, worse, have lied about him and pilloried his work to a point almost beyond recognition? Why? Why, moreover, though he has appealed his case to Rome and has requested from that quarter a formal hearing, an ecclesiastical trial, if you will—why has he been summarily refused, worse still, condemned before the world without trial? My friends, I only know part of the answers. In fact, that's one of the reasons that we all are here, hopefully to obtain at least a few more. But let me say this, perhaps as a more direct answer to the questions before us:

In just two years from now, it will be 40 years since I entered the Catholic press apostolate. Up until 1967, when I left The Wanderer, where I had served as Associate Editor and later as Editor for almost 30 years, I had the benefit of being personally tutored and trained by my good father, Joseph Matt, a Papal Knight who had been knighted by Pope Pius IX when I was only a boy often. My father was editor-publisher of both the German and English editions of The Wanderer for over 65 years, or until his retirement in 1965. On the basis of my close association with and journalistic apprenticeship under him, I can truthfully say that there was nobody—whether Bishop, or priest or layman—who had higher admiration and a more genuine regard for the office of the Pope and for solid Papal teaching than my father. He was a great scholar, conversant with half-dozen different languages, including Greek and Latin, and he was, moreover, exceptionally steeped in Church history and the classical Catholic tradition. I well remember from the days of my earliest youth, how he, in glowing terms, would hold forth on many occasions, both privately and publicly, about the great things that the modern popes in particular had wrought, and what extraordinary leaders they were not only in Church affairs but in their general diplomacy and state-craft vis-à-vis the world and human society. He used to single out for special attention and tribute the pontificates of such glorious popes as Pius V, Pius VI, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and so on, down the line. But the thing about men like my father which distinguished them from some, who, in those days as now, would make of the Popes, any Pope, almost a graven image or idol, all but divinizing them to the point where they can do no wrong, was his staunch conviction, based on his knowledge of history and on the perennial teaching of the Church itself, that even the Pope, after all, is a son of Adam, that he can and does sometimes sin therefore, that he sometimes can and does blunder in practical policy-making, in matters of Church administration and policy, that only in matters of clearly defined and established Faith and Morals, and with the whole of the Magisterial teaching tradition and office behind him only then is a Pope, any Pope, infallibly and divinely guided against error. With such basic understanding and Catholic conviction to go by, my good father—God rest him!—stood foursquare not only with and in valiant public defense of the overall program for reform envisaged by the modern Popes, but he was further motivated and inspired in his writings by his profound knowledge of such great historical Councils as the Council of Trent and Vatican I, both of which, far from being merely "pastoral" or even "ecumenical" in today's broader sense, had been expressly characterized as dogmatic or definitive Councils, with no real question from rank-and-file Catholics as to their infallible authority, their morally binding nature and character.

I tell you this, my friends, not by way of digression—which some of you may think it to be—but only in order to make a further point, which is this: My father has long gone to his eternal reward, and cannot, therefore, be here to speak for himself in this matter. Nor will I attempt in the circumstances to put words into his mouth or commit him to what I have to say here. But I am morally certain, on the basis of what I know of his solid thinking and character, that, if he were here today and standing in my shoes, he could not but applaud the clear-cut statement of principles made by Archbishop Lefebvre over a year ago, which statement was published in The Remnant of February 1975 and in which His Excellency said this:

We cleave with our whole heart and soul to Catholic Rome, guardian of the Catholic faith and of the traditions necessary for the upholding of that Faith; to Rome Eternal, mistress of wisdom and truth. On the other hand, we refuse as we have always refused, to follow the Rome of neo-modernist and neo-Protestant tendency so clearly manifested at the Second Vatican Council and in the reforms which have followed. All these reforms have in fact contributed and are still contributing to the demolition of the Church, the ruin of the Priesthood, the destruction of the Sacrifice and the Sacraments, the disappearance of the religious life, as well as to the emergence of naturalist and Teilhardian doctrine in universities, seminaries, the religious education of children—a teaching born of Liberalism and Protestantism, and condemned many times by the solemn Magisterium of the Church. No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can force us to abandon or diminish our Catholic faith, clearly expressed and professed by the Magisterium of the Church during nineteen centuries.

Archbishop Lefebvre went on at the time to quote in this connection the letter of St. Paul to the Galatians: "Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel to you other than that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema." Then he continued:

Is not this what the Holy Father is telling us again today? And if there should appear to be a certain contradiction between his words and his acts, as well as those of various departments of the Curia, then we choose what has always been taught and turn a deaf ear to destructive innovations. There can be no fundamental modification of the lex orandi (law of the liturgy) without producing a corresponding change in the lex credendi (the things that we must believe). The new Mass corresponds to the new catechism, the new Priesthood, the new seminaries, the new universities, and the charismatic pentecostal Church—all of which are opposed to orthodoxy and to the age-old teaching of the Magisterium. Born of Liberalism and Modernism, this reform is wholly poisonous; it comes from heresy and ends in heresy, even if not all of its acts are formally heretical ... That is why, without rebellion, or any bitterness or resentment, we pursue our work of training priests under the guidance of the star of the age-old Magisterium, convinced that we can render no greater service to the Holy Catholic Church, to the Sovereign Pontiff, or to future generations. That is why we hold firmly to everything that has been believed and practiced—regarding faith, morals, worship, catechetical instruction, the formation of priests, the structure of the Church—by the eternal and unchanging Church, and codified in the books issued before the Modernist influence of the Council, while we wait for the true light of Tradition to dispel the darkness which presently obscures the sky of Rome Eternal.

My dear people, that public statement was first published about two years ago. It appeared in The Remnant on February 4, 1974. It was this statement above all else which provoked such a concerted and bitter reaction against him, particularly among the bishops of France, whose seminaries today, by the way, are a disgrace and whose envy, therefore, of the Seminary of St. Pius X in Ecône, is understandable. Also understandable is the fact that, together with some of their ecclesial sympathizers in Rome today, things were finally driven to a point where Pope Paul himself became involved and addressed a letter—or at least a letter bearing his signature—to the Archbishop demanding that he make a public act of submission—I quote—an act of submission "to the Council, the post-conciliar reforms and the changes of direction [since then], to reject which is to reject the Pope."

In other words, His Excellency was asked to cease doing what he had and has been doing, namely, training future priests in the traditional manner, in the traditional Catholic liturgy, the traditional Catholic theology and philosophy, the traditional Biblical exegesis, the traditional Mass and Sacraments—AND, if he refuses, he is to be condemned before all the world as rejecting the Second Vatican Council, even the long and bewildering aftermath of the Council, and the Pope himself!

The whole thing, my friends, is without precedent, preposterous, incredible! It reeks of behind-the-scene political intrigue, of petty jealousies and megalomaniac hate, all of which is, of course, the exact opposite of the syrupy love-love-love preachments which we have been hearing so endlessly since Council days. Only in today's state of universal anarchy, apostasy and confusion is it at all believable. One could, perhaps, understand being asked by the Pope to submit to the sixteen official Council documents, as they were originally promulgated by the Council Fathers and by the Pope himself in the early 60s. For instance, the Council's officially promulgated Constitution on the Liturgy, with its underscoring of the traditional Latin as over against the vernacular languages, its emphasis of Gregorian Chant and other traditional usages. But for anyone of us to be asked to submit not only to the formal Conciliar constitutions and decrees as such, but to the post-conciliar hodgepodge of reforms and the "changes of direction" since then, is to be asked to accept anything and everything which the liturgical-theological tinkerers and word-smiths from here to Timbuktu have been cooking up for us ever since the Council. It is the same as being asked to submit, without question, to an open-ended bundle of things, from which everything the Council decreed has somehow been purloined away in order to make room for an endless grab-bag variety of cheap and tawdry claptrap, ranging from profane guitar "liturgies" and congregational bar room ditties, to a conglomerate assortment of so-called rituals and "ecumenical" services, with stand-up communion, self-service communion, the lodge-hall handshake, convivial feasting and banqueting, with shades of the Beatles and Mitch Miller sing-a-longs!

No, my friends, I too, could not and will not submit to that! Ten years ago and ever since, in fact, I have taken the position, both in and out of The Remnant, that, although it is not a layman's prerogative to presume to make any final or definitive judgment as to the validity or non-validity of the New Mass as Vatican II defined it, but we must try to wait patiently either for the present or a future Pope and Council to make this kind of judgment, I nevertheless stated, even as Archbishop Lefebvre has been consistently doing, that the New Mass and liturgy, the new catechetics, the new priesthood, the new seminaries, and the new democratization and mob rule which is in fact usurping and demolishing the Church's Magisterium and along with it the whole hierarchical structure and authority of the Church—that all of these things are, if not formal heresy per se, then surely they must end in heresy, must split the Church asunder. In fact, to me it becomes almost an exercise in futility to go on arguing any longer about the validity-invalidity question surrounding the New Mass, when the simple, unadorned fact is that NONE—NONE of the vaunted reforms envisioned by the Pope and the Council Fathers—including the New Mass—none of these reforms has brought the Catholic world humbly and sincerely to its knees or reformed and renewed our minds and hearts and souls in Christ Jesus! Nor have misguided attempts at "ecumenism" brought our separated brethren flocking back into the one true fold of Christ. Instead we see not only a vast internal disorder inside our own Household; we see a fast-growing decline and decay in what was once called Christendom, whilst our real enemies, the chief fomentors and plotters of world destruction, who have as their principal aim now as always the overthrow of such basic institutions as our own altars and homes, and, along with that of course, the overthrow of the Papacy itself, Christ's Church itself, as we have known it—these, I say, are graciously allowed if not sometimes encouraged to pursue their devilish course, without real hindrance of any kind. Indeed, is it not a fact that our present Pope himself has repeatedly spoken, in most anguished terms, of what he calls "the smoke of Satan" which has infiltrated the Catholic Church and imperils their Church? And has he not said that what we are witnessing today is, what he calls, the "auto-destruction" (self-destruction) of the Church in this supposedly more enlightened and more progressive post-conciliar era? Very well, then: are we nevertheless expected to submit without murmur to this satanically inspired self-destruction, this ongoing demolition process, closing our eyes to the raging smoke and fire? Most of us, I'm sure, would like to believe of course that perhaps Vatican II had some substantive reasons for not categorically condemning and anathematizing, as former Popes have done, the ancient global conspiracies known as Masonry and Communism, from which the "smoke of Satan" has long been issuing. These global conspiracies are surely among the most obvious and most formidable concerns to be faced by men and nations today. But whatever the Council's presumed good intentions in the matter, the fact remains that these most powerful and sinister global conspiracies in the world's history were NOT thus explicitly and rigorously condemned, and they are now very much more in the ascendancy—including in "Catholic" France and Italy!—than they were even ten years ago, with at least one half the world firmly in their icy grip, and with every likelihood that soon, if we Catholics and Christians don't wake up, we shall no longer have to concern ourselves with whether the Mass is valid or invalid, whether to have this or that kind of do-it-yourself Sunday morning liturgy—but rather, there will no longer even be a Mass as any of us have known it—it may then be exclusively the Black Mass, Satan's Mass, the Antichrist, and his legions, large and small, will be lord of the world and the chief object of men's worship!

Do I exaggerate? I don't think so. Did you read last Sunday's "Pioneer Press," the story about the projected rock concert slated for tomorrow night at the St. Paul Civic Service Center downtown? The story goes on to say that tomorrow night will see the very thing which some of us have been warning against for years—i.e., when rock music and the so-called "Rock Culture" will begin to reveal itself for what it truly is: primitive, savage, even satanic. The story describes how at tomorrow's "concert" the onstage men and women will strip and there will be either real or simulated copulation!

No, I doubt that I exaggerate. It was not more than a year or so ago, after the new abomination, the so-called "Children's Mass," had first been announced in Rome, that the famed Dietrich von Hildebrand, author and lecturer and himself a Papal Knight, dared to write: "It is only with the new Children's Mass issued by the evil spirit of the liturgical reform, Archbishop Bugnini, that the victory of collectivism, naturalism, and horizontalism comes drastically to the fore" (Satan at Work, 1974, p. 26).

A local bishop, upon reading these words in The Remnant at that time, stalked angrily away from the scene, muttering to himself that anyone publishing such a dastardly piece as this couldn't possibly be a good Catholic!

Well, since then this so-called "evil spirit," Archbishop Bugnini, has been quietly removed from his post as chief architect of the New Mass and liturgy, in the Vatican's Congregation on Liturgy, and has been shipped off to a far-distant corner of Iran. But, though his removal from so influential a post was a step in the right direction, we are now reliably informed, by responsible and knowledgeable people in Europe and elsewhere, that Archbishop Bugnini had been, ever since 1961—the early stages of the Council!—a Freemason, and that it was only some more recent "indiscretion" on his part that let the thing slip out into the open!

My friends, as you perhaps know, Canon 2335 of the Church's Code of Canon Law, punishes with excommunication reserved to the Holy See those who become members of the Freemasons and kindred societies which plot against the Church or against lawful civil society. Why, then has Archbishop Bugnini not been excommunicated? Of course we know that Canon Law, too, ever since Vatican II, has been subjected more and more to change of every description, but my question is: why should this be? For what good purpose have such changes been presumed to be in the best interests of the Church and civil society? Did you know that, in 1738, in his Pontifical Constitution In Eminenti, Pope Clement XII not only condemned Masonry and forbade any Catholic under pain of excommunication from being involved with it, but he ended his remarks with these clear and incisive words: "We condemn and forbid them [Masonic secret societies] by this, Our present Constitution, which is to be considered valid for ever."

Note that phrase "for ever"! Sounds almost like that other papal phrase, concerning the Old Mass—"in perpetuity"—which has likewise been ignored and cast aside in our day!

Ignored and cast aside, I might add, precisely by those in first place who are forever accusing Catholic traditionalists of rejecting and disobeying the Holy See! Who, may I ask, is it who is really in disobedience to the Holy See—is it the traditionalists or is it the neo-modernists and liberals?

My friends, I have no intention of alarming you. Yet I have reason to feel that the case of Archbishop Bugnini, is only the tip, so to speak, of the iceberg and that as Pope Pius X so graphically described it in his momentous Encyclical Pascendi, the vipers (his word for them!) who nest themselves in the very bosom of the Church have indeed proliferated and spawned a far more pestilential new breed there. Otherwise, how do we explain the wholesale ruin and devastation which we see everywhere inside the Lord's own vineyard today? How do we account for the diminishing sacrality and reverence in our prevailing mode or worship, the obvious heterodoxy and outright heresy in our school texts and catechisms, the Playboy and contraceptive mentality which have invaded our once Catholic seminaries and colleges and schools?

My dear people, that, it seems to me, is exactly the state of affairs that we see and experience today. The situation is catastrophic, with the traditional teaching and authority of the Church, of Christ Himself, flaunted and cast aside not so much by rank-and file Catholics, but by those claiming to bespeak authority even while they demean and decry it, chiefly by demeaning and decrying tradition, which is, after all, a main base upon which authority rests. Then, in the name of a counterfeit authority or a "rump magisterium" as someone has termed it, an authority which has no real basis in fact or in law, they would impose upon all the faithful what is perhaps best described as a caricature, a mockery of the real Truth of things, beginning with Christ's Holy Sacrifice, while at the same time forbidding both priests and faithful from ever again participating in the traditional Mass—even in the Novus Ordo Mass if it is said in the traditional Latin. I myself know of only one parish church in the city of St. Paul where there is still a Latin High Mass each Sunday morning. True, it is not a Tridentine Mass but it is offered, I must say, with such great solemnity, dignity, and awesome decorum that it bears no slightest resemblance to any of the Novus Ordo Masses in any of the neighboring parishes. But, I repeat, this is to my knowledge the only such Mass available today in the city of St. Paul. Yet Vatican II declared that Latin must be continued, while the vernacular languages were at best only allowable! Why? Is it Vatican II itself or is it "the change of direction" since Vatican II which is to be obeyed? Is it that nebulous non-definable "spirit of Vatican II" and the whole ghastly assortment of post-conciliar innovations, or is there some specific authority, some explicit Canonical Law, which the faithful, both priests and people, must follow?

And what about the Papal Bull, Quo Primum, in which St. Pius V decreed and prescribed that no priest could ever be penalized or censured for continuing to say the Old Mass? We are told in effect to forget it, it's been abrogated, prohibited, and hence you must "obey" and "get with" the Novus Ordo. But exactly when or why or how this was supposedly done, and by what canonical document or established precedent—this, of course, they fail to tell us, they will not tell us, they cannot tell us, as there is in fact no such authoritative legal document!

Forget, too, they say, the Constitution (that's what the Council Fathers called it—the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy). Forget everything and anything you and I have ever been taught by Holy Mother Church about Socialism and Communism, about Freemasonry and kindred philosophies and movements and creeds designed to remove and destroy established Christian order. Forget about Original Sin, and Actual Sin, and Sanctifying Grace. But mind you, now— DON'T FORGET TO BE OBEDIENT!—That is the one remaining Absolute! Obedience to the new Church, the reformed Church, the Church which is not only ordered to "dialogue" with anyone and everyone—Jews, pagans, Hottentots—but a church which now, regularly, exchanges pulpits and lecture platforms with everyone, draws up so-called "agreed statements of belief with Anglicans and other separated brethren, even hiring them as teachers in so-called "Catholic" high schools, colleges, seminaries and the like.

And meanwhile, of course, the list of supposedly "disobedient" priests—for instance, an Oswald Baker in England, or, only last week, a Msgr. Raymond Ruscitto in Fresno, California, or even an Archbishop Lefebvre in Switzerland—the list keeps growing, and these men are being cast into the exterior darkness, while the Hans Kungs, the Schillebeexks, the Rahners and the Haerings and all the rest of that strange consortium known as "progressives" continue to monopolize the lecture platforms and public media of all descriptions.

Strange indeed, is the wholesale revolution that has taken place since the early '60s! When Pope John XXIII gave his opening speech to the Second Vatican Council, on October 11, 1962, he took pains to explain that "the greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the Sacred Deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously." And again that it was the goal of the Council "to transmit that doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion."

Need I remind you that the sacred deposit of the Faith, which Pope John wished to see safeguarded and transmitted by the Council without attenuation or distortion, was first revealed to us by Christ Himself, the Invisible Head of the Church, and was preserved and transmitted through twenty centuries via the two chief sources or fonts of Revelation—namely, Tradition and Scripture, and in that order.

And that being so, why is it, one wonders, that not only Scripture, which is only a PART of the Revealed Word of God, but Tradition itself, which Christ chose as one of the two mainstays by which to pass on His Truth to all men in all times, stands today in such disrepute that most Catholics, almost by instinct, tend to shy away from it, recoil against it, mimic it, deride it? Why is it that the traditional Mass and sacramental liturgy, much of it directly traceable to the Apostolic Age itself, is in shreds and tatters? Why, contrary to what the Church has always taught, is the traditional Scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas and the traditional asceticism and spiritual teaching of the early martyrs and saints and doctors of the Church giving way, more and more and more, to a socio-political activism—a dialectical materialism—a falsely labelled "Christian Marxism"—a horizontal naturalism, an ant-heap collectivism, with priests and bishops and nuns and even some prominent Cardinals among them marching endlessly back and forth over the world stage, proclaiming a variegated version of Freud and Marx and Fichte and Hegel, a nebulous hodgepodge of the evolutionist creed of Spencer and Darwin—sprinkled, of course, with the Olympian mutterings of that amazing theological astronaut of outer space, Teilhard de Chardin? My friends, I don't know the answers. I only know that Catholic Tradition and Catholic Traditionalism have been all but banished, literally driven into exile, by the combined forces of Liberalism and Modernism and Neo-Modernism, against which all the former Popes tried to warn us. And this has been done, not by outsiders, but by those conspiratorial forces within the Church itself whom St. Pius X explicitly warned against in 1907 as the chief demolition crew, whose antics, left unchecked, would bring about catastrophe and protracted ruin.

Well, the prediction made by St. Pius X appears to have been fulfilled. Now, what's to be done? What can one do about it? Most of us, my friends, are neither priests nor bishops, and therefore we cannot, much as we would like, escape the new "orientations" simply by saying the Mass of our choice. That, in fact, is a sublime advantage and honor which only priests and bishops have. Whatever other hardships they may have to endure—and there are many—that is the one great comfort and consolation they still enjoy over the rest of us, even if nowadays the Mass of their choice must, for the most part, be celebrated only in private. That being so, it seems to me that we lay people have an even harder hill to climb than the priests and bishops. Of course our responsibilities, too, are obviously different. First of all, our knowledge and insights—our perspective, if you will—is on a different level. So are our daily routines and disciplines and laws. In theology, liturgy, linguistics, canon law, etc., most of us would be hard put not to have to admit—and this, in today's egalitarian atmosphere, can be a truly humbling experience) we will have to admit that we do not and cannot be expected to know, let us say, as much as an Archbishop Lefebvre is expected to know. Nor is our authority on a par with his. Whether we be priests or laymen, we cannot expect to receive exactly the same degree of divine grace, nor exactly the same degree of accountability before God. In short, what I am trying to say is simply this: that no matter what the social egalitarians do or say, we are NOT ALL EQUAL! We each have our own particular obligations and duties to perform, our own individual consciences to follow—hopefully trained and formed consciences, of course, in accordance with the mind of God and the mind of the Church throughout the ages.

But whatever we are and whoever we may be, let us keep in mind above all—those of us who wish to remain genuine Roman Catholics and who therefore are steadfastly committed both to Tradition as well as Scripture—that we must be always truly humble in this holy cause, never presuming too much, never trying to be a higher authority than we really are, never giving in to those soul-destroying temptations of Satan—inordinate pride coupled with misguided zeal or ignorance. St. Pius X, in his encyclical against the heresy of Modernism, points out that the real explanation for Modernism is this very evil—Pride and Ignorance. Surely, we Catholics, Roman Catholics, must be ever on guard lest we wake up one fine day and find we have succumbed, if not exactly to Modernism, then perhaps to that self-same demonic spirit, that evil spirit, that conceit, that inordinate and ever-recurring presumptiveness on the part of fallen man—which is to delude ourselves that we can take the place of God or at least that we can and will re-arrange and re-make His holy covenants and laws. We must bear in mind, my dear people, that Catholic Tradition is, in the true sense of the word, a most sacred and most holy trust. Sacred Tradition begins and ends with the revealed teachings and truths of God. It is not man made, but rests in God, is anchored in God. Rank-and-file carriers of sacred Tradition— I'm speaking now of the laity—must not presume to speak or act as if we were the conscience for all men. That we are not, nor can we ever be. Rather, we must be humble, indeed, for only by humbling ourselves— that is, by being always mindful of our own limitations and weaknesses and faults—only then can we honestly say that we are following the example and teaching of Our Blessed Lord and His Holy Mother. For us as for them, humility is the gold key to the ultimate success of our holy cause. Christ on Calvary demonstrated that central fact most conclusively. For the sake of the one great and overriding cause of our Redemption, our Restoration to His Kingdom, He humbled Himself even unto the death on the Cross. He might—if He had been merely human—He might have raged and fumed and fulminated over His ignominious fortune on Calvary, He might even have turned upon His oppressors, His executioners, His tormentors, hating and reviling them and calling them all sorts of descriptive names. But He, our Divine Exemplar, our Heavenly King, our God He did none of these quite human things. He had a divine mission, a Heaven-sent trust, a Cause to fulfill, and hence He proceeded on His course quietly, serenely, without brawling or ostentatious commotion or vainglorious self-seeking and agitation even on the Road to Calvary. Then, when His executioners seized Him and nailed Him to His Cross—even then the marvellous example He gave us till the end of time is gloriously summed up in His dying phrase: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

So, let us continue to pursue our course even as He did, carefully, prayerfully, peaceably, even as Archbishop Lefebvre has demonstrated for us, without bitterness, without rancor, without noisy, needless public display or puffed-up pride. Let us bear in mind always that although the Mass, the Tridentine Mass itself, is all-important—hope in God, for instance and confidence and trust that when He said that the Mass, His Mass, was to be His eternal testimony, in other words, it was to be the eternal guarantor of His Real and ever-recurring Presence amongst us—He meant what He said, and He is God, and He will not go back on His word, no matter what men may do or say about it.

One further point: Let us who are proud to speak of ourselves as Roman Catholics, let us remind our brothers and sisters in Christ that neither the Church itself nor Tradition and Scripture began with Vatican II, nor even with Trent and Vatican I. It began with Christ, and is not and cannot be, therefore, narrowed down and confined to only one particular Pontificate or one historical epoch in the Church's history. We must be proud of the whole of our Catholic tradition; we must be proud to be known as Roman Catholics, whose tradition stems from Apostolic times, from Peter, from the Councils of Jerusalem, Nicea, Chalcedon, and so on, and that all of the succeeding Popes, therefore, all the succeeding dogmatic Councils, in particular, make up which is rightly termed the teaching Magisterium, to which all of us owe obedience and submission.

My friends, about ten years ago, I listened to a well known Catholic lay speaker who, after a brilliant discourse on the state of the Church and the state of the world, rounded out his remarks on this solemn note:

"I very much fear," he said, "that what we are witnessing now will terminate before long if not in what is described in the Book of the Apocalypse, then in any case in the kind of dire persecution that may well put to shame even that of Nero and Diocletian. But if it comes, if the catacombs again are beckoning, let us hope and pray that we, you and I, will count ourselves blessed, not cursed, to be there and thank God for the grace which, we shall find, is never-failing even then, for those who love and serve Him always."

It goes without saying that I was profoundly moved and impressed by these words. And in the ten years since they were uttered, I am more and more persuaded to believe that the catacombs of which he spoke are indeed yawning before us. But, for those of you who may have been through Italy and even Rome, as I was, and who had occasion therefore to visit those ancient tombs and monuments of Christian valor and heroism which they are, you will know what I mean when I saw that they are indeed lowly places, humble places—low enough and humble enough in fact that even the Saints and Martyrs who assembled there must have been compelled to stoop when entering or leaving them. To me that is somehow symbolic of what the catacomb Christians were and still are expected to be—humble people, always fully aware of the tremendous burden of responsibility that rests upon the shoulders of those whose holy cause is the Church, is Tradition, is the Sacred Deposit of the Faith which Christ bequeathed to us for our salvation and sanctification with Him in glory!