August 1983

Your Excellency:

In this letter we wish to draw your attention to the problem which lies at the very heart of the crisis in American Catholicism. This problem is the manner in which our bishops use their authority, or fail to use their authority. The latter problem is at present the more common. These men, successors of the Apostles, shepherds of the flock confided to them by Our Lord, stand by passively while wolves enter the sheepfold and ravage the flock. They do not deserve the name of shepherd. They are hirelings. In this letter we hope to alert Your Excellency to the gravity of the situation by drawing your attention to two publications which accept that the bishops must be held responsible for the disintegration of the Church in the United States of America. More perceptive authors recognized and faced up to this problem as much as a decade ago. In 1973, in The Devastated Vineyard, Dietrich von Hildebrand protested about bishops who:

make no use whatever of their authority when it comes to intervening against heretical theologians or priests, or against blasphemous performances of public worship. They either close their eyes and try, ostrich-style, to ignore the grievous abuses as well as appeals to their duty to intervene, or they fear to be attacked by the press or the mass media and defamed as a reactionary, narrow-minded or medieval. They fear men more than God.

In an editorial in the December 1977 issue of The Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., warned:

The Magisterium has shown excessive restraint in recent years in dealing with dissidents. As a result people are confused. The Catholic Church is in decline. Time is running out. When will the bishops once again learn to act like bishops?

Your Excellency, we fear that since Father Baker wrote these words time has almost run out where the possibility of salvaging anything appreciable from the wreckage of American Catholicism is concerned. In the January 1983 editorial of the same journal Father Baker stated what traditional Catholics have been claiming for years: "a major trend in this country is towards an American Church, that is, a Church separate and independent from Rome. The locus of this trend is not in the laity, but in the Church leaders: some bishops, priests, nuns, intellectuals, diocesan experts. Another way of saying the same thing is that we are becoming more Protestant all the time. By that I mean rejection of a hierarchical Church founded by Jesus Christ, primacy of the subjective conscience, and absolutizing Scripture to the neglect of Tradition (sola scriptura)."

We would ask you to read this quotation once more, with very great care. The claim it makes is terrifying, i.e., that in the United States we are witnessing the rejection of the hierarchical Church founded by Jesus Christ to be replaced by a Protestant American Church, separate from Rome. We would like to stress that this is not a claim made by us as Editors of a traditionalist journal, it is a charge made by the Editor of the leading journal for priests in the English-speaking world. As we have said, its implications are terrifying, both for the Church in this country, and for you personally. How can Your Excellency face the prospect of going down in history as the Apostolic Delegate who presided over the separation from the Holy See of the Church in America?

The first publication to which we wish to draw your attention is a fifty-six page booklet by Professor James Hitchcock. It is entitled "The Dissenting Church," and is available from The National Committee of Catholic Laymen, Inc., Room 840, 150 East 35th Street, New York, New York 10016, at a price of $2.00. It consists almost entirely of actual examples of heretical and schismatical teaching and acts by spokesmen for the "American Church." We have not seen any indictment so thorough, so unanswerable, and so compact. When we say that it is unanswerable we would add only one proviso, providing that the incidents it cites did happen—and we believe they did. Unless Your Excellency is willing to investigate each one of them, and write to assure us that they have been fabricated by Professor Hitchcock, then there is no doubt about it, a schismatic American Church is already here. Its leaders are in effective control of many if not most American dioceses. According to Professor Hitchcock:

The truth of the matter is that, at least in the United States, it would be difficult to find a major institution more internally disorganized, more ideologically divided, and less effective in its governing structures than is the Catholic Church.

If you had known our Church on the eve of Vatican II you would not have believed such a debacle possible. Professor Hitchcock shows in one particularly perceptive passage that, where the "American Church" is concerned, the term "dissent" is not the correct description of unorthodoxy. He accepts that the former dissenters are now in control, and it is those who uphold Catholic truth who are the dissenters:

Dissent in American Catholicism is no longer the province of courageous outsiders, but is itself established. It challenges the Church not from the margins but through the Church's own central organs. Indeed, it is the official institutions of the Church which are now used to propagate dissent and, often enough, to repress orthodoxy. Almost unnoticed, a quiet revolution has occurred. Like all revolutions, it began simply with a demand for tolerance. Like most revolutions it ends in a new orthodoxy which enforces a conformity even more rigid than the old.

Hitchcock also notes that scholars who are loyal to the papal Magisterium are, in effect, "banned from speaking in particular dioceses, and before most national organizations, as well as at Catholic colleges and seminaries." He adds:

Not uncommonly a diocesan religious education office mandates catechisms which are obviously deficient from the standpoint of Catholic doctrine, even as it bans orthodox catechisms, and sponsors workshops for teachers in which those teachers are inculcated with principles of dissent. Meanwhile diocesan liturgical authorities permit and even encourage practices clearly at variance with official liturgical norms.

So firmly has unorthodoxy been institutionalized that bishops who are Catholic at heart now hardly dare make a stand for the truth. Hitchcock comments:

On the rare occasions when individual bishops have taken strong stands, the results have not been happy for them. The late Bishop Joseph V. Sullivan of Baton Rouge forbade Charles Curran to speak in his diocese, and subsequently removed a Newman Club chaplain who had attempted to sponsor Curran's talk. Bishop Sullivan met with a storm of criticism and abuse, including demands for his removal. Once he was actually called to Rome for questioning, though apparently exonerated. During his ordeal not a single bishop offered him any public support. A few other bishops have had similar experiences, albeit less severely. The lesson, apparently, has not been lost on others.

Your Excellency may recollect that in February 1983 we wrote to you on the topic of Father Curran. We complained that he travels the country in the capacity of an official spokesman for the Church, as Professor of Moral Theology at the Pontifical Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and yet, we complained: "The opinions which Father Curran teaches and endorses do not simply violate the most elementary norms of Catholic sexual ethics, they are repugnant to the entire Judeo-Christian concept of morality." Some bishops do not simply tolerate him in their dioceses, they welcome him with open arms. Hitchcock reveals that Archbishop Peter L. Gerety of Newark once personally introduced Father Curran as "a good friend with whom I agree substantially."

We are aware that Your Excellency has a very busy social schedule, much of it, alas, at social functions with the bishops of the "American Church." With all respect we would beg you to cancel, say, just one such cocktail hour to study Professor Hitchcock's booklet, carefully and prayerfully, asking yourself two questions: (1) "Is it true?" and, if you answer "yes," then, "Where does my duty lie?"

The second publication to which we wish to draw your attention is longer, but of such importance that we have no hesitation in suggesting that you have a duty to read it. This book is The Crisis of Authority—John Paul II and the American Bishops, by Msgr. George A. Kelly. It can be obtained for $11.95 (post paid) from the HPR Bookshelf, 86 Riverside Drive, New York, New York 10024. Msgr. Kelly has already provided the most thorough and documented account of the collapse of American Catholicism in his book The Battle for the American Church. In this book Msgr. Kelly had located the main problem of the Church in America in dissident theologians, priests and religious. In his new book he has come to accept that the principal problem lies with the bishops. He states this quite with total clarity in his opening sentence: "The thesis of this book is that the chief responsibility for the ongoing difficulties of the Catholic Church in the United States now rests with the American Bishops."

We shall not comment on Msgr. Kelly's book in any detail in this letter as it will be accompanied by a review which appeared in the January 1983 issue of The Homiletic and Pastoral Review. We would particularly like to draw the attention of Your Excellency to a reference in this review to the part played by two great bishops who acted as papal legates in countries where it once appeared that the Church had declined to such a level that reform and renewal were no longer possible; these were Poland at the time of the Reformation and Ireland at the opening of the nineteenth century. Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius of Cracow brought Poland back to the Faith; Archbishop Paul Cullen of Armagh rescued the Church in Ireland from the final stages of moral decay.

We appeal to you yet again, Your Excellency, to beg the Holy Father to send an orthodox and courageous papal legate to the United States to perform the same task. We see no other solution to the present crisis. And, as we have suggested to you previously, the first task of such a legate would be to remove some of the more notorious members of the de facto schismatic hierarchy. Professor Hitchcock took the drastic step of citing four of them in his booklet: Archbishops Peter L. Gerety of Newark, Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, James V. Casey of Denver, and Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle. To these names we would certainly add Bishops John L. Sullivan of Kansas City (Missouri), Kenneth Untener of Saginaw (who showed pornographic films to seminarians when rector of the Detroit Archdiocesan seminary), Richard Sklba, auxiliary of Milwaukee (an advocate of priestesses for the Catholic Church before and after his episcopal consecration), Frank J. Harrison of Syracuse, Walter L. Sullivan of Richmond and, finally, Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. While one of these men continues to occupy his see no honest person could accept as remotely credible the claim that the Pope exerts any authority over the American Bishops.

This brings us to what is perhaps the most important point in this letter, and it is one in which we must go one step further than the authors we have cited. While they have been willing to fasten the blame for the present crisis fairly and squarely upon the bishops, something conservative Catholics in general have been reluctant to do, we must take an even more radical position. It is with no little sadness that we feel bound to state that the Holy See bears an equal or even greater responsibility. If the bishops have failed to use their authority, the post-conciliar popes have even more markedly refused to use theirs. We would be less than honest if we failed to affirm that as the American bishops are to Charles Curran so the Popes have been to the American bishops. He has, it is true, given some fine teaching on faith and morals. Archbishop Lefebvre, the Superior of our Society, thanked him for this in a letter dated 18 November 1979: "Through your discourses you have made evident your attachment to Our Lord Jesus Christ Who is the only solution to all problems, your fidelity to Catholic morality, and your wish to restore the priestly and religious life. This is, moreover, what we have never ceased to uphold and put into practice." Furthermore, the Pope has even promulgated legislation to curtail abuses. But his teaching on faith and morals is frequently ignored and sometimes even ridiculed in the United States, and his disciplinary instructions are treated with contempt in many dioceses. We still recall the shame and embarrassment we felt, both for the Pope and for ourselves as American Catholics, when Sister Teresa Kane defied him in public before the television cameras during his visit to our country. Shame, above all, for his impotence in the face of this defiance. Sister Kane has become a heroine of the "American Church," and her influence is now so considerable that many American nuns would place more weight upon any statement she made than on a directive from the Pope!

As we have already stated, the authors we have been citing have refused to face up to the responsibility of the Holy See for what has taken place in the United States. With the most profound filial respect for the person of His Holiness, we would beg you to convey to him our heartfelt conviction that he does not have the right to remain inactive any longer. He is the possessor of the Keys entrusted to St. Peter by Our Lord Himself. These Keys are the symbol of an authority, the authority of Christ, which is meant to be used. The Pope has a duty to use it. We have no doubt at all that the Holy Father does find it difficult to impose the sanctions which it is his duty to impose but, we must repeat again with the utmost respect, that he has no right not to impose them! Men in authority, particularly those in the highest positions, often find it hard to exercise their authority correctly and effectively. There are, alas, many popes who have failed in this way during the history of the Church, and the Church has always suffered. It is suffering now and nowhere more so than in this country where you are the Pope's representative.

Finally, we would like to emphasize to Your Excellency the fact that the sources we have cited in this letter are quite independent of the traditionalist movement. Two of them, in fact—Msgr. Kelly and Professor Hitchcock—have manifested great hostility towards us. Both have made personal attacks upon Archbishop Lefebvre. Indeed, in the booklet which we have just brought to your attention, Professor Hitchcock accuses the Archbishop of being schismatic. We would thus ask you not to discount the charges we have made against the American Bishops simply because they come from the Editors of an official journal of the Society of St. Pius X. We would also like to bring to your attention the fact that Archbishop Lefebvre has just dismissed nine American priests from the Society for a schismatic attitude.

This was not an easy decision for him to make, particularly as the attitude of these young priests was, to a certain extent, understandable, if not excusable. They had reacted to the schism and heresy permeating the Church in this country by behaving as if it no longer formed part of the Catholic Church; they had reacted to the failure of the Holy Father to act as a pope by behaving as if he was not a pope, in some cases even refusing to pray for him in the Mass. This is an attitude which is being adopted by more and more American Catholics as the degradation and disintegration of the Church in this country intensifies. It is our earnest and constant prayer that just as God gave Archbishop Lefebvre the grace and courage to take the measures necessary to eliminate schism from our Society, so He will give our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, the grace and courage necessary to remove from their sees the false shepherds, the hirelings, who stand by with indifference or even applaud as the wolves ravage their flocks.

The Editors

The Most Reverend Pio Laghi
The Apostolic Delegation
3339 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008