December 1983 Print

An Editorial

REJOICE IN THE LORD, this is the message which your Editors send to you this Christmas. By the time most of you receive this issue, the Third Sunday of Advent will probably have arrived, the day traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday, from the first word of the Introit: Gaudete—Rejoice. "Rejoice in the Lord always," the Introit urges us, "again I say rejoice." As a token of rejoicing the organ may be played at High Mass and Vespers, and priests may wear rose-colored vestments, expressing the joy that pervades the whole liturgy at this season, even though Advent is a time of penance.

We know from the correspondence we receive that many of our readers feel that there is little to rejoice about at present when we contemplate the sad condition of Holy Mother Church. We have every sympathy with them, and regret that we find it necessary to devote so many of our pages to documenting what the French theologian Louis Bouyer has described as the "decomposition of Catholicism." The decomposition of the Church is paralleled by, or, more accurately, reflects a widespread repudiation throughout our country of values which were common to all Americans until at least the end of the Second World War. Society today is afflicted by the scourges of widespread divorce, abortion, pornography, sexual perversion and drug abuse to an extent that endangers the very basis of family life. The virtue of patriotism is now regarded with contempt by many Americans, and Catholic bishops are sometimes in the vanguard of those seeking to render our country defenseless in the face of Communist aggression.

The past year has been a particularly sad one for traditional Catholics—a process of fragmentation which has been gathering momentum in recent years has now had repercussions within the Society of St. Pius X. In 1982, we witnessed the emergence of a traditionalist counter-Church headed by illicitly consecrated bishops, and this year we have been subjected to the spectacle of nine Society priests in America repudiating Archbishop Lefebvre in order to "do their own thing." It is impossible not to see the hand of Satan at work. The corruption he has sown throughout the official Church in the United States has been so effective that is largely now a schismatic American Church, with its own faith (or lack of it), morals (or lack of them), and liturgy (if such it can be termed). Satan's efforts now appear to be devoted principally to the traditionalist movement, and, we must concede, with great success. His principal and most effective weapon is pride, the vice that caused his own downfall. "Non serviam" he proclaimed, "I will not serve." This could be the motto of many of those duped by him today. "I will not serve," they claim, not realizing that they are, in fact, serving his purposes.

What, then, is there for a traditional Catholic to rejoice about during this Advent? The answer is: "A great deal!"—so much that this holy season can truly be one of great joy for us. On a natural basis it would indeed be hard for us to experience a feeling of joy; but the joy that we should feel has a supernatural basis. We are not citizens of this world, merely sojourners here. We must be in the world, but not of it. Our true home is in heaven, and it is upon heaven that the Advent liturgy seeks to focus our attention. It asks us to look beyond the first Advent of Our Lord in the stable at Bethlehem, and to contemplate through and beyond Christmas to that second Advent when Christ, in all the splendor of His power and majesty, will come for the consummation of His work of redemption. The great joy of Christians, to which we are summoned by the liturgy of Gaudete Sunday, is to witness the drawing nigh of "the day of the Lord," when He shall come in His glory to take us with Him to the heavenly city. We should earnestly desire that this Christmas season will prepare us for that great day, and that it should soon be accomplished. The oft-repeated "come" of the Advent liturgy is an echo not only of those in the prophets, but that in the Apocalypse of St. John: "Come, Lord Jesus," are the last words in the New Testament.

Those of us who grew up in the Church before the Council, priests included, may well have failed to understand and live our faith in its proper perspective—that of the Second Coming and Last Judgment. "O Dawn of the East, brightness of the light eternal, and Sun of Justice, come and enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death," we prayed each Advent. But we didn't really feel ourselves living in darkness and the shadow of death. Let those who are old enough think back to twenty-five years ago. The Church seemed to be flourishing throughout our country, it appeared firm as a rock. Seminaries, convents, schools, universities, and a vigorous Catholic press flourished throughout the country, together with countless active associations for men and women. In every Church and every chapel on every day of the week the beautiful and reverent liturgy of the traditional Roman Missal was celebrated. In all our schools, unquestionably orthodox teaching, based on the Catechism of the Council of Trent, was given. The Church was admired and respected even by those who hated her. It would have meant political suicide for any party or any politician to have advocated legalizing abortion, introducing explicit sex education even into state schools, or removing the legal prohibitions on homosexuals. We also took it for granted that every pope would be wise, holy, prudent and firm. We could rely on Rome, and because we could rely on Rome, what had we to fear? No, we didn't really think of ourselves as living in darkness and the shadow of death. Most of us had probably come to take it for granted that it was natural for the Church to be vigorous, prosperous, flourishing, and respected. We had lost our sense of historical perspective. We hope that all our readers are studying our current series, "Forebears in the Faith" with great attention. These great Catholics certainly lived out their faith in darkness and the shadow of death. The Church they knew was neither flourishing nor respected. In Elizabethan England, it had, for the majority of citizens, ceased to exist. Cardinal Newman remarked in one of his greatest sermons, "The Second Spring," that it was "the high decree of heaven, that the majesty of Catholicism should be blotted out" in Britain. "So all seemed to be lost; and there was a struggle for a time and then its priests were cast out or martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. Its temples were profaned or destroyed; its revenues seized by covetous nobles, or squandered upon the ministers of the new faith. The presence of Catholicism was at length removed,—its grace disowned,—its power despised,—its name, except as a matter of history, at length almost unknown ... No longer the Catholic Church in the country; nay, no longer, I may say, a Catholic community,—but a few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully about, as memorials, of what had been. 'The Roman Catholics'—not a sect, not even an interest, as men conceived it ... but merely a handful of individuals, who might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the great deluge ... found in corners, and alleys, and cellars, and the housetops, or in the recesses of the country; cut off from the populous world around them and dimly seen, as if through a mist or in twilight, as ghosts flitting to and fro, by the high Protestants, the lords of the earth."

It has clearly been "the high decree of heaven, that the majesty of Catholicism" should be blotted out in the U.S.A. today. Let us admit freely that traditional Catholics are now little more than a despised remnant. And why should this be? What could have inspired such a decree from heaven? Surely, we must admit that the majesty of Catholicism in our own and other English-speaking countries can only have been superficial. How many of us really thought of ourselves as exiles from our true home in heaven? Did we not, for all practical purposes, see ourselves as citizens of rather than sojourners upon earth? The collapse of American Catholicism has reminded us that the only true marks of the Church are that it will always be one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic. It need not always be vigorous, flourishing, and widely respected. Thus, in the apparently abject state of the Church today, traditional Catholics should rejoice in the fact that they have been given a particular grace in remaining true to the faith of their fathers. "Why me?" each one of us should ask ourselves. "Why, when so many others have fallen away, have I remained faithful?" This must have been the question the faithful remnant in Elizabethan England put to themselves.

There is, of course, a danger in the grace we have been given. Satan will inevitably try to use even the particular graces given to us by God to turn us away from our Creator. The danger is that of pride, that of saying: "Thank God that I am not as the rest of men." The correct response to this particular grace must be to turn to God, to implore His mercy, to beg for His help for ourselves and for His Church. "Stir up, O Lord, Thy might, and come to save us," is the Alleluia Prayer for Gaudete Sunday. The Communion verse gives us all the reassurance we should need: "Say to the fainthearted, take courage and fear not: behold our God will come and will save us."

There is one thing of which we can be absolutely sure: God will not abandon His Church—to imagine that He has done so is not simply fainthearted but blasphemous! We can also be certain that even if the Church is reduced to a very little flock it will still be an hierarchical Church. The Church which Christ founded, the Church to which we are determined to remain faithful, is an hierarchical Church with Peter as its foundation. Peter may not always act as we might hope. After all, he fled from the Garden of Gethsemane, he denied Our Lord to the maidservant, he was not at the foot of the Cross, he had to be rebuked by St. Paul for compromising the Faith through his temerity, but this did not alter the fact that he was the rock upon which the Church was built. Archbishop Lefebvre said many years ago that if ever a bishop breaks with the Holy See it will not be him. However much the Pope may disappoint us, we must remain united to him and obey him in all that does not compromise our faith. If we break away from the rock of Peter we shall be swept into waters where we cannot hope to be saved. We urge our readers to make 1984 a year in which they redouble their prayers for the Pope. We must remember that many of his predecessors have not been wise, holy, prudent and firm. We must rejoice in the extent to which he does uphold the basic teachings of our faith with clarity and courage. If he has disappointed us upon occasions he has outraged the Liberals! They hate him and abuse him. Let us love him and pray for him.

Although the reasons for our joy this Christmas must be primarily on a supernatural level there have been some reasons for encouragement during the past year. Father Schmidberger has assumed his responsibilities as Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X without any serious problems occurring—the defections in America had taken place before he did so. He has received the loyal support of Society priests and their congregations throughout the world. Father Richard Williamson has achieved wonders in ensuring that our seminary is now a thriving and truly Catholic institute, conducted in the true spirit of the Society. His achievement appears almost miraculous when the sad events of this spring are considered. Furthermore, the Society has already begun to re-establish itself in the North-East District once more, and we hope that good progress will be made in this respect in 1984. The South-West District, we are delighted to say, remained united behind the Archbishop and Tradition, and is offering the same loyalty to Father Schmidberger.

Perhaps the most dramatic and encouraging event of the year was the frank admission made by Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that the teaching of religion to Catholic children has gone disastrously astray since Vatican II, and that religious education (catechetics) should be based firmly upon the Roman Catechism (The Catechism of the Council of Trent). In his editorial to the September issue of the English Jesuit monthly, Christian Order, Father Paul Crane, S.J., said precisely what we here at The Angelus felt about the Cardinal's historic statement:

It has put fresh heart into parents whose faith has been badly battered by the treatment meted out to their children, and, indeed, themselves—by those whose duty it is to teach the things of the faith in Catholic schools. For what the Cardinal said in the most erudite fashion was only what they in their own way have sensed and said for close on twenty years; viz. that contemporary catechetics is in crisis through the failure of those responsible for its teaching in schools to present the truths of the faith as a whole and that, to this end, the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, should be recalled from the obscurity into which it has been thrust and used once again as the core round which sound catechetical instruction should be built.

Father Crane is correct. Cardinal Ratzinger has done no more than say what traditional Catholics have been saying for the past twenty years. How often have we been sneered at and treated with contempt by so-called "experts," even by bishops, for daring to presume that we could know better than they did? How ridiculous, they claimed, that the very idea that the Catechism of Trent could have any relevance for a twentieth-century Catholic! Well, the highest authority in the Church, but for the Pope himself, has now admitted the justice of our case. Does this not give us cause for hope that the Vatican will eventually concede that we have been right all along on an equally important matter—in demanding the continuing use of the Mass of Trent? We have also been sneered at and treated with contempt by so-called "liturgical experts," even by bishops, for daring to suggest that the Missal of St. Pius V can have relevance for a twentieth-century Catholic. We know for certain that the Pope has twice been on the point of making important concessions regarding the Tridentine Mass, but has given way on both occasions due to the pressure of highly-placed Liberals. We know that many traditional Catholics feel bitter about this, but we must remember that the Pope is only human and is subject to the pressures undergone by any incumbent of high office. Cardinal Oddi said this year that if the Catholic people want the Tridentine Mass he is sure it will be restored to them. The Society will continue making it clear that truly Catholic people want this, by using no other form. We at The Angelus will continue to publish and distribute literature putting the case for the Tridentine Mass. We are certain that after only six years of existence we are achieving as much in this respect as any other traditionalist publisher in the English-speaking world. We have sent tens of thousands of items all over the world, and will continue doing so until the Vatican accepts the justice of our claim that the Tridentine Mass should be used once again as the core round which sound liturgical worship should be built.

We also detect signs of a return to traditional American values in some aspects of national life. It is a long time since we have experienced such a general feeling of patriotism as that following the liberation of Grenada. The Moral Majority is making its presence felt and, although its leaders are not Catholic, probably anti-Catholic in some cases, the moral values they uphold are ones we share. The pro-life movement, too, is continuing its campaign for the unborn with great vigor. With constant prayer and sacrifice, an active involvement in our duties as Catholics and citizens, who knows, 1984 may be the year in which the tide begins to turn in Church and State. Let us never forget that the Blessed Mother herself has given us the blueprint for survival in the message of Fatima. It is a message that we beg all our readers to keep continually before their minds.

May this coming Christmas, then, be a season of joy for all of you. The foundation of our joy must be that whatever our personal problems, whatever the evils afflicting both Church and State, we know with absolute certainty that God loves each one of us as an individual, that this love is so great that He sent His Son to save us and prepare an eternal home for us in heaven. The Introit for the Second Mass of Christmas gives the reason for our hope and for our joy:

Lux fulgebit super nos—A light shall shine upon us this day: for the Lord is born to us: and He shall be called Wonderful, God, the Prince of Peace, the Father of the world to come: of whose reign there shall be no end.

No one can be a traditional Catholic without believing these words to be true. What right, then, have we not to be joyful at this holy season?

Gaudete in Domino semper,
iterum dico, gaudete.