The Remnant June 30, 1977
by Walter L. Matt
Regardless of what Rome will do about Archbishop Lefebvre, still the Mass and the whole of the Trent tradition and teaching, all of it dogmatically defined and established as the mind and the will of the Church, will remain as THE central issue or bone of contention on whose ultimate outcome the weal or woe of the Church will hinge. For this reason, therefore, we earnestly beg our readers not to lose heart or become discouraged and despondent or embittered over the present tragic situation. The cause of Christ, the Invisible Head of the Church, transcends and surpasses all else. We must not, we dare not if we love God and value our immortal souls, yield to momentary setbacks or relax in our common struggle. Today’s war is a war of the spirit, a war of principalities and powers, a war between Christ and AntiChrist. As for Archbishop Lefebvre, we still are convinced that history will vindicate him, regardless of what Rome chooses to do in the matter at this time. But we urge our readers to pray both for the Pope as well as the Archbishop that, in the long run at least, the cause of Christ and His Church will triumph and the present state of anarchy and confusion will be brought to a halt. Right now, while the turmoil still continues, we can think of no better reading matter than the latest Remnant-sponsored books, “The Tridentine Mass”, by Michael Davies ($1 a copy, postpaid), and “A Bishop Speaks”, consisting of the writings and addresses by Archbishop Lefebvre from 1963 to 1975. This latest compilation of 230 pages priced at $4.50 per copy, is about as complete in its presentation of the tragedy which has befallen the Church in our day as anything could be. The publishers, Scottish UNA VOCE, 6 Belford Park, Edinburgh, have now furnished The Remnant with a large consignment of these superb books, which Archbishop Lefebvre fervently hopes “will help many Catholics, bishops, priests and laity to understand the tragedy which is ruining the Church, andthenew betrayal of which Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Victim.” Needless to say, we earnestly share his hope!
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I note that a Pennsylvania bishop has had the courage to state publicly that the so-called reform of the Mass, which is a principal product of Vatican II, has failed to achieve its goal of “creating community”, quite the contrary. “The ‘renewers’ of the liturgy,” the bishop points out, “sought to create ‘community’, to get people involved, to make them feel they were one with the group, ” says Auxiliary Bishop Norbert F. Gaughan of Greensburg, Pa. “These ‘reformers’ of the rite claimed the old Mass did not do that. “
Bishop Gaughan, writing in the May 27 issue of the “Pittsburgh Catholic”, cites a recent Parent-Teacher meeting in a suburban parish of “middle-class Catholics”. They were asked how many would like to go back to the old Latin Mass. “The question was asked complacently, presuming there would be only a handful. Yet, lo and behold, in a group of about 150, three fourths said they would desire that,” the Bishop writes.
The Bishop goes on to say that, “to become community – we must share not just a set of beliefs, but gestures and responses which do not come naturally to all of us in the same way. The new rite invokes community, which sadly is not there. Someone ought to study what people mean by ‘Latin Mass’, and, secondly, what it is that people miss in the present structure. It is not a matter of formula, or Latin words,” he points out. “It was an experience we do not have today. It can be a rgued that the liturgical reformers never bothered to ask or to seek some understanding of what the people’s experience of the Mass was, and what would happen when change came.” (Los Angeles Tidings, 6/17/77)
Well, the Bishop is quite right of course. He’s also honest enough in admitting that in the poll which he cites some three-fourths expressed their preference for the old Latin Mass of their forebears. This all jibes with the recent poll taken amongst British Catholics, which re vealed that 2% wanted no other than the Tridentine Mass, whilst 14% preferred the old Latin Mass to the new rite. Now, according to the 1977 edition of the official Catholic Directory, there are 4,182,209 Catholics in England and Wales. Applying these percentages to that total, as the chairman of the Latin Mass Society pointed out, 2% means that 83,644 English Catholics want only the Old Mass and 14% means that 585,509 prefer the Old Mass to the New. The total number represented by those who voiced a definite ‘Yes’ for the Old Mass amounts to 669,153 Catholics. In other words, a round 700, 000 British Catholics still want the Old Latin Mass after more than a decade without it! Moreover, if there is such a strong minority in England and Wales, where the worst excesses of the Modernists are relatively fewer and more ra re and where the Papal Indult has not yet taken all hope from the faithful, what then would be the result on a world scale? No doubt a ‘Yes’ vote would be even more resounding. For if we accept the British percentages as given above, all we have to do is to determine how they compare with the total world population of Catholics, which is approximately 550 million. Thus, if 2% want only’the Old Mass, this would mean 2% of 550 million or 11 million Catholics. And if 14% prefer it, this would mean 77 million. The total estimated ‘Yes’ votes for the Old Mass means that 88 million Catholics throughout the world are in favor of that Mass!
I might add, by the way, that a few years ago here in St. Paul, our young people’s Regina Coeli Group went to about ten parish churches on successive Sunday mornings and asked people coming from Mass to sign printed petitions requesting the return of the Old Mass. Within a matter of a week or two the Group had collected over 1, 000 signed petitions asking for the return of the Old Mass!
The question arises: For how long can so many millions of Catholics be deprived of their right to worship in accordance with their cherished tradition and their conscience? Or will it take eighty-eight million excommunications to put an end to their pleading?
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I note in the Minneapolis Tribune (6/17/77) the following: “A Masonic Lodge official will participate in the dedication tomorrow of a $5-million Roman Catholic home for the aged at 90 Wilkin S t., St, Paul.
“Rose E. Frederickson, grand master of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Minnesota, will place the cornerstone, which will be blessed by Archbishop John R. Roach, head of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. The Masons contributed $5,000 for the home operated by the Little Sisters of the Poor and to be called Holy Family Residence.”
One wonders just when in history, or at what precise moment in time, the encyclicals proclaimed by the past Popes are no longer considered to be morally binding upon Catholics? For instance, has the encyclical on Freemasonry, Humanum Genus, which categorically condemned this ‘perfidious sect’ – has this been abrogated? “Let no one be deceived”, Pope Leo XIII declared, “by a pretence of honesty. It may seem to some that Freemasons demand nothing that is openly contrary to religion and morality; but, as the whole principle and object of the sect lies in what is vicious and criminal, to join with these men or in any way to help them cannot be lawful”. A few years later, in his Apostolical Letter of March 19, 1902, the same great Pope, in reviewing the lengthy term of his pontificate, was even more vehement and outspoken in condemning any fraternization with Masonry, regardless of where or on which continent it operates. He referred to the latter as “a sect of darkness”, a “sect which human society these many years carries within itself and which like a deadly poison destroys its happiness, its fecundity, and its life,” a sect which, “abiding personification of the revolution, constitutes a sort of retrogressive society whose object is to exercise an occult suzerainty over the established order and whose whole purpose is to make war against God and against His Church.”
That, of course, was how the Church thought and felt about Masonry just 75 years ago. “We must tear away the mask from Freemasonry,” Pope Leo ordered. But today, 1977, we not only share, in varying degrees, their materialistic, naturalistic, pantheistic and evolutionist concepts and tenets, but we invite them to lay the cornerstones for our Catholic institutions of the future!
The question arises: will such institutions continue to be Catholic – Roman Catholic, that is ?
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In case some may wonder why we’re giving so much space to Fr. Crane’s article series on Communism and the Church, the reason should be fairly obvious. For not only is this hydra-headed monster advancing across the globe with more and more rapid strides, but – and this is the real tragedy – its once implacable foe, the Church, seems to have decided, since Vatican II, that Communism has somehow mellowed and therefore there is hope of conciliation and peaceful co-existence perhaps. Thus, for example, you may have seen the recent report from Washington according to which the Church in Latin America is being more and more influenced by Marxist goals and “the thinking of theologians and political scientists almost invariably speaks of some form of socialism in Latin America”, hopefully to replace the present capitalist system. The report was made in a statement given to the national Catholic Register by Thomas Quigley, assistant director of the United States Catholic Conference’s office of International Justice and Peace. Interestingly, the report in the Register (June 5) was headlined “Socialism Prevails in Latin America”. It went on to quote Mr. Quigley to the effect that the kind of socialism being advanced in Latin America would not be “like Stalinism”, but a more “modified” or “mellow” type, more like that prevailing today in Castro’s Cuba, which, according to Quigley, “is on the way to becoming a more acceptable socialist state”. (?!)
One wonders whether either Mr. Quigley or, for that matter, the USCC itself, or even the bishops and priests who favor a more ‘modified’ kind of socialism, have ever bothered to read Pope Pius XI’s social encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, in which he refers explicitly to such hypotheses as a ‘modified’ or ‘mitigated’ form of socialism, and declares on the matter thusly:
“But what if, in questions of class war and private ownership, socialism were to become so mitigated and amended, that nothing reprehensible could any longer be found in it? Would it by that very fact have laid aside its character of hostility to the Christian religion? This is a question which holds many minds in suspense; and many are the Catholics who, realizing clearly that Christian principles can never be either sacrificed or minimized, seem to be raising their eyes toward theHolySee, and earnestly beseeching Us to decide whetbfer or not this form of socialism has retracted so far its false doctrines that it can now be accepted without the loss of any Christian principle, and be baptized into the Church. In Our fatherly solicitude We desire to satisfy their petitions, and We pronounce as follows,: whether socialism be considered as a doctrine, or as a historical fact, or as a movement, if it really remains socialism it cannot be brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic Church, even i f it has yielded to truth and justice in the points We have mentioned; the reason being that it conceives human society in a way utterly alien to Christian truth.
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If like all errors, socialism contains a certain element of truth (and this the sovereign pontiffs have never denied), it is nevertheless founded upon a doctrine of human society peculiarly its own, which is opposed to true Christianity. ‘Religious Socialism’, ‘Christian Socialism are expressions implying a contradiction in terms. No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true socialist.” (Quad. Anno, Pius XI, May 15, 1931)
Could anything be more clear than that? And could any Pope have been more definite, more explicit that he was hereby PRONOUNCING on a matter of dogma, and that no Catholic, therefore, is at liberty to defy this teaching? And yet this teaching today is being subverted if not completely disdained and defied. Why? And why is it that those bishops, priests, and laymen who have turned their backs on such teaching and who now blandly opt for a ‘mitigated or ‘mellowed’ form of socialism are not being called to order, are not being suspended or threatened with excommunication?
