For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.

- Romans 10:13-15

The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913, Vol. XII, P- 775a: "In 881-2 Pope John VIII prescribed the reordination of Bishop Joseph of Vercelli, who had been ordained by the Archbishop of Milan, then under the ban of excommunication."

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica , Supplement, Q 39, Art 2: "For the higher orders, however, the use of reason is required both out of respect for, and for the lawfulness of the sacrament, not only on account of the vow of continency annexed thereto, but also because the handling of the sacraments is entrusted to them. But for the episcopate whereby a man receives power also over the mystical body, the act of accepting the pastoral care of souls is required; wherefore the use of reason is necessary for the validity of episcopal consecration."

The Catholic Encyclopedia,, 1913, Vol. XIII, p. 304a: "(l) Conditions for Valid Reception. - (a) the previous reception of baptism by water) is an essential condition for the valid reception of any other sacrament. Only citizens and members of the Church can come under her influence as such; baptism is the door by which we enter the Church and thereby become members of the mystical body united to Christ our head (Catech. Trid., de bapt., nn. 5, 52). (b) In adults, for the valid reception of any sacrament except the Eucharist it is necessary that they have the intention of receiving it. The sacraments impose obligations and confer grace: Christ does not wish to impose those obligations or confer grace without the consent of man. The Eucharist is excepted because, in whatever state the recipient may be, it is always the body and blood of Christ."

Moral Theology, Heribert Jone & Urban Adelman, 1946, pp. 334-5: "460. Requirements for Valid Reception. 1. The recipient of a Sacrament must be in the wayfaring state and (except in case of Baptism) validly baptized. …… 2. The required intention must be present. ….. 461. a) The implicit habitual intention is in itself sufficient for the valid reception of a Sacrament. ….. b) The implicit habitual intention is required in order that ordination be certainly valid, since the intention is required in order that ordination be certainly valid, since the intention to assume a new state and new burdens is not readily included in another act of volition." p. 468: "638. I. Validity requires that the candidate for ordination be a baptized male who, if an adult, must have at least the habitual implicit intention to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders "

Canon Law, A Text and Commentary, Bouscaren & Ellis, 1953, p. 422, Canon 968: "Only a person of the male sex who has been baptized can validly receive the sacrament of orders. ..... (1) the male sex - the constant practice of the Church from the earliest days as well as the unanimous teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church have excluded women from the reception of orders; (2) baptism by water - it is only by baptism that a man can become a member of Christ's Church and thus receive the right to the other sacraments (c. 87). A third requisite is supposed in the case of an adult: the intention to receive the sacrament - this is required for validity in adults: an habitual, express intention suffices, that is, a positive act of the will once formed and never retracted before the reception of orders."

Cursus Theologicus, Carolus Bozzola, S.J., 1948, Vol. IV, De Sacramentis, p. 296, under De Subjecto sacramenti ordinis: "But in adults we have already seen also for other sacraments, is required at least habitual intention of receiving the sacrament."

Sacramental Theology, A Textbook for Advanced Students, Clarance McAuliff, S.J., 1958, pp. 64-5: "The recipient's intention must be both external and internal. He must intend not only to receive the sacred rite (external intention), but also to receive it as an act of Christian worship."

Summa Theologiae Moralis iuxta codicem iuris canonici, Noldin & Schmitt, 1938 (25^th edition), III De Sacramentis, p. 476: "465. ….. for valid reception of orders it is required and it suffices (a) that the ordinand be a male; (b) that he be baptized: (c) That he have at least habitual intention of receiving the orders, if he be adult."

Obviously the baptism required is Catholic Baptism the only baptism which provides entry into the Catholic Church. To receive Orders, we are told again and again, is the right of Catholic Church members only. Certainly the Church has no intentions of conferring priesthood or episcopate upon non-members, especially ex-members. "Only citizens and members of the Church can come under her influence as such; baptism is the door by which we enter the Church." Apostasy and excommunication are the doors by which we leave the Church, and lose all rights of members, especially title to the episcopate. The bishop, says St. Thomas, must have the use of reason because he must intend to fulfill the duties of his office. "But for the episcopate whereby a man receives power also over the mystical body, the act of accepting the pastoral care of souls is required; wherefore the use of reason is necessary for the validity of episcopal consecration."

In use of our own reason we can readily appreciate the utter lack of reason involved in accepting that a man who has both apostatized by, and been excommunicated for, joining the masons, having attained a lofty devil-worshipping degree, can intend to accept the pastoral care of Catholic souls. Here is a prime example of a man with a four-square head attempting the absurd task of fitting it into a (roughly) circular mitre. As Hugo Maria Kellner pointed out (Letter No. 75, April 1979), Achille Lienart was utterly ineligible for the episcopacy by reason of apostasy and excommunication, and was by reason of 30^th degree Freemasonry utterly incapable of forming the correct intention to receive a sacrament for its proper purpose "as an act of Christian worship." Indeed, Vatican II's only benefit that comes to mind is that Achille Lienart there proved his diabolical orientation, which Lefebvre and his unordained crew impiously hope never interfered with his ecclesiastical actions. Perhaps they can bemuse themselves about his intention, but they cannot gainsay his perfect ineligibility - which made his intention irrelevant.

As Mr. Kellner demonstrated, Canon 968 falsified Church doctrine by listing apostasy and excommunication as "irregularities" - thus preserving non-existent Catholic rights of ex-Catholics.

The 1917 Code was a codification of the many overlapping sources of the law, not intended as a correction. It removed laws for which no purpose remained, but freemasonry remains a major foe, entitled to no benefit from our laws. Only treachery could have introduced this "loophole. "

Canon law, unless divine, is not dogmatic. Divine law in cases like Lienart's: "He that is not with Me is against Me : and he that gathereth not with me scattereth" - Matt 12:30; Luke 11:23.

We see the Lefevrites continue to scatter. Unfortunately, they continue also to drag traditional Catholics, to whom the priest's word, despite our sad experience, remains law.

Objection - There seems only one lone authority, though widely quoted, for the fact of Cardinal Lienart's membership in the Freemasons. It seems highly unlikely that such evidence as his signature on a masonic register would exist. An infiltrator would have been more careful than to leave evidence which could trip him up - destroy his usefulness to the craft.

Reply - I see no reason why a Freemason would not sign a secret register, never intended for the general public. One might allow for arrogance (and even occasional stupidity) among those too proud to serve God. It could be taken as an indication of their care of secrecy that only one man discovered the primary evidence. A fact is not less because known to only one man. Our daily newspapers thrive on beats and scoops. When a man discovers such a fact he is conscience-bound to publish it. There is no time for corroboration from others, who, if they exist, either fear for their lives or share the plot. This lone authority appears to have been correct in certain other cases, notably Bugnini's.

Lienart, Freemason or not, certainly proved at Vatican II and since that he was not Catholic. With Suenens, Koenig, Lercaro, Dopfner, and many others he worked ceaselessly in the interests of the modernists and Freemasons. Which constitute the greatest danger? (possibly to sacraments as well as Church?)

The Catholic Dictionary of Theology, H. Davis, I. Thomas, OP, J. Crehan, SJ, Nelson 1971. Vol. III, p. 134, Intention:

"But on the side of the minister, is it enough to hold that what is called an external intention is all that is required? This external intention which some defended as adequate) may be defined as the willing and serious performance of the sacramental rite. An inner mental act of willingness to perform the rite is included in this 'external intention' by its proponents, but it is thought to be compatible with a contrary intention of not willing the rite to be a sacrament. Philibert Lavardin, bishop of Le Mans, confessed on his deathbed in 1671 that he had in fact conferred holy orders while withholding, his intention. The Sorbonne drew up a statement of opinion that nothing need be done to make good this crime, but Rome thought otherwise, and the eventual condemnation (D318) in 1690 of the proposition that a baptism is valid if the minister forms a mental intention of not willing to do what the Church does was a public correction of the French errors of the time."

December 7, 1690 the Holy Office condemned thirty-one propositions. No. 28 (Denzinger 1318): "Baptism is valid when conferred by a minister who observes all the external rite and form of baptizing, but within his heart resolves, I do not intend what the Church does."

Can such an intention be determined in the absence of the minister's disclosure? If the minister is shown involved in devil-worship at the time of the ceremony, such an intention must be presumed a virtual certainty, especially if the minister's actions, prior or subsequent, are consistent with his presumed intention.

Pope Benedict XIV condemns the opinion that the neutral will (which is neither agreeable nor hostile to reception of the sacrament) suffices in one receiving Baptism. He declares that Baptism has its effect when its subject either wills or has willed to be baptized; if he neither agree nor disagree, unless he had the intention beforehand, he cannot be baptized. Having established the necessity of the subject's intention, the pontiff concludes a greater necessity of the minister's intention, and teaches that should it be established that some one has administered Baptism or another unrepeatable sacrament, having applied all external rite, but withholding his intention, or deliberately willing not to do what the Church does, by pressing necessity the sacrament should be administered again conditionally.

I stated publicly that I believed Lefebvre a properly ordained a priest, but I refused to bet my salvation on this unnecessary belief. Additional information and deeper analysis have convinced me that Lienart never ordained anyone. No Catholic is required to believe in the validity of Lefebvre's orders. Even were validity possible, his public heresy insures that his conferred orders are not licit. No one is permitted to use illicitly obtained orders (Canon 2372). Laisney, like any priest "ordained" since Lefebvre refused to ordain men who differed from his two theological opinions that the novus ordo missae is not per se invalid and that notorious heretics are or can be popes, is by this refusal proven to have held the same two heresies, as well as to have been responsible, like Lefebvre, for all heresies promulgated by Paul VI and his successors. This applies to any priest who retains membership in Lefebvre's organization.

If Lefebvre ordained priests, they are not Catholic priests - ordained according to Church regulations, at the Church's orders, to positions in the Church - even should they be both priests and Catholic. All Catholics are bound to shun his "priests'' - who are not even excommunicated priests with a proper background to whom we repair in extremis. They have never been legitimately trained or ordained Catholic priests; they have no status to which they can return.

When a prominent, reputable historian reports a fact which is by its nature difficult for the man in the street to check, you may believe him because of the consequences to himself. High Grand Orient Freemasonry is, to say the least, treacherous, devious, and dangerous. Fortunately Lienart's behavior at and since Vatican II confirms the report, which, in turn, provides all the "reason" behind the behavior.

Could this God-hater have himself intended to receive the fullness of Holy Orders? One may reasonably doubt it. Doubt is not permitted in our sacraments. Even could this "doubt" be resolved, there remain two more, either of which must be avoided: 1) whether an apostate freemason can intend to act in any way for the Church which 2) he certainly tried to destroy subsequently in its unity, Catholicity, and Apostolicity. Why should he neglect holiness, especially Mass and sacraments, holiest of all? Freemasons often attack the Church in different sectors, but never limit hostilities thereto; their war is total.

One of freemasonry's best-known policies, that which initially attracts members, is promotion of the brothers, each in his own field This may very well account for Marcel Lefebvre's rise to the episcopacy in the first place. He certainly acted and thought like a freemason. But the experience which solidified my own suspicion, being a matter not of action but rather of omission or inertia, is more difficult to demonstrate. It remains possible, and contributes unnecessarily to the huge doubt clouding all Lienart's "sacramental" activities. But this is all overkill; Lefebvre had every right to be shunned by all over his proven public heresies.

LEFEBVRE ORDAINED(?) BY A HIGH-DEGREE FREEMASON

We thought this legitimate because apparently supported by St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae III, 64, cited by Econe's Laudenschlager. However good the arguments pro or con, further pursuit of III, 64 clearly convicts Econe of dishonesty in claiming its approval. St. Thomas presents the Laudenschlager selective citations as opinions - not Church dogma. Fuller quotation of the same III, 64 places St. Thomas in the opposite camp.

"An inanimate instrument has no intention respecting efforts. But in intention's place is the motion by which it is impelled by the principal agent. But an animate instrument, as is a minister, not only is moved but also moves himself inasmuch as he by his own will moves his limbs to perform the necessary actions. Therefore is required his intention, by which he subjects himself to the principal agent: that he evidently intends to do what Christ and the Church do." - S. T. III, 64, 8, ad 1.

Question (64, 8, 2): "One man cannot know another's intention. If therefore the minister's intention is required for completion of a sacrament, the man approaching the sacrament could not know that he has received the sacrament. And so he could not have certitude of salvation, especially since certain sacraments are necessary for salvation, as will be explained below. "

Answer: "About this there are two opinions. For some say mental intention is required in the minister, which if lacking no sacrament is conferred. But in children, who have no intention of approaching the sacrament, Christ Who baptizes interiorly, supplies for this defect. But in adults, because they intend to receive sacraments, their faith and devotion supply this defect.

"Now while this might be said to be adequate so far as the ultimate effect is concerned, namely, justification from sins, still, so far as that effect which is reality and sacrament is concerned, in other words so far as character is concerned, it seems that the defect cannot be made good merely through devotion of him who approaches the sacraments; because the character is never imprinted except through the sacrament.

"Therefore others say better that the minister of a sacrament acts in the person of the whole Church, whose minister he is. But in the words which are uttered the Church's intention is expressed This suffices for completion of the sacrament unless the contrary be expressed on the part of the minister or the recipient of the sacrament."

Laudenschlager's statement that the Church has recognized validity of orders of certain schismatic heretics cannot extend to cover validity of orders conferred by apostates.

"Apostasy from the faith separates a man from God altogether, as we have seen, which is not the case with other sins."- S.T. II-Iiae, 12, ad 3

"One can deviate from the rightness of Christian faith doubly. In one way because he will not assent to Christ Himself: and this has as if an evil will concerning the end itself: And this pertains to the type of infidelity of pagans and Jews. In the other way though he intends to assent to Christ but he fails in choosing those things by which he may assent to Christ, because he chooses not what was truly given by Christ but what his on mind suggests to him. Therefore heresy is a type of infidelity pertaining to those who profess the faith of Christ but corrupt His teachings." -S.T. II-Ilae, 11 , 1, reply.

Laudenschlager by quoting St. Thomas out of context tries to show that a masonic impostor pretending to be Catholic, practicing perfect visible-audible valid external intentions, can validly ordain. So he pursues the quotation no further:

"The intention of the minister c an be perverted in two ways. One way, with respect to the sacrament itself: for instance when some one does not intend to confer a sacrament but to do something deceptively (delusorie ). And such perverseness takes away the truth of a sacrament: especially when he manifests his intentions outwardly." -S.T. 111, 64. 10 reply.

Especially rules out exclusively. Nor does St. Thomas place a time limit on outward manifestation. Probably most of us heard from same nun the unlikely fable of the old black slave at an episcopal consecration. She told the new bishop how proud she was, since it was she who had baptized him. "Oh? And how did you do it?" "Why, you was so cute I couldn't use plain water - I used milk!" So the new bishop was forced to be baptized property, to be confirmed, to make his First Communion, to undergo conferral of minor and major orders, to be ordained priest and consecrated bishop. It makes no difference, as this fable was meant to illustrate, however much later the defect is manifested.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol VIII, page 69d: "The Church teaches very unequivocally that for the valid conferring of the sacraments, the minister must have the intention of doing at least what the Church does. This is laid down with great emphasis by the Council of Trent. (Sess. VI). The opinion once defended by such theologians as Catharinus and Salmeron (theologians at Trent) that there need only be the intention to perform deliberately the external rite proper to each sacrament, and that, as long as this was true, the interior dissent of the minister from the mind of the Church would not invalidate the sacrament, no longer finds adherents. The common doctrine now is that a real internal intention to act as a minister of Christ, or to do what Christ instituted the sacraments to effect, in other words, to truly baptize, absolve, etc., is required. The intention need not necessarily be of the sort called actual. That would often be practically impossible. It is enough that it be virtual. Neither habitual nor interpretive intention in the minister will suffice for the validity of the sacrament. The truth is that here and now, when the sacrament is being conferred, neither of these intentions exists and they can therefore exercise no determining influence upon what is done. ….. Whatever may be said speculatively about the opinion of Ambrosius Catharinus who advocated the sufficiency of an external intention in the minister, it may not be followed in practice, because, outside of cases of necessity, no one may follow a probable opinion against one that is safer, when there is question of something required for the validity of a sacrament. "

Overwhelming evidence of Achille Lienart's apostasy was capped by his behavior at Vatican II, where Paul VI appointed him a Moderator on the strength of his "liberal" record. Joining the freemasons itself constitutes apostasy. It is quite likely that Lienart never in his life validly ordained a priest. All his ordinations lie under a cloud of legitimate doubt, which must attain to Lefebvre's orders. Lienart made him a priest(?). Lefebvre was, therefore, at best, doubtfully eligible for the episcopacy, for which true priesthood is pre-required. All his own conferred ordinations share the same doubt. Anyone, therefore, who - ignoring Lefebvre's heresies, to which he obliges his ordinands - attends a Mass(?) celebrated by him or any necessarily heretical priests(?) in good standing with his 'Fraternity of St. Pius X (or its breakaway Society of St. Peter), if aware of the doubt, unnecessarily risks mortal sin. If unaware of the doubt he runs the risk of idolatry. 'This applies with greater force to the doubtful priests themselves who dare celebrate Mass(?) or administer sacraments(?) under this cloud.

FREEMASONRY'S EFFECT ON ORDINATION

Dr. Runa Coomaraswamy (Roman Catholic), June 1982): "Let us then look to discover a historical precedent about a Masonic bishop." He then devoted three long paragraphs to the biography of Charles Maurice de Tallyrand-Perigord, Bishop of Autun, forced into the clerical state by his family, assuming his bought diocese only as his ticket into the Estates General.

"After most of the traditional ad loyal bishops fled France, it fell his lot to consecrate (together with the infamous apostate, Bishop Gobel) all the 'Constitutional Bishops' that replaced them. ..... He was a bad priest, an apostate bishop, a Freemason, a Christian barred from communion and an individual who for forty-nine years could not receive the sacraments of the Church. " [A Christian? A priest? Whoever can show that he was forced into marriage could in normal times be almost sure of an annulment - a declaration that he had not received the sacrament of matrimony for lack of interior assent, no matter how impressive the ceremony.

What are we to believe of Talleyrand's consent to his enforced ordination?] Now the point of all this is that most of the bishops of France derived their Apostolic Succession through Talleyrand and his two associates (also supporters of the Revolution). Not only were all Talleyrand's episcopal consecrations recognized, but when the Concordat between Napoleon and Pius VII was signed, the exiled bishops who had remained loyal to Pope Pius VI were asked to resign. Rome allowed the bishops of the Constitutional Church, all of whom derived their orders from the Mason Talleyrand, to remain in their positions, as diocesan ordinaries. The fact that Talleyrand was a Mason and a revolutionary made no difference.

"To sum up ..... (1) There is no real evidence ..... that Cardinal Lienart was a Freemason. (2) If he had been a Freemason, it would not have invalidated the sacraments he conferred. (3) The case of Talleyrand demonstrates in the practical order that the Church does not regard ordinations performed by Freemasons as invalid." [Talleyrand consecrated two (2!) bishops in 1791. He was quickly excommunicated, and ceased all ecclesiastical activity.]

Pius VII was not necessarily a free agent in his deals with Napoleon. Nor did he thereby rule on Talleyrand's orders; he had two other bishops on whom he could depend for validity and Apostolic Succession as provided by Church law to overcome one or two of the participating bishops' ineligibility. "Supporters of the Revolution" most probably in error, could not lose their sacramental powers through that support. We can cite priests and bishops of almost all political persuasions, including supporters of the masonic American Revolution.

If, despite reams of logical evidence, no one can prove Lienart a Freemason, at least no one can prove he was not. Lefebvre accepted the public disclosure as factual, concerning himself only with the "fact" that an apostate enemy of God can still confer valid orders. Lefebvre himself acted in a most peculiar manner, due possibly to his own masonic entanglement - which obviously I cannot prove. But it is characteristic of the masonic plotters that they set up their own phony opposition, so that they need not deal with genuine opposition. Naturally its leader's record varies from that of the ordinary apostate. If Lefebvre is not the phony opposition, where is this vital part of the plot? Who else keeps traditionalists out of the real fight? Many try, but he succeeds, despite his blatant "strategic" procrastination and inconsistency. Undeniably, people who should fight follow him instead, and let him conduct the compromises.

St. Gregory Nanianzen (325-359) in 379 heard the call of the downtrodden Catholics of Constantinople, and there gave five sermons on the Creed of Nicea, which earned him, alone of all Christian teachers except the Apostle St. John, the special title of Theologus or the Divine. In these discourses Gregory "summed up and closed the controversy of a whole century." The best evidence of their value and power lies in the fact that for over fourteen centuries they have been a mine whence the greatest theologians of Christendom have drawn treasures of wisdom to illustrate and support their own teaching on the deepest mysteries of the Catholic Faith.

It almost seems that the closer a man is to God, the easier it is to take advantage of him. He refuses to think ill of others. So Gregory lost influence with his fellow bishops through another's abuse of his hospitality and trust.

St. Gregory received at face value one Maximus the Cynic, and surrounded him with honors. Maximus conspired to supplant Gregory in the see of Constantinople. Having previously won the confidence of Peter, Patriarch of Alexandria, he had seven chosen men who were to guarantee his claims sent from Egypt. He gathered about him a large number of sailors from; the Imperial fleet, bribed some intimate acquaintances of Gregory, and, during the latter's sickness, entered with his followers into the Anastasis church. Some bishops then started to consecrate him bishop . Word spread and the people came running. Maximus and his friends fled to the house of a fluteplayer and there the ordination continued.

The Council of Constantinople (May-July 381) took up first the question of the see of Constantinople. The scandalous ordination of Maximus the Cynic was pronounced null as contrary to canon law. The first consequence of this decision was a declaration of invalidity of all ordinations performed by him.

"If anyone say ..... that those who have not been rightly ordained by ecclesiastical and canonical power and have not been sent, but come from some other source, are lawful ministers of the word and of the sacraments: let him be anathema."

Council of Trent, Session XXIII, 15/7/1563

THE FAITH IS NOT DEFENDED FROM NOTHING OR NOBODY but from aggression and aggressors, heresies and heretics. To insist that public heretics are popes is to join them in heresy.

This statement can be refuted only in: (1) proving Vatican II perfectly orthodox, that it promulgated no error whatsoever, and that the new "mass" contains no Arianism, no Judaism, no Lutheranism, no apocatastasis, no variation from Catholic tradition or doctrine. For who promulgated these monstrosities? And who continues to support and impose them? On whose authority does anyone accept them? Or (2) in declaring tradition false in anathematizing Pius XII and all his predecessors back to St. Peter as heretics.

THE LEFEBVRE SYNDROME

St. Eusebius, bishop of Samosata, is claimed as a precedent. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol V, p. 615: "Eusebius displayed his greatest activity during the persecution of the Catholics by the Arian Emperor Valens. Disguised as a military officer he visited the persecuted churches of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, exhorting the afflicted Catholics to remain loyal to their faith, ordaining priests where they were needed, and in many other ways assisting the Catholic bishops in the difficult exercise of their duties during those troublous times. ….. Incensed at the great success of Eusebius, the Arians prevailed upon the Emperor Valens to banish him into Thrace. After the death of Valens, in 378, he was allowed to return to his see. ..... he resumed his former activity against the Arians, both in his own diocese and in the neighboring churches."

His jurisdiction, then, expanded to fill the vacuum. But Eusebius said quite openly that the bishops he undercut were Arians, that he ordained Catholics to keep the faith alive in his area. Lefebvre's failure to condemn heresies and those who hold them publicly leaves him without basis for his extra-legal activities. His practical recognition of Vatican II and the postconciliar "Church" leaves his St. Pius X Society in practical heresy. When he ordains members of his own Society he is not ordaining Catholics, but men committed by his own public actions to the support of those who propagate heresy, right in the heart of the new rites to which he gratuitously accords validity, rites for which he asks only a parallel rite while a Catholic would demand abolition.

Lefebvre to Una Voce's Eric de Saventhem 17 December 1976 "For the Universal Church I foresee, as you do, a peaceful coexistence of the preconciliar and the postconciliar rites. Accordingly, it should be left to the priests and to the believers to select the 'family of rites to which they prefer to adhere. Then, one should wait until the course of time makes known God's judgment on the respective values of truth and salvific effects for the Catholic Church and for total Christianity."

This "orthodoxy," particularly the ecumenical last phrase, outdoes Vatican II's own ambiguity. But it is not compromise. For Lefebvre will never compromise. Did he not write JP2 (March 19, 1979): "A solution could not be found in any compromise?" He kept us from the fight. He stood out, attracting the support of the hopeful. But he disclaimed leadership, so that he could shirk responsibility to lead the fight. He talked a good fight, leading to belief that he would eventually live up to the Faith. Day by day we expected; year by year we waited. He temporized enough to set the next stage in our destruction. The exiled traditionalist is to believe he has returned to the oasis when he takes his place in the mirage. We shall all be permitted our traditional rite (according to John XXIII) celebrated in desecrated churches long dedicated to sacrilege and idolatry, by laymen "ordained according to the new "sacrament of order," men trained in ignorance of the Church's propitiatory intention. To secure this great benefit all we need do is believe that nothing ails the novus ordo missae! So why were we not granted this great privilege in 1976? Lefebvre and Una Voce had agreed to the conditions beforehand.

Williamson, Econe's official spokesman to the antipodes, left little to be desired in his presentation. His enthusiasm was undeniable. He gave straight answers. His message was clear - but clearly unacceptable. Even Montini and Bugnini supported one system only, consistently, though sinfully, proscribing the other.

Clearly, in supporting heretics, Lefebvre supported their heresy. That he supported less heresy an official Rome or that out of charity he supported it reluctantly made him that much more dangerous. Nearly everyone can (if he will) detect open heresy (though Vatican II somehow fools those who have not read its documents). The closer to truth, the more easily the heretic deceives more people. Most dangerous is he who varies least. Religion is no game of horseshoes to be scored by proximity. No points for a leaner - the ringer or nothing!

Lefebvre's contribution, questionable and minuscule, necessarily aroused hostility among the hierarchy. He could have provoked at least as hostile a reaction by broadcasting the whole truth. But this course is less profitable, we assure you.

Catholics have the right to straight talk, honest argument, and complete, unadulterated orthodoxy from clergy, bishops, and popes. Vital issues may not be put off. Refusal to rule on a current issue earned (genuine) Pope Honorius I the Church's condemnation for heresy. Lefebvre needed look no further for precedent than the Temple money-changers fleeing the whip. Between pleas for the course of time to resolve matters, it would have behooved him to ask what Christ would have done had he not found money-changers but open idolaters. Lefebvre would have complained to Caiphas. if, in charity, he had deemed Caiphas capable of digesting strong but kosher meat.

THE ANGELUS, January 1980, carried Lefebvre's statement of Nov. 8, 1979. He listed five fundamental and pertinent dogmas violated ("Not clearly represented ….. even contradicted") by the novus ordo missae. "These New Masses," he said, "are not only incapable of fulfilling our Sunday obligation, but are such that we must apply to them the canonical rules which the Church customarily applies to communicatio in sacris with Orthodox Churches and Protestant sects.' True! The novus ordo is not mass; it has been imposed by non-Catholics, heretics, apostates.

But where is his reason? He acknowledges as legitimate the authority that imposed and continues to guarantee these sacrileges. He will not even say that this authority has exceeded its competence, or that these sacrileges must be wiped out. He will settle for equal rights for the traditional Mass in the same churches with these sacrileges. You may not attend, but neither may you conclude ..... under penalty of exclusion from his Society ..... invalidity. He who will volunteer priests to local ordinaries, who will allow validity to a non-Mass, will excommunicate you for failure to adhere to his own unnecessary theological opinion ..... exactly as represented by Williamson: "As long as" [equivocation'!'] "the essential conditions for validity are present" [never mind where] "matter, form, intention and a validly ordained priest, 1 do not see how one can affirm this" (invalidity). He seems unable to see that neither form nor intention are present in the whole damnable rite.

Then he waltzes into the eight -ballroom: The essentials of our traditional Mass are necessary not to validity but to integrity. He presents this emotionally charged picture of Cardinal Mindzenty celebrating this disintegrated Mass for his own profit, pronouncing solely the words of consecration [unspecified] over "a little bread and wine," and maintains that "he most certainly accomplished the Sacrifice and the Sacrament." Hogwash! Unwarranted theological opinion! Lefebvre [and Mindzenty?] would have it so.

Mindzenty would also have it that vernacular is good in the Mass because it promotes nationalism, as he pointed out in broken English to three of us.

Consider the circumstances of this "bare formula" celebration. Firstly, Mindzenty in prison unable to control his movements, lay under no obligation to say or assist Mass. Secondly, he expected interruption or not. If interrupted he would not yet have consecrated [in which case what harm?] or he would have consecrated, and left the Sacred Species, open to accident or deliberate desecration. So if he expected interruption he had no right whatsoever to attempt Mass. He had no one else to whom he could administer the sacrament He alone could benefit. If we may insert emotional opinion, Lefebvre style, who can doubt that he would have received equal benefit from a merciful and understanding God through what we must often settle for, a spiritual communion? If he expected no interruption why confine himself to the bare formula [whatever] in violation of Canon 817, the codification of divine law that forbids consecration of one species without the other or of both outside Mass? ("Bare formula" is further treated in Is The Pope Catholic?, pp. 57-60.

Lefebvre next presumes lack of proper intention in all the younger clergy. "Nevertheless (in so judging) ..... we priests of the Society) must always act as doctors of the soul and not as judges and hangmen." [What is his point?] "Those who are tempted to this latter course(?) are animated by a bitter spirit [temptation = sin?] and not true zeal for souls." [We find in the LMSA Newsletter, Sept. 1979, that Lefebvre's official representative, Fr. Williamson, says that Australia has enough priests for its traditionalists, and will receive none from Econe. True zeal for souls would have discerned a tremendous field: returning novus ordo Catholics and Catholics driven from their churches by the novus ordo to the true Mass.]

Lefebvre now tackles the "serious problem of conscience for the faithful," whether we have a pope. "One can fairly ask oneself how it was possible that a successor of Peter can in so little time have caused more damage to the Church than the French Revolution." [One could also ask: Who else could? Or how could he do it by accident? Or who would try unless allied to the same group that promoted the French Revolution? The Freemasons boasted for more than a century that they would eventually set their own man upon our papal throne and accomplish our destruction. Lefebvre looks at the accomplishment and pretends that it happened by accident. He cites fact: that Paul VI signed heretical documents, then experts agreements that this makes Paul not a heretic but only a liberal. What's the difference? Either way he wasn't Catholic.]

"A good number of theologians" (again!) "teach that a pope can be heretical as a private doctor or theologian, but not as a teacher of the Universal Church. One must then examine in what measure Pope Paul VI wished to engage his infallibility in the diverse cases where he signed texts close to heresy if not formally heretical." [Have you read such nonsense? Conciliar documents? Popes may teach what they please if they cross their fingers? But wait - there is more!]

"Does not the exclusion of the cardinals over eighty years of age, and the secret meetings which preceded and prepared the last two conclaves render them invalid?" [He had earlier raised the question of ineligibility to participate of "cardinals" created by public heretics posing as pope, and left the issue in the air, presumably unworthy of settlement.] "Invalid: no, that is saying too much. Doubtful at the time perhaps. But in any case the subsequent unanimous acceptance by the Cardinals and the Roman clergy suffices to validate it. That is the teaching of the theologians." [A doubtful election becomes valid when the electors accept their own doubt vote! Who cares what theologians think! Where are the canonists? Have either ruled on rigged elections in which nearly all electors (as fine a gaggle of liberals, modernists, freemasons, communists, and other non-Catholics as ever assembled - an oversize college packed by two of the same type to ensure completion of the destruction so well begun) had no right to participate? Would either hold, with Lefebvre, that a ''pope" who did so much damage to the Church would never use his usurped powers to appoint others of his own ilk? Would they insist on a public heretic's papal prerogatives? Theologians, at and since Vatican II, have put us in this mess.]

"The Truth must be affirmed at Rome above all other places. It is of God," says Lefebvre, "and He will assure its ultimate triumph." [But when Father Noel Barbara went to Rome in 1976 and proved publicly that Paul VI was a heretic and therefore not possibly pope, where was Lefebvre? Backing the Truth? Or proving that it was not the Truth? He may have been able to settle the entire issue had he taken either side. His media coverage could have brought the matter sufficiently before the public that it might have been resolved. Oh, we don't know that, we are told, as though he had a choice. It was his place to try. His prominence assured that few others could or would.]

FATHER LUCIAN'S LEFEBVRE (Excerpts, letter of Sept. 6, 1979)

Archbp. Lefebvre ..... is subject to John Paul II (but he has a difficulty). Since he is subject to John Paul II he is in the one-world religion which John Paul II heads. Hence, all who are served by the Society of St. Pius X are in reality Novus Ordo Catholics ….. the right wing of the apostate Church.

….. the Church ..... ruled from Rome since the death of Pope Pius XII is an apostate church, ….. even worse than the Church of England and the Lutheran Church ….. more evil in doctrines and rites than any Protestant church I ever came upon. Hence, anyone ..... connected with it is in bad shape ..... not in the true Church that Christ founded. To be a Catholic one must believe what Christ taught, what the Catholic Church believed during two thousand years, and which it believes today (as the true Remnant. .....

….. if Lefebvre calls John Paul II the Pope we have to be on our

guard. Well he does that, and all is men that I know do the same. One time I told some people in the presence of a Lefebvre priest that Paul VI is not the pope, and he insisted that he is the pope. Do not live in a dream world. Those men are playing a great game. They are to get the opposition under the authority of the false pope - attached to and in the apostate church. Do not give in one inch. Live your Faith without a priest rather than (as a) "nut" that will have the true Mass at any price - ending in hell. ..... A true Catholic will have no union with people of other religions. The Catholic Church is exclusive. It is one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. The church of John Paul II has not one of those marks.

CHRISTENDOM'S LEFEBVRE

We once asked an Econe seminarian about traditional publications. Gerard Hogan recommended Father Nugent's Christendom We paraphrase its August 1978 issue - it forbids direct copy.

Father Nugent has written against Lefebvre's defamers, but never unreservedly endorsed man or organization. He waited and watched to determine their nature. Now that their direction is clear he must warn us.

He visited Econe mid-September 1972. Some English-speaking students failed to enchant him: ''too intensely political." One or two reminded him of Mencken's man who could strut while seated.

Econe's very air was French. Courses were not in Latin, and students other than French-speaking must spend time on that language [cutting into vital theology time, already too short, and giving them the exacting, demanding subjects in the "language of diplomacy" and circumlocution].

He spent two, afternoon hours (Sept. 18) conversing with Lefebvre, who asked him to superintend in Kentucky his next American ordinands through their first years as priests. But Lefebvre hardly knew him. And his canonically erected community had very different traditions and customs. And Father had already concluded that some of these men were unlikely and improper candidates.

Father quotes Hamish Fraser: "Many who act in the name of the St. Pius X Society would not seem particularly inclined to show obedience even to Msgr. Lefebvre." [Father(?) Richard Williamson, during his 31 July slide lecture, that the St. Pius X Society house at Albano would now be used for a novitiate. Originally planned for a post-ordination year of study to steep the new priests(?) in the Roman tradition - these days? - it lay idle; the priests(?), once ordained(?), simply would not go there. The Archbp.(?) has no authority or control over them. What kind of religious society is this?] Father Nugent asks why Lefebvre should not expect strife and "scandalous dissension" among his followers.

Christendom (same issue) deals with a question on coexistence of St. Pius V's Mass with the novus ordo, as Lefebvre requests. Referring to the same suggestion from Heenan's Westminster replacement, Basil Hume, and Father's reply (Christmas 1976 issue) Father reaffirms that Catholics can settle for nothing less than universal restoration of the complete Faith and true Mass. We cannot leave others to the ambiguous, counterfeit, Protestant, while left ourselves in quiet possession of the certain, real, Catholic, and claim to love Our Lord and our fellow man.

COMPROMISE OR BUST!

Lefebvre wrote JP2 (Dec. 24, 1978): "Most Holy Father, ..... for the honor of Jesus Christ, for the greater good of the Church and for the salvation of souls, we entreat you to say one word, a single word as the Successor of St. Peter and as Pastor of the Universal Church to the bishops of the entire world: 'Laissez faire - let them be. We authorize the free practice of what many centuries' Tradition has made use of for the sanctification of souls.'

"What difficulty would such an attitude create'! None. The bishops would decide the places, the times reserved for this Tradition." [Exactly as they have in England under the indult!] "Unity would immediately be restored at the level bishop." [Obviously a schizophrenic of the highest order. Cujus regio ejus religio? ''On the other hand how advantageous it would be for the Church: the renewal of seminaries and monasteries; great fervor in the parishes - the bishop would be amazed to rediscover in a few years an outburst of holiness and devotion they thought had disappeared forever. "

This man is having himself on. He will leave the return of Tradition; to the tender mercies of the individual bishops, decide only by majority vote at their conferences, who are all in heresy and apostasy. And all will flock back to their old Mass and display fervor - in a pig's eye!

We can secure the return of our Mass and sacraments in one way alone though the same exercise of authority under (this time true) obedience by which we lost them. Tradition must be made exclusive, just as the renewal was made exclusive. No Church can live part old and part new, part true and part false. The Catholic religion is an integrated whole, to be accepted or rejected on divine authority.

No reasonable man can expect the younger clergy: many of whom never learned Latin, to elect the old Mass when it is so much easier to use the vernacular, which they may understand and probably will not garble. Nor, supposing that they can be persuaded or ordered to celebrate the true Mass rite in Latin or any other language, can we be sure they are properly trained in the Church's intention. If, additionally, they have been "ordained" in the new rite impose with the novus ordo missae, their attempts to celebrate a true Mass with produce the same old novus ordo missae itself, for they are no more priests than I am.

Lefebvre continues: "(Econe's) priories would serve the dioceses …. By helping in the parishes, in complete submission to the local ordinary." [But his priests(?), says his official representative, wouldn't obey him. What will happen the day the local ordinary tells the Econe priest(?) to celebrate the novus ordo missae in the sudden absence of the parish priest? It will never happen! Bring back that pig - we need his other eye!]

Lefebvre never takes time to justify his compromising attitude. Why should he explain to us? But into the vacuum steps a seminarian to prove there is no compromise (The Angelus, September 1979). If the dualistic decree he discusses really leaves the rumor stage and is promulgated, "some fanatical traditionalists, already entrenched in a rather bizarre analysis of the crisis in the Church and desperate lest any improvement(?) diminish their mailing list, will probably cry 'Compromise!' all the louder and pour abuse with renewed violence on Arbp. Lefebvre, who would welcome such a decree, and the many Catholics who would not profit from such a decree.

"This 'compromise' scruple develops from an inaccurate notion of the Church and membership in the Church elaborated by a few ill-instructed" [this from a boy enduring a shortened seminary course in French!] "newsletter-publishers according to which the teaching of unorthodox doctrine by a pope automatically makes the organization of which he is the head a non-Catholic sect, ..... the errors of our parish priest do not mean we have to leave our parish; the errors our bishop do not mean we have to abjure membership in the diocese; the errors of a Pope do not mean we have to separate ourselves from the Church!"

That notorious generation gap! Formerly the younger generation associated with its elders; Association bred a healthy respect for these elders' mental capacity; we had more sense than to try to con them. Had Pius XI or Pius XII promulgated condemned heresy we would hardly have insisted that they were merely unorthodox not condemned heretics automatically excluded from the Catholic Church and consequently from any and all authority and jurisdiction therein. In recognizing such facts I would not leave my parish, my diocese, or my Church. But in failure to realize such conditions my parish, diocese, or "pope" and his government can leave me and all other Catholics, past, present, and future. To lapse into heresy no method is quicker or less trouble than to accept religious and jurisdiction of known heretics.

"It would be difficult to prove," this innocent waffles on, "that the novus ordo constitutes the 'impious or sordid use' which desecrates a church and makes worship there illicit."

Our Mass, defined as the Sacrifice of Calvary, is efficacious because the Victim is divine - of infinite value, the only sacrifice, as the Church has always taught, of any propitiatory value. In the new rite, defined as other than the Sacrifice of Calvary, containing a "Preparation of the Gifts" correcting Christ's prayerful Action, telescoping the people's communion into the essential priest's Communion, a number of "Eucharistic Prayers" replace the essential Canon of the Mass. In the Preface of the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer you may read, if you don't mind blasphemy, "Father in heaven, it is right that we should give you thanks and glory. You alone are God, living and true." - classic Arianism, denial of the Blessed Trinity, denial of the divinity of the Second and Third Persons.

What effect has this heresy on the consecration, supposing, it were real in any version of the novus ordo? Is this, then, the Body and Blood in Sacrifice on an infinitely valuable Divine Person? Or is it now the body and blood (How?) of a mere man, of no eternal value whatsoever? Is it not even less - the useless corpse of all time's greatest liar and impostor, who has claimed divinity? And (presuming anyone can believe in him and his "consecration") when he is raised and adored is this not idolatry?

What must be said of the man who promulgated this most hateful heresy? (Not even a new heresy in which he might conceivably be honestly deceived!) What can be adduced in defence of the clergy and hierarchy who must know this as well as he? Or what were they doing all those years in the seminary? What are these people if not heretics? Where, then, is their jurisdiction? Removed by Canon Law! They are obeyed only at the risk of weekly idolatry, the worst crime on the calendar. It would be difficult to prove that idolatry desecrates a church?

MORE UNANSWERED LETTERS TO LEFEBVRE

Benjamin F. Dyden was asked to furnish an English translation of his letter to Lefebvre, July 18, 1978. Conscience obliged him to warn that parts of the "Conclusion" bad been made obsolete by a subsequent proclamation: "….. the Society of St. Pius X ..... cannot tolerate among its members those members who refuse to pray for the Pope or affirm that the novus ordo missae is per se invalid." Lefebvre and all his Society are now, therefore, clearly members of John Paul II's Conciliar Anti-Church; and Canon 1258 forbids Catholics to attend their Masses, receive the Sacraments from them, or in any active way participate in religious services with them.

"Since ..... July, 1975 I have been receiving, with my family, the ….. sacraments administered by priests of your Society. ..... Out of gratitude and to give a bit of assistance to your work . .... I have translated into English the Constitutions of the Sisters, the Statutes of the Society, your admirable Reflections on Suspension a Divinis, and several of your sermons.

"….. not the detractions of your enemies-..... meditation on your own words ….. aroused in my mind disquiet, doubts as to your intentions regarding the three principal weapons used now against the Catholic Church: 1) the pretended authority of Antipope Paul VI, ) that of his Conciliar Anti-Church, and 3) his Anti-Mass, the novus ordo missae. It would almost seem ….. that under the appearances of fidelity to the Church of the Ages you are sowing .…. confusion and inability to resist these three weapons.

"..... the pope's personal attitude, which is more difficult to discover." (Your Declaration to the Press, Aug , 1976)

''How can a pope, a true successor of Peter, assured of the assistance of the Holy Ghost, preside over the Church's destruction, the most profound and extensive in her history'? (Ibidem)

"In all this work, what has been the pope's role? His responsibility? Truly, it seems overwhelming despite the desire to exonerate him of this frightful betrayal of the Church. (J'accuse le ConciIe, p. 10) Paul VI's attitude, then, is not at all difficult to discover. Not only have you discovered it; the whole world has discovered it, and obliges you to agree 'despite the desire to exonerate him.' This desire ..... led you to utter publicly the untruth about his attitude, which is 'difficult to discover.' It also inspired you with the idea, immoral and deadly for the Church of 'leaving this problem to theologians and historians' or else 'to God and future true successors of Peter'; that is, you will combat the serpent's tail, the Anti-Church prelates, without crushing the head the antipope. .. . .

"..... that immoral wish led you to conjure away, under the words problem and eventuality, the Catholic Church's legislation, prepared and promulgated for the present crisis, ..... no longer an eventuality. In pronouncing their anathema against Pope Honorius I ..... the Sixth Ecumenical Council and Pope St. Leo II ….. added to heresy another motive ..... simple negligence of his duty to combat heresy.

"For Paul VI to be an antipope ..... it suffices to recall the name of any stubborn, notorious heretic, still loaded with honors and quite confident that he will be neither excommunicated nor otherwise combated ..... Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, Raymond Brown, Charles Curran, Helder Camara. Mendez Arceo ….. only difficulty is ….. to choose from this litany of instances in which Paul VI has neglected to combat heresy, thereby laying upon all Catholics the obligation to combat him, him personally as an antipope, under the same excommunication as ….. Honorius I."

Mr. Dryden then quotes and applies Canons 2314 and 188 (4). He continues: "Far from being 'difficult to discover, ' Paul VI's heresies are found most anywhere. In the United Nations it was the religion of man and the denial of original sin. Among the decrees of Vatican II, which Paul VI approved and has imposed on you as a condition for lifting your suspension a divinis , we read that non-Catholic religions are means of salvation, and that it is good for Catholics to participate in worship with their 'separated brethren. ' ..... even ..... published catalogues of these heresies, e.g., ..... de Nantes ..... Fr. Noel Barbara ..... The heretic has been admonished and remains impenitent and pertinacious. .....

"Paul VI's schism he himself has been at pains to advertise publicly and scandalously by imposing the novus ordo missae, in contempt of the decree Quo primum. He advertised it anew on May 24, 1976, in the Consistory, by opposing yesterday's authority to 'today's authority,' and by arrogating to himself the right 'to define, among the numberless traditions, those which must be considered norms of faith ' without concern for the definitions already made by true popes.

"We see, then, that Paul VI is quite clearly excommunicated and deprived of all authority and has become an antipope through heresy and schism, in virtue of Canons 2314.1 and 188.4. That is why these canons remain hidden from the public view, buried not only in the sepulchral silence of Paul VI and his Conciliar clergy, but even in the silence of the clergy supposedly traditional but really in collusion with the antipope. If the faithful could read these canons, the whole comedy would be at an end. People would laugh on hearing Paul VI speak of 'Our authority, willed by Christ.'

"..... your Declaration of Aug. 2, 1977: 'In the same measure that a pope should withdraw fm this tradition, he would become schismatic, would withdraw from the Church. Theologians like St. Bellarmine, Cajetan, Cardinal Journet, and many others have studied this eventuality. It is not, therefore, something, inconceivable. ..... it seems to us much more certain that the Faith taught by the Church for twenty centuries contains no errors than it is absolutely certain that the pope is truly pope. Heresy, schism, ipso facto excommunication, invalidity of his election are all causes from which it may sometimes result that a pope has never been or is now no longer pope. ..... the Church would be in the situation she experiences after the death of a Sovereign Pontiff. '

"Comparison of your words with the text itself of the canons shows inaccuracies that seem intentional, ..... to conceal from the public that these are laws, quite precise and obligatory, and give the impression that ..... they are only the subtle, impractical speculations of some theologians.

"Why..... do not you and priests of the Society explain thoroughly and clearly these canons, which strip all authority from the invaders of our buildings? Why ….. employ so much eloquence in a case ..... entirely theoretical, ... .. of a legitimate pope who might abuse his authority without losing it? Is this not ..... complicity? ….. confirming the error sown by Antipope Paul VI, that his authority exists and is willed by Christ?"

Mr. Dryden's and our condemnations of Lefebvre, his Society of St. Pius X, and all who hold similar views carry additional weight; we supported Lefebvre before we knew his true intentions. Lefebvre adds weight to his views and actions by demonstrating that he has considered their opposites,", and, presumably, found them wanting. Meanwhile he kept the ball from those who would have carried it. All to well choreographed for accident. Mr. Dryden continued with quotations from Lefebvre's "Reflections on Suspension a Divinis," July 29, 1976:

"We are suspended a divinis by the Conciliar Church and for the Conciliar Church, to which we have no wish to belong. That Conciliar Church is a schismatic Church because it breaks with the Catholic Church that has always been. It has its new dogmas, its new priesthood its new institutions, its new worship, all already condemned by the Church in many a document, official and definitive. ….. This Conciliar Church is, there not Catholic. To whatever extent Pope, bishops, priests, or faithful adhere to this new Church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church." and followed this with the conclusion to Lefebvre's sermon at Lille, Aug. 29, 1976:

"It would be so simple, if each bishop in his diocese placed one church at our disposal, at the disposal of faithful Catholics, telling them, "Here is the church that is yours." And here, when we think that the Bishop of Lille has given a church to the Moslems, I don to see why there should not be a church for faithful Catholics. After all, the whole question would be settled. That is what I shall ask of the Holy Father, if the Holy Father will receive me: "Holy Father, let us give tradition a try."

"So simple? ..... this makes my head swim. In just one month .... .! You now find it quite natural, quite simple to celebrate the Mass of Jesus Christ on a footing of equality, if not of inferiority, and in sweet amity with Moslem worship and Conciliar worship, in the bosom of that schismatic Church to which you had no wish to belong, by authorization of that antipope, of those bishops who, by adhering to the new Church have separated themselves from the Catholic Church!

The whole question would be settled! Must we not rather ..... say that the whole question is settled? That you have settled it by this act of adherence to the antipope and his anti-Church? (Canon 2314, sec. 3: If they have joined a non-Catholic sect or have publicly adhered to it, they incur infamy ipso facto.)

"Lefebvre has committed the infamy of adhering to a non-Catholic sect ….. thereby separated himself from the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation. Even while we fear that the antipope might excommunicate you invalidly, even while claiming the right to appear before a tribunal made up exclusively of apostates, you have drawn upon yourself a real and valid anathema. ….. that infamy still weighs on your work, and on thousands of souls whose ideas it turns topsy-turvy and who are tempted to follow so execrable an example of adherence to the anti-Church. This is a scandal which you must undo, first by a public abjuration and then by combating, with all the life and strength that remain to you, the false authority of the antipope and his Anti-Church."

Mr. Dryden then quotes Lefebvre five times running - in opposing directions. March 29, 1973 he "will never say this novus ordo missae is heretical." Feb. 15, 1975 an old priest's intentions left over from the true Mass can somehow validate his particular novus ordo. On June 6, 1977 he does "not say that the new mass is heretical" nor that it "is not valid in itself." But July 29, 1976 he called the Conciliar Church schismatic for "principles opposed to the Catholic Church, such as the new concept of the Mass ..... which gives the assembly a priestly role that it cannot exercise." And Aug. 29, 1976: "The new mass is a hybrid mass, which is no longer hierarchical but democratic, where the assembly has a greater place than the priest; it is therefore no longer a real Mass which affirms the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

Yet Michael Davies has the consummate gall to write (The Angelus, Nov. 1980): "The Arbp., of course, has never questioned the validity of the New Mass. Some of those who are attacking him now once supported him; they must have known of his position regarding the New Mass when they gave him their support. Clearly, they have changed their views, not the Archbp." Mr. Davies has received every issue of The War Is Now! gratis (till Aug. 198). Therefore he knows as well as Lefebvre himself from my voluminous one-way correspondence that we have changed views on neither new "mass" nor antipopes, and that our support for Lefebvre was contingent on his adherence to the Catholic Faith, which both Davies and Lefebvre have deserted since Vatican II. Mr. Dryden then quotes from De defectibus and from St. Thomas Aquinas, to the effect that the celebrant's intention is unaffected by his belief; he is Christ's instrument acting for the Church. Is St. Thomas wrong? Or is your talk of intention and faith simply so much dust in our eyes, to make us forget that the new rite is invalid through defect in form and illicit in virtue of the decree Quo primum? ..... that good old priest, with his good intention in the new rite, does not exist. On the contrary, there is an excommunicated man, celebrating a non-Catholic rite, as minister of the Anti-Church. In the absence of proof to the contrary, his intention will be that promulgated by the Anti-Church, to celebrate a commemorative meal, without Sacrifice, without Transubstantiation, and therefore without sacramental validity. If proof to the contrary existed, the Anti-Church's bishop would straightway expel the good old priest."

Lefebvre interview, Alan Gill, Sydney, Morning Herald, Nov. 7, 1981 - Extracts:

Q. You stress loyalty to the early Councils of the Church and also to the first Vatican Council. Why not to Vatican II?

A. I support all the dogmatic Councils from Nicaea to Vatican I. Vatican II was pastoral, not dogmatic, and was under the influence of the Modernists. You can see this by its fruits - very bad, and very sad for the Church.

[Again he refrains from accusing Vatican II of explicit, previously condemned heresies. Canon 1325 obliges him, and every bishop in the world, to condemn heresy. Vatican II, he says, was under a modernist influence, but not the pope who signed and promulgated its modernism, nor his successors who have committed themselves to its further implementation.]

Q. Can a loyal Catholic disobey the Pope?

A. Yes, it is possible. I can say to the Pope "In such and such a thing you have done, you were wrong." Saints have defied Popes. Paul VI was lax and now we have the fruits. These fruits are catastrophic.

[Paul VI was selective in his laxity. Lax in permitting heresy, he manifested downright zeal in its promulgation, as well as in suppression of tradition.]

Q Some questioners are often less interested in whether what you are doing is right or wrong, than in whether you are "against the Pope."

A. I know. But I am not "against the Pope." I am against some acts of the papacy.

[The papacy does not act; popes act. The acts which Lefebvre opposes are acts of men whom he deems popes - whom he is not against. Which way to the carousel?]

Q There is talk of a rapprochement between you and John Paul II. It is said that you have had several private meetings.

A 1 have had one meeting, a month after his election. But I have had regular contact, through an intermediary, Cardinal Seper.

Q Do you think there will be a settlement soon?

A. Pope John Paul II is not against us. He is a good, warm man, sentimental, but not very strong. There are cardinals in the Curia - Knox, Baggio, Casaroli, who care nothing for tradition, and they influence the Pope.

Q. Your objections center principally on the Mass. Do you believe the new rite is merely "ambiguous," the moderate position, or do you share the hard-line view that it is totally defective and therefore invalid as a sacrament?

A. The new rite is ambiguous but not invalid. ..... I have never said this. Some individual Masses may be invalid through defect of intention or other reasons. I am sure this applies in many cases.

[Defect of whose intention? If the priest's why would this not affect Mass in the old rite? No proper intention exists in the new rite itself, which Lefebvre quite clearly and unequivocally states is not invalid.]

Q. It is said that you would accept a compromise in which the old Mass is accepted along with the new.

A. I ask only for Liberty to say the old Tridentine Mass. I have said many times that I will not personally say the new Mass. Ratzinger (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Arbp. of Munich) and others have told me many times: "Say the new Mass just once, and your problems will be finished." They say: "How can the Holy Father give you liberty to say the old Mass if you refuse to say the new?" It is difficult for Rome to accept my position.

Q Some of your fellow-traditionalists claim that your "compromise" is not a victory but a defeat, a sell-out.

A. They want the impossible.

[This "impossible" is not specified. Is what we had for nineteen centuries now impossible'' Or was it impossible that Lefebvre condemn heretics and heresies? No wonder we made no headway - our "leader" wouldn't fight for the right because he couldn't win! How could he know till he tried? Victory is God's, and He may not grant it to our efforts. But all our martyrs testify to their lack of concern with this point. When Christians were thrown to lions the lions usually won, but few were canonized. Whether we can achieve complete recovery of our religion is completely irrelevant. This is not our responsibility. We are all obliged to defend our Faith from all enemies, especially when they tell us they are Catholic.]

Lefebvre was interviewed on arrival at Sydney international Airport for "11:00 A.M." television program. According to our tape, Laurie Brennan said: "By clinging to something which is dead you're being divisive and contributing further to that decline." Gerard Hogan put the silly remark into French. Lefebvre replied: "You know, as St. Paul said in his letter, you have the depositum fidei that we must continuate in the Church. The Faith is come from Jesus Christ, but by the Apostle, by the generation and generation. But we cannot change it, cannot change it, cannot change Our Lord. Let us say the council, let us say the pope during transition period - but this cannot change impossible!"

What is impossible to change is impossible to recover!

Father Brian Buckley Wrote (6 Oct 81) to Lefebvre, who never replied:

Since you propose to visit Australia in November, it is well for you to know beforehand that many Catholics here are very concerned about your attitude towards the validity of the New Order of Mass, and your attitude of acceptance as popes of the recent and present occupants of the papal chair.

It is not right that traditional Catholics in this country should be left further confused after your visit; so I write on behalf of many to ask you to state your true position on the above matters. As the most publicized bishop in the world today apparently taking a stand for the true Catholic Faith, you, Monseigneur, have a strict duty before God publicly to profess Catholic truth, so that the world media will report that truth and vindicate the true and traditional Catholic Faith. If you do not publicly profess the truth, then it will be clear that you betray the Catholic Faith and even more than Paul VI and other notorious heretics; because to many Catholics who recognize Paul's errors you have appeared to be (and profess to be) completely orthodox, ready to lead us all away from error. You must now prove it.

You have stated that you will never say that the New Mass is per se invalid. But the Catholic Church has stated quite clearly that the Mass is the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, the same Sacrifice as that of Calvary; whereas the New Mass, as you know, was officially defined by the Conciliar Church which accepted it as "The sacred assembly or gathering together of the people of God, with a priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord." The New Mass then is defined in the same terms as any other protestant worship-service - a gathering of people to recall and commemorate the once-only death of Christ which happened at a certain time in the first century. The New Mass was not intended to be the same Sacrifice repeated here and now, Calvary-over-again. The definition tells us so.

A valid Catholic Mass is one which is Calvary-over-again, which brings about necessarily the Real Presence of Our Lord on the altar to be sacrificed in an unbloody manner. The New Mass performs no sacrificial action, it simply gives a narrative of an action once performed. It does not intend to be or profess to be at any time the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - not even when celebrated "fittingly and worthily" by a "holy" priest with his possibly correct intention, which intention of course does not and cannot change the intention of the rite, which is to celebrate in the protestant sense of "To commemorate" "to be thankful for" as the definition officially indicates.

Why must Catholics read a definition by a protestant sect (as the heretical conciliar church shows itself to be) a forced Catholic meaning where a protestant meaning is clearly indicated? Catholic and protestant theologians all agree, if they are honest, that the New Mass involves no sacrifice-which is why Mass-hating protestants can and do use it for their memorial service. A memorial service has no intention or power to bring about Transubstantiation, so Catholics adoring as God the prayed over bread and wine are involved in idolatry.

I am sure that you do not think, Monseigneur, that God will join in the deception and bring about the Real Presence in a service that was intended by its composers to be only a memorial without any Real Presence - and really a mockery of the here-and-now Sacrifice, concocted to deceive simple Catholics. Surely not!

Your advice then to Catholics that it is permissible to attend a New Mass "occasionally" cannot be accepted. You are publicly inviting Catholics to become idolaters - or, at the very least, to risk idolatry, which is surely just as grave an insult to God. And when you permit "occasional" attendance at the New Mass - how many times, say, a year? Three? Seven? What is then of the eighth attendance? How can this be wrong when the other seven were right? What is the magic number beyond which right becomes wrong?

There can be no doubt that if a work of adoration of God is perfect and is right in itself and declared right by the Church, then it is always right. If it is sometimes wrong in itself it is always wrong. If it is not the Mass it is wrong for Catholics, always, in itself, if it pretends to be the Catholic Mass.

Catholic theology does not recognize the New Mass as the Holy Sacrifice, nor does protestant theology, even if it were only doubtfully or questionably valid, Catholic principles seriously forbid a Catholic to attend it, ever. What circumstances could possibly justify risking sacrilege even if the New Mass were not in itself demonstrably sacrilegious?

And must we not presume that a priest who belongs to the conciliar church and who uses a bread-and-wine service which is described by the protestant term "memorial of the Lord" intends to do what the conciliar church intended in designing that service? If it is, as you have said, an ambiguous service how can Catholics know for certain what the priests of the conciliar church consider it to be? How can they presume (let along know for certain) the present right intention of even validly ordained older priests who are now loyal to the conciliar church with its errors and heresies? Priests have been trained to forget about the word "transubstantiation" - it never occurs in modem Eucharistic literature in the conciliar church. Do they still believe in it, or intend it in their New Mass? How could any layman possibly know? But the rite itself does not intend it.

And after all, it is not a question of whether the New Mass is valid - it's a question of its being acceptable to God. Is there any reason whatever why God would accept or validate a rite whose background is so dishonest and un-Catholic, a service with such obvious and demonstrable errors, and in addition to the dishonest forgery, the lie, in at least in some vernacular versions, including the English, which is always used in this country?

You consider Paul VI, John Paul I, and now John Paul II to be truly popes and to be regarded as such. Do you not think that it is a strange situation to have a Vicar of Christ whom every Catholic in the world is bound under pain of mortal sin to disobey in the matter of the New Mass? Catholic principles strictly forbid what these supposed Vicars of Christ command. By their adherence to heresy, specifically to a non-Catholic worship service replacing the Mass and to an heretical Vatican II Council, these men have put themselves outside the Catholic Church according to the traditionally accepted rules of the Church. This is fact. Why try argue the fact and the Church's judgment on it?

Certainly we can all pray for John Paul II with the intention that he will recognize his heresies and become a Catholic. But while he remains a heretic he is not a Catholic; he is it fact an apostate. Pope Leo XIII stated in Satis cognitum "The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside the Catholic communion and alien to the Church whoever would recede in the least degree from any point proposed by the authoritative Magisterium." How can one who is alien to the Church be its earthly head? How can anyone who disputes the accepted teaching of the Church be accepted by Jesus Christ as His Vicar, teaching in His place?

Msgr, until you make your position quite clear on these matters, Catholics cannot be blamed for suspecting that you too are a heretic and are working to promote the program of the Conciliar Church among traditionalists as an agent provocateur. No one wants to think this, but it would seem that it is your job to neutralize those traditionalists who would protest and make trouble by yourself setting up an apparent "Right Wing" movement which you will keep loyal to the popes of the Conciliar Church and lead eventually to its New Mass with which the Old Mass will be conceded "parity!" - until its followers die out. Is that it? Have people pinned their faith in you as the only human hope while all the time you are really persuading them to accept the important "changes" - an apostate papacy and a protestant worship-service?

To sum up: it seems clear that you support the New Mass, because you want it and the Catholic Mass to be given an impossible parity. You want the old rite to be allowed along with the new in every diocese, so that the option is there for Catholics to choose the "family of rites" (your term) to which they wish to belong. You advise Catholics that it is allowable for them to attend the New Mass "occasionally." You declare your respect and obedience-when-you-choose to popes who are clearly and openly and publicly heretics, and to an heretical Council "when understood (per impossibile) "in an orthodox light." It does not make sense.

It may be that your line of thinking is your own way of trying to rationalize what cannot be rationalized except by saying that it is wrong. You are refusing to face facts, either deliberately or through misplaced respect for men who have disgraced and betrayed the papacy. Your attitude is mistaken in the view of Catholics all over the world. Please write to me in French and explain your position, because an explanation is certainly going to be demanded of you when you come to Australia.

MICHAEL DAVIES TO THE RESCUE

In a book review in The Remnant, May 31, 1982: "Archbp. Lefebvre is quite happy to accept the services of priests ordained under the new rite, and I would be surprised if theologians of rite could be found to endorse the thesis that the new ordination rite was probably or even possibly invalid." [So what is Econe's purpose? (Fund raising!)] "..... 1 obtained the advice of a Canon lawyer, four theologians of the best repute, and one of the word's greatest authorities on Christian Latin. Their opinions, each submitted individually, without consulting the others, were unanimous: that God would not allow a [genuine] pope to promulgate an invalid sacramental rite and that although an invalid vernacular version is theoretically possible, the various English translations of the new rite have all been adequate for validity. I have since consulted two more theologians who have expressed exactly the same opinion." [One of our arguments: If a man in exercise of his free will promulgates an invalid sacramental rite, how is he pope?]

Paul VI did not merely introduce such rites; he removed, supplanted, and claimed credit for having forbidden undoubtedly true worship and sacraments, thereby predictably alienating millions of Catholics (whom Davies and his ilk ignore in their interminable "majority" calculations) from their (not his) Church. His successor JP2, who has apostatized as publicly as possible as often as possible, has for years continued to suppress true worship and sacraments, and continues the policies and reforms of three immediate antipope predecessors in implementation of Vatican II.

But, it is seriously argued, the best theological opinion holds that the ordination contains the essentials of Sacramentum ordinis. Lefebvre takes each applicant ordained in the new rite on the merits of the case. Some he accepts, others he conditionally ordains. Fr. Schmidberger would prefer all reordained, but not all are of that mind.

It seems; then, that it is up to the "priest" as much as to Lefebvre or Schmidberger. If he refuses conditional ordination they accept him anyway. But what are the "merits" of the case?" How does Lefebvre determine whether the applicant is properly ordained? They have all undergone the same new rite, whose various vernacular versions have received "ecclesiastical" approval. The difference must lie in the ordaining bishop: Is he property consecrated? What is his intention? If the rite contains the essentials why would Lefebvre "re-ordain" or conditionally ordain anyone? The rite is either sufficient every time or insufficient every time. Lefebvre should never entertain the least suspicion of the ordaining bishop's intention. Sacraments operate of themselves, and the bishop's intention cannot affect validity so long as he adheres strictly to the Church's prescribed rite. The moment Lefebvre admits the relevance of the bishop's intention he casts suspicion upon his own priestly ordination by a subsequently known enemy of the Church, who, it is often argued never had the slightest intention of doing anything for the Church. He may even have lacked the intention of being "consecrated bishop in the first place, and have taken the job purposely to vitiate and invalidate what he could. If, therefore, Lefebvre was not validly ordained priest he lacked the qualification for consecration to the episcopacy, and none of his sacraments would have been validly conferred. So he cannot consistently hold this position.

Is the ordaining bishop's orthodoxy in doubt? Not applicable! The Church recognizes ordinations, consecrations, baptisms, confirmations, etc. of various schismatic sects. We can even call their priests in absence of our own for the last rites.

Perhaps the ordaining bishop is not a bishop! Why not? Is he an apostate? Not good enough; like the schismatics, he retains his sacramental powers. Is he a freemason? What of Lefebvre's own ordaining bishop? Perish the thought!

What's left? The ordaining bishop was invalidly consecrated. How? All three men who consecrated him were not bishops either. Or a defective rite was employed. Of our old rite no one entertains the slightest doubt. So the new rite must have been used. If the new rite "ordination" of a bishop is invalid, why is not the new rite priestly ordination introduced by the same incompetent authority on the same day likewise invalid? So we have gone all the way around the vicious cycle and returned to arc one. The new rite ordination "contains the essentials."

If you (Like Montini and Bugnini) intended to destroy a sacrament secretly, would you not retain the words described in Sacramentum ordinis as "essential, therefore required for validity?" But the whole rite is necessary to contain what Pius XII called essential. It is nearly all missing from the new rite, despite Pius XII's order that nothing be changed or omitted. He said that the form of the sacrament is the Preface, beginning with its first word and ending with its last. The new rite retains the Preface to include the "essential" words, and then replaces the rest with new words conveying new ideas. This constitutes a change in the form! - clear cause for doubt (at least). Doubt is not permitted in administration of our sacraments.

As long as the rite of Ordination continued unchanged, the entire rite being administered according to the Roman Pontifical it made no real difference what was essential, therefore required for validity. But to retain these words and to omit or replace others in profusion will not guarantee validity - guaranteed only the traditional rite. The intention has been removed from the (new) rite itself, and may not be presumed (as though it could affect the matter) in a man attempting to ordain priests in a rite which the Church (as in Sacramentum ordinis) has forbidden. He shows his intention to do what the Church intends exactly as in his use of the novus ordo or the Book of Common Prayer service. In all cases the intention must be in the rite. If it is in the rite then the intention of the minister is ordinarily presumed, and validity is equally presumed every time. If some one must evaluate each bishop's intention, judging each ordination on its individual merits, the rite is defective and never works.

Even were the new rite of ordination valid no reason exists why anyone must, or even should, accept it. There was no necessity to introduce it, except to replace the unquestionable sacrament, to downgrade the clergy, and to service the new "mass" introduced with it. Knowing this, Lefebvre has imposed phony priests "ordained" according to this new rite on traditional Catholics foolish enough to support the crusade for equal toleration of old and new. He has volunteered them the clear risk (dead certainty, rather) of participation in idolatry. He had a choice; he could have refused this problem. He chose wrongly, as so often at and since Vatican II. If the new rites of "mass" and "ordination" are valid, why did he presume to open a seminary supposedly to perpetuate the old rites?

Clarence Kelly Made Seven Charges, Mar. 25, 1983, styled, 9 Econe priests

1) "At the beginning of the school year Your Grace imposed reforms in the Mass at the seminary in Ridgefield, i.e., liturgical reforms imposed by John XXIII. ..... this caused great scandal ..... among professors and students. ….. it is contrary to right reason to counter the disorder of the liturgical revolution by imposing ..... an important phase of that revolution as the liturgical norm. ….. Why impose reforms which contributed to an attack on tradition? Unity cannot be based on disorder and novelty." [Nevertheless the reforms were introduced - though Sanborn, one of the signers, was rector of the seminary.]

2) "Over the past few years, the Fraternity has accepted the service of priests ordained by vernacular versions of the New Rite of Ordination of 1968. On Nov. 30, 1947 Pope Pius XII issued his Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis ….. it was his intention "to put an end to all controversy,' as he said. He did this by, among other things, decreeing and determining which words in the form for the ordination of a priest 'are essential and therefore requisite for validity.' The English words of the form in the New Rite of Ordination so differ from the ones Pius XII said we essential for validity that they introduce a positive doubt as to its validity. In fact, the doubt is not negative, but positive enough even in your own mind Your Grace, so as to justify the conditional ordination of priests ordained in the New Rite. And so you have in fact conditionally ordained at least two priests in America: Father Sullivan and Father [omitted ..... ordinand's request]. Indeed, you even asked Rev. Philip Stark to accept conditional ordination and he, as you yourself told us, adamantly refused. And yet, after his refusal, you nevertheless allowed and continue to allow him to work with the Fraternity; and he is not the only doubtfully ordained priest that you permit to do so - he is one of many.

"Thus under the aegis of the Fraternity doubtful Masses are being offered, doubtful absolutions are being given and dying people are being anointed with an 'Extreme Unction' that may be invalid and of no more value than the anointing with oil done by a Protestant minister. How, one must ask before God, can the Fraternity reject the doubtful sacraments of the new Church only to replace them with doubtful priests? How grave a sin is this! How false a pretense! Furthermore the Fraternity in the South West District has begun to import to the United States priests whose theological training and manner of ordination are under a similar cloud. As Your Grace knows, this has been a source of scandal.

"The employment of such priests strikes at the heart of one of the reasons for the Fraternity's existence: to provide unquestionably valid sacraments for the faithful - for if a positive doubt exists as to the validity of a priest's ordination, not only are the sacraments he administers doubtful, but the faithful are put into a position by the Fraternity of choosing between the doubtful sacraments of the new Church and the doubtful priests of the Fraternity. From the standpoint of Catholic morality this is inadmissible."

[This proves that Lefebvre cared nothing whether his Fraternity provides true Mass or sacraments, any more than he cared for orthodoxy. If he subjected his own congregations to the undoubted risks cited who can be sure of his honesty, proper intention or good faith in his own already suspect ordinations? For use of these "doubtfully ordained" what other motive may be imagined than greater, speedier financial returns? Doubtfully? Impossibly ordained - swindled by the new rite! He thus procured idolatry! In what else can he be trusted? In his intention to confirm or ordain? In his (disinterested?) assessment of the validity of his own ordination? The signers of this letter should immediately apply this argument to the validity (there is no liceity - no legitimacy) of their own orders - and refrain from their further use. "Doubtful pope, no pope," says Canon Law Personis. Doubtful priest, doubtful Mass - to be avoided completely. These abuses, too, obviously known, remained unpublished and uncondemned, lived with, condoned by these nine priests(?) until they were ejected from the Fraternity. This casts suspicion on their own motives. They have warned the faithful rather late. Morally, this too is inadmissible.]

3) "..... we have always followed the Missal, Breviary, Calendar and Rubrics of our holy patron, Pope St. Pius X, which practice was sanctioned by the First General Chapter. Of late, however, an attempt has been made to force all the priests and seminarians in the United States to accept the liturgical reforms of Pope John XXIII on the grounds of uniformity and loyalty to the Fraternity, thereby implying that adherence to non-reformed traditional Rites of St. Pius X constitutes disloyalty. Can it be that the Fraternity has come to look upon loyalty to tradition as disloyalty to the Fraternity? Most recently, to our shock and dismay, a newly-ordained priest was given at ultimatum - either to accept the reforms of John XXIII and to begin saying Mass according to the John XXIII missal or leave the Fraternity. Is it possible that the Fraternity which has been persecuted because of its loyalty to tradition now persecutes priests for their loyalty to tradition?'

[Possible? Obvious! What can be expected of compromises? How long have these nine signatories maintained membership in the Fraternity in full knowledge of, among other things, Lefebvre's public refusal in 1979 to ordain(?) a man who disagreed with his erroneous theological opinion that the novus ordo is not per se invalid as a Mass, and despite his contention that, outside of certain conditions seldom met, it is no Mass at all - his willingness to allow its continued use alongside use of the true Mass. Additionally, Lefebvre made it clear that no one who disagreed with his theological misconceptions could remain in his Fraternity. So nearly four years later, why were these nine men still in his Fraternity? They accuse him correctly but tardily. They hope they have no grounds to sue for false ordination. But they know they lave no legal ecclesiastical standing, because Lefebvre cannot invoke Canon 209 for his extra-legal activities unless the Holy See is vacant-another "opinion" he will not tolerate in his Fraternity.]

4) legitimate complaint over dismissals from the Fraternity which don't hold water. Canon Law provides that no one may be ordained priest or consecrated bishop without a title or benefice - a job. Lefebvre has no authority to provide a job, parish, benefice, or the like. But he remains responsible for his priests'(?) support.

5) Lefebvre's unwarranted assumption of the Church's magisterial authority. "Now while in theory the Fraternity may deny any claim to such teaching authority in practice it has acted as though it did have such an authority. For it has proposed solutions to speculative theological questions and has threatened with expulsion or has actually expelled priests and seminarians who disagree with its teaching. ….. The Catholic thing to do would be for the Fraternity to refrain from attempting to bind the consciences of its members on speculative theological questions which are, in fact, open to discussion, and which can only by settled definitively by legitimate authority when the traditions have been restored."

[More gutless appeals to the future! How will the "restored" tradition see the imposition of a new "mass" or a heretic atop the Holy See as anything but violation of divine law as codified in Quo Primum and Canons 188 and 2314? No reason exists to suppose these matters "open to discussion."]

6) "The fundamental reason for the Fraternity's existence is to promote loyalty to the Church and her teachings. ..... Priests, seminarians, and the faithful who associate themselves with the Fraternity to the extent that the Fraternity is loyal to Tradition; they associate with it because they want the traditional Mass, the traditional sacraments and the traditional teaching of the Church. .... We priests cannot profess loyalty to the Fraternity as equal in value to loyalty to the traditional rites and doctrines. Therefore, the primary motive of everything we do is loyalty to the Church. To the extent that any organization, including the Fraternity, would do things which conflict with the traditions and immemorial practices of the Church, to that extent we reject these things without hesitation or reservation."

[No hesitation at all, beyond nearly four years.]

7) 'The Fraternity has recently enunciated a general policy whereby it would presume the validity of the new Church annulments without investigation. ….. presumption is to be given in favor of the Conciliar Church's annulments until the contrary is proved. This is a tragic error, for the Conciliar Church has proved its contempt for the sacrament of Matrimony by its actions. Before the world the Church is held up to ridicule because of the annulment practices of the Conciliar Church, which are more contemptible than the actions taken against marriage by secular tribunals." [A case obviously scandalous in Kelly's eyes in its solution by Lefebvre is cited, though why it should have been referred to Lefebvre for solution is not made clear. When and under what authority did Lefebvre assume the duties of the Roman Rota? The more we hear of this Fraternity, the closer to absolute zero it approaches.]

Five weeks later Kelly wrote 'We regret that until now our repeated attempts at communication with you were to no avail." [Kelly's team is either too slow to catch on or has kidded itself too long. Lefebvre's long-standing commitment to public heresy should long since have forced its attention and some consequent action. Like divorce! But no - they stuck to the income till they were thrown out.]

NOEL BARBARA'S LEFEBVRE

Have we the right to recognize John Paul II as Catholic pope and at the same time to disobey him publicly on the new mass, ecumenism, religious liberty, and all the conciliar orientations? The answer is fundamental, since submission to the pope distinguishes a Catholic, who cannot be saved if not in submission to the pope.

What is essential to salvation is necessarily available to all.

Resistance to Vatican II was spontaneous. Because they were shocked in their Catholic instinct and wished to keep their religion the faithful fled their parishes and grouped around faithful priests, to ensure themselves their traditional worship. It became necessary to justify this resistance. In July 1969 we explained why we could not accept the new mass. In 1976 we established the treason of Paul VI and Vatican II. Though the matter became increasingly urgent, Lefebvre always refused to join us in a study of these questions to reach agreement on their Catholic answer. Still, for years, while he hesitantly advised assisting , at the new mass, Econe's founder maintained friendly relations with those who recognized neither the validity of the new mass nor the legitimacy of the postconciliar popes. His change of attitude dates from John Paul's accession. After renewal of negotiations with the directors of the postconciliar church (May or June 1979) Lefebvre distanced himself from those who accept neither the new mass nor the illegitimate authority (conciliar popes) behind it. In November 1979 , though he had always declined leadership of the traditionalists, he emerged from his habitual reserve, publicly took a stand "on the two problems which worry the consciences of Catholics faithful to Tradition: the validity of the novus ordo missae and the present existence of a pope." (Fideliter No. 13, p. 65), and made an announcement on he subject. Taking full advantage of his episcopal status, he attempted to impose his position on everyone by discrediting all who thought differently, accusing them of animation by "a schismatic spirit."

Remember: Lefebvre has always rejected meeting to study these problems. He made his decision alone and tried to impose it on all, even outside his Fraternity. His decision was given wide circulation. His announcement had all the assurance of the supreme, sovereign Magisterium with none of the supporting arguments which always accompany such decisions.

Recall some absolutely certain Catholic truths:

1. All are responsible before God for actions according to conscience.

2 We are all obliged to know the laws of God and His Church. Culpable ignorance renders us responsible for transgression.

3. The pope is infallible when teaching on faith and morals to the universal Church.

4. No Catholic can be saved If, knowingly, he shows himself rebellious to the authority of the pope.

5. Refusal to believe, with obstinacy, one or more truths of faith is to commit the mortal sin of heresy.

6. Public and obstinate refusal to submit to the authority of the pope is to commit the mortal sin or schism.

7. The formal sins of heresy and schism cause the loss of the state of grace, and separate those who commit them from the Church.

Lefebvre separates himself from Catholic doctrine:

In practice he denies the dogma of papal infallibility. By imposing the new mass, ecumenism, and religious liberty, Paul VI and John Paul II erred; they taught doctrines previously condemned by the Church. Upon this fact Lefebvre and we agree.

The Catholic response is both simple and obligatory: A pope cannot err in such matters. Since these men have erred, it is proven that they are not popes.

Lefebvre rejects this response of faith. He persists in recognizing John Paul II as legitimate true pope but considers him in error when he commands and teaches the whole Church the new mass, ecumenism and religious liberty; indeed for this cause he disobeys him. But to say that he who errs in teaching the whole Church is the pope is equal to saying that the pope can err in teaching the whole Church. What is this if not denial of the dogma of papal infallability? Thus in affirming that the pope errs in his official teaching on faith and morals to the whole Church Lefebvre renders himself in practice responsible for the sin of heresy. Moreover, since he pays no attention to protests, but persists in his errors with foolish obstinacy, Catholic morality requires him to be considered a formal heretic.

Lefebvre's behavior is also schismatic. Everywhere he publicly proclaims John Paul II the legitimate true Catholic pope, but publicly and obstinately refuses to submit to him: He refuses the new mass, ecumenism, religious liberty, and his own suspension a divinis. What, asks the catechism, is this obstinate refusal to submit to the jurisdiction of the man he says he conscientiously believes to be the pope, if not separation from the pope and the making of schism.? Paul VI whom Lefebvre recognized as pope, did not let slip the chance to emphasize (24 May 1976): "But how can we not see in such an attitude ..... the fact that Mgr. Lefebvre has placed himself outside obedience to the successor of Per, and outside communion with him, and thus outside the Church?"

"If any will come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him: God speed you. For he that saith unto him: God speed you communicateth with his wicked works." ( II John 10-11)

If the mere greeting of one bringing non-Catholic doctrine causes participation in his heresy, how can we not see that to take the part of Mgr. Lefebvre and the priests of his Fraternity, to support them and to assist at their masses, while they reject the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility (heresy), and on the submission owed the pope (schism), is to participate in their heresy and their schism?

Econe Full Stop, by Father N Barbara (edited excerpts)

[Lefebvre is quoted extensively. The book abounds in footnotes citing occasions and sources, for which we refer you to the book.'

One day Mgr. Lefebvre castigates Vatican II: "we refuse and always have refused to follow the Rome of neo-modernist and neo-protestant tendency ….. clearly manifested in Vatican II and after the Council in every reform issuing therefrom." "It is an error to say that the reforms did not have their principle in the Council." 'The official postconciliar reforms and orientations show, with more evidence than any writing the official and intended interpretation of the Council." "It is therefore impossible for any alert and faithful Catholic to adopt this Reform and to submit to it in any manner whatever."

On another day Lefebvre is ready "to sign a declaration accepting the Second Vatican Council interpreted according to tradition."

One day he fulminates against "the mass of Luther" which "presupposes a different conception of the Catholic religion, a different religion." "Let there be no mistake it is not a matter of difference between Mgr. Lefebvre and Paul V" (but) "of the radical incompatibility between the Catholic Church and the conciliar mass of Paul VI representing the symbol and program of the conciliar church." "The Catholico-protestant mass, a spring henceforth poisoned which produces incalculable ravages ….. The ecumenical mass leads logically to apostasy ….."

Another day Lefebvre does not blush to consider the cohabitation of the two rites. He distinguishes between "good" and bad new masses. "l think they should not abandon every public act and in consequence if the mass is celebrated in a respectful manner and not sacrilegious, I think it right to assist at this" (new) "Sunday Mass in order to fulfill the obligation." For the obsequies of a family member, Lefebvre, accompanied by Father Simoulin, assisted (30 June 1980) "actively" at "Luther's mass."

One day: "All who cooperate in the action of this upheaval, accept and adhere to this new conciliar church ….. enter into schism." Another day he begs recognition from these same schismatics.

29 July 1976: "This conciliar church is a schismatic church because it breaks with the Catholic Church of the centuries ....." "Because it has taken, as the basis for its operating principles opposed to those of the Catholic Church." "The church which affirms errors like these is both schismatic and heretical. This conciliar church is thus not Catholic."

4 August 1976: "I do not reject it altogether. I accept the council in so far as it conforms to Tradition."

23 November 1980: "We must hope that matters will be settled with John Paul II, I have not at all given up hope that matters will be settled with him. ….. We simply ask, perhaps, not to discuss theoretical problems, to leave the questions which divide us, like religious liberty. We are not obliged to resolve all these problems now, time will bring its clarity, its solution ….." Lefebvre, who has so often proclaimed that to accept Vatican II's religious liberty would amount to denying the rights of Christ over the world, himself proposes nothing other than putting the Royalty of Our Lord under a bushel, if that would permit him to enter the good graces of the conciliar church. But does he not understand that to bring his vain bargaining to a satisfactory conclusion he thus subordinates the Catholic faith to the success of his own (illicit) work?

Lefebvre wanted all elements of his confrontation with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith publicized in a special number (233, May 1979) of Itineraires, from which come all the following quotations. Lefebvre quoted his reply to the ex-Holy Office of dividing the Church:

"When I think that we are in the buildings of the Holy Office, which is the exceptional witness of Tradition and of the defense of the Catholic Faith, I cannot help thinking that I am at home and that it is I whom you call 'the traditionalist' who should be judging you. Tradition represents a past as unshakeable as this house; liberalism has no foundation and will pass away. One day truth will resume her rights." On Lefebvre's own admission, that was a fine occasion to judge - to condemn the conciliar church and cause Truth to triumph.

To Cardinal Seper's first letter (28 January 1 978) was appended a questionnaire, to which Lefebvre replied (26 February). His reply was considered incomplete. 16 March he received the further demand:

"1. Concerning the 'Ordo Missae': (a) A Catholic cannot cast doubt on the conformity with the doctrine of the faith of a sacramental rite promulgated by the Supreme Pastor; (b) ..... (c) .....

"2. Your general declarations (on the authority of the Second Vatican Council and of Pope Paul VI) combine together into a praxis which leads to the question: are we not confronted by a schismatic movement? In fact, you ordain priests against the formal will of the pope and without the 'litterae dismissoriae' required by Canon Law - and you have continued after your suspension 'a divinis' - you send these priests into priories where they exercise their ministry without the authorization of the Ordinary in place; you give addresses calculated to spread your ideas in dioceses in which the bishop refuses you his consent; with priests whom you have ordained, you are beginning, whether you wish to or not, to form a group calculated to become a dissident ecclesial community.

"3. You consider that the priests ordained by you have the jurisdiction provided for by Canon Law in cases of necessity. Is this not to argue as though the legitimate hierarchy had ceased to exist?

"4. The pope has the supreme power of jurisdiction ..... not only in matters which belong to faith and morals, but also in those that appertain to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world (Vatican I, 'Pastor Aeternus'), thus the obedience due him is not limited to doctrinal matters.

"5. By your statements on submission to the Council and to the postconciliar reforms of Paul VI - statements in conformity with the whole pattern of behavior and particularly illicit ordinations to the priesthood - you have fallen into grave disobedience which in strict logic leads to schism."

Whatever the quality and intentions of the new church hirelings, they ask the right questions. Can we cast doubt on a sacramental rite promulgated by the pope? If this rite is objectively doubtful, can its promulgator be pope? To act as Lefebvre acts, still recognizing the conciliar heads as legitimate, is this not the road to schism? Does this action not assume the death of legitimate authority? Can a Catholic limit obedience to doctrinal matters?

Lefebvre sidestepped. He sent some " reflections on the situation of the Church since the Second Vatican Council" and some "particular thoughts," neither of which replied to the questions. The "thoughts" quoted Leo XIII to justify disobedience to the pope at the cost of confusing the Church with any natural society.

On this foundation the colloquy of 11 and 12 January 1979 opened. We reproduce here only the modernists' first two questions and Lefebvre's most revealing replies.

Question: Must we conclude from these (Lefebvre's) statements (just read) that, according to you, the 'Pope, by promulgating the new Ordo Missae, and the totality of the bishops who accepted it", founded and gathered round them visibly a new "conciliar" Church radically incompatible with the Catholic Church?

Lefebvre: I observe first of all that the expression "conciliar Church" is not mine but Mgr. Benini's, who, in an official letter, demanded that our seminarians submit to "the conciliar Church."

I consider that a spirit of modernist and protestant tendency manifests itself in the conception of the new Mass and furthermore in the whole Liturgical Reform. The protestants themselves say so and Mgr. Benini himself recognized it implicitly when he said that this Liturgical Form was conceived in an ecumenical spirit. (I can prepare a study to show how this protestant mentality is to be found in the Ordo Missae.)

Question: Do you contend that a faithful Catholic could think and affirm, that a sacramental rite, in particular that of the Mass, approved and promulgated by the Sovereign Pontiff, could be not conformable with the Catholic Faith or "favens haeresim?"

Lefebvre: This rite in itself does not profess the Catholic Faith in as clear a manner as the former Ordo Missae, and in consequence it could favor heresy. But I do not know to whom to attribute it, neither do I know whether the Pope is responsible for it. What is stupefying is that an Ordo Missae of a protestant flavor, and thus "favens haeresim?", could have been issued by the Roman Curia.

Contrast the pitiful replies with the grave questions! The new church hirelings normally confine themselves to inconsistent arguments, but that day they asked questions of extreme precision. A mistake? Or were they sure from Lefebvre's feeble letters that he would give way? Whatever the reason, Providence willed that these questions should be asked; and we must see that Lefebvre refused to answer. He was called upon to state whether a new church was born with Vatican II, and whether this church is incompatible with the Catholic Church. The answer is easy; he said himself he should be judging them. With a pirouette, a few vague observations on the spirit of reform, he collapsed. A second time the new church asked a self-condemnatory question: Could a reasonable Catholic contend that the Sovereign Pontiff of the Holy Church could promulgate what Lefebvre himself had so often called "Luther's mass?" Again he collapsed, feigning ignorance regarding the ''pope's" responsibility for the new "ordo missae." This question could not have surprised him; it was put to him for the third time in less than a year - a year to prepare the only possible answer. Lefebvre failed in his duty, condemned himself to be no longer able to judge his adversaries(?) in the name of the faith, and placed himself outside the Church in the sight of all. He refused what Providence asked of him: to confess the faith, to bear witness that the conciliar church is not the church and that its heads are impostors.

Lefebvre has himself said that the Church now lives through an exceptional crisis, undoubtedly its gravest yet. He also knows that the major problem concerns the legitimacy of the heads of the conciliar church. He had a particular responsibility to solve it, in order to act in whatever manner and to bear witness before the world that the conciliar church is not the Church of Christ, that its heads are impostors. He understood this. From his letter (6 Oct. 1978) to forty cardinals including Wojtyla):

"A pope worthy of the name and a true successor of Peter cannot say that he will give himself to the application of the Council and its Reforms. In so doing he places himself in rupture with all his predecessors and with the Council of Trent in particular."

LEONARD HURST'S LEFEBVRE (The Catholic Cross, Feb. 1986)

..... Lefebvre has U-turned back to the Conciliar Church, causing unrest and unhappiness among those attending some thirty Mass Centers which we established and for which we recruited priests. Lefebvre tells people especially his priests, they must now accept what he has proved unacceptable or doubtful, therefore to be avoided. He compels Econe students [who seek true Orders to celebrate the true Mass] to declare that they accept the Head of the Conciliar Church [imposer of the new "mass"] as Pope. He sacked nine Americans for wishing! to continue to use St. Pius X's Missal in preference to John XXIII's changed (ergo illicit) Missal. His changed attitudes, his willingness. to violate the law upon which he bases his own right to celebrate the true Mass, are extremely serious in effect and implication.

He has, moreover, introduced to service the Mass Centers, with full permission to officiate as though Catholic priests, men who have not been ordained in the Catholic Church to offer Mass. This is an act of apostasy and entails blatant sacrilege [and idolatry]. Lefebvre himself has declared such men "bastard priests." Pope Leo XIII has decreed that such men, not ordained within the rules laid down by the Catholic Church, are not Catholic priests; therefore, though they follow the Missal exactly, word for word, rubric for rubric, the "Mass" they offer is no Mass at all, but an act of sacrilege and blasphemy to be avoided under pain of mortal sin by every Catholic.

These men's guilt is shared by all who "command it, counsel it, conceal it, partake in it, are silent about it, or defend it " This is the law and teaching; of the Catholic Church. It is our duty to present Catholics these facts; failing in this we are also condemned. We begged the men concerned to seek conditional ordination, and were ignored. Yet in performing our duty to warn Catholics of the utterly unnecessary danger arising from the utterly unnecessary use of false priests, we are once again charged with divisiveness. The false traditionalists have likened us to Communist infiltration. How does one infiltrate his own house?

THE CRUX OF THE MATTER, D J Sanbom

The Catholic Cross, Oct. 1986 (Edited excerpts)

In times like our own, when liturgical norms are manifestly contrary to the Catholic Faith, we are not permitted to make up our own rules, or to consider the crisis a form of free-for-all in which we can take the reforms we like and reject others. We are obliged to choose, to the best of our ability that point when the liturgy was entirely pure and free from any stain of modernism, an element totally alien to the Catholic religion. While it is possible that there could be differences of opinion concerning the correct date to choose, the principle remains that we must follow a determined set of rules used by the Church at some time before the Council, and regard them as binding. To concoct a mish-mash is to depart from the liturgical unity of the Roman Catholic Church Abp. Lefebvre complained that a priest in France insisted on omitting the Confiteor before Communion; this was against the "rules of the Fraternity." (This rule had been decreed at the very same meeting of the Abp.'s council at which the John XXIII rubrics we imposed on all, January 1982.)

John XXIII suppressed the Confiteor before Communion in his new rubrics; the priest's point was that: if we follow John XXIII, let: us follow John XXIII. It is impossible to affirm in the same breath that it is necessary and obligatory to follow his rubrics and that it is licit to continue to use a rubric which he suppressed. The French priest holding to this principle was considered disobedient to the Abp. And outside the "spirit of the Fraternity," etc.

Lefebvre has condemned the "nine" as schismatic and disobedient to papal authority because we refuse the John XXIII rubrics. ..... nothing to do with papal authority, since Lefebvre continues to impose the Confiteor before Communion, apparently even with the threat of expulsion. John XXIII suppressed it; would it not flout the same papal authority to retain it as to retain any other pre-John XXIII rubric? This fact reveals clearly that the crux of the matter is not obedience to John XIII's rubrics but to Abp. Lefebvre's rubrics. Priests who work with the Society priests [not the Society priests themselves?] in Australia have an "indult" (special permission) from Fr. Schmidberger to continue using the pre-John XXIII rubrics, the very same rubrics declared "schismatic" and "disobedient to papal authority" in April. [What consideration coaxed this "indult" from Schmidberger? Who needs it? Is Quo Primum abolished? Why would these co-workers, necessarily older than the Society, crave or accept the Society's permission to celebrate Mass as forbidden by those whom they, independently of the Society, have always inexplicable recognized as true popes?] Although such accusations sounded good in the Spring, it is evident that Lefebvre does not really think the use of these rubrics unlawful. If permitted for priests in Australia, why illegal for priests in America? Why was the whole house burned down, if nothing is wrong; with this form of liturgy?

In the midst of all the April fulminations, Lefebvre said in one of his conferences: "In the instruction in the new Canon Law they talk about 'eucharistic hospitality.' What is this .....? It means that when a Protestant comes to receive Holy Communion and he says, 'I have the true Catholic Faith in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, ' then you must give him Communion. That is incredible! It is impossible, impossible! H has no other Catholic Faith, only in the Real Presence, and so we must give him Communion. He may have no fait in the Sacrifice of the Mass, he has no faith in the papacy, he has no faith in sanctifying grace, and we must still give him Communion? Impossible! It is in the new Canon Law! We cannot use this Canon Law. It is the same as all books that come from this reform of the Council of Vatican II. "

The November 1983 ANGELUS, official English-language publisher and editor for Abp. Lefebvre and the International Society: "The old Code will be abrogated. We are hoping to publish a commentary on the New Code by Fr. Thomas Glover, JCD, in a forthcoming issue. Fr. Glover is Professor of Canon Law at the Society of St. Pius X seminaries in Europe. Father has pointed out that whatever our personal feelings about the new Code, it comes to us with the full authority of the Pope and that we have no alternative but to accept it as the official Canon Law of the Church."

Then December we see a totally opposite position. Letter jointly signed by Antonio de Castro-Mayer and Abp. Marcel Lefebvre: "..... we utter this cry of alarm, rendered all the more urgent by the errors, not to say the heresies, of the New Code of Canon Law."

This represents a major shift from the spirit of reconciliation with the modernists which Abp. Lefebvre has followed since the election of John Paul II in 1978. It states implicitly that John Paul II is a heretic, since it says clearly that the New Code of Canon Law, which he signed and promulgated, contains heresies.

I fear that those who dare point out that this new attitude is a departure from the one he adhered to for the past five or six years, will be told that they are "against the Archbishop.

Will they continue to say that, in order to be a Catholic, it is necessary to be united to this modernist hierarchy, even after they have accused it of having publicly promulgate heresy? But what Catholic would ever want to be united with a heretic?

The theological hopscotch that is evident with regard to the New Code is perfectly representative of the Society's procedure from the beginning. The inconsistency of the fundamental position of the International Society towards Vatican II changes causes Abp. Lefebvre to vacillate theologically and liturgically. His followers are then forced to act either consistently with principles or inconsistently with him.

Major Leonard Hurst's Letter (2) to an Econe Priest (paraphrase): Silence in the face of well-grounded challenge surely constitutes admission of indefensibility. The only important issues concern the Church and my Faith; on these I remain unchanged since the day of my Baptism, well over your twenty years ago.

From the day of Roncalli's selection I suspected him; Events justified my suspicion. His attitude, conduct, and remarks, widely reported, were most unedifying. Having accepted that the Church is unchangeable, I immediately mistrusted his seemingly pointless changes.

Your illogical, untenable stand appears based on belief that Lefebvre is the wisest, most learned, sole reliable authority within the Catholic Church. Complete truthfulness and consistency are essential to reliability. Is Lefebvre truthful? In his "Reflections on Suspension" he asserts, in effect that he has refused the novus ordo since its institution. But Father Guerard des Lauriers (who names other witnesses) testifies that Lefebvre habitually celebrated the novus ordo right up to 24 December 1971 (about two years after I had set up the first Mass Center. In Bogota in 1973 he con-celebrated the same illicit innovation with Father Aulagnier. Either Lefebvre's veracity or his memory falls short of reliability. [Possible confusion of terms: "mass of Paul VI']

Is Lefebvre consistent? Your letter admits that "his thought has developed over the years" (euphemism for "he changes his mind now and then"). Why must we accept his rulings when his opinions today differ from those he held yesterday? Your extract from his speeches indicates that he is again changing his mind; he may be tottering, towards recognition of the blatantly obvious fact that the Church has no pope. He expelled nine priests because they would not accept JP2's legitimacy. Three years later he prepares to accept their view. If so, will he recall them? If not, why not? Because, as your letter continues, the nine were expelled because "fanatically" attached to the Missal of St. Pius V? But Lefebvre himself (Letter No. 24) asserted that the use of this Missal was the only thing which could avert the "destruction of the Church." He subsequently ordered all his priests to use John XXIII's "Missal," and expelled priests because they followed his own teaching - undeniable, scandalous inconsistency!

He than visits your chapel, sees you using a 1909 Missal, possibly uses it himself and says and does nothing about it. This evidence, some provided by yourself, shows that Lefebvre is not a reliable leader to be followed at all costs. By insisting on adoption of his own often irrational standards, instead of the Church's norms, he has lost almost one third of his Econe trained priests, alienated many traditionalist priests and laymen around the world, and so confused many that they have now ceased to know or care about the Catholic Faith.

I am astonished to see you unwilling to admit the demolition of your challenge to point out "one word" of difference between the Ordinaries of St. Pius V's and Roncalli's Missals. Surely the insertion of St. Joseph into the Canon is sufficient?

The omitted Collects, Secrets, and Postcommunions are part of the Ordinary because it specifies that they must be used.

You have several Roncalli missals, some with, some without St. Joseph. John XXIII missals have themselves differing Ordinaries. Your own words prove my case! But you go on to ask whether I really think any Catholic will have his faith weakened by the fact that the priest says one Collect instead of three. At least one Catholic, the priest, will have had his faith weakened if "false teachers" and "wolves in sheep 's clothing" have persuaded him that he and others can disobey a Church law - properly promoted by a Pope-Saint four centuries ago - accepted and scrupulously obeyed by every pope since.

Catholics must obey papal decrees. We disobey at our peril; we reject Our Lord's words, "He that heareth you hearth Me." Sedevacantists obey the decrees of all popes, from St. Peter to our latest, Pius XII. Lefebvre undeniably obeys no pope whomsoever concerning the Mass. He recognizes the founders and leaders of the "heretical and schismatic" Conciliar Church, Roncalli, Montini, Luciani, and Wojtyla as popes, but illogically refuses to obey them.

Compliance with Quo primum alone insures continuation and integrity of the Holy Sacrifice, the Cornerstone of our Faith. You seem to believe that it need not (or should not!) be obeyed because some French bishops failed to obey it for many years. America has laws forbidding many actions from murder to speeding. Are such laws invalid - not to be obeyed - because thousands disregard them?

You tell me that consistently I must refuse feasts of such as St. Pius X or St. Therese of Liseaux, canonized long after the Missal was declared unchangeable. The Missal provides for celebration of feasts according to category - bishop, martyr, doctor, virgin, etc. Obviously the saints you mention fall within such categories; therefore their inclusion changes nothing. [The long established custom to compose Propers for new feasts continues. No one heedlessly altered it.]

Bringing cases concerning worship of Mass Centres , civil court directly breaches Canon Law; such disputes must be decided by the Church. Lefebvre characteristically disregards the Law. He spends tens of thousands of other people's money given to God - to secure possession of property to which he has no right. The money he squanders, like the Centers themselves, came mainly from the savings and pensions of poor old people who gave it to secure the continued celebration of the traditional Mass of the Catholic Church. By imposing a 1962 "Mass rite" in its place Lefebvre has betrayed all these contributors, the true owners! He certainly has no legal, territorial, or ecclesiastical authority over these people, nor has he contributed money toward the acquisition of the Mass Centers.

Lefebvre's dictatorial style and outlook shows itself when, as Fr. Williamson admits, he attempts to barter the Centers, etc. - other people's property! - against recognition of the Society by the men in Rome who, he himself tells us, head a "schismatical and heretical Church."

Men not ordained for the Catholic Church - not priests - preside at British Mass Centers. Agents of the Conciliar Church ''ordained" therein to service the novus ordo, operate with Lefebvre's full consent, approval, and encouragement. He has aptly called that Church "schismatical and heretical " spawning "bastard priests" through "bastard sacraments" (Reflections on Suspension & 1976 Lille speech).

You challenge me (again) "produce a statement by any theologian to the effect that Quo primum means that no pope can change anything at all in the Roman Missal." Any sane, hones, literate person capable of reading and understanding must admit that Quo primum itself is just such a statement, by a recognized Catholic theologian, Pope St. Pus V. Its binding power has been conceded by every pope since. His authority, you say, is no greater than that of any other pope - nor is it less! In keeping with Church tradition and practice, popes continue to observe decrees of their predecessors. Changing the unchangeable Missal involves faith and morals; besides interfering with our highest moral obligation, it rejects the de fide dogma of papal infallibility. Furthermore, Roncalli and his successors all swore an installation oath ''to change nothing."

Against all the evidence you insist that 1) Quo primum is not binding, 2) it does not concern faith and morals, 3) any pope may change the Roman Missal. (Can he supplant it?) 4) we must follow the directives and (changeable) opinions of Lefebvre. He has maintained for years that Roncalli, Montini, Luciani, and Wojtyla are popes of the Church.

Why do 'YOU not follow these men?

..... it is truly evident that since the Second Vatican Council the Pope and the Bishops' Conferences have distanced themselves from their predecessors with an even greater clarity. [than during the council?]

All past defense of the Faith and missionary effort is now considered error for which the Church must seek pardon.

Since 1789 until 1958 eleven popes have condemned the liberal Revolution. Their attitude is now held "lack of understanding of the Christian influence which inspired the Revolution." ..... In adopting the liberal Religion of Protestantism and the Revolution Rousseau's naturalist principles, atheistic freedoms of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the principle of human dignity no longer connected with truth and moral dignity, the Roman authorities reverse their predecessors and break with the Catholic Church; they place themselves at the service of the destroyers of Christianity and the Universal Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The acts of JP2 and the National Bishops' Conferences show from year to year this radical change in the conception of the Faith, the Church, the Priesthood, the world, and salvation by grace.

The summit of this rupture with the former Magisterium (teaching) of the Church has been fulfilled at Assisi after the visit to the Synagogue. The public sin against the Word made flesh and His Church makes one shudder with horror: John Paul II encourages false religions to pray to their false gods - a scandal without measure and without precedent. [JP2 set his own precedent in 1982 at Canterbury.)

..... we are obliged to declare that this modernist and liberal Religion of the modern and conciliar Rome distances itself more and more from us, who profess the Catholic Faith of the eleven Popes who have condemned this false religion.

The break comes not from us, but from Paul VI and from John Paul II who have broken with their predecessors.[How does Lefebvre class John XXIII and JP1?] This denial of all the Church's past by these two Popes and the Bishops who imitate them is an inconceivable godlessness or impiety and an unbearable humiliation for those who remain Catholic in faithfulness to twenty centuries of the same Faith.

Therefore we consider as null all that has been inspired by this spirit of denial: all the Post Conciliar Reforms [but not the council itself! nor Roncalli's violation of Quo primum!], and all the acts of Rome which have been accomplished in this impious spirit. [Why the qualifying phrase? Why not simply "all acts of these public heretics - not possibly popes or bishops?" Was the novus ordo missae imposed in "this impious spirit?" Is it therefore null? If so, why has Lefebvre maintained for so long that it is not per se invalid? Are the invalidating changes in sacramental forms "accomplished in this impious spirit"] ….. Buenos Aires, 2 December 1986 (signed) MARCEL LEFEBVRE (&) ANTONIO DE CASTRO-MAYER (who is in perfect agreement.)

SEMINARY TRAINING? WHERE?

To win at professional tennis you take lessons, hire a coach, hone, your skills on stiff competition. To sharpen chess skills you play those who can beat you; you learn little from your victims. To win souls for Christ you underwent a long, strict, weighty course of study and religious training. When you had absorbed two years' philosophy and four years' theology you might be found short spiritually, and still rejected. But with good teachers, sufficient library, and durable eyesight you could be ordained priest. After years as a curate you might run a parish, then diocese. A many years' practice you might excel at your job, if you had been led along slowly, steadily, through the usual channels.

Vatican II and its aftermath changed all that. Vernacularization made Latin and Greek elective (dropped). This simplified and shortened the seminary course. The candidate never understood the languages in which his philosophy, theology, apologetics, encyclicals, canon laws, and Scripture were written. Seminary education became a joke.

Into the breach leapt the Society of St. Pius X, which began to turn out priests(?) as half-educated as any, who, without long years of drudgery and training, became instant parish priests, seminary rectors, school principals, provincial superiors, professors of theology, philosophy, and canon law, editors of "Catholic" magazines, infallible guides to the traditional Catholic community. They all undergo the same brief, inadequate schooling, under the auspices of a heretical fraternity established in the postconciliar "Church," then emerge and go their various ways. All claim to be Catholic priests, though some will admit being illicitly ordained. They may or may not be priests, depending on the validity of Lefebvre's own priestly ordination, but not Catholic priests, ordained as they are(?) without title, ordinary, authority, jurisdiction, nor way to procure them. Several, indeed, victims of Paul VI's new ordination rite, lack even this questionable priesthood, yet they celebrate "mass" in the name of their fraternity, bringing certain idolatry to traditional Catholics willing to risk only probable idolatry with traditionally ordained(?) priests. And these appear to be not only men accepted by Lefebvre despite refusal if conditional re-ordination but one or more whom Lefebvre himself "ordained" with the new rite.

The Catholic Cross, July 1985: (Lefebvre) has never been the unswerving defender of the Mass of Trent which we had believed him to be. We also have evidence that, in August '73 he 'ordained' an 'Econe priest' using the New Rite of the Conciliar Church, after telling people that it is invalid."

Father Noel Barbara in Econe Full Stop " The muddle ….. over the new rite reaches the level of a joke. Thus the seminarians are unsure of the validity of the ordination of Fr. Cottard. We know for a fact that he was ordained by Mgr. Lefebvre according to the new rite. After that, opinions differ." (Re-ordination?) ….. Mgr. Lefebvre is unwilling to shed further light on the affair ….. some seminarians carefully avoid assisting at masses of this doubtful priest: to the extent, for example, that a certain functionary at Econe arranged that his friends should not have to assist at the community mass when it was said by Fr. Cottard."

Why will Lefebvre not clear way this doubt on his orthodoxy - on his good faith? No defense necessary? What can be certain about the sacramental intention of a bishop who "ordains" in the new rite, even when subsequently using the proper rite? One rite is as good as the other; he has made no distinction. And what kind of seminary training leaves its recipients only doubting, not condemning, such an "ordination?"

An old priest told me that he had left Econe partly because, of its defective curriculum. Gerard Hogan, one of Lefebvre's priests(?), exposed the deficiency of his own education by telling Toowoomba's traditionalists how difficult it is to identify heresy these days. Surprisingly? Not if we appreciate that the trainee is unlikely to exceed his trainer. Lefebvre excused Paul VI's public heresies on grounds that Paul was a liberal! Patrice Laroche absolved JP2 of teaching heresies because it was only error.

Let us return to Econe Full Stop. Econe, says Fr. Barbara, claims to form "true and holy priests," but succeeds, rather, in graduating complacent men who cover inordinate pride with counterfeit humility. They peach in platitudes. Their inaccurate language barely hides ignorance if not downright heresy. (He includes citations and samples.) But varied are their tales; some enshrine their throttled thought in print, taking to task traditional writers (Strojie, Kellner, etc.) who knew their faith before these innocents were born.

Listen, for instance, to Simoulin: "We would like to express the bitterness of many of the young priests coming out of Econe. Pious and learned lay people have been occupied for too long in criticizing them because they are young and inexperienced, without taking heed that they are perhaps fragile. Some cast doubt on the doctrinal purity of the teaching at Econe, while others question the intelligence or competence of the priests who emerge."

What an attitude among those expected to reconquer the world for true religion! It stems from Lefebvre's excuse that first we must have the sacraments everywhere, so quantity of priests takes precedence over quality. Econe takes anybody. Some have found themselves listed as seminarians on their first visit. There is practically no examination of personal worth, doctrine, or vocation. Far from testing these in the seminary itself, Lefebvre often advances ordination dates when the filling of new posts or areas requires. Possibly these defects could be justified were his seminary at all adequate. But it stacks. up poorly against even this century's earlier seminaries, which produced "pious but by no means learned" priests "who allowed themselves to be swept away by the gale of Vatican II.

"The fact is made still worse by the wish to keep the seminarians, and the priests, in ignorance of those points which ought to be their reason for existence. At Econe they defy the authority of the 'pope' ..... and cast doubt on the new sacraments without giving reasons. ….. they refuse explanations to inquirers, the very fact of daring to ask deemed a sign of the wrong attitude." Practically no instruction is given on Vatican II, new rites, or canonical reforms, and only enough on doctrine to keep up appearances. The mediocrity of the course is reinforced by that of the professional staff. The criterion is agreement with Lefebvre. Spiritual and doctrinal emptiness is largely with "lefebvrism," the blind tortuous following of a blind guide.

But the patrons of Lefebvre's illicit heretical, schismatic fraternity pass lightly over Major Hurst's and Father Barbara's serious charges because the fraternity provides "mass" and "sacraments." They demand proof of the charges instead of justification from Lefebvre. They consider Lefebvre innocent till proven guilty, not recognizing that 1) he is a proven heretic, and 2) we are not trying a court case but trying to keep our Faith, without which we cannot be saved.

Meanwhile the postconciliar "Church" rejoices to see traditionalists pacified by Lefebvre's fraternity. Theological "authorities" say in effect: "Better they should have heir heretical celebrants of their doubtful mass than that they should bother us!" No Catholic can settle for this!

Logically, if we must have the Mass we should prefer to assist at an Orthodox liturgy (forbidden to Catholics); at least the celebrant refrains from the further heresy of praying for "Pope John Paul."

Lefebvre or Thuc ordinands have no possible jurisdiction, even when orders are valid. No Catholic has the slightest obligation to seek out these illicit clerics(?), especially when such actions almost surely involve him in schism, heresy, and idolatry.

No Catholic can be obliged to assist at Mass in absence of an undoubtedly Catholic Mass under undoubtedly Catholic auspices.

LEFEBVRE IMPOSED ON CATHOLICS FOR YEARS,

because the appearance of Mass attracts our strongest support. But we trek through a veritable religious Sahara, and we must not veer off toward the mirage. Lefebvre was a schismatic heretic whose episcopal status depended on whether his priestly ordination at the hands of a high-degree mason (an apostate servant of the devil) was valid - whether he was eligible for episcopal consecration - whether apostate Achille Lienart could have himself received the episcopal order intended only for Catholic priests. Even in the hardly possible eventuality that such problems could be resolved to favor Lefebvre's legitimacy, how can we grant the Church's sacramental intentions to the Lienart who conspired to vitiate its doctrine and discipline, before, during and after Vatican II. Dying, he congratulated himself: "Humanly speaking, the Catholic Church is dead."

In assisting at mass(?) celebrated by Lefebvre or anyone he ordained(?) we risk idolatry. We have, therefore, no choice; we must avoid it, and sacraments(?) administered by the same doubtful priests and bishops. Doubtful sacrament, no sacrament!

But let us suppose that authority has ruled in Lefebvre's favor, and that he could without question ordain priests and consecrate bishops. What jurisdiction had he? Was he a diocesan bishop? No. Could he legitimately ordain subjects of diocesan bishops without their approval, their dismissorial letters? No. Could he run seminaries in their territories without their approval? Could he found a religious society with approval of a postconciliar bishop and continue it in existence against orders of a postconciliar pope? He could assume such powers only in utter default of competent authority - no pope, no Catholic bishops in the dioceses concerned. This is, of course, the exact situation, but Lefebvre never put this case. He provided insufficient basis for his actions. He continued to recognize legitimacy of antipopes and jurisdiction of apostate hierarchy. He signed most of Vatican II's documents - including the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. He would accept all these documents "read in the light of the Council of Trent" - an absurdity advanced seriously - in order avoid calling antipopes and their followers public heretics and schismatics. But he ever maintained a good standing among these schismatic followers. He has treated with heretical antipopes as though they, ineligible through public heresy, held office legitimately. He even excluded his own priests(?) from his novus ordo "Church" fraternity for disagreeing with his inconsistent, untenable position. He founded a society and its seminaries to train and properly to ordain true priests to celebrate the true Mass, but apparently as an option. For he refused to condemn the novus ordo "mass,'' but avowedly sought mere parallel status for the true Mass.

He even accepted "priests" "ordained" according, to Paul VI's new, invalid "ordination" into his society without re-ordaining(?) them with the proper rite, and then imposed these laymen on misled Catholics who wish to remain truly Catholic, without informing the people concerned that their "confessions, communions, and mass" were lay-administered - thus making idolatry certain!

Lefebvre made no essential distinction between traditional and novus ordo mass and sacraments. He therefore subscribed to heresies (Arianism, Judaism, apocatastasis) built into these latter by heretics to whom he adhered as popes. He was not Catholic, and no Catholic could approach him for Mass or sacraments, even if undoubted, except on his deathbed. The doubt, of course, rules out even the deathbed. If he really was a bishop, his priests are not Catholic priests, having been ordained in defiance of Church law and of what Lefebvre wrongly supported for years as legitimate authority. When these priests(?) rebelled against him they could not thereby recover a status never attained.

Lefebvre had for twenty years pretended to fight for traditionalism, even repeatedly conveying the message that he knew best and would strike at the proper time. The proper time to fight heresy and apostasy is always NOW! He distracted and undercut genuine traditionalists and kept them from the front lines. At last gone too far for Rome, he still keeps us off the point. He enticed a genuine bishop (illicitly retired - without jurisdiction) into co-consecrating some of his priests(?). If not priests, then they cannot be bishops, any more than Lefebvre himself. If priests, then they are bishops, but not Catholic. Either way they cannot help us to salvation, and they must be shunned.

Lefebvre allowed a whole generation of possible supporters to die out while he temporized with Rome. He could no longer take the required stand. He had changed direction so often that no one could know his stance next month, next week or next minute.

Lefebvre's book, AN OPEN LETTER TO CONFUSED CATHOLICS,

first calls as witnesses to the great confusion those themselves indispensably involved in its creation and protraction, Their Holinesses Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. On page: 10 "we have the Pope himself attending religious ceremonies in false religions, praying and preaching in the churches of heretical sects ….. The faithful no longer understand." [Nor does Lefebvre; he still calls these blatant apostates "Holiness" and "Pope."]

On page 34 he disavows leadership. But he trawled the world, raised funds, enticed his followers into accepting and disobeying apostate antipopes. For years he undermined and opposed action. "Wait for the opportune moment. I have an earth-shaking plan. When it counts, I'll act." This message came even to me by at least four routes. Even had he acted properly in 1991 he would have outlived most support and all effectiveness. His disavowal matches Roncalli's "I don't like to claim special inspiration" to convoke Vatican II.

Page 24: "Why make hosts that are grey or brown .....? ..... trying to make us forget ….. hanc immaculatam hostiam …..?" [But the Mass offers the Spotless Victim - not_ the pure white piece of bread. Small wonder Lefebvre considered the novus ordo missae not per se invalid!

Page 35 raises questions about validity of individual novus ordo services just after nailing down the lid on them all for offering the wrong things and replacing the consecratory action with a narrative of institution. "The payers of the offertory, the Canon and the priest's communion are necessary for the integrity of the sacrifice and the sacrament but not for its validity." [A disintegrated but valid Mass! He illustrates his point with] "Cardinal Mindszenty pronouncing in secret in his prison the words of Consecration over a little bread and wine ..... was certainly accomplishing the sacrifice and the sacrament." [Supposing this romance factual, or that an isolated consecration can equal Mass, one presumes that Mindszenty, while needlessly violating canon law, intended to consecrate. This vital intention is completely absent, even actively thwarted, in the new rite itself, which no priest's intention can validate.]

Page 36 discusses assisting at a sacrilegious though valid novus ordo to satisfy our Sunday obligation. "These masses cannot be the object of an obligation." [Naturally not! Our obligation existed centuries before the novus ordo.]

Page 52 consults Acta Aptolicae Sedis to cite against the abuses of confession the very antipopes who introduced and promoted them. Others should obey (selectively) while Lefebvre ignores direct orders from ordinations. Each individual is to judge a pope's prescriptions to decide whether to obey. [Private interpretation!]

Page 58: Lefebvre purports to demonstrate proper form and matter insufficient for a valid ordination in absence of proper intention. But he declared his own ordination unaffected by the intention of the apostate, devil-worshipping, God-hating freemason who performed it.

65-6 describe some of the Dutch Catechism's damning shortcomings and heresies specified by a commission of cardinals in 1967. "A few years earlier they would have been forth rightly condemned and the Dutch Catechism put on the index. ….. Yet without waiting for the commission's report ….. the promoters ….. had the book published in several languages." (Ukrainian translation by Miroslav Lubachivsky, since "ordained" patriarch by JP2.) [Forget the commission; where was the pope? How could a genuine pope not have forbidden this outrageous compendium of heresies? - not an academic theological dispute, but an "authority" published for the "liberation" of Catholics and used in schools to turn our "children into little Protestants." Montini, as with contraception, set up a commission, as though these matters were in doubt.]

pp. 71-2 refer to "contemptible" catechisms retained despite parental protest because approved by the Catechetical Commission, and printed with permission of Quebec's President of the Episcopal Commission for Religious Teaching. "How can one accept the idea so contrary to the Catholic religion on the pretext that it is covered by episcopal authority?" [Again, where is the pope - our standard of unity and belief - charged with the preservation of our religion? To postulate the current incumbent a genuine vicar of Christ is heretical (at least by implication) and blasphemous.]

Page 73: "The Church has always considered the university chairs of theology, canon law, liturgy and church law as organs of her magisterium or at least of her preaching. Now it is quite certain that at present in all, or nearly all the Catholic universities, the orthodox Catholic faith is no longer being taught. I have not found one doing so, either in Europe or in the United States, or in South America." [The rot is universal; responsibility lies at the top. On the hierarchy in conspiracy behind the "pope's" back! So whence the last four "popes?" Would all those conspirators have elected an outsider? And who (as Lefebvre complains) abolished the Holy Office?]

Pp. 7&88 detail horrors of ecumenism and religious liberty. Lefebvre's highly publicized attitudes in these fields have caused many to wonder at his willingness to sign Vatican II documents interpreted in the light of the Council of Trent. Was he establishing a "reason" against the day of discovery for already having signed most?

In the next chapter, on communism and freemasonry, Casaroli and Wojtyla are charged with saddling Czechoslovakia and Hungary with communist bishops. Bugnini is again unmasked as a freemason. Yet, said Lefebvre, his novus ordo remains valid, just like Lienart's ordinations.

In the next two chapters (pp. 97-113) Lefebvre amassed proofs that the 1789 revolution has taken over the Church especially since Vatican II. Montini as he so often promoted the cult of man. Then, astonishingly, without regard for all that has continued to happen, he avers that all this is compensated for and corrected (or at least sanitized) by Montini's Creed of the People of God! "This Credo, dawn up by the successor of Peter to affirm the faith of Peter, was an event of quite exceptional solemnity. ….. he has made an act which pledges the faith of the Church" [to gratitude for Islam and Judaism, among other choice bits]. "We have thereby the consolation and the confidence of feeling that the Holy Spirit has not abandoned us. ….. the Arch of faith that sprang from the first Vatican Council" [not Christ and His Apostles?l "has found its other resting point in the profession of faith of Paul VI." [An arch supported 98 years at one end awaiting a base for its loose end!l

Lefebvre's next chapter documents the Church's marriage with the Revolution, "an adulterous union and from such a union only bastards can come. The rite of the new mass is a bastard" [but valid] "rite, the sacraments are bastard sacraments. We no longer know if they are sacraments which give grace or do not give it. The priests coming out of the seminaries are bastard priests, who do not know what they are." [Presidents?] Bastard priests to bastardize the laity How? We must first accept change. Secondly our reactions to change are registered because opposition to change is more spontaneous than reasoned. [Really!] Two typical attitudes: Acceptance of (1) novelties one by one, (2) total renewal of faith entering a new cultural era but closeness to the Apostolic faith [Close counts in horseshoes; we are bound to the Apostolic faith itself.] Vanishing faith must be bolstered with some fundamental assurance. What? The Holy Spirit! No hierarchy, magisterium, dogma (but yes, Virginia, there is a pope!); Christians are inspired directly by the Holy Spirit. [That's why Montini joined the charismatics at the Roman holiday!]

On page 129 we read that Montini gave away "his" tiara under pressure from the modernists, who also prevailed upon the bishops to give up their rings. According to (at the time) retired Melbourne auxiliary bishop John N. Cullinane, Montini called in all rings and replaced them with rings of his own design, just as he replaced his papal pectoral cross with the ephod worn by Caiphas.

Page 134 features Lefebvre's usual claptrap about his loyalty to "the present reigning successor of St. Peter ….. as long as he echoes the apostolic traditions and the teachings of all his predecessors. It is the very definition of the successor of Peter that he is the keeper of 'this deposit. ..... we are submissive and ready to accept everything that is in conformity with our Catholic faith, as it has been taught for two thousand years, but we reject everything that is opposed to it. ….. a grave problem confronted the conscience and faith of all Catholics during the Pontificate of Paul VI." [But no longer?] "How could a pope, a true successor of Peter, assured of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, preside over the most extensive destruction of the Church..... something that no heresiarch has ever succeeded in doing? One day this question will have to be answered.."

[Lefebvre simply refused to see the only possible answer, and reduced himself, and those to whom he brought his own confusion, to choosing among public pronouncements and actions of a supposedly infallible "keeper of the deposit." Montini perverted and destroyed this deposit, and is therefore by definition not a true successor of Peter We must declare this fact and act accordingly.]

On Page l53-4 Lefebvre was not in schism because he did not and would not leave the "pope, " himself in schism. Nor is he among those who insist that Montini was a heretic [so often proven] and therefore, by that very fact, impossibly pope [as canon law provides]. "John Paul I and John Paul II would then not have been legitimately elected." [Perfectly true, but he omitted a major reason: that they had - like himself - adhered to Montini as true pope, thereby condoning his public heresies.] "This is the" [misstated] "position of those called 'sedevacantists.'

"Paul VI has done more harm to the Church 'than the French Revolution." [All by mistake?] "Some of his acts - signatures on Article 7, Institutio Generalis of the new mass and Vatican II's Religious Freedom - are scandalous" [and heretical]. "But it is not a simple problem to know whether a pope can be a heretic." [If he signs and promulgates heresy he is obviously a heretic.] "We have to consider the degree to which the pope intended to involve his infallibility ….."

[When he promulgates doctrine in his "papal" capacity he necessarily involves both his office and its attributes. When he errs he proves that he lacks infallibility - a papal essential. Since he had publicly embraced heresy before he "became infallible" he lacked eligibility, his election was null and void, and he could never have acquired either the office or its infallibility.] If Montini's liberalism suffices (as Lefebvre said) ''to explain the disasters of his pontificate" then obviously his liberalism was a major error to which we must apply "By their fruits you shall know them."

"Another argument put forth by the sedevacantists; is that the exclusion of Cardinals of eighty years and over, and the secret meetings which preceded and organized the last two conclaves render those two popes invalid. ..... going too far; doubtful, perhaps. [Doubtful pope, no pope!] "Nevertheless, the subsequent unanimous acceptance of the elections by the Cardinals and the Roman clergy suffices to validate them. That is the opinion of the theologians." [After how he abused the periti, all theologians, at Vatican II. Let canon lawyers rule whether cardinals' acceptance of their own void election validates its result, especially when all the electors had at least condoned Vatican II's heresy-laden promulgations and most had signed them. All had come under automatic expulsion of Canons 2314 and 188, as had Lefebvre himself. That contributed greatly to his willful blindness.]

Page 155: "The visibility of the Church is too necessary for its existence for it to be possible that God would allow it to disappear for decades." [Visibility of public heretics contributes nothing to that of the Church, which has always been visible enough to persecute, even when (often enough) it had no pope.

"While rejecting Paul VI's liberalism, we wish to remain attached to Rome and the Successor of St. Peter out of fidelity to his predecessors." [How have the last four "successors" demonstrated fidelity? If we could discern it we would have no problem. We have at least one problem less than Lefebvre: we feel no need to palliate or misconstrue facts.]

Lefebvre continued with a long list of matters which must be rectified, but which could not exist in the same Church with a genuine, functioning pope. His solution (there is no other" - page 159) is for Catholics to enter politics, or at least to vote.

Lefebvre's book has deepened the fog. But it helps explain the inconsistency and confusion of his Society's spokesmen. Anyone confused enough to be guided by this Open Letter will finish it more confused than ever.

Marcel Lefebvre acted more or less like a Catholic bishop. In a sense his performance excelled JP2's; he fooled more traditionalists. Many who act as though JP2 is not pope refuse to say he is not pope torturing their consciences into absurdity) because that holy Lefebvre also contradicted himself. All Vatican II bishops and cardinals could go wrong, but not Lefebvre. When they all condoned liturgical and doctrinal change they proved themselves heretics. They contradict their own former positions, so they must be wrong. But when Lefebvre contradicted both his former and his current positions, he was obviously sincere - therefore correct.

So send your sons to become Janissaries and your money to war against your Catholic Faith. Lefebvre would have us believe that those with whom he quarreled (respectfully) because they preserve nothing (except infallibility & obedience) of the Catholic Faith and replace it with new, protestantizing doctrine and worship are undoubtedly successors of St. Peter, who would have carved the ears off them sooner than off another servant of the high priests. He refused not only to condemn their idolatrous novus ordo as invalid but also to ordain or keep in his community anyone who condemns it or its preposterous imposing authority.

Consistency and logic starve in his community - as in the entire Renewal. Think not that Lefebvre fought for the Faith. He led the mock war. He occupied positions to which genuine warriors are entitled. While the Roman usurper apostates can compromise with him or his survivors they need not deal with the true Catholic.

Lefebvre's fractured survivors will lead us into apostasy as surely as will the rest of the hierarchy. He can't fool you? He fooled me for several years. He created a fine impression, but for too long personality has weighed too much in the selection of bishops. He would settle everything peaceably, so we need not stand on our own hind legs.

But there is a time for war - when our Faith is threatened - and a time for peace - when we die.

ECONE'S ENVOY. Sydney. Tuesday 31 July 1979

roughly a hundred traditionalists of various stripes attended Father(?) Richard Williamson's slide lecture, which dealt also with Lefebvre's Roman troubles. Slides, darkness, no notes, few direct quotations. Lecturers remarks italicized throughout.

The archbp.'s convictions are clearly set forth in his book, A BISHOP SPEAKS.

Why does he not point out in Rome that Rome backs and preaches heresy?

He is trying to convert them in charity. You don't spit in a man's face when trying to get something from him.

Why not? It might wake him up!

No, these people cannot take strong meat. In charity they must be fed milk first. (St. Paul) Behold these weak men in Rome: Paul VI imposed his wishes, his new "mass" and "sacraments" upon unwilling hundreds of millions. John Paul II survived war, communism, and ecclesiastical politics to adhere to the renewal. These, not the lambs they have shorn, are to benefit from our charity. When King David fell from grace God's prophet, Nathan. told him - brutally, if you will - : "Thou art the man!" And Dad repented. Genuine charity owes the same approach to those who influence many times David's subjects far more vitally.

But we hard-liners and cranks (charitable designation for those who see no excuse for bargaining away God's property) fail in charity. We give strong meat to those who can stand only milk - those raised in our same faith and traditions, not the converts from generations of idolatry and paganism with whom St. Paul dealt. Our approach won't work, say those without the stomach for it. And it's uncharitable.

Why must we deal with heretics? How can heretics by popes?

We must assume that when the Roman clergy (cardinals) elect their bishop they know what they are about. The elect the bishop of Rome, who is automatically pope.

Isn't this like saying fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong?

A man unknown to me asked about transubstantiation in the new rite of "mass" and validity of the new ordinations. On the mass there was no yes or no - sometimes transubstantiation takes place, sometimes not. It becomes less frequent as younger priests not properly instructed in the Church's intentions replace the older. (To be construed as a reply to part two of the question?) The new mass was to be shunned for its Protestantizing tendencies and for its uncertain validity.

"You do know what doubt involves? Idolatry, the worst possible evil." But I could not accuse people of the sin of idolatry. "I didn't say sin. I said idolatry." Even uncharitable cranks understand that sin requires evil intent. But idolatry is objective. Worshipping unconsecrated bread is in itself idolatry.

Father(?) would not discuss the fact (oversimplification?) that we are nineteen centuries late with a new rite. All we need for transubstantiation is form, matter, and intention. Matter is there. Form is there: This is My Body, This is the chalice of My Blood. (We let this go. Time was shorter than his form.) And if the priest has the Church's intention that is all that is necessary. "No, the intention must be in the rite." The words are there. "Cranmer kept the words. The Book of Common Prayer has the words." Then Father(?) Williamson shocked me twice in quick succession. He repeated the first shock when, not believing I had heard correctly, I failed to reply. A properly ordained Catholic priest can transubstantiate in the Book of Common Prayer service.

"Not on your life."

Will you go against all theological opinion ….. Here a charitable soul injected thanks for a lovely lecture, and Mr. Foley adjourned to the refreshments.

But imagine appealing to theological opinion these days! What has put us in this mess? When has it ever bound us?

How much more clearly could a Catholic priest show lack of the Church's intention than in celebrating a non-Catholic service, particularly a rite belonging an organization which officially (39 Articles, 31) declares our Mass "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits?" Father(?) Williamson's "theological opinion" contradicts both Canon Law and the Church's universal practice.

Some Canon Law is divine Law. We may safely place in this category laws that treat divine matters Canon 817 says that neither species may be consecrated without the other nor both outside Mass. Mass, the Sacrifice of Calvary, has three principal parts at which we are required to assist on Sundays and Holy Days under pain of mortal sin. The parish priest is equally bound to provide his parishioners the Mass - all of it, including the three principal parts - not a novelty nor a non-Catholic service in the very provision of which he would violate the Natural Law as codified in Canon 1258 (It is unlawful for the faithful to assist in any active manner, or to take part in the sacred services of non-Catholics).

No one can show that transubstantiation takes place outside its proper environment Priests are forbidden to attempt it. Any such attempt per se excludes the Church's clearly expressed legislated intention. Williamson's "theological opinion" is only another classroom exercise in useless hair-splitting a free and unnecessary gift to the enemy, a misplacement of charity, a gallows on which to hang the Mystical Body before drawing and quartering it into dead sections that will accept the novus ordo or the new sacraments even if only for other sections.

Caged in a classroom such opinions merely provide mental gymnastics for seminarians. But let them escape into the practical sphere and they support heresies, thus demonstrating their absurdity. If this type of claptrap is taken seriously in theology courses, no wonder our priests have almost universally accepted the novus ordo missae - which is let us again oversimplify, nineteen centuries too late to pretend any connection whatsoever with our Apostolic Faith.

JP2 welcomed Lefebvre effusively, even as he had a communist mayor a week earlier. Cardinal Seper asked the questions while JP2 preserved his genial neutrality. Lefebvre returned in January to answer eighteen or so trick questions. His replies were drawn up for him to sign. He refused because a press secretary blurted out the plan to have him before a commission or court to defend them. We can have no idea how vicious ecclesiastics can become; the corruption of the bets is the worst. To the query whether JP2 was involved in the vicious plot Williamson replied Lefebvre avoids answering this question to keep from scandalizing.

Cardinal Seper had asked delay for last June's ordinations(?). Lefebvre had then suggested that if after delay Rome's approval were not forthcoming Rome would lay itself open to suspicion of false promises and shady dealing. If approval followed the delay Rome could be charged with yielding to pressure from Econe. To avoid this (fictitious) choice, let the ordinations(?) proceed on schedule. Rome withheld action.

Who choreographed the skit? What other excuse could Rome need than the canonical requirement for dismissorial letters from candidates' proper bishops? Supposing a candidate could produce a proper bishop who had not lost jurisdiction by public lapse into heresy, this law would oblige Lefebvre. To exempt himself from this law, made to keep responsible control of the priesthood he must at the very least demonstrate loss of jurisdiction: he must condemn for specified heresies the bishops whose apparent rights he violates.

LUNACY LANE: From a letter of Richard Williamson:

"As Fr Schmidberger says, the conditions attached to this permission for the Tridentine rite are unacceptable to priests of the Society of St. Pius X, notably Condition 'A" (That must be made publicly clear beyond all ambiguity that such priests and their respective faithful in no way share the positions of those who call in question the legitimacy and doctrinal exactitude of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970.), "for while acknowledging that a Pope may legitimately introduce a new rite of Mass. (and Pope Paul VI was Pope), we can never admit that a rite departing so far from Tradition as the Novus Ordo Missae. is, as such, legitimate, or doctrinally sound. Hence some people would even see in the Decree" (Vatican, 3 Oct. indult for use of 1962 Missal) "a trap to divide Traditionalists or isolate the Society of St. Pius X. However we must beware of getting our minds into a closed circuit whereby Christ's Vicar is damned if he helps us and damned if he doesn't."

[Whom has he helped but himself, He gains credit for benevolence while confusing more souls. He grants permission no one needs for a Mass no one wants - dating all the way back to 1962 - under conditions no genuine traditionalist can accept. He has tried to fool us again, to split our opposition. He permits this phony near-return of our Mass now that the purpose of its removal is almost entirely accomplished. We can now have the ceremonies garbled by those who (1) are no longer sufficiently conversant with Latin, meaning or pronunciation, (2) no longer remember the theology of the Mass, (3) have been painstakingly brainwashed of the Church's intention, (4) have accepted the nonsensical legitimacy of a papal introduction of a new rite for Mass, and (5) have accepted public heretics - Paul VI JP2 - as Catholic popes.]

Williamson: "Let us suppose that he sincerely wishes to liberate Tradition - what other first step would we realistically expect him to take, to set about reversing the whole direction of a massive organization like the Catholic Church?''

[What an odd goal - "to liberate Tradition!" Why not "to restore all things in Christ?" Or would that exceed hope from a man who publicly dedicated his "pontificate" to full implementation of Vatican II, that heretical council to whose heresies he contributed so fully? Literally thousands of traditional Catholics could draft an encyclical for his signature that would solve every problem except where to imprison the hierarchy What is this "first step" syndrome as though genuine faith and morals must return by easy stages, having been stolen so gradually? A genuine pope could - and would straighten everything out in half an hour. Can anyone imagine St. Plus V, St. Pius Y or even Melbourne Archbishop Daniel Mannix suffering the current Renewal more than ten minutes?]

Williamson: "For in no way will the Devil quietly let the Tridentine Mass be officially reinstated! His master-stroke against Mother Church, climaxing centuries of effort, was, with the promulgation of the Novus Ordo in 1970, so to split Catholic Pope from Catholic Mass that seemingly no Catholic could cleave to both, … every Catholic was split in two, … Mother Church was rent from top to bottom."

Typical Econe logic! This promulgation Easter 1969, incidentally) by Paul VI was the Devil's master-stoke. But Paul VI, who, says Williamson, was a Catholic pope, infallibly guided by the Holy Ghost in faith and morals, lyingly and illegally introduced a Judaistic, Arian, Lutheran, Cranmerian idolatry, deliberately to replace undoubtedly true worship so successfully that it requires "papal" intervention for its occasional return. A Catholic pope promulgates Satan's master-stroke! - thereby splitting himself from the Catholic Mass! But there are obviously some - contributors to Econe and its horribly misnamed Society of St. Pius X - who can torture logic enough to believe it.]

Williamson: "With this Decree, or, at any rate with the next and the next that it foreshadows. Almighty God is visibly, even though poor men, steering His Church out of the, difficulties into which they had brought it, and the manner and timing of the Church's rescue we shall watch Him perfectly synchronizing, for the salvation of souls, with the onset of the Third World War."

Then he has the nerve to quote Romans 11:33 to back up his prophecy. Rather: How incomprehensible are Williamson's judgments!

July 1 brought forth from Bishop(?) Richard Williamson at the Lefebvre seminary in Winona, Minnesota a four-page "refutation" of the main sedevacantist argument," defined: "Recent popes say and do heretical things. Heretics are outside the Church. Therefore these popes are not even members of the Church, let alone true popes." But a Catholic voicing heresies or performing heretically is only a material heretic, still a Catholic unless pertinacity makes him a formal heretic. [This miracle is neatly accomplished through the magic word, liberalism - approximating self induced culpable, malicious, phony ignorance. But Williamson amplifies and labors this incredible, simplistic "solution" to the point where he proves his own version of pertinacious against the antipopes he defends.]

How can Williamson send out such pathetic drivel? Can he have read it over? Wojtyla entered the seminary not to learn from St. Thomas but to accommodate him to modern thinking. For the rest of the page and most of the next, Williamson anathematizes the results of his accommodation. Then - surprise! - on election Wojtyla discovers the successful takeover of what he himself has pushed, even through Vatican II. But the poor slob had no idea of Catholic truth or that he had himself opposed it for forty years. Despite papal infallibility he cannot teach correct doctrine because of this invincible ignorance. No one is above, alongside, or beneath him to keep him on track. Are we talking corporation or the Holy Ghost? He will not confer infallibility on a heretic, formal or material. Can anyone but a religious illiterate not know that ecumenism contradicts true religion? Popes teach! No one need allow for their doctrinal variations and shortcomings, existence of which proves conclusively that beneficiaries of such allowances cannot be popes. If Williamson thinks his nonsense has caused any sedevacantist argument to collapse, he might consider enrolling in a course in logic.

Williamson's article, "In Defence of the Pope", appeared in Melbourne's September Catholic, to which Peter Weaver replied: "If I understood (Williamson) correctly, John Paul II is blameless for all his scandalous actions and erroneous teaching because his upbringing in life and in the Faith has led to something called 'mind-rot', which condition makes him believe that there are no Catholic truths that he is refusing, so that he therefore believes that what he is doing is right.

"Every type of criminal from mass-murderer to pickpocket pleads in extenuation deprived childhood, ignorance, or diminished responsibility But can these excuse the man who fills the most responsible position on earth? Such a man, preserved in the faith by the Holy Ghost, cannot wander innocently into public error. Either he errs deliberately out of malice or the Holy Ghost is not preserving him from heresy. Either alternative leads inevitably to the conclusion that he cannot be pope. Why argue over what kind of heretic cannot be pope?

Williamson "admits that John Paul II is falling into errors and damaging the Church (para 3). How does he answer St. Paul: 'There are some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven preach a Gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.' (Gal 1:7-9)? And what of St. John: 'If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him: God sped you. (John 2:10)?

"Finally, 'pertinacious' (para 4) is erroneously defined: 'fully aware that he is denying Catholic dogma.' My Oxford English Dictionary says the word means 'stubborn, persistent, obstinate (in a course of action, etc.)' which definition seems far more apt." (edited)

It appears to have escaped all these defenders of the 'Pope" that a genuine pope, properly ruling the Catholic Church teaching (and permitting the teaching of) only Catholic doctrine, participating in only Catholic worship, would need no defense. But Wojtyla travels thousands of miles in most extravagant fashion to join publicly in every kind of false worship and doctrine, even apologizing, in complete reversal of the missionary spirit - the manifestation of Apostolicity, the fourth mark of the Church - to aboriginal peoples for depriving them of their depraved, often murderous and/or cannibal, "cultures." He keeps his defenders inordinately busy.

Williamson's theology contains a few holes, not least of which is his insistence that episcopal consecration will automatically turn a layman (or even a deacon) into a priest. Leo XIII set forth the ancient principle that sacraments convey what they signify and signify what they convey. At no point in the consecration of a bishop are conferred the powers to celebrate Mass or to forgive sins. Unless already a priest no man can become a bishop through this third stage of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, often termed the filling up of the sacrament, or the adult stage which can pass on the properties of its present and former stages. But when a glass is empty you fill it; if it is partially full you fill it up.

Then, to demonstrate another of his shortcomings, history, Williamson invents the notion that St. Cyprian was made bishop without having been a priest. I find several St. Cyprians treated with their own articles in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, pp. 582 sqq. One, the Bishop of Toulon who died 3 Oct. 546 "was the favorite pupil of St. Caesarius of Arles, by whom he was trained and who, in 506, ordained him to the deaconate, and in 516, consecrated him Bishop of Toulon." So St. Caesarius never ordained him priest, or that would have been mentioned. But no point is made of this. There were ten years between in which any number of bishops were available to ordain him to the priesthood. One of them undoubtedly did so, probably later in 506, or even in 507. St. Caesarius was himself ordained deacon and priest before being consecrated bishop. He would have been extremely unlikely to have skipped an order for someone else. Such skipping, even of minor orders, has always contravened canon law.

Another was martyred at Nicomedia 26 Sept. 304 in Diocletian's persecution. "He ….came in succession deacon, priest, and finally bishop."

But the first, after whom the others were probably named, "was certainly only a recent convert when he became Bishop of Carthage c. 248 or the beginning of 249, but he passed through all the grades of the ministry." If Williamson wishes to argue that at that remote time no distinction was made between priests and bishops, the article mentions five priests hostile to St. Cyprian, possibly because they were passed over by his promotion. But we are not confined to the above. In Dom Gueranger'' The Liturgical Year, Vol. XIV, p. 227: ""Cyprian was a native of Africa, and at first taught rhetoric there with great applause. The priest, Caecilius, from whom he adopted his surname, having persuaded him to become a Christian, he thereupon distributed all his goods among the poor. Not long afterwards, having been made priest, he was chosen bishop of Carthage."

So is St. Cyprian's lack of priesthood the basis for Michael Davies' learned argument that the traditional position "is having to be abandoned?" Michael believes that another newer rite can repair the novus ordo to an acceptable point on which traditional Catholics must compromise, or else convict themselves of that horrible crime, immobilism. Michael can find no Arianism in the novus ordo and no heresy in Vatican II's documents. So what worth has his argument that Lefebvre would have been made priest by a ceremony intended to make him a bishop? He concedes its unlawfulness. Behind every Church law was a reason. Why not the obviously invalidity? Even doubtfulness is sufficient.

Lefebvre himself never argued against the Marquis de la Franquerie's revelation of Lienart's high-degree freemasonry. Could it be that he knew both men, and that he knew he could not disprove the truth? He certainly knew the dedicated historian's reputation for responsibility, and the risk he took in revealing what he must, therefore, have regarded as fact.

Was Lefebvre more aware than Williamson and Davies that St. Pius X removed at least three French bishops from their sees (Tarentaise, Laval, Dijon) and had their ordinations redone? The removal of Le Nordez in 1904 is given in The Catholic Encyclopedia as the cause of the break in diplomatic relations (1905-1920) between the masonic French government and the Vatican. Why would France fight the Church over dismissal of a non-masonic bishop?

Lienart, incidentally, clearly demonstrated his hostility to everything Catholic at Vatican II and thereafter. Why would a thirtieth degree (Godhating, devil-worshipping freemason intend anything that the Church intends?

Williamson's citation of the fruits of Lefebvre's work in Central Africa should depend somewhat on whether all those Central Africans have kept the faith or followed the novus bogus. May I suggest a parallel? Father John A. O'Brien, noted American Catholic writer and polemicist (The Faith of Millions), had a string of converts and an influential syndication in the Catholic press. But when the changes had taken a tenuous hold he approved them in a disgraceful book, Catching Up With The Church. There were hundreds of these "prominent" priests building up "authority" and influence that they might better mislead the faithful when the opportunity inevitably arose. Lefebvre "led" the opposition at Vatican II, but caved in at the end and signed the documents, when his leadership could have had a strong effect. His great "effort" came years too late. and its fruits can now be seen. His priests(?) are nearly as split as the conciliar "Church" itself. In this they only follow him on different days, as the record clearly proves. I would not dream of arguing from only these points that he was or was not a priest; for they show merely that we cannot accept him as Catholic.

Neither Williamson nor Davies had a Catholic education. Nor do they necessarily appreciate the meanings of Catholic teachings, especially on intention. Nor could they have imbibed such from Lefebvre, who held or at least stated, that a properly ordained priest could consecrate (transubstantiate) in the novus ordo missae if he had the proper intention. Williamson, at our only meeting, tried to secure my agreement that a properly ordained priest with a correct intention could transubstantiate in an Anglican "mass." How does this hypothetical properly ordained priest demonstrate correct intention in his incorrect use of rites clearly forbidden by the Catholic Church?

Williamson wrote (March 5, 1992):

"But the Society insists that for instance the Mass of the Novus Ordo is not automatically invalid and yet it refuses to let people attend it ...." If so, this is one more inconsistency. In 1975 or 1976 Gerald Hogan, then a seminarian at Econe, returned home for a funeral in Melbourne. He then came to Sydney, and I drove him here and there. He said that seminarians away from Econe were let satisfy their Sunday obligation at either traditional or novus ordo mass.

Lefebvre himself used the "mass" of Paul VI in St. Peter's Basilica at the altar-tomb of his "patron" Pope St. Pius X, because, he said, by celebrating the traditional Mass he would give scandal He used the "mass" of Paul VI even at Econe, and was finally persuaded by his staff priests that It was inconsistent with his "aim" to train priests for the traditional Mass I have always used novus ordo and "mass" of Paul VI interchangeably, so I read others the same way. But Bugnini during Paul VI's early years, put out in both Latin and vernacular a "mass" which omitted the prayers at the foot of the altar and the Last Gospel. In vernaculars it changed Christ's words of Consecration. It was a stage on the road to the new rite (novus ordo) and deliberately created the chaos to be "corrected" by introduction of the new rite. Both introductions violated Church law as codified in St. Pius V's Quo primum. This "mass" of Paul VI, a wanton step toward the novus ordo, was imposed with the novus ordo intention: replacement and abolition of the traditional Mass. It was, therefore, no good either.

So this "mass" of Paul VI, they tell me, is what Lefebvre celebrated at the tomb of St. Pius V, at Econe until talked out of it, and when in hospital at Bogota (concelebration with Aulagnier). Whether he used Latin or the vernacular is beyond my ken. But either way It was not the traditional Mass for which he supposedly opened his seminaries, after the novus ordo's introduction, when clearly it had let to that novus ordo, which he would never call invalid.

Williamson's paragraph 13: 'Thirdly, .... from the very beginning of ….. the Novus Ordo Mass, a handful of wholly competent canon lawyers pointed out that Paul VI never, while instituting the New Mass, at the same strictly abrogated or prohibited the continuation of the Old Mass." Jesus Christ instituted our Mass. No human, not even as exalted as Paul VI. can _institute a Mass or a sacrament. In my book, Is The Pope Catholic?, pp. 29-32, I mentioned correspondence with Cardinal Freeman over our projected Tridentine Mass at Santa Sabina School, Strathfield. He wrote "that the Tridentine Mass cannot be celebrated. ….. Neither I, nor any other Bishop. except the Pope himself, has authority to authorize the celebration of Mass according to the old Order."

So we wrote Paul VI, and you can read "his" answer Furthermore, in that famous 1976 Consistory which dealt so roughly with Lefebvre, Paul VI expressly stated that he had forbidden the Tridentine Mass. Those canon lawyers were correct; he never legally killed the Mass, but kill it he did. Is this a typically sneaky act of a genuine pope? He made the novus ordo obligatory and permitted no option except for retired priests celebrating privately. According to him, no Catholic could assist at Mass. That supposedly provoked the foundation of the Society of St. Pius X.

In imposing the novus ordo Paul violated the infallible moral law of the Catholic Church, while claiming to have done the same thing as the genuine pope who had codified it to defend the Mass against just such attacks as Paul's. If Paul was pope, and had power to institute a new mass and impose it as valid for traditional worship what possible excuse had Lefebvre to set up an organization to disobey him? Especially in Paul's 's postconcilar "Church?"

In paragraph 14 Williamson, like any other Protestant, sifts and assays parts of the Novus Ordo religion, which he rejects as a whole. Lefebvre, now a yardstick of tradition, signed most of the documents of Vatican II and often said that he would sign them, read in the light of the Council of Trent to which they are publicly and, of course, heretically opposed. In signing them he split, like the rest of those conciliar apostates, from the Catholic Church as formally constituted. "And then, were he so indispensable, how could the Society have lasted" (but well split) "already one year without him?"

"Our Lord said that if all human voices were silenced in His defense, the very stones of the street would cry out in protest." It's convenient to interpret Scripture as needed St. Luke (19:35-40): "the multitude began with joy to praise God ….. saying: Blessed be the King who cometh in the name of the Lord, ….. Pharisees ….. said ….. Master, rebuke thy disciples. To whom He said: I say to you that if these shall hold their peace, the stones will cry out." [In protest - or in praise?] But if we accept Williamson's interpretation, we note that the stones are silent; therefore some one still adheres publicly to the whole truth. Can it be Williamson, who sifts through the refuse, which he refuses, for what he can swallow?

Sedevacantists, however, have no patented sifters the more readily to discern Church destroyers' big motivations, never distinguish, he says, between abstract and the concrete. How easy to attribute to us this nebulous, undemonstrable fault, if one cannot fault our abstract logic applied to concrete facts!

On To Williamson's letter of April 1, 1990, largely an ad for a new book by another Econe graduate, which makes all those telling abstract points never as recently made by concrete sedevacantists. "….. when, as in this book, the quotations are all put together, one after another," [the usual method] so that a coherent pattern emerges, and when this pattern is confirmed by a series of photographs of the man acting in accordance with that thought pattern, then something emerges with devastating clarity: this man does not have a Catholic mind." He refers correctly to JP2. But the same criteria apply to Lefebvre and Williamson.

Williamson introduces an unfamiliar word, hereticize, which he defines as say or do things which are heretical, and repeats it five times. The Oxford Dictionary carries only one definition, to pronounce heretical. Williamson's concrete error is somewhat mitigated by abstraction from Webster's New International Dictionary, under the line among the rare, archaic, and obsolete words, of the definition, to make, declare, or be heretical.

"The position of the Society .…. is that despite many hereticizing words and deeds of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II in particular; nevertheless the Society holds them to have been or to be Popes unless and until clear proof emerges to the contrary." But the Society never admits that Paul VI promulgated more than a dozen previously condemned heresies. despite Lefebvre's protestations that he could sign the promulgated documents read only in the light of the Council of Trent. If they agreed with Trent there would be no such problem. If they disagreed with Trent in any particular way they were obviously heretical. It later transpired that Lefebvre had signed most of them anyway, thus approving many of the same heresies which Paul VI publicly promulgated. But Paul VI, Williamson argued in his July 1, 1990 letter, didn't know these were heresies, because he was a Liberal. But Lefebvre, not a Liberal, knew, or he would not have objected. Why was he not a heretic?

But the Society (and many Traditional Catholics) instinctively reject sedevacantism "How could the Catholic Church, designed by Our Lord to be a visible structure, long survive without a visible head?" [Not an argument! We sedevacantists fear the same. Only the facts are relevant.] "….. if the Popes since 1958 or 1963 have been invalid Popes, how can they have appointed valid Cardinals?" [Obviously they can't!] "And if there are few valid Cardinals, how can another valid Pope ever be elected?" [Good question! Who guarantees that there will ever be another elected?] Again, if there is no Pope, who will consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart? It will be done, said Our Lord in 1931, but it has not yet been done." [In 1931? Is it part of the Deposit of the Faith, complete at the death of the last Apostle? Sounds like a private revelation, which can prove nothing, and is therefore no argument Anyway, some Fatima devotees will tell you that the aforesaid consecration was done by Plus XII.]

Then Williamson begs the question several more times in the same paragraph in even sillier drivel: One may think that only the divine promise to Peter has preserved the Church from complete destruction by the recent popes, by means of that famous Note to Lumen gentium and Humanae vitae [both dodges of a heretic antipope]. Nor are we to forget that Montini and Wojtyla are still Catholic enough to be hated by ultra-liberals [who hate nearly everyone]. With worthwhile arguments who would trot out these feeble inanities?

Then next words to strike the eye are so ridiculous that their very statement refutes them: 'To say that the Novus Ordo Mass can be valid is to explain how its poison avoids being rejected outright by Catholics and so how it succeeds in doing so much harm; similarly to say that these liberal Popes are still Popes is to explain precisely how they retain so much power to damage the Church." [Please consult The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, 212 on Liberalism, condemned by three genuine popes in terms which excommunicate the Liberal for heresy.

Williamson then demonstrates how we become sedevacantists: "Step One: the recent occupants of the See of Peter hereticize. i.e. they say and do things which are heretical." [Step One, he says in the next paragraph, is incontestable - clearly demonstrated by this book he promotes.) "Step Two: He who hereticizes is a heretic " [Unless we use a definition from the dictionaries.] "Step Three: Every heretic is cut off from the Mystical Body of Christ, or the Church. Step Four: Whoever is cut off from the Body cannot possibly be its head. Conclusion: These hereticizing 'Popes" cannot still be Popes."

"True, whoever hereticizes is at least a material heretic ….. who speaks or acts against Catholic truth. However, to be cut off by heresy from the Mystical Body, or excommunicated one has to be at least a formal heretic. From which it follows that by no means everyone who hereticizes is thereby excommunicated. So both Paul VI and John Paul II may well hereticize [As Step One this was incontestable.] "but that does not as such cut them out of the Church." [But the Holy Ghost keeps a genuine pope doctrinally correct in matters of faith and morals. These men obviously lack infallibility.] Williamson then applies Christ's promise to Peter to these heretics. [A heretic, no matter what kind cannot be pope.]

Williamson's letter of July 1, 1990 lists "wild explanations" each of which have "a grain of truth," but he never considers that they may be true. But he continues to tell us that these recent papal heretics retain a grain or two of Catholic truth, which keeps them Catholic. [On the contrary, one heresy makes a heretic, no matter how orthodox all his other tenets.'

How, asks Williamson, can intelligent, capable Church leaders, apparently of good will, trained before Vatican II, remain unaware that they flout eternal Catholic truth, without, as he tries to show, becoming formal heretics? His answer is Liberalism [for which the Church excommunicates. Whether or not these Church leaders (of good will and traditional training) are formal heretics, they are excommunicated latae sententiae in holding and teaching Liberal and Modernist views, the public condemnation of which was stressed in their training. And they surely knew enough to hide such views until the time was ripe.] "Pope Pius X did his best to root it out, but it so grew back [unawares] "that now his successors" [not proven] "are destroying the Church while convinced they are saving it." [certainly not proven, even by this genius at begging questions.

Wojty1a, it seems, is a compromiser of Church doctrine, a victim of mind-rot, and an active partisan of a five hundred-year-old apostasy. But being Polish he believes profoundly in the goodness of what the Church does. [So he works sedulously in Poland, at Vatican II and through the papacy to change it.] He seeks a new synthesis because there must be one, and none of the older syntheses have worked. He entered the seminary not to learn but to modify. [One is not to be satisfied with God's revealed religion, but must insist on man's rights and independence - as though God had never thought of free will.]

Willamson next describes Liberalism in terms suited to Satanic pride and rebellion, and easily sees that it "completely unhinges the Catholic Faith" but allows us devotees to remain in the Catholic Church to teach us all our Catholic truth with damning variations, because somehow we cannot discern their public heresy,

The neo-modernism of the 1960's, more deadly than the turn of century modernism condemned by Pope Pius X, enjoys the support of current and recent popes. [Is there no contradiction here? Why is this advanced to excuse current and recent popes, when it rather proves the sedevacantist point in the very sentence in which he thinks to refute it.: "Thus by the time Karol Wojtyla emerges from the Second Conclave of 1978 as the Conclave's elected choice and is acclaimed as Pope by the Universal Church, he finds neo-modernism firmly established in the upper ranks of the Church. And so what can he know 'Catholicism' to be but this 'improved' version which he himself strove with conviction to promote at Vatican II …..?" [Two years older than Wojty1a, I was raised in a much more modernist climate than Poland. Had I been elected pope in 1978, would I have known that Catholicism was neo-modernism? What about Williamson himself? Is he not much younger and raised in Protestantism? But then, of course, he had further training by Lefebvre and his novus ordo Society.] But let him hang himself even higher.

"….. from 1978 on, whom does he find that can get through to him" [what he knows well] "that his 'Catholicism' is way off track?" [But still on the railroad, no?] No one above, beside, or beneath him can protest that his thinking [as distinct from his status?] is heretical, because Paul VI has wiped up all opposition to neo-modernism. "Who or what remains to tell him his thinking is not Catholic?" Only the entire well-known tradition! Only popes from Gregory XVI to St. Pius X, speaking infallibly and excommunicating for precisely that thing!]

[And who has heard of a genuine pope about to define a doctrine who never consulted all tradition, many theologians, and the Catholic consensus? Even I wrote to the man who I thought was pope with a perfectly legal, reasonable, traditional request His method of handling this request, made for the welfare of souls, his chief province, helped me to realize his bias against spiritual welfare and his illegitimacy in office. Further observation and investigation have proven both.]

But Williamson writes that all persuade Wojtyla, a deliberate liberal who strove to promote heresy and compromise at Vatican II, that his stand is not Liberal but altogether Catholic. "How can he know ….. that his ecumenism is flouting Catholic dogma?" [Everyone knows that Catholics have always been forbidden to worship with non-Catholics!] "It takes mind-rot to believe all he teaches" [heresy?] "and to believe it is Catholic, but that mind-rot is in him and all round him, so one may well believe" [or not believe] "he is basically unaware of how he is wholly undermining Catholic dogma. But, just as a man who unawares tells an untruth is not properly a liar, so a man who unawares flouts Catholic dogma is not properly (formally) a heretic."

[But if we ask a policeman for directions, follow them to the letter, and arrive on the wrong side of town, we conclude that he doesn't know his territory. Who would call him a liar? He thinks he's right. But if we follow his directions we could drive into a reservoir A policeman is, after all, not guaranteed infallibility.]

But a pope is guaranteed infallibility, to the extent that his teaching of erroneous faith or morals proves him not pope He is guided by the Holy Ghost, Who is not subject to mind-rot or any other failing.

After fantasizing a bit longer, Williamson congratulates himself that: "Hence the main sedevacantist argument falls to the ground." [No, the fog is too thick.] "John Paul II's faith, one may argue, has massively but not totally failed"; but through it all, Williamson argues, JP2, Like Paul VI, remains triumphantly our Pope, our guide our standard of unity, the Vicar of Christ.

But if we must decide for ourselves when and where to follow him, why do we need him? How can we unite with "the recent occupants of the See of Peter" who incontestably "say and do things which are heretical?" If we do, how are we not also heretics?

At St. Mary's, Techny, Illinois in the early thirties, every Lenten Sunday saw a public performance of Calderon de Barca's play, The Mystery of the Mass, with Frater LeFrois as Wisdom, Frater Werez as Ignorance, and Frater John Cohill, future "Bishop" ("ordained" 1969) of Goroka, New Guinea, as the Christus. Behind a transparent curtain a deacon simulated a Mass, exactly as he would celebrate Mass after ordination tot he priesthood. This play ran for years, so a new deacon was required each year. This presented no problem; all deacons practiced this "dry mass" at least six months - an integral part of the seminary course.

Some one asked Danile L. Dolan whether his Econe seminarians were not trained and ordained in John XXIII's liturgy His reply:

"We received no appreciable liturgical training whatever at Econe, and until September of 1976 the Mass was that of the early years of Paul VI. (Indeed, concelebration was permitted in our first statutes.) The celebrant sat on the side and listened to reads, or himself performed them at lecterns facing the people. The only reason that the readings were done in Latin and not French, we were told, is that the seminary is an international one! (Interestingly enough the Ordinances of the Society, signed by Abp Lefebvre and currently in force, allow for the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel in the vernacular - without reading them first in Latin.)

"It would be difficult to say what liturgy was followed at Econe, because the rubrics were a mishmash of different elements, one priest saying Mass somewhat differently from the rest. No one set of rubrics was systematically observed or taught. As a matter of fact, no rubrics were taught at all. The best I can say is that over the years a certain eclectic blend of rubrics developed based on the double principle of (a) what the Archbishop liked, and b) what one did in France. These rubrics range rather freely from the Liturgy of St. Pius X to that of 1968. It is simply the 'Rite of Econe,' a law unto itself. To this day it would be impossible to study a rubrical textbook and then function, say, in a Pontifical Mass at Econe.

There is no uniformity because there is no principle of uniformity - certainly not the 'Liturgy of John XXIII.' …..

"As for our seminary training, we were never taught how to celebrate Mass. Preparation for this rather important part of the priestly life was to be seen to in our spare time and on our own. The majority of the seminarians there seem never to have applied themselves to a rigid or systematic study of the rubrics, as may be seen from the way in which they celebrate Mass today."

Dolan goes on to ask whether, with the example of older priests subjected to twenty years of constant confusing changes, anything else could have been expected. Perhaps the confused older priests should bear the blame also for the general theological incompetence of the average Econe graduate. Econe seems to have been slipshod all around. It may have bombed out even as a "school for holiness," so called by Gerard Hogan, who has apparently left the group rather than accept a new assignment. We keep asking what kind of religious society this can be.

Fear not; it is in the best possible hands, which frequently send out letters to benefactors. Many of these wend their unsteady way to me, fortunately, for I can use the entertainment.

Nor does the entertainment stop there. A Canberra friend in recent conversation with Father(?) Peek, Rector of the St. Pius X Society seminary at Goulbum, N.S.W., secured the good "Father's" admission that St. Pius X Society "priests" are not required to swear St. Pius X's oath against modernism. Why is he their patron? Were we to attribute them orthodoxy for their title?

Father Noel Barbara has said goodbye. The end of an era has come. Few traditionalists can remember when we had no Fr. Barbara to fight with or against. In his first and last 1993 issue (#12) of Fortes in Fide:

Page 13 enters the field of episcopal consecrations lacking papal mandate. June 30, 1988, at Econe, Switzerland, Abp(?) Marcel Lefebvre, assisted by Bp. Castro de Mayer, consecrated(?) four of his priests(?) without Apostolic Mandate. Three of these did the same for another July 28, 1991 at Sao Fidelis, Brazil.

Pp. 14-15 quote Church law; Canon 953 requires written mandate to precede consecration; Canon 2370 suspends all participants till dispensed by the Holy See; Holy Office decree of April 1951 excommunicates all participants. But we live in a crisis, so we may appeal to a future pope for authority to violate Church law with impunity. What guarantees a future pope? Who guarantees his reaction?

Reasons for invocation of epikeia (page 16): (1) Impossibility of obtain mandate due to non-existence of formal popes; only material popes. Deprived of all papal authority, are available. So why not procure a material mandate and consecrate a material bishop, or two? For a time it appeared that Lefebvre could worry a mandate out of John Paul II to whom he publicly adhered as genuine pope. He had at least sense enough not to swallow the Cassiciacum thesis which splits our standard of unity into two equal parts, neither functional.

Certain necessary to justify resorting to epikeia in order to violate the law's clear provisions: grave and urgent need to proceed and consecrate; moral certitude: should a true pope appear [fact?] he would [fact?] unquestionably grant a mandate. New rites are [only?] doubtful; therefore an urgent need exists to consecrate bishops to assure continued priesthood and mass.

Lefebvre's consecrations were scandalous in lacking doctrinal justification and in total violation of Church law. "The very first condition, the sine qua non for interpreting the intention of the lawgiver never existed for them. Not only did they recognize but they continue to recognize John Paul II as a true Pope …..; not only have they offered but they continue on a daily basis to offer ..... Mass una cum famulo tuo papa nostro Joanne Paulo, not only have they excluded, but they continue to exclude from their Fraternity, priests, brothers, religious, and oblates who refuse to recognize him, but they have petitioned and presented their requests to him and have received a formal refusal from him." (Footnote quotes Schmidberger letter 5/28/91 in support.) "….. Abp. Lefebvre is fully justified in presuming that 'John Paul II, the catholic pope' would provide them with the mandate which 'John Paul II, the antichrist pope' refuses to give them.

Barbara absolves Lefebvre and his Fraternity from consequent excommunication because they were too stupid to realize that JP2 is an antipope lacking authority to excommunicate them for actions for which they knowingly drew ipso facto excommunication decreed under a genuine pope. Barbara nevertheless accuses them all of scandal in that they teach that one can recognize some one as authentic Vicar of Christ while knowingly disobeying his most specific commands. But they somehow avoid the stigma of heresy, though they recognize an ineligible public heretic as Christ's vicar.

On page 27 Fr. Barbara decries the rumor that he had denounced Abp. Thuc's consecrations (Des Laurieres, Carmona, Zamora) in revenge for denied consecration. Why would Thuc have refused him? He consecrated almost anyone who asked. Now, however, Barbara insists on the validity and liceity of Thuc's more recent consecrations - because Thuc invoked epikeia. Sure he did the following year!

Page 44 - "This Declaration" (2/25/82) "is of the greatest possible importance with regard to what we are discussing. It manifests the primary condition which would allow Abp Ngo to presume an Apostolic Mandate, a condition without which he could not use the principle of Epikeia. The consecrations performed under such circumstances are not only perfectly valid, but also perfectly licit."

So why was this primary condition withheld until long after the consecrations? Will an afterthought eliminate the basic flaw? Well, yes. according to the postconciliar "Church" which "justified" its existence by replacing the Code which had outlawed it. Unless Thuc had placed himself above the law by some such declaration before he went beyond the law, he was subject to the law and its penalties - as also were those whom he consecrated - all were excommunicated.

BARBARA'S OPEN LETER TO LEFEBVRE'S FRATERNITY

pp He appears to approve Lefebvre's fourfold consecration of 6/30/88, even though Lefebvre had ignored requests (Barbara's & others') to precede the consecrations with "considered reason' - a statement denying connection with the "antichrist" JP2. "But such, a declaration," said Lefebvre, "would turn too many of the faithful away from us ….. cause harm in my priories and seminaries." What has public opinion to do with objective truth? But it could have cost Lefebvre money.

Pere Barbara devotes a paragraph (p. 53) to an evaluation - summation of his "original study" (Fortes in Fide #8) to foster unity among "those who resist the popes of Vat II" by reducing the issue of the Holy See's vacancy to the realm of personal opinion (this rules out the possibility of epikeia) while making it clear that the Vat II popes lack all Pontifical authority. No takers.

Edited quotations:

I have never encountered anything among you but arrogant indifference to all things unconnected with the Society of St. Pius X.

If JP2 is Christ's vicar, and despite your bishops, seminaries, and university, you avow that you can't prove he's not, you can't resist him as you openly do without mortally offending Christ (p. 56)

You are obliged to resolve this matter. You are so sure that the popes of Vat II are true popes. If so, they truly possess Christ's authority. And Paul VI ordered you to close your seminaries and disband. (p 57)

For you infallibility clothes a pope only when correct; at other times he can err. So you recognize the Vat II popes as true Vicars of Christ despite their having publicly - officially - professed the worst possible errors for over twenty years, even joining them in matters of faith - so the degree that you expel members who fail to celebrate mass una cum famulo tuo Papa nostra Joanne Paulo. (p. 67)

Those for whom religion is only a collection of practices demand only mass, sacraments, and doctrinal instruction. Those who live their faith demand also doctrinal justifications of our stand consistent behavior, and above all a confession of faith on disputed points. Despite your seminaries, convents, Parisian university, five bishops, and several hundred priests, your organization has never published a single doctrinal work to confound protagonists of the new Church and their formal heresies and to justify resistance. (p. 72)

You pretend to recognize the authority of JP2 and his bishops while exercising your ministry against their express wishes. Logical? You then try to convince those scandalized by such behavior that it conforms with Catholic practice, and is even recommended by Doctors and Saints of the Church. (p. 72-3)

Of Lefebvre's many declarations let me cite his letter (Oct. 6. 1978) to forty cardinals including Wojty1a of Cracow: "A pope worthy of the name and a true successor of Peter cannot declare that he will dedicate himself to the application of the Council and all its reforms. By so doing, he makes it clear that he has broken with all his predecessors and especially with the Council of Trent." Do you not realize how foolish you look since Wojtyla's election? From his first encyclical he made clear that he would completely apply Vat II's decisions. (pp. 77-8)

Lefebvre never drew the conclusions which honor and the faith demanded, but, against all justice, expelled those of his children who believed him sincere, and who had concluded from his aforesaid letter that JP2 is not a true pope. (pp. 78-9)

Why are you not ashamed? you who persist in undermining the Catholic resistance? You betray the Church. You act in a manner which can profit only those who openly aim at her destruction. You lack all judgment in not seeing that to affirm and insist everywhere on the Vat II popes' legitimacy plays into the enemy's hands. You undercut and defame the true resister who adheres to the entire Catholic faith, and brand him an "extremist". (p. 79)

Without warning Lefebvre made his fratricidal declaration of Nov. 8, 79, and stabbed the Catholic resistance in the back. (p. 86)

Like Lefebvre you refuse to declare that these popes who have for well over 20 yrs. officially taught heretical doctrines are not and cannot be real vicars of Christ. Like him you lack courage to declare that they have themselves provided proof that they are not invested with Pontifical Authority. Whether the issue is religious liberty, or total inversion of Church teaching on liturgy, the Mystical Body of Christ, ecumenism, communism, or a host of other novelties, each of these errors was condemned in pre-existing Pontifical documents. (Footnote cites partial list: Religious Liberty condemned by Gregory XVI in Mirari vos & by Pius XII in Quanta cura. Ecumenism by an Apostolic Letter of Pius VIII, by Gregory XVI in Summo iugiter, & by Pius XI in Mortalium animos. The new ecclesiology by Pius XII in Mystici corporis Christi etc. (p. 88)

Apart from Paul VI who destroyed everything in the Church, and apart from his successors who have codified his "October Revolution' no one has done more harm to the Church than Lefebvre by his dividing, liberalizing, and sterilizing the Catholic resistance. (pp. 93-4)

Lefebvre's contempt for those who disagreed with his thinking was a principal trait of his character - possibly the basic cause of a failure to bear witness to the faith. He never accepted from those whose thinking varied from his. He never tolerated or heard objections, even in the gravest issues. In 1970 when I organized the first conference to study doctrinal problems at Tours, he announced that he would not participate if I invited Fr. Raymond Dulac. This same mentality governed his behavior toward his ex-members: No more contact - finis! (p. 94)

He picked his advisers only from among his admirers: he could not bear to be contradicted. Who can then be surprised that the final result is not Catholic?

He was convinced that I erred. An error in matters of faith must hazard one's salvation. Thus duty obliged him to correct me, especially since I asked for correction repeatedly citing Ezekiel 3:17-21. Nor was I alone excluded from his charity, but also all Catholics misled by the new Church. What did he so often request of his "pope?" Not to ban the new rite which would cost them their faith - merely to retain the ancient ways for his Society. [How else could he tolerate soul-destroying novelties for his fellow members in the Mystical Body - whom he was bound in charity? Had he received some divine dispensation from loving those outside his Society?

To grant legitimacy to Vat II's "popes" is to affirm that Christ has appointed them His vicars and supported their authority. [Such a course denies papal infallibility, involves one in numerous proven public heresies, and obliges obedience to all commands and directives from these "popes."]

Our differences are not mere divergence but direct contradiction. If you are on the right path to salvation, then I am not. If I am correct you are headed for Gehenna. You have toward me, as I toward you a grave obligation in charity. This letter fulfills my obligation to you. Can you do the same for me?

One cannot believe in the sincerity of your convictions unless you hold that I am necessarily en route to damnation.

[I doubt that any of Lefebvre's crew will take up this challenge. Like their founder they lack the requisite charity, as they have demonstrated again, again, and again wherever they settle. Charity is listed first among the fruits of the Holy Ghost. "By their fruits you shall know them."

Lefebvre feared that if he finally took a consistent position his support would evaporate. He had attracted worldwide backing because he was an archbishop and could deal with Rome. Dealers work better from strength. He had ''the only game in town" for a good twenty years, and botched it so badly that he must have botched it purposely. We have seen all too often how poorly educated are his priests(?), how feeble their logic, their apologetics, their theology. Is it possible that he would not have recognized or realized his seminary courses' inadequacy? He had years to rectify such matters, but let his people down at every opportunity.

Would he have lost support had he educated the laity over those twenty years? Or given dogma priority over cash?]