Chapter 29 - FILL IN HERE
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A Pacifist Council
The dialogue and the free searching advocated by the Council, of which I spoke to you before, are clearly marked symptoms of the Liberalism of Vatican II: they wanted to invent new methods for the apostolate among the non-Christians by dropping the principles of the missionary spirit. You can re-read what I called the apostasy of principles, which characterizes the liberal spirit. The Liberalism which penetrated the Council went much further; it went as far as betrayal, by making peace with all the enemies of the Church. They wanted to make a pacifist Council.
Recollect how John XXIII, in his opening address at the Council, set forth the new attitude that the Church must have from then on with regard to the errors which threaten its doctrine: recalling that the Church had never failed to be opposed to the errors and that it had often condemned them with the utmost severity. The pope made the most of the fact, Wiltgen tells us,1 that it preferred now “to use the remedy of mercy rather than the weapons of rigor, and judged it opportune, in the present circumstances, to amply lay out the strength of its doctrine rather than have recourse to condemnations. “Now, these were not only deplorable words, showing moreover a very blurred thinking; they were a whole program that expressed the pacifism which was that of the Council.
It was said: we have to make peace with the Freemasons, peace with the Communists and peace with the Protestants. So we must finish with these perpetual wars, this permanent hostility! This is furthermore what Msgr. Montini, then the Substitute to the Secretariat of State, said to me when I asked him during one of my visits to Rome during the 1950s, for the condemnation of Moral Rearmament. He answered me, “Oh, we must not always condemn, always condemn! The Church is going to look like a cruel mother!” That is the expression that Msgr. Montini used, the Substitute of Pope Pius XII. I can still hear it! So, no more condemnations, no more anathemas! Let us at last get along together.
The Triple Pact
“Freemasons, what do you want? What do you ask of us?” Such is the question that Cardinal Bea went to ask the B’nai B’rith before the beginning of the Council. The interview was announced by all the newspapers of New York, where it took place. The Freemasons answered that what they wanted was “religious liberty!"—that is to say, all the religions put on the same footing. The Church must no longer be called the only true Religion, the sole path of salvation, the only one accepted by the State. Let us finish up with these inadmissible privileges and hence, declare religious liberty. Well, they got it: it was Dignitatis humanæ.
“Protestants, what do you want? What will satisfy you, so that we can pray together?” The answer was this: “Change your worship, take out from it what we cannot admit!” Agreed! They were told that we would even have them come, when we work out the liturgical reform. They will formulate their wishes, and we will draw up our worship according to them! Well, that happened; it was the constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium, the first document promulgated by Vatican II, which gave the principles and the detailed program of this liturgical alignment with the Protestants;2 and then the Novus Ordo Missæ promulgated by Paul VI in 1969.
“Communists, what do you desire? Tell us, in order that we may enjoy the happiness of having some representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Council as well as some emissaries of the KGB!” This was the condition put down by the Patriarchate of Moscow: “Do not condemn Communism at the Council; do not speak of it!” (I would add: “Most especially, do not amuse yourselves by consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary!”). Then, “Show openness and dialogue with us.” The agreement3 was concluded, the betrayal completed: “Alright! We will not condemn Communism.” That was executed to the letter: I myself carried, along with Bishop de Proença Sigaud, a petition with 450 signatures of conciliar Fathers, to the Secretary of the Council, Bishop Felici, asking that the Council declare a condemnation of the most appalling technique of slavery in human history, which is Communism. Then, since nothing was happening, I asked how it was going with our request. Someone looked, and finally answered me with an astounding off-handedness, “Oh, your request has been mislaid in a drawer…“4 Communism was not condemned; or, rather, the Council, which had given itself the responsibility of discerning the “signs of the times,” was condemned by Moscow to keeping silence on the most obvious and the most monstrous of the signs of this time!
It is clear that there was, at the Second Vatican Council, an agreement with the enemies of the Church, so as to finish off with the existing enmity towards them. But this is an agreement with the Devil!
The Church Converted to the World
The pacifist spirit of the Council seems to me very well characterized by Pope Paul VI himself in his speech to the last public session of Vatican II, December 7, 1965. The Church and modern man, the Church and the world— these are the themes approached by the Council with a new look that Paul VI here wonderfully defines:
The Church of the Council, it is true, has not contented itself with pondering over its own nature and over the relations that unite it to God; it has been very much occupied with man, with man such as in reality he presents himself in our time: the living man, the man entirely occupied with himself, the man who makes himself not only the center of all that concerns him, but who dares to assert himself as the principle and the ultimate reason for all reality…
There then follows a whole enumeration of the miseries of man without God and of his false grandeurs, which concludes thus:
…man the sinner and the holy man; and so on.
I truly wonder what the holy man is going to do at the end of this accumulation of uncleanliness! Especially as Paul VI sums up what he has just described, by mentioning secular and profane humanism:
Secular, profane humanism has finally appeared in its awful stature and has, in a certain sense, challenged the Council. The Religion of God, who became man, has met with the religion (for it is one of them) of Man, who makes himself god. What has happened? A shock, a fight, an anathema? That could have happened: but it did not take place. The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of spirituality for the Council. A sympathy without limits has completely overrun it. The discovery of human needs (and they are so much greater as the son of the earth becomes more grown-up) absorbed the attention of our synod. Grant at least this merit to it, you, the modern humanists; and know how to recognize our new humanism: we also, we more than anyone, have the cult of man.
There you have it then, explained, in an ingenuous and lyrical manner, but clearly and terribly, what was not the spirit, but the spirituality of the Council: a “sympathy without limits” towards the secular man, for the man without God! Still, if it had been for the purpose of lifting up this fallen man, of revealing his mortal wounds to him, of dressing them for him with an effective remedy, of healing him and bringing him into the bosom of the Church, of submitting him to his God…but no! It was to be able to say to the world, “You see, the Church also has the cult of man.”
I do not hesitate to affirm that the Council brought to reality the conversion of the Church to the world. I leave it to you to reflect who the moving spirit of this spirituality was: it is enough for you to remember the one whom Our Lord Jesus Christ calls the Prince of this World.
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1 Op. cit., p. l5.
2 The principles of the liturgical revolution were indeed there, but formulated in such a manner as to pass unnoticed by the non-initiated.
3 Between Cardinal Tisserant, the authorized agent of Pope John XXIII, and Bishop Nicodemus, concluded at Metz in 1962 (cf. Itinéraires, April, 1963; February, 1964; July-August, 1984).
4 Cf. Wiltgen,op .dt, pp. 269-274.