Chapter 31 - FILL IN HERE
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Paul VI, Liberal Pope
You will perhaps wonder: how is it possible, this triumph of Liberalism through Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and through a Council, Vatican II? Is this catastrophe reconcilable with the promises made by Our Lord to Peter and to His Church: “The gates of hell shall not prevail over it"1; “I am with you all days, even to the end of the world."?2 I do not think that there is any contradiction. Indeed, to the extent that these popes and the Council neglected or refused to make use of their infallibility, to appeal to that charism which is guaranteed to them by the Holy Ghost provided that they indeed intend to use it, well, they were able to commit doctrinal errors or, a fortiori, to let the enemy penetrate into the Church by reason of their negligence or their complicity. To what degree were they accomplices? Of what faults were they culpable? To what extent was their office itself compromised?
It is indeed obvious that someday the Church will judge this Council and will judge these popes; it will certainly be necessary. How will Pope Paul VI, in particular, be judged? Certain people assert that he was a heretic, schi matic, and apostate; others believe that they can demonstrate that Paul VI could not have had the good of the Church in view, and that therefore, he was not the pope: this is the thesis of the Sedes vacans. I do not say that these opinions do not have some arguments in their favor. Perhaps, you will tell me, in thirty years things that were hidden will be discovered; basic principles that should have been self-evident to contemporaries will be better perceived, assertions of that pope absolutely contrary to the tradition of the Church, etc. Perhaps, but I do not think that it is necessary to have recourse to these explanations; I think that it is even an error to follow these hypotheses.
Others think, in a simplistic fashion, that there were then two popes: one, the true one, was imprisoned in the cellars of the Vatican, while the other, the impostor, the double, sat on the throne of Saint Peter, to the misfortune of the Church. Books have appeared on the two popes, supported by the revelations of a person possessed by the demon and by the so-called scientific arguments that assert, for example, that the voice of the double is not that of the true Paul VI!
Finally, others think that Paul VI was not responsible for his actions, prisoner as he was of his entourage, even drugged, which seems to become visible from several pieces of evidence showing a physically exhausted pope that had to be held up, etc. This is still too simple a solution, in my opinion; for in that case we would only have had to wait for the next pope. Now we have had (I do not speak of John Paul I, who reigned only a month) another pope, John Paul II, who has invariably pursued the line traced by Paul VI.
The real solution seems to me to be another one, much more complex, painful, and sorrowful. It is supplied by a friend of Paul VI, Cardinal Daniélou. In his Memoirs, published by a member of his family, the Cardinal says explicitly: “It is obvious that Paul VI is a liberal pope.”
This is the solution that seems the most probable historically: because this pope is like a fruit of Liberalism;
Throughout his life he was impregnated with the influence of the men who surrounded him or whom he took as teachers who were Liberals.
He did not hide his liberal sympathies: at the Council, the men whom he appointed as moderators in the place of the presidents named by John XXIII, those four moderators were, along with Cardinal Agagianian, a Curia cardinal without personality, Cardinals Lercaro, Suenens, and Döpfner, all three of them Liberals and his friends. The presidents were relegated to the rear, to the table of honor; it was these three moderators who directed the proceedings of the Council. Likewise, Paul VI throughout the Council supported the liberal faction which was opposed to the tradition of the Church. This is known. Paul VI repeated—I have quoted this for you—the words of Lamennais, verbatim, at the end of the Council: “The Church asks only for liberty”; a doctrine condemned by Gregory XVI and Pius IX!
It cannot be denied that Paul VI was very strongly marked by Liberalism. This explains the historical evolution lived by the Church in these last few decades, and it characterizes very well the personal behavior of Paul VI. The Liberal, as I have told you, is a man who lives perpetually in contradiction: he asserts principles, but does the contrary; he is permanently incoherent.
Let me quote for you some examples of these thesis-antithesis binomials which Paul VI excelled in posing as so many insoluble problems which reflected his anxious and paradoxical mind. The Encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam, of August 6, 1964, which is the charter for his pontificate, supplies an illustration of this:
If the Church, as We were saying, truly is conscious of what the Lord wants it to be, there rises up in it a singular fullness and a need for expression, with the clear consciousness of a mission that goes beyond it and of the good news to be spread. This is the obligation to evangelize. It is the missionary mandate. It is the duty of the apostolate… We know this well: “Go therefore, teach all nations,” is the last commandment of Christ to His apostles. These men define their unimpeachable mission by the very name of apostles.
This is the thesis. Right away, here is the antithesis:
In relation to this interior impulse of charity which tends to translate itself into an exterior talent, We will use the name, which today has become the usual one, of dialogue. The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives. The Church makes itself the word; the Church makes itself the message; the Church makes itself conversation.
Finally, there comes the attempt at synthesis, which does nothing but to consecrate the antithesis:
Even before converting the world, indeed better, in order to convert it, we must approach it and speak to it.3
More serious and more characteristic of the liberal psychology of Paul VI are the words by which he declared, after the Council, the suppression of Latin in the liturgy. After having recalled all the benefits of Latin: a sacred language, a fixed language, a universal language, he asks, in the name of adaptation, for the “sacrifice” of Latin, even while admitting that this will be a great loss for the Church! Here are the very words of Pope Paul VI, reported by Louis Salleron in his work, The New Mass:4
On March 7, 1965, he declared to the faithful massed in Saint Peter’s Square:
It is a sacrifice that the Church is making by renouncing Latin, a language that is sacred, beautiful, expressive and elegant. It has sacrificed centuries of tradition and of unity of language for an even greater aspiration towards universality.
On May 4, 1967, this “sacrifice” was accomplished, through the Instruction Tres abhinc annos, which established the use of the common language for the recitation, aloud, of the Canon of the Mass.
This “sacrifice,” in the mind of Paul VI, seems to have been definitive. He explains himself on this again, on November 26, 1969, while presenting the new rite of the Mass:
It is no longer Latin, but the current language, that will be the principal language of the Mass. For whoever knows the beauty, the power of the Latin and its aptitude in expressing sacred things, this will certainly be a great sacrifice, to see it replaced by the vernacular language. We are losing the language of the Christian centuries; we are becoming like intruders and outsiders in the literary domain of sacred expression. We are thus losing to a great extent that admirable and incomparable artistic and spiritual richness that is the Gregorian chant. We have reason, to be sure, to feel regrets and almost confusion over this.
Everything should have thus dissuaded Paul VI from bringing about this “sacrifice” and persuaded him to keep the Latin. But no; taking pleasure in his confusion in a singularly masochistic fashion, he is going to act contrarily to the principles that he has just enumerated, and to decree the “sacrifice” in the name of the “understanding of the prayer,” a specious argument that was only the pretext of the Modernists.
Never was the liturgical Latin an obstacle to the conversion of the infidels or to their Christian education; indeed, on the contrary, the simple peoples of Africa and of Asia love the Gregorian chant and that one and sacred language, the sign of their belonging to Catholicism. Experience proves that where Latin was not imposed by the missionaries of the Latin Church, there the germs of future schisms were deposited. Paul VI then pronounces the contradictory sentence:
The response seems banal and prosaic, but it is good, because it is human and apostolic. The understanding of prayer is more precious than the decrepit silk garments with which it has been royally adorned. More valuable is the participation of the people, of this people of today that wants to be spoken to clearly, in an intelligible manner that it can translate into its secular language. If the noble Latin language cut us off from children, from the youth, from the world of labor and of business, if it was an opaque screen instead of being a transparent crystal, would we be making a good calculation, we, fishers of souls, by keeping for it the exclusive rights in the language of prayer and of religion?
What mental confusion, alas! Who is stopping me from praying in my language? But liturgical prayer is not a private prayer; it is the prayer of all the Church. Furthermore, another lamentable confusion, the liturgy is not an instruction addressed to the people, but the worship directed by the Christian people to God. The catechism is one thing, the liturgy another! It is a question, for the people assembled at the Church, not of “being spoken to clearly,” but of this people’s being able to praise God in the most beautiful, the most sacred, the most solemn manner there is! “To pray to God from beauty”—such was the liturgical maxim of Saint Pius X. How right he was!
You see, the liberal mind is one that is paradoxical and confused, distressed and contradictory. Such indeed was Paul VI. Mr. Louis Salleron explains this quite well, when he describes the physical look of Paul VI: he says “He has a double face.” He is not speaking of duplicity, for this term expresses a perverse intention to deceive which was not present in Paul VI. No, it is a double person, whose contrasted countenance expresses a duality: now traditional in his words, now Modernist in his acts; now Catholic in his premises, his principles, and now progressive in his conclusions, not condemning what he should condemn and condemning what he ought to preserve!
Now, through this psychological weakness, this pope offered a dreamed-of occasion, a considerable opportunity for the enemies of the Church to take advantage of him: all the while keeping one face (or half a face, as you will) Catholic, he did not hesitate to contradict tradition. He showed himself favorable to change, baptized mutation and progress, and went thus in the direction of all the enemies of the Church, who encouraged him. Did we not see, one day in the year 1976, Izvestia, the organ of the Soviet Communist Party, demand from Paul VI, in the name of Vatican II, my condemnation and that of Ecône? Likewise the Italian Communist newspaper L’Unita expressed a similar request, reserving a whole page for it, at the time of the sermon that I gave at Lille on August 29, 1976, furious as it was over my attacks against Communism! “Be conscious,” it had written, addressing itself to Paul VI, “be conscious of the danger that Lefebvre represents and continue the magnificent movement of approach begun with the ecumenism of Vatican II.” It is a little embarrassing to have friends like those, don’t you think? A sad illustration of a rule that we have already remarked: Liberalism leads from compromise to betrayal.
Our Attitude Towards Such a Pope
The psychology of such a liberal pope is rather easily conceivable, but it is more difficult to uphold! It puts us indeed into a very delicate situation vis-a-vis such a head, whether it be Paul VI or John Paul II. In practice, our attitude should be based on a previous discernment, rendered necessary by these extraordinary circumstances of a pope won over to Liberalism. This discernment is this: when the pope says something that is consistent with tradition, we follow him; when he says something that goes contrary to our Faith, or he encourages or lets something be done that harms our Faith, then we cannot follow him! The fundamental reason for this is that the Church, the pope, and the hierarchy are at the service of the Faith. It is not they who make the Faith; they must serve it. The Faith is not being created, it is unchangeable, it is transmitted.
This is why we cannot follow those acts of these popes that are done with the goal of confirming an action that goes against tradition: by that very act, we would be collaborating in the auto-demolition of the Church, in the destruction of our Faith!
Now, it is clear that what is unceasingly asked of us: complete submission to the pope, complete submission to the Council, acceptance of all liturgical reforms—this goes in a direction contrary to tradition, to the extent that the pope, the Council, and the reforms carry us far away from tradition, as the facts prove more every year. Consequently, to ask this of us is to ask us to collaborate in the disappearance of the Faith. Impossible! The martyrs died to defend the Faith; we have the examples of Christians imprisoned, tortured, sent to concentration camps for their Faith! A grain of incense offered to the pagan god, and immediately they would have saved their lives. Someone once advised me, “Sign, sign, that you accept everything; and then you continue as before!” No! One does not play with his Faith!
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1 Mt. 16:18.
2 Mt. 28:20.
3 Pontifical documents of Paul VI, 1964; ed. St Augustin, Saint-Maurice, pp. 677-679.
4 Collection Itinéraires, NEL, 2nd edition, 1976, p. 83