After 50
years of prevarication, ambivalence, mendacity and confusion it has happened.
Rome of 2021 has declared definitively the Tridentine Mass is out. A tragedy,
yet for those of us who have remained steadfast and faithful to SSPX it comes
in one sense as a blessed relief.
Gone now are the years when confusion, fear,
erosion, division, desertion and betrayal beset us. Thanks be to God for all our holy Bishops,
priests, brothers and religious who stayed true to the principles laid out so
clearly in 1974 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Deo Gratias,
Deo Gratias.
Declaration
By
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X
Rome, 21 November 1974
We adhere with our whole
heart and with our whole soul to Catholic Rome, the guardian of the Catholic
faith and of those traditions necessary for the maintenance of that faith, to
eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom and truth.
Because of this adherence,
we refuse and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-modernists and
neo-protestant tendencies, such as were clearly manifested during the second
Vatican Council, and after the Council in all the resulting reforms.
All these reforms have,
indeed, contributed and still contribute to the demolition of the Church, to
the ruin of the Priesthood, to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice and of the
Sacraments, to the disappearance of the religious life, and to naturalistic and
Teilhardian teaching in universities, seminaries, and catechetics, a teaching
born of Liberalism and Protestantism many times condemned by the solemn
Magisterium of the Church.
No authority, even
the very highest in the hierarchy, can constrain us to abandon or to diminish
our Catholic faith, such as it has been clearly expressed and professed by the
church's Magisterium for nineteen centuries.
"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. 1,8).
Is this not what the Holy
Father is repeating to us today? And if a certain contradiction is apparent in
his words and actions, as well as in the acts of various Roman
Congregations, then we choose what has always been taught, and we
turn a deaf ear to the innovations which are destroying the church. The
"lex orandi" (law of prayer) cannot be profoundly
changed, without changing the "lex credendi" (law of
belief). The new Mass is in line with the new catechism, the new priesthood,
new seminaries, new universities, and the charismatic or Pentecostal church,
all of which are in opposition to orthodoxy and to the age-old Magisterium.
This reform, since it
has issued from Liberalism and from Modernism, is entirely corrupt; it comes
from heresy and results in heresy, even if all its acts are not formally
heretical. It is thus impossible for any faithful catholic who is aware of
these things to adopt this Reform, or to submit to it in any way at all. To
ensure our salvation, the only attitude of fidelity to the church and to
Catholic doctrine, is a categorical refusal to accept the Reform.
It is for this reason that,
without any rebellion, bitterness or resentment, we pursue our work of the
formation of priests under the star of the age-old Magisterium, in the
conviction that we can thus do no greater service to the holy Catholic Church, to
the Sovereign Pontiff, and to future generations.
For this reason, we hold
firmly to all that has been believed and practised by the Church of always, in
her faith, morals, worship, catechetical instruction, priestly formation and
her institutions, and codified in the books which appeared before the modernist
influence of the late Council. Meanwhile, we wait for the true light of
Tradition to dispel the darkness which obscures the sky of the eternal Rome. By
acting thus, we are sure, with the grace of God, and the help of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, Saints Joseph and Saint Pius X, of remaining faithful to the
Catholic and Roman Church, to all the successors of St. Peter, and of being
"fideles dispensatores mysteriorum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi in
Spiritu Sancto. Amen"
(Faithful dispensers of the
mysteries of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Ghost. Amen)
