True face of authority

… Some of his seminarians compared Mortain with its healthy liberty to the rough and tough training in the novitiate. “Here we are at last far from the novitiate!” they would say, In this attitude Fr. Lefebvre detected a loss of fervour, or a loss of focus in spiritual training and in the pursuit of sanctity. The too exclusively intellectual approach adopted by the philosophy students was a serious pitfall. He warned them to beware:

It is not normal; the opposite ought to be the case. After the novitiate, your studies should provide food for your spiritual life and not lessen it. When all is said and done, philosophy understood and loved, leads to God who is present everywhere, incomprehensible in so far as He exceeds our weak intelligence. Here is where the door of faith opens….

Philosophy is a preparation to sanctity and to a life of union with God….True knowledge leads logically to humility: false knowledge which stops along the way, which is incomplete, leads to pride and self-importance.

The remedy was readily available: St. Thomas. The Father Superior went through the Summa Theologica in his spiritual conferences. He devised a “triptych of the spiritual life” which he planned to expound over three years and which he later spoke of at Econe:

The first year was given over to the study of the “unjust man” with all the consequences of original sin. The second year covered the “just man” sanctified by grace with his virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the beatitudes. In the third year – had I stayed for a third year – I would have explained the means by which man passes from the state on injustice to the state of justice: firstly our Lord himself (His work of redemption) then the means of sanctification that He instituted: the Mass, the sacraments, prayer, doing Gods will, the means to fight against our failings and grow in virtue. I would have finished off with the four last things, and the fulfilment of justification.

… A seminarian said, “We valued him a lot. We really loved him because he was very simple and direct”. Since he sang a little off key, Fr. Lefebvre asked one of the youngest seminarians who had a good voice to help him practice singing the Preface of the Mass. “he was always happy to see seminarians in his office, to speak, to say something that needed saying, talking in his small gentle voice”.

… Colleagues visiting Mortain were surprised by the mutual trust between the priests and students, a trust that enabled the students to act often on their own initiative. Such were the fruits of an understanding Father Superior. This was how Fr. Lefebvre conceived of the right relationship between authority and obedience. France after liberation was suffering from a crisis of authority brought about by the crisis of obedience among the Free French. Restoring authority’s real meaning meant showing its true face. The Father Superior led by example, and that was a language the seminarians could understand. One day he asked them to write an essay on authority, starting from a beautiful description of authority which he gave them but providing their own examples to illustrate their arguments.

“One can say that authority is totally divine in its origins, and sweet and powerful in its essence. And, if it is moved by the gift of counsel and supported by prudence, it is also amazingly fruitful, bringing order, prosperity and peace.” 

Archbishop Lefebvre was at  Mortain November 1945-June 1947.
The biography of Marcel Lefebvre by Bernard Tissier de Mallerais.

A sermon in which Jesus Christ does not figure is useless ... concluded

The ardour with which he preaches is so extraordinary that his adversaries exhibit and incredible opposition. The terms used in Holy Scripture are clear: not only are they enraged but “they gnashed their teeth at him”. Truly, through them, the devil himself acted against St Stephen. Consider the ardour and effect of his preaching and of his faith, and the persecution they aroused, obviously he so clearly manifested the Holy Ghost within him that they put him to death. The good God allowed him to enjoy this blessed vision before his death.

The Apostles St. Peter and St. Andrew died on crosses, and the great missionaries went in the name of the cross to preach the Gospel. This what St Francis Xavier did, and St Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort, and so many others. They held up the Cross to impart the Faith or to revive it. The Cross has its own virtue. The good God has willed that the cross be the salvation for all men. Consequently, one must believe that in every man there is a predisposition to believe in the virtue of the Cross. I have experienced this in the course of my missionary life in pagan villages. When the Cross was shown to the villagers and when what it was explained, an actual grace descended into souls. The souls were touched at the thought that God came upon earth, suffered for them, and shed His Blood to redeem them from their sins.

Men full of pride and steeped in their knowledge are the hardest to convert. At the idea of adoring Christ, they revolt like the devil, like the bad angels, like the princes of the priests, like the Scribes and the Pharisees. But simple souls that are undoubtedly in sin more easily recognise their disorder. They are in a situation that quite oft5en creates in them a certain remorse. So the thought that this degrading siutaion in which they find themselves has an exit, a way to resurrection, and light attracts them. When they think that God Himself took the trouble to come and sacrifice Himself to get them out of the state of sin into which they had fallen, then souls rise up and thank God, seeing that salvation is possible, resurrection is possible.

The Mass of All Time Angelus Press 2007

A sermon in which Jesus Christ does not figure is useless…. (continued)

......

Thus Mary’s intercession is necessary because all graces come to us through her hands… We must preach the cross of Our Lord against the evil spirit of the World, which is the spirit of the devil, which is the spirit of error, the spirit of attachment to earthly goods. What is the most obvious means of detaching oneself from the spirit of the world? It is the spirit of the Cross. It is necessary to preach the Cross so that the people really unite themselves to the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice.
You will preach the doctrine of the Cross. St Paul preached nothing else: “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (I Cor. 2.2), as he himself said. That was his preaching; it will be yours too, I am certain.
In the fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles(5:30-33), we read: “The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging Him upon a tree. Him hath God exalted with His right hand, to be Prince and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of these things and the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to all that obey him, when they had heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they thought to put them to death.” This shows another important side of things. Preaching Our Lord Jesus Christ, which is the fruit of the Holy Ghost in the ministry we have to give, leads to persecutions. We mustn’t deceive ourselves: we are for Our Lord the world is against Our Lord. Sinners are against Our Lord. Our Lord Himself said it: the world hates me, and it will hate you of you love and serve me (Jn. 15: 18-21)
Remember the magnificent story of St Stephen. If there is one of the first Christians who manifested the presence of the Holy Ghost within him, it was St Stephen. We must love to read and re-read the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which recounts the story of St Stephen, because all the manifestations of the Holy Ghost appear in him. His faith is so lively that the good God even allows Stephen to see Him: “But he being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly to heaven, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God” (7:55). The good God gave him the grace to see His glory before he died. To be continued…

A sermon in which Jesus Christ does not figure is useless….

Preaching
The sermon, which prolongs the Word of God, is a function reserved to the ministers of the sacrifice. It must have a sacred character in order to dispose souls to live the gospel and to unite themselves to Our Lord’s sacrifice.

1. A ministry conferred upon the deacon
Ordination to the diaconate confers a power not only over the real, physical Body of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, but also over His Mystical Body. For insofar as a consecrated person advances nearer to Our Lord Jesus Christ, from the tonsure to the diaconate and finally ascending to the priesthood, he enjoys a proportionally greater power over the Eucharist, and equally over the Mystical; Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why the Church already grants you a certain number of powers. You will eventually be able to give Our Lord Himself in the Blessed Sacrament to souls. By reason of this authorisation and power, you have the duty to prepare souls to receive the Blessed Sacrament well, and that is what you will do by preaching. Preaching is, then, a very important thing.

2. The principal object of the Sermon
One of the chief manifestations of the presence of the Holy Ghost in a soul is his preaching. When the Holy Ghost enlightens a soul about the work of Our Lord and His Passion, at the same time He imparts. The Acts of the Apostles relate that, after St Peter’s discourse before the Sanhedrin, the Christians gathered together, and they prayed. And “when they had prayed, the place was moved wherein they were assembled; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spoke the word of God with confidence” (4:31). At a time when no one believes any longer in Our Lord Jesus Christ, when no pone believes any longer in the power of the Holy Ghost, nor in the supernatural gifts and the virtues, we must show in our words, our preaching, and our whole life, this presence of the Spirit.

“And with great power did the apostles give testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ Our Lord; and great grace was in them all” (Acts 4:33). It is a remarkable fact that the object of the Apostles’ and St. Paul’s’ preaching is the person of Jesus. St Paul has some magnificent expressions on this subject: “I preach Jesus and Jesus crucified” (I.Cor.2:2)… we must preach Our Lord. A special grace of illumination is given to the faithful concerning all the events of Our Lord’s life, and particularly, of course, concerning His crucifixion and resurrection.

A sermon in which Jesus Christ does not figure is useless; either the aim or the means in missing. “For we preach not ourselves” says St Paul, “but Jesus Christ Our Lord” (II Cor. 4:5). Jesus Christ must always enter into our sermons because everything relates to Him. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Consequently, to ask the faithful to become more perfect or to convert without speaking of Our Lord is to deceive them; it is to fail to show them the way by which they can succeed. “But we preach Jesus crucified” (I Cor. 1:23).

Ardent preaching is mediated by the holy sacrifice of the Mass, that is to say, by the cross and by the most Blessed Virgin Mary. Jesus and Mary are the great sources of grace: Jesus by Mary. Jesus in the holy Sacrament of the Mass represents all the Sacraments, all the sources of salvation; and Mary communicates them.

To be continued
From The Mass of All Time Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre Angelus Pres 2007.

the 1984 code of Canon Law

I want to speak to you of a very serious novelty: the New Code of Canon Law. I had not seen any necessity for a change. But if the law changes, the law changes, and we must make use of it, for the Church can ask nothing evil from her faithful.

However, when one reads this new code of Canon Law one discovers an entirely new conception of the Church. It is easy to be aware of, since John Paul II himself describes it in the apostolic constitution which introduces the new Code. ". . . It follows that which constitutes the fundamental novelty of Vatican Council II, in full continuity with the legislative tradition of the Church (this is to deceive), especially in that which concerns ecclesiology, constitutes also the novelty of the new Code." Hence the novelty of the conception of the Church according to the Council is equally the novelty of the conception of the new Code of Canon Law.

What is this novelty? It is that there is no longer any difference between the clergy and the laity. There is now just the faithful, nothing else, on account of the "doctrine according to which all the members of the people of God, according to the mode which is proper to each, partake in the triple priestly, prophetic and royal function of Jesus Christ. To this doctrine is likewise attached that which concerns the duties and rights of the faithful and particularly the laity, and finally the Church's involvement in ecumenism!"





This is the definition of the Church (Canon 204): "The faithful are those who, inasmuch as they are incorporated in Christ by baptism are constituted as the people of God, and who for this reason, having been made partakers in their manner in the priestly, prophetic and royal functions of Christ, are called to exercise the mission that God entrusted to the Church to accomplish in the world:" We are all faithful, members of the people of God, and we all therefore have ministries! It is clearly said in the Code: all the faithful have ministries. They therefore all have the responsibility to teach, to sanctify and even to direct.

Let us continue our commentary on this Canon 204: "…having been made partakers in their manner in the priestly, prophetic and royal function of Christ, they are called to exercise the mission which God entrusted to the Church to accomplish in the world, according to the juridical condition proper to each one." Hence everyone without exception, without distinction between clergy and laity, inasmuch as they are the people of God, has the responsibility of this mission entrusted by Jesus Christ properly to the Church. There is no longer any clergy. What, then, happens to the clergy?

It is as if they said that it is no longer parents who have the responsibility to give life to children but the family, or rather all the members of the family: parents and children. This is exactly the same thing as saying today that Bishops, priests and laymen have all responsibility for the mission of the Church. But who gives the graces to become a Catholic? How does one become faithful? No one knows any more who has the responsibility for what. It is consequently easy to understand that this is the ruin of the priesthood and the laicization of the Church. Everything is oriented towards the laymen, and little by little the sacred ministers disappear. The minor orders and the subdiaconate have already disappeared. Now there are married deacons, and little by little laymen take over the ministry of the priests. This is precisely what Luther and the protestants did, laicizing the priesthood. It is consequently very serious.

This is quite openly explained in an article in the Osservatore Romano of March 17, 1984: "The role of the laity in the new Code." "The active function that the laity has been called on to exercise since Vatican II by participating in the condition and mission of the entire Church according to their particular vocation is a doctrine which, in the context of the appearance of the concept of the people of God has brought about a reevaluation of the laity, as much in the foundation of the Church as for the active role they are called on to develop in the building up of the Church."





Such is the inspiration of the whole new Code of Canon Law. It is this definition of the Church which is the poison which infects the new laws. The same can be said for the Liturgy. There is a relationship between this new Code of Canon Law and the entire liturgical reform, as Bugnini said in his book The Fundamental Principles of the Changing of the Liturgy. "The path opened by the Council is destined to change radically the traditional liturgical assembly in which, according to a custom dating back many centuries, the liturgical service is almost exclusively accomplished by the clergy. The people assist, but too much as a stranger and a dumb spectator." What? How can one dare say that the faithful are present at the sacrifice of the Mass as simply dumb spectators so as to change the Liturgy? How must the faithful be active in the sacrifice of the Mass? By the body or spiritually? Obviously spiritually. One can draw a great spiritual profit from assisting at Mass in silence. It is, in effect, a mystery of our Faith. How many have become saints in this silence of the true Mass!

"A long education will be necessary for the Liturgy to become an action of all the people of God." Without a doubt. Then he adds that he is speaking of "a substantial unity but not a uniformity. You must realize that this is a true break with the past." This past is the twenty centuries of prayer of the Church.
Bugnini was the key man in the liturgical reform. I went to see Cardinal Cicognani when this reform was published and I said to him: "Your Eminence, I am not in agreement with this change. The Mass no longer has its mystical and divine character." He replied: "Excellency, it is like that. Bugnini can enter as he likes into the Pope's office to make him sign what he wants." This is what happened to the Secretariat of State. This is how all these changes happened. They agreed on it beforehand, and then obtained signatures for some changes, and then others, and then others.

I said to Cardinal Gut: "Your Eminence, you are responsible for Divine Worship, and you accord permission for the Blessed Sacrament to be received in the hand! They will know that this was published with the agreement of the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship!" He replied: "Excellency, I do not even know if I will be asked for it to be done. You know, it is not I who command. The boss is Bugnini. If the Pope asks me what I think of Communion in the hand, I will cast myself on my knees before him to ask him not to do it." You see, then, how things happened at Rome: a simple signature on the bottom of a decree and the Church is ruined by numerous sacrileges ... The real presence of Our Lord is ruined, for it is no longer respected. Then, nothing sacred remains, as was seen at the large reunion at which the Pope was present, where the Blessed Sacrament was passed around from hand to hand between thousands of persons. Nobody genuflects anymore before the Blessed Sacrament. How can they still believe that God is present there?





It is this same spirit which inspired the changing of the canon Law as that which inspired the changes in the Liturgy: it is the people of God, the assembly, which does everything. The same applies to the priest. He is a simple president who has a ministry, as others have a ministry, in the midst of an assembly. Our orientation towards God has likewise disappeared. This comes from the protestants who say that eucharistic devotion (for them there is neither Mass nor sacrifice: this would be blasphemy) is simply a movement of God towards man, but not of man towards God to render Him glory, which is nevertheless the first (latreutic) end of the Liturgy. This new state of liturgical mind comes likewise from Vatican II: everything is for man. The bishops and priest are at the service of man and the assembly. But where is God then? In what is His glory sought? What will we do in heaven? For in heaven "all is for the glory of God," which is exactly what we ought to do here on earth. But all that is done away with, and replaced by man. This is truly the ruin of all Catholic thought.

You know that the new Code of Canon Law permits a priest to give Communion to a protestant. It is what they call eucharistic hospitality. These are protestants who remain protestant and do not convert. This is directly opposed to the Faith. For the Sacrament of the Eucharist is precisely the sacrament of the unity of the Faith. To give Communion to a protestant is to rupture the Faith and its unity. '

March 24, 1984 - Conference given in Turin, Italy


Translated from The official bulletin of the French District of the Society of Saint Pius X, February 5, 1992