Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Thursday, October 18, 2007 12:13 AM
Subject: Taken From The Resurrection of the Roman Catholic Church
To: parousa2009@yahoo.com
Eager to distance himself from the possibility of their being any more such dangerous and scandalous priests within his order he set about purging the SSPX of any priests (even those of clearly peaceable intentions) whose opinions of John Paul II’s ministry had even the faintest similarity to those of Fr. Krohn. This made for some rather considerable unpleasantness when quite a number of fine priests had to be ejected from the SSPX. These included nine priests many of whom held leading positions within the American North East district (including the District Superior, the District Bursar, the Rector of Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Ridgefield, the Headmaster of the University at St. Mary’s, and his assistant). Over the next several years, perhaps ten to fifteen percent of his priests worldwide had been ejected from the SSPX, ending in late 1985 with four Italian priests, Frs. Franco Munari, Curzio Nitoglia, Giuseppe Murro, and Francesco Ricossa. Of these ejected priests (particularly the nine American priests ejected in 1983) more will be said in a later chapter.
Cardinal Ratzinger, who had succeeded Cardinal Seper in 1982 after the latter passed away in late 1981, praised Abp. Lefebvre’s efforts to purge those certain priests from his society, saying in a July letter, “the Pope acknowledges the devotion of Archbishop Lefebvre and his fundamental attachment to the Holy See, expressed for instance by the exclusion of members who do not recognize the authority of the Pope.” Although that is a slight misreading of the nature of those excluded priests, the gesture of excluding those priests went a long ways toward smoothing diplomatic relations with Rome and John Paul II.
Also in 1982, Lefebvre had finished twelve years as Superior General of the SSPX and it was time for him to step down, even though this stepping down action took place in 1983 shortly after the ejection of the nine American priests. Succeeding him was Fr. Franz Schmidberger, a German who was fond of mathematics and who had been elected to the post of Vicar General of the SSPX during its first general chapter. Later, in November of 1983, Lefebvre and de Castro Mayer jointly published a “Bishops’ Manifesto” which read:
Holy Father,
May Your Holiness permit us, with an entire filial openness, to submit to you the following consideration. During the last twenty years the situation in the Church is such that it looks like an occupied city.
Thousands of members of the clergy, and millions of the faithful, are living in a state of anguish and perplexity because of the “self-destruction of the Church.” They are being thrown into confusion and disorder by the errors contained in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the post-conciliar reforms, and especially the liturgical reforms, the false notions diffused by official documents and by the abuse of power perpetrated by the hierarchy.
In these distressing circumstances, many are losing the Faith, charity is becoming cold, and the concept of the true unity of the Church in time and in space is disappearing.
In our capacity as bishops of the Holy Catholic Church, successors of the Apostles, our hearts are overwhelmed at the sights throughout the world, by so many souls who are bewildered yet desirous in continuing in the faith and morals which have been defined by the Magisterium of the Church and taught by Her in a constant and universal manner.
It seems to us that to remain silent in these circumstances would be to become accomplices to these wicked works (cf. 2 John 11).
That is why we find ourselves obliged to intervene in public before Your Holiness (considering all the measures we have undertaken in private during these last fifteen years have remained ineffectual) in order to denounce the principal causes of this dramatic situation, and to besiege Your Holiness to use his power as Successor of Peter to “confirm your brothers in the Faith” (Luke 22:32), which has been faithfully handed down to us by Apostolic Tradition.
To that end we attached to this letter an appendix [not included in this book] containing the principal errors which are at the origins of this tragic situation and which, moreover, have already been condemned by your predecessors. The following list outlines these errors, but it is not exhaustive:
1. A latitudinarian and ecumenical notion of the Church, divided in its faith, condemned in particular by the Syllabus, No. 18 (Denzinger 2918).
2. A collegial government and a democratic orientation in the Church, condemned in particular by Vatican Council I (Denzinger 3055).
3. A false notion of the natural rights of man which clearly appears in the document on Religious Liberty, condemned in particular by Quanta cura (Pius IX) and Libertas praestantissimum (Leo XIII).
4. An erroneous notion of the power of the pope (cf. Denzinger 3115).
5. A Protestant notion of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, condemned by the Council of Trent, Session XXII.
6. Finally, and in a general manner, the free spreading of heresies, characterized by the suppression of the Holy Office.
The documents containing these errors cause an uneasiness and a disarray, so much the more profound as they come from a source so much the more elevated. The clergy and the faithful most moved by this situation are, moreover, those who are the most attached to the Church, to the authority of the Successor of Peter, and to the traditional Magisterium of the Church.
Most Holy Father, it is urgently necessary that this disarray come to an end because the flock is dispersing and the abandoned sheep are following mercenaries. We beseech you, for the good of the Catholic Faith and for the salvation of souls, to reaffirm the truths, contrary to these errors, truths which have been taught for twenty centuries in the Church.
It is with the sentiments of St. Paul before St. Peter, when he reproached him for having not followed “the truth of the Gospel” (Galatians 2:11-14), that we are addressing you. His aim was none other than to protect the faith of the flock.
St. Robert Bellarmine, expressing on this occasion a general principle, states that one must resist the pontiff whose actions would be prejudicial to the salvation of souls (DE ROM. PON. I.2, c. 29).
Thus it is with the purpose of coming to the aid of Your Holiness that 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 and by the ceremonies and addresses on the occasion of the Fifth Centenary of the birth of Luther. Truly, this is the limit!
May God come to your aid, Most Holy Father. We are praying without ceasing for you to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Deign to accept the sentiments of our filial devotion, [signed] S. E. Monseigneur Marcel Lefebvre, International Seminary of Saint Pius X, Ecône, Switzerland [and] S. E. Monseigneur Antonio de Castro Mayer, Riachuelo 169, C. P. 255, 28100 Campos, (RJ) Brazil.
At last, in 1984, John Paul II finally gave permission (albeit on a most grudging and miserly basis) for the tridentine Mass to be said. On the surface it seemed to grant everything Lefebvre was asking for, but it had been carefully worded so as to exclude those for whom the Mass of Saint Pius V is a banner, namely Lefebvre and the SSPX, and even more so, such priests as Lefebvre had ejected from his society. While Lefebvre couldn’t help but praise this small step in the right direction, he knew that to throw his society in with this special permission would have been to win a battle but lose the war.
Over the next three years, the thin trickle of correspondence between Ecône and Rome continued, equally unavailing and equally ineffective. A very few priests of the SSPX obtained Indults, but most more or less ignored it as they went about their business seeing to the needs of the souls in their parishes. Then, in late 1986, John Paul II pulled the most outrageous stunt of his entire career. He organized a joint prayer session with the leaders of just about every known religion on the face of the earth. They gathered at a place called Assisi and each in turn prayed to their respective gods for world peace. One can’t help but believe that John Paul II had done this entire fiasco “at” Lefebvre, since immediately thereafter he sent a letter to Lefebvre practically daring him to say that he was not the pope. Lefebvre refused to take that bait but once again in response repeated what he had said in his 1974 declaration about the difference between Eternal Rome to which his loyalty is ever committed, and Modernist Rome which was showing itself to be all the more schismatic and heretical than ever before. And there the matter stood until June of 1987.
Meanwhile, the SSPX continued to grow and expand into more countries, England, Mexico, Columbia, South Africa, Holland, Portugal, Australia, India, Sri Lanka, Gabon, Senegal, New Zealand, New Guinea, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Chile, and Zimbabwe. Seminaries, priories, Carmelite orders, Dominican orders, Benedictine orders, parishes, and mass centers continued to expand in numbers all around the world. Abp. Lefebvre wrote his first book, An Open Letter To Confused Catholics, and toured the world, confirming thousands of Catholics everywhere he went; crusades and pilgrimages were led in which thousands participated. And with each passing year, more and more priests got ordained. In 1987, over 200 priests were members of the SSPX, and perhaps another 100 or so were nonmembers who were also faithful to Tradition.