Pope John-Paul II thinking on the prayer meeting of Assisi

December 1, 1994

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

A difficult but valuable book on Pope John-Paul II has just been published in English translation by the Angelus Press out of Kansas City, Missouri: Volume I of "Pope John-Paul II's Theological Journey to the Prayer Meeting of Religions in Assisi" by the German Professor and priest, Fr. Johannes Dörmann.

Difficult; because Fr. Dörmann is a Catholic scholar of many years' standing, not a Society of St. Plus X priest, but a learned writer and teacher within the official Church, with many university-level articles and books to his name.

Valuable, because with no concern other than to get at the truth Fr. Dörmann has applied all his experience and talents as a Catholic scholar to discovering and analyzing what this Pope actually thinks. His analysis and conclusions are to us all the more valuable for having been undertaken and published in Germany quite independently of the society, indeed upon information and belief Prof. Dörmann does not even celebrate the Tridentine Mass. In no way can he be accused of being a "Lefebvrist". If then he and his book testify that the Church's present crisis is not just a problem of liturgical rites or of Church language or of any superficial feature of Church life, but an upheaval of the very foundations of the Catholic Faith, then his independent testimony is a striking confirmation of the wisdom of the apparently extreme stand taken by Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of St. Plus X since the early 1970's.

What happened was that Prof. Dörmann was profoundly shocked by the Inter-religious World Prayer Meeting held in Assisi in 1986 at Pope John-Paul II's instigation and under his leadership. The Professor asked himself, how could the Catholic Pope have come to give such public recognition and official credit to all of the world's principal false religions? Over some such question Catholics have agonized for years, and it has driven many to resort to more or less far-fetched explanations such as a drugged Pope, a dummy Pope, a KGB Pope, a Freemason Pope, an invalid Pope, or whatever. Instead of wild surmise the Professor assumed — reasonably — that Pope John-Paul II meant what he was doing and was doing what he meant. In that case, what did he mean? Again reasonably, the Professor set himself to find out what Pope John-Paul II meant, by studying what he has said in his speeches and writings.

Now it is not as though over the last 20 years, whether as Cardinal or Pope, Karol Wojtyla has been hiding what he thinks, on the contrary there has come from him a constant flow of words, spoken or written. The problem is that his style is difficult. Many a page of his one can read half a dozen times and still not grasp what he is meaning to say. Outwardly it seems pious, but inwardly it seems unclear. At this point the pious majority of the Pope's readers or listeners lets itself be contented with the outward piety of his words, whilst a disconcerted minority lets itself be repulsed by their inward lack of clarity. Either way, they give up the attempt to understand what the Pope is meaning, and pass on, contented or disconcerted as the case may be.

In this situation, the immense virtue of Prof. Dörmann, and the immense usefulness of his book, is that he let himself be neither contented nor disconcerted, but he pursued the Pope's meaning until he found it. What the Professor found is so shocking that many of the pious Catholics mentioned above will be tempted to go into denial, or at least to give his book the silent treatment, but let two indications be given that the professor really has found the Pope's meaning. First and foremost, it is normal that how a man thinks should correspond to how he acts, and what the Professor discovered of the Pope's thinking corresponds exactly to the event of Assisi and to much else besides. Secondly, it is normal that a man as trained as this Pope is in philosophy and theology, should think coherently, and what the Professor discovered is an entirely coherent system of thought, "with every word calculated and in its right place", the Professor has said.

What system did the Professor — repeat, quite independently of the society of St. Plus X — discover? The enclosed red flyer gives an overview of his book, which is only the first of three Volumes to have appeared in German, with another two, maybe three, waiting to be written, if the Professor's health holds up, for which we must pray, for the sake of the truth, which is sacred.

The Pope's thinking starts out from man. Every man alive has deep inside himself, if only he will look within, access to a union of himself with God which exists thanks to Christ's Incarnation whereby Christ united himself to every man. This union of every man with God is inside every man alive whether he knows it or not, whether he wants it or not, and so it has been since the beginning of the human race, but it is only in recent times, thanks to the out-pouring of the Holy Ghost upon the Second Vatican Council, that men have become aware of this automatic union of every man with God. The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ merely made manifest the love of God the Father present already inside every man by God's union with every man.

Thus far Fr. Dörmann, who in his successful pursuit of the Pope's meaning has abstained from all emotion, abuse or rhetoric. He has merely laid out the Pope's thinking and then, by contrast, alongside, the thinking of the true Church (see, for example, the "Criticism" sections of the Overview).

But let us spell out a few of the logical consequences of this thinking: all men are saved from birth, so Hell (the old-fashioned eternal fire) either does not exist or is empty. Conversion, faith, baptism, the sacraments are no longer necessary for salvation, they merely enhance the human person's awareness of his saved state. Likewise amongst all the religions in which subsists the Super-church of the God of all men, the Catholic Church's only superiority is that, through its connection to Christ, it has a better grasp of man's full inner dignity, which it is its function to encourage men to live up to.

Hence on the one hand a certain preaching of moral standards, e.g. Cairo, to maintain human dignity, but on the other hand a steady pressure upon the narrow old Catholicism to open up and to allow itself to be absorbed into the brave new Super-Church of all mankind, so much less exclusive, so much more caring for all men! Hence Pope John-Paul's recent promise that the new Super-church will apologize for all the sins of the narrow old Church, for instance its warmongering Crusades, its intolerance of other religions, etc.

Not that the Pope disbelieves in the doctrine of the Old Church, on the contrary he is convinced that Tradition is true and that amongst all religions, Catholicism alone is the fullness of the truth. However, all other religions contain seeds of truth sufficient for salvation outside the Catholic Church!

Nor does the Pope want to exclude Traditional Catholics from his Super-church, on the contrary he is convinced that the evolution from Church to Super-church is the true, "living Tradition". So he would love all Catholics to follow him, so he will formulate the Super-Church doctrine as harmoniously as possible with the old Church doctrine - surely his contriving to express the new thought in the old language causes the above-mentioned obscurity of his style, which it takes the patience and skill of a Prof. Dörmann to penetrate. However, if obstinate "Traditionalists" nevertheless refuse to share his broader vision, then to his sorrow and without his fault they excommunicate or at least marginalize themselves ....etc, etc.

Dear friends and benefactors, I hope your hair is now quietly standing on end! The depth and objective perversity of this neo-modernist heresy are unprecedented. As remedies, surely there soon remain only the shedding of our blood in martyrdom and/or a divine chastisement. But to understand helps us to endure, and here we owe a great debt to Prof. Dörmann: his book makes sense of an otherwise senseless scene. Read the book if you have a chance of understanding it. Give a copy to any priest with a chance of reading it. The truth must out. How else can souls be saved?

Meanwhile note down Winona's interim remedies in your calendars: men's retreat, December 26 to 31; priestly ordinations Saturday June 24; men's three-day retreat June 28 to July 1; women's retreat July 10 to 15; men's retreat July 17 to 22 and men's doctrinal session July 25 to 29.

We pray for the Pope. We pray for yourselves, and we sincerely thank each one of you benefactors for all your support through another calendar year. Blessed Advent, Happy Christmas, Happy New Year!

Most sincerely yours in Christ,

Understanding moral liberty and natural liberty

November 1, 1994

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

Back in May when this letter disentangled the dignity of man with God from the very different dignity of man without God, you were promised a letter to disentangle the two even more confused liberties, corresponding to the two dignities. As the arrival of winter gives us longer evenings by the electronic fireside, let us attempt the second disentangling.

Liberty, like its Germanic synonym, freedom, is one of those words which in modern times is so charged with emotion that the moment it is mentioned, most people stop thinking because their brains are awash in cozy feelings. However, anybody with a grain of common sense, looking at the world around him, appreciates that the world produced by these feelings is not cozy at all, and so it is not only Catholics who need to so some thinking.

Let us start by defining liberty, or freedom, in the way most people use the word, as an absence of constraint. Now constraint may be external or internal. For instance if a bird is in a cage or has a thread tied to its foot, it is constrained externally, because the cage or thread are not part of the bird but are external to it. But if the bird is externally free or free from any external constraint, that does not mean it is internally free, because all its actions, for instance wherever it flies or whenever it eats, are governed, or constrained, by its instincts. Watch a dog caught in a conflict between two of its instincts. The dog is not freely choosing, or deciding. Eventually one instinct prevails, and the dog acts accordingly. On the contrary men have a superior faculty of reason or intelligence with which they can over-ride their instincts, so men are not normally constrained by their instincts, so they can use their reason to choose which instinct to follow or not to follow, and so men have both external liberty (if they are not in prison) and internal liberty.

Thus a man in prison has internal but not external liberty, a bird in the sky has external but not internal liberty a man in the open air has both, a bird in a cage has neither. What interests us here is not the external liberty, called physical liberty because it means an absence of physical or material constraint. What interests us here is the internal liberty, called natural liberty because it is part of man's rational nature, or sometimes psychological liberty because it is part of man's psychological make-up.

This natural liberty as we shall call it, following on man's reason, is nothing other than his free-will, as it is called in English, meaning man's faculty to choose without constraint of instinct between alternatives presented to his reason. This faculty of free-will, or natural liberty, is at the heart of the confusion over "liberty" and it is one of the two liberties continually confused, so let us look at it well to observe its true nature. Let us establish four points: it is a (1) inalienable (2), faculty, a (3) unlimited (4) capacity, which for purposes of illustration we shall compare to a motor car.

Firstly, in its roots, natural liberty is an inalienable feature of rational nature. Wherever there is the faculty of reason, wherever there is a man not deprived of the use of his reason, there is natural liberty or free-will. If a man loses, for instance by drink, the use of his reason, then he is no longer free, but otherwise his natural liberty is inalienable from his being a man. So long as a car is mechanically in working order, it has or is, until the car "dies", an inalienable ability to drive.

Secondly, in the man, natural liberty or free-will is a faculty and not an act. It is a faculty or ability to act, built into his nature, but it is prior to any of a man's rational acts, presupposed by all of them and so identical with none of them. The car, purely as car, is an ability to drive, it is not yet, purely as a car, driving anywhere. It can be sitting in a garage.

Thirdly, in action, natural liberty is unlimited from within, that is to say the faculty is not limited to this act or that act, to this kind of act or that kind of act, but it is a faculty wide open to any and all acts physically available to a man in his circumstances. The faculty is only limited from without, for instance, a man has no natural liberty to fly (without a machine) because that alternative is not physically available to him. But from within, free-will is not limited. Similarly the car, again purely as a motor car, is not limited to driving north, or south, or east, or west, but it can drive in any of these directions wherever a car can drive, only not for instance across water, because that is not a possibility physically available to it.

Liberty	{	absence of external constraint:	PHYSICAL LIBERTY
=absence of constraint		absence of internal constraint:	NATURAL LIBERTY =Free-will

However, fourthly, in morals, natural liberty is a capacity or ability, and not a right, to act without limitation. For just as certain acts like flying by himself are physically unavailable to man, so too certain acts are morally unavailable to him, for instance murder, adultery or theft. Natural liberty has the capacity to commit these wrong acts, but it has no right to commit them. Similarly the motor-car has the physical capacity to drive down the wrong side of the road, but it has no right to do so because it will suffer and cause accidents. The car's natural ability to drive wherever it can drive comes from within it as a car, but its right to drive wherever it may drive comes not from within but from without, for instance from the highway code. Thus natural liberty gives me the ability from within to do whatever I can do, but the right to do what I may do comes not from within but from without. The ability or capacity alone does not constitute a right.

Of course if there was no highway code, then the motor car would have the right to drive on the road wherever it had the ability, then ability and right would be the same thing. But when it comes to morals, there is a highway code. Man constantly dreams of having the right to do as he likes, but as Catholics know, and as all the truly great pagans and non-Catholics have taught, this universe has a moral framework whereby, from outside of us, certain acts are objectively and unchangingly right whilst others are objectively and unchangingly wrong. From which it follows that natural liberty is an ability but not a right.

So all experience teaches that of all the acts available to be chosen by natural liberty, some are right, or morally good, and some are wrong, or morally evil, and here we come to the second of the two liberties continually confused.

If the faculty of free-will is misused to choose evil acts, then we have the misuse of natural liberty which is commonly (and reasonably) called license, each act of which is sinful, or a sin. On the other hand —- always assuming that human acts divide into those that are morally good and those that are morally evil —- if the faculty of free-will is rightly used, to choose good acts, then we have the, right use of natural liberty which we call moral liberty. Let us again look well, to establish, the true nature of this moral liberty, in four points: it is (1) alienable (2) use of a faculty, a (3) limited (4) right.

Firstly, in its roots, moral liberty is alienable in the sense that every time I misuse my natural liberty by choosing sin, then I may have sinful liberty, or license, but I certainly have no moral liberty to do good, in fact Our Lord says that he who sins is the slave of sin (Jn VIII, 34). Similarly if a car is misdriven so that it is wrecked, it can no longer be driven anywhere until its natural ability to drive is repaired. The car’s being misdriven excludes or alienates for the duration its being driven. Of course a man’s liberty cannot be wrecked beyond repair so long as he is living. He retains until death his inalienable faculty of natural liberty but misuse of the faculty excludes or alienates its right use for as long as the misuse lasts. Therefore moral liberty is alienable.

Secondly, in the man, moral liberty or the right use of free-will is the use of a faculty as distinct from the faculty used, like the safe driving of the car as opposed to the car driven. There must be the faculty prior to the use, as to the misuse, and so every use, like every misuse, presupposes the faculty, as all driving or misdriving presupposes a car, but the faculty is different, from its use or misuse because it is always in itself open to both and so it is identical with neither. Natural liberty is by itself only potential, moral liberty and license are always at least. partly actual. It is because there will never be moral liberty without natural liberty, that the Catholic Church values and defends natural liberty against all heretics who deny that man has free-will; nevertheless it is moral liberty that adds the actual goodness to the mere potential of the faculty of free-will. As driving presupposes a car, so all drivers look after their cars; nevertheless no car in the garage, can insure it will be well driven on the road; the good driving is distinct from the car.

Thirdly in action, moral liberty is limited from within, that is to say moral liberty is limited to all good acts, it excludes and is excluded by the evil acts of license. Thus in terms of the variety of acts open to it, moral liberty is more limited than natural liberty which is open to all acts good or evil. Therefore moral liberty is comparatively limited. As good driving excludes bad driving, so good driving limits the variety of ways in which a car can be driven.

However, fourthly, because moral liberty's limitation is to acts that are good, then moral liberty can be called a right, because if I have no right to do wrong, or commit sin, I do have a right to do what is right. One can say that liberty is a right which is confined to right acts. Now moral liberty is by definition confined to right acts, whilst natural liberty is open to right or to wrong acts. Therefore moral liberty is a right to act whereas natural liberty is only a capacity or a potency to act. It is obeying the highway code and all laws concerned which gives me the right to drive my car out of the garage and on the road.

Natural Liberty = Free-will, by itself unlimited	{	limited in action to bad acts:	LICENSE
~POTENTIAL DIGNITY		limited in action to good acts:	MORAL LIBERTY ~ACTUAL DIGNITY

Thus we arrive at the following clear distinction in four points between natural and moral liberties, the two liberties which it is necessary above all to distinguish:- whereas natural liberty is an inalienable faculty, a (from within) unlimited capacity, moral liberty is an alienable use of that faculty, a (from within) limited right. Natural liberty and moral liberty are thus as distinct as the motor car sitting in the garage and its being well driven along the road; as distinct as the bottle empty and the bottle filled with wine.

Well, if the two liberties are so clearly distinct, how can they ever be confused with one another? A swift answer is that while I live I cannot lose my natural liberty which is open to all acts, good or evil. Now moral liberty is a right. If then I blur the two, my natural liberty becomes a right, and I have the right to do whatever I like, right or wrong! In fact claiming natural liberty as a right is a convenient way of abolishing right and wrong. Everything becomes legitimate, an old dream of naughty man. We are then all "liberated" and "emancipated", we can all "let it all hang out", we can do as we like, in theory as long as it does not hurt someone else, but in practice (and in logic) even if it does hurt someone else - drive-by shootings, natural-born killers, etc, etc. Teach youngsters that their natural liberty is a right, and, in logic and justice, they will punish their teachers by destroying them.

However, many liberals will admit the difference between right and wrong, and still claim that they have a natural right to do wrong. So the real reason for the confusion must go deeper.

The real reason is the self-glorification of man. The wine-bottle is seen to be so valuable that it is of no importance whether it is filled with wine or dish-water. The car is seen to be such a superb model that it does not matter whether it drives or crashes — look, what a superb wreck it makes, wrapped around that tree! Man is seen to be by nature of such dignity, his natural faculties have such intrinsic value, that howsoever he uses or misuses them they show forth that transcendental dignity, and so their use or misuse becomes of secondary importance. Man's natural liberty thus becomes a right, because whatever he does with it, it shows forth his dignity. Look, what superb wrecks Lucifer and Judas Iscariot are, in the eternal fires of Hell! What a dignity of defiance!

This glorifying of man's nature in itself forgets (or denies) that man is not a value in himself. As the bottle exists only to contain wine, as the car exists only to be driven without crashing, so a man exists only to fill his life with merits so that when he dies he can go to Heaven. No human soul is on earth for any other reason. But the liberals and secular humanists deny that man is relative in this way to any value above him. He is the supreme value in himself, therefore he is a value above right and wrong. Now in truth God alone is above right and wrong (in the sense, that He alone can by nature do no wrong). Therefore the liberals in fact make man into God.

Moreover the liberals have gained such influence over the last several hundred years that they have moulded the whole world around us. Their glorification, in fact deification, of man seeps into our being through their music, arts, media, schools, universities, politics, economics, "patriotism", and so on and so on. As a result, when a man-glorifying error like the right to do wrong is put before us, it finds through the cast of our minds and the tilt of our emotions, moulded by the liberal world around us, such a sympathetic reception that the error and the confusion are liable to drop into us as easily as a letter drops into a letter-box.

That is why, if we are asked such a question as whether moral liberty or natural liberty is the true liberty, our instinctive reaction is to say that it is natural liberty, because moral liberty is limited, and limits take away liberty. Now that answer would be correct if man was an end in himself, because then he would be the measure of right and wrong, which means he could do no wrong, which would give him the right to choose whatever he liked, which would make moral liberty meaningless. But whoever recalls that man is even more for Heaven than the wine-bottle is for wine or the car is for safe driving, realizes that true liberty is liberty for the bottle from dishwater, liberty for the car from crashing, liberty for man from sin (whoever sins is the slave of sin, says Our Lord), so that the true liberty is in fact moral liberty. Thus natural liberty rejects any limitation or law, but moral liberty greets any limitation or law helping it to attain its end. If natural liberty, which is open to sin, were the true liberty, then neither God nor the angels in Heaven who can no longer sin, would have true liberty!

Liberty	{	PHYSICAL	{ Not Equal	used badly: LICENSE used well: MORAL LIBERTY
		NATURAL = Free-will
		an inalienable faculty an unlimited capacity		an alienable use of faculty, a limited right

Alas, these arguments have difficulty biting when a man's emotions from his background, friends, education and even "patriotism" all run in the opposite direction. However, if the whole world were steeped in the error of deifying man and glorifying natural liberty, it would still not be so grave as long as the Catholic churchmen resisted and condemned the error. But now listen to a few examples of Vatican II's teaching on religious liberty:

* "The human person has a right to religious freedom" (Dignitatis Humanae #2) - he has a natural faculty to choose any religion, yes; he has a moral right to choose any religion other than Catholicism, no.

* "The right to religious freedom is founded in the dignity of the human person" (D.H.#2) -man is so dignified that he has a right by moral liberty to go to heaven, yes; a right by misuse of natural liberty to go to hell, no (unless "right" simply means ability).

* "Men retain the right to religious liberty even when they misuse it by not seeking the truth" (D.H.#2) - men have the natural faculty to turn away from the truth, yes; they have the moral liberty or right to do so, no.

* "Religious bodies have the right to be allowed to spread whatever is their faith" (D.H.#4) — religious bodies have their members' natural faculty to spread truth or error, and the civic liberty if their society chooses to allow them to do so indiscriminately, but they have the moral right or liberty to spread the Catholic truth alone.

These are just four examples of the almost hopeless confusion pervading this Vatican II document, confusion between the natural faculty of freedom and the moral right of freedom. It is a confusion that easily fits into modern minds feeling the self-value and glory of man, but it will not fit into Catholic minds knowing man's entire relatedness to, and dependence on, God. Yet the mass of Catholic churchmen today are going along with this — in effect — declaration of independence from God!

"It is not, nor it cannot come to, good". To Vatican II making man's natural liberty into a right corresponds the man-centered New Mass; to the New Mass corresponds "Beavis and Butthead", that horrific MTV programme whose charming and well-spoken young creator apparently declared on a recent TV talk-show (David Letterman) that the idea for his nihilistic cartoon about two valueless boys came to him all in a flash when, in attendance at the Novus Ordo Mass, he heard a Beavis-style laugh from a youngster two pews behind him; and "Beavis and Butthead", mirror of valueless youth, is the death-knell tolling for a futureless society! Of course, give man the right to do as he likes, and in no time at all human society will become worse than a jungle!

Any reader of today's newspapers cannot fail to observe how fast that is happening around us. Man has put himself in the place of God, he claims natural liberty as a right, that right he has to grant — or he is proud of granting! — to youngsters who have none of the oldsters' residual common sense to restrain them from behaving worse than wild animals. As a result, everywhere the red lights are flashing dissolution and chaos, and the alarm bells are ringing off the wall, but will man put his liberty back underneath God? Never! Anything but that!

Catholic adults! Activate your supernatural faith and charity, recognize the absolute supremacy of God and his Divine Son, Jesus Christ, and the primacy of His one Catholic Church; recall that man by his nature alone is not only open to good or evil, but by the original sin in his nature more or less strongly inclines naturally to evil; so resolutely wash out of your own minds the last trace of confusion between the natural faculty of freedom and the moral right, and then, according to your circumstances, do all in your power to censor, curtail, limit and check the youngsters' misuse of their natural faculty, so that it will choose only that to which they have the moral right. They may not understand, and you may not be popular, but at least you will not have been a traitor to them, and by defying your country in its error, if it rests on religious liberty, you will have done all you can to save it from its ruin!

As usual at this time of year, the Seminary has available Christmas cards to send to your friends or loved ones whereby they will be included in the Christmas Novena of Masses starting on Christmas night at the Seminary's main altar.

May God have mercy upon us all, and make us slaves of that justice and servants of that truth which alone can set us truly free (Jn.VIII, 32).

Sincerely yours in Christ,

The need to shun religious fellowship even with 'conservative' Catholics

October 1, 1994

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

October, month of the Holy Rosary, and today some seminarians are taking part in a "National Rosary March" being organized locally in Winona. However, the Seminary will not be officially taking part. Interesting question — why not?

The problem is not what it might often be, namely some kind or other of naturalism, because the flyer announcing the Rosary March announces also its supernatural motivation: "...to save both America and the world, to obtain the conversion of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to establish the Reign of Christ the King, to obtain the conversion of all Americans to the Roman Catholic Faith, to restore the Traditional Family; and to perform public reparation for sin." It could be one of our own Society of St. Pius X Catholics who drew up such a programme.

Nor is the problem what again it could easily be, namely one of activism. True, the flyer begins a little disagreeably with the title "Calling all cowards", as though anyone not taking part in the March is faint-hearted or not willing to do something to defend their Faith. Nevertheless, "praying fifteen decades of the Rosary as we walk down the main streets of our towns" is primarily prayer, with little action as such, and with little indication of that spirit of revolt or anger which can, from a Catholic point of view, mar many otherwise apparently well-intentioned marches or parades.

Nor is the problem one of more pressing duties of state.. Indeed seminarians have an absolute duty to study and pray in isolation from the world for, normally, six years to prepare themselves to go back into the world as priests of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but mid-day Saturday they can easily take an early lunch, with minimal interruption of studies, and with fifteen decades of the Rosary said into the bargain.

Nor is the problem one of collaboration or involvement with the Novus Ordo, insofar as the March is being organized, says the flyer, by a group of lay people and surely any such layfolk who believe in public rosaries have the Catholic Faith. And if any Novus Ordo clergy are present and are - naturally enough - invited to take a lead, surely seminarians present can be diplomatic enough to let no action on their part deter any official clergy from taking part in a public Rosary March!

Then where is there a problem? Answer: seminarians being taught and learning to believe the fullness of Catholic doctrine are coming into possession of a treasure beyond price, that Faith without which it is impossible to please God and so to get to heaven. Now it is true that anybody taking part in a public Rosary March must have some Catholic Faith at least, and that all such people should benefit from contact with seminarians being armed with the fullness of Faith. However, the risk is that few such people may grasp the importance of the fullness of integral Catholic doctrine, and so the seminarians could be exposed to a kind of temptation of "TRADECUMENISM": let all of us who believe in the Rosary just get together, and all will be well; let all of us who love the Mother of God concentrate on the things that unite us and not dwell on the things that divide us, after all we are all Catholics, are we not?

That is how seminarians might be tempted to begin devaluing what makes the specific Mission and value of the Society of St. Pius X, namely its guarding the integrity of Catholic doctrine.

This importance of doctrine, on which follows the need for so-called Traditional Catholics to shun religious fellowship even with so-called conservative Catholics (except to make them see the error of their ways), is difficult for many people today, even Catholics, to understand.

Let us think for a moment. A Catholic is a Catholic (i.e. much better placed to get to Heaven than if he were not a Catholic) not by his sex, age, intelligence, or any such thing, but by what he believes, meaning not what he makes up in his own mind, but by what he knows to be true in matters of God.

Thus a Catholic knows firstly that one God exists, and that to associate with atheists on the supposed common ground of benevolence to mankind, while excluding God, is to live a lie and a blasphemy - because anything good at all in man comes only from God. Secondly he knows that God once (only once) took flesh and became man, the God-man Jesus Christ, and that to associate with other religions on the basis of a supposed common belief in God, excluding Jesus Christ, is to live a lie and a blasphemy against the goodness of God who took infinite pain to come down to earth for us men and for our salvation. Thirdly the Catholic knows that Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, came down amongst us not only once in the Incarnation but also every time Mass is validly celebrated, in the mystery of the Real Presence, and that to associate with other "Christians" on the grounds of a supposed common belief in Christ, is to associate in a lie if these "Christians" insult God (at least objectively) by their refusal of the doctrine of the Real Presence.

These are three classic examples, what one might call the first three classic stages, of the principle whereby to refuse Catholic doctrine is to insult God. Thus he who denies the Real Presence, for instance, gravely under-estimates the true love of God. Alas, many Catholics today do not understand this primacy of doctrine, which is a primacy of divine reality, because they put man and his fellowship in front of the interests of God.

However, let us suppose the principle is understood, at least in theory. Then since Vatican II we may say the principle has been carried at least two stages further forward in practice:-

Fourthly, a Catholics knows (but not by authority - there is the problem!) that the Second Vatican Council departed from Tradition, and that to associate indiscriminately with Novus Ordo "Catholics" on the basis of a supposed common "Catholicism" is to associate in a lie and a blasphemy if these "Catholics" insult God (at least objectively) by trampling on Catholic Tradition.

Fifthly, a Catholic knows (this is even more controversial, but, day by day, events prove Archbishop Lefebvre to have been right) that the "conservatives" who put themselves back under Rome around or after the fateful Consecrations of June, 1988, also thereby departed from Tradition, and that to associate in friendship or solidarity with them is implicitly to betray the Catholic Faith by saying in actions if not in words that the Faith is something that today's Roman Protestants are capable of guarding - for who protects a child by throwing him amongst thieves? So whoever does throw a child amongst thieves, what value does he put on the child? And if he thinks thieves are not thieves, what is his judgment worth? And if he pretends they are not thieves, what is his honesty worth? In any case the child is ruined.

Dear friends, this letter has often (and recently) taken us "Traditionalists" to task for our laziness, complacency, vanity, hypocrisy, all the sins in the book! For, subjectively, we are all of us poor sinners, and we are liars if we deny it (I Jn I,8). Objectively however, we are carriers of glorious Tradition, the fullness of Catholic Truth. Our own misery as carriers makes no less glorious the Truth we carry, indeed the more lowly we may (must) think of ourselves, the more highly by contrast we should uphold the Truth.

In that case the seminarians may go down the hill to join with all other devotees of the Rosary and of the Mother of God, and they may mix with there to do them all the good they can, but the greatest good they can do them - always with all due prudence - is to give them to understand that, fourthly the Novus Ordo, and fifthly its "conservative" branch, are: not adequate ways to honour the Mother of God or to serve her Divine Son.

"With the Rosary and the Scapular one day I will save the world", said the Mother of God to St. Dominic. If anyone wishes for an audio tape of the Rosary to help them pray at home, the 15-decade Rosary with the Litany of Our Lady has been recorded by the Society of St. Pius X in Ontario - write - with the number of tapes required ($10 each) to Queen of the Holy Rosary, P.O. Box 44538, Scarborough, Ontario MlK 5K3, Canada.

For details of three Traditional Catholic Pilgrimages led by Society priests next May, June and July from New York, two to Italy and one to the Holy Land, contact Mr. and Mrs. Robert di Cecco at 114 Paugussett Circle, Trumbull, CT 06611, Tel (203) 261-1133.

For departed souls dear to you, put names on the enclosed cards and send them to us to be put once a month on the Seminary's altar for inclusion in a Requiem Mass, but please make any accompanying donation (not necessary) quite clearly distinct from any stipend for any other Masses to be said.

Lastly, if you have missed the Seminary letter for July, August and September, and if you are sorry to have missed it, this is the last time we are using the old unslimmed mailing-list, so if you do not wish to be a victim of our dieting, if you wish to be kept on the Seminary's mailing-list, you must now drop us a line.

Pray the Rosary through October. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Bernard Fellay, new Superior General of Society; Dominicans

August12, 1994

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

After July's letter which discouraged some of you with the reminder that members of the Society of St Pius X are only human (St Phillip Neri used to pray to Our Lord, "Lord,, beware of me, I could turn Turk this afternoon!"), nobody will mind an August letter bringing some good news.

The most important good news is that thanks to your prayers and sacrifices, the Society of St. Pius X has a new Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, elected by the Society's General Chapter in Switzerland on July 11 for a term of 12 years, until the year 2006.

Not that this General Chapter disowned the previous Superior General, Fr. Franz Schmidberger, who served from 1982 to 1994; on the contrary by electing him First Assistant, the General Chapter chose to place him alongside the new Superior General, an unusual move, but certainly proving the desire of the General Chapter for continuity in the guidance of the Society.

Rather, as Bishop Fellay explains in the enclosed (summarized) Press Conference he gave on July 15, the regulations of Mother Church and her practice for congregations like the Society of St Pius X definitely indicate that a superiorate of 24 years — a quarter of a century— is to be the exception rather than the rule, and so the General Chapter, by changing the Superior General, aligned itself on the wisdom of Mother Church.

Some people may object that back in 1988 one reason for Archbishop Lefebvre's not consecrating Fr. Schmidberger as a bishop was that the Archbishop then said that the Society's Superior General should not be a bishop, so why now has the General Chapter elected a bishop?

The answer is that circumstances have changed since 1988. At that time contacts and negotiations with Rome had only recently come to a halt, just before the episcopal consecrations in fact, so if it seemed possible that negotiations might re-start, it also seemed wise not to obstruct them by having them headed up on the Society's side by a bishop that Rome might have felt obliged to punish in the meantime (Sure enough, Rome "excommunicated" the bishops).

However, since 1988, negotiations with Rome have not yet re-opened, because the Society has refused to abandon the old religion, and Rome has refused to abandon the new religion, and no amount of diplomacy or subjective good will on either side can bridge the widening objective gulf between the two religions. In this situation the Society no longer felt obliged to spare the susceptibilities of Rome, so if the best man it had was one of those "excommunicated" in 1988, it felt free to elect him, which is what happened.

But does that mean that by no longer caring what Rome thinks, and by choosing a bishop for leader, the Society is setting up a parallel church after all?

By no means! Re-read the July letter. Aside from and apart from the Catholic Church, the Society of St Pius X is nothing. Therefore what the churchmen in Rome think, is of great importance, but if they insist upon plunging deeper and deeper into apostasy, the Society must take its own steps to defend the Faith, which includes electing the best man it has for Superior General, whether he is "excommunicated" or not.

But does not the choice of a bishop indicate a drift of the Society towards setting up a schismatic church? No, read Bishop Fellay's Press Conference, where he speaks of his authority as bishop and as Superior General. His authority as bishop he describes as being a delicate and unusual authority coming from the Catholic Church, for our special circumstances, but certainly not an authority over a new church. His authority as Superior General he describes as being exactly that of his predecessor, no more, no less, namely an authority confined to directing members of the Society, again, no authority to set up a new church.

So even added together these two authorities do not add up to an intention of schism on the part of the Society or of Bishop Fellay. Back in 1988 the Society was similarly accused of beading for schism, but surely no fair-minded observer can point to anything that has happened in the Society over the last six years to justify that accusation. Why then over the next six years? As Bishop Fellay says, the General Chapter manifested a clear desire on the part of Society leaders for the Society to continue along exactly the lines laid down by Archbishop Lefebvre. In brief, thank you for all your prayers for the General Chapter.

The weather at Ecône for that week was unusually warm, and the warm weather continued at least until the end of July. For the last week in July, I found myself at Fanjeaux in the South of France, giving the annual retreat to the Dominican teaching Sisters at their Mother House. Besides the girl's school in Post Falls, Idaho, these Sisters operate a series of schools all over France, but for the annual retreat they all gather together once a year in Fanjeaux, this year over one hundred of them. They much edified me.

I cannot remember in the United States having seen many fields of sun-flowers, but in that part of the world they are common. In the summer across a whole field these huge flowers quietly stand, all lifting their bright faces in one direction, making a sea of yellow. Now the Dominican Sisters are dressed in black and white, but as one hundred of them sat in front of me with their radiant faces all turned in the same direction, I could not help thinking — as I told them! — of the fields of sun-flowers all around their convent.

Ah, girls, are you wondering what to do in life? If you want to be happy, throw away home, marriage, husband and family for Our Lord's sake, and as He promises in the Gospel, He will give you one hundred-fold in this life and eternal happiness in the next. In Idaho and in France, the Dominican Sisters are doing marvelous work teaching girls how to do God's will in a difficult world. Several American girls have gone to Fanjeaux, and a number are now back in Idaho. They have emptied themselves out, and Our Lord has filled them full — there is the fulfillment that girls look for, alas, in every other direction! 0 Lord, grant us many maidens to try a religious vocation!

How his children need his teaching Sisters! And how his Dominican Sisters in Idaho need help to build the new school for all the girls coming to them! Contributions to Dominican Sisters, 5450 West Riverview Drive, Post Falls, ID 83854. They only need some half a million dollars! God bless them, and you!

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Ordinations; will SSPX remain faithful?

July 1, 1994

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

Another splendid ceremony of Ordinations at Winona last week gave seven new priests to Mother Church, four of whom were from the United States, and four of whom (not quite the same four) will be staying to serve in the United States. One of the Americans, Fr. Thomas Blute, is being posted to the Society's Seminary in Australia, while an Englishman, already working at District HQ in the U.S.A., Fr. Helmuts Libietis, will stay there. Mother Church rises above all nationalism, but by so doing is the creator of Christian nations!

A picture story of the ceremony will come to you as usual with next month's "Verbum". The weather was beautiful, in contrast to last year when Minnesota in late June nearly froze us! In fact this year some of our visitors were so warm that I had to reassure them that I had plenty of cool fans in the Seminary, but I regret to say that the visitors knew that those fans blow only hot air.

Be that as it may, the new priests, six for the Society of St. Pius X, one for the Traditional Dominicans in Avrillé, France, are, as always, an immense gift of God. To Him goes our primary gratitude. Where would we be without priests? - Padre Pio said the world could more easily do without the sun than do without the Mass. But our gratitude also goes each year to the seminarians who work hard and well to put the ceremony together for the greater glory of God. For all such gifts it is wise for us to be grateful, especially in a darkening world:

"How far that little candle throws his beams,
So shines a good deed in a naughty world" (Merchant of Venice).

As the world around us grows more and more naughty, with the devil being given, as a punishment for our naughtiness, more and more power to shut down whatever is true, just, holy, of good report, so candles of goodness, without in themselves increasing in power or light, nevertheless stand out more and more, and we should be correspondingly more grateful for their survival. Who can tell how soon they may be extinguished?

Thus when Catholics attending a true Mass run into any of the difficulties surrounding its celebration, they can become impatient, for instance, at lack of unity amongst all the priests celebrating the true Mass. Such impatience may be justified, at least in past, but would not such Catholics be wiser today to be grateful for any and every single true Mass celebrated? We may not yet be in those days when the sacrifice is going to be taken away (Dan 8:11), but if things continue on their present course, those days may soon be here, and then with what longing may those Catholics not look back on a single one of those back-room Masses said in however unfavorable circumstances?

It is called being grateful for small mercies, or, counting one's blessings. Similarly wise, in my opinion, is anybody who does not pin too great hopes on the future of the Society of St. Pius X. Through it no doubt immense gifts and graces have come to many of us in the past and are still coming in the present, but nothing gives us the right to count on their continuation in the future. On the contrary, according to all normal expectations, the more powerful the current of apostasy sweeping downstream Church and world to their perdition, the more irresistible the current becomes, and the more likely it is that the still resisting Society will be swept away as well.

Please, these lines are being written before the Society's General Chapter of July 11 to 14, so they have nothing to do with any particular decision that will be taken there. They are based on entirely general considerations, for instance that every Catholic group or organization has a structure of authority, which authority must ultimately derive from the Vicar of Christ, the Pope. When therefore the Pope repudiates a Catholic organization, as Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have effectively repudiated the Society of St. Pius X, then that organization is submitted to a severe strain ....

Here is another dark thought: in the 1950's the Catholic Church was holding out magnificently against the world, conversions were multiplying, the intellectuals were rejecting Communism, the whole world seemed ready to lie down at the feet of the Church, and what happened? In the 1960's it was the Church which at Vatican Two collapsed at the feet of the world! Today the Society of St. Pius X is holding out magnificently against the false church, intellectuals are rejecting the Novus Ordo, conversions to Tradition are beginning .... Let us beware of that moment when all the church seems about to lay down arms at the feet of the Society! Exile is painful, the combat is wearisome, the world has its attractions ....

Now — brighter thoughts! — of course God is God, God is the Lord of Life and death, God can preserve or destroy what He will, God will never abandon His Catholic Church nor leave His sheep without shepherd, so He can easily provide Society members with special graces to ensure the Society's survival until such time as He inspires a Pope not only to give the surviving Society his approval, but also maybe to lean on the Society for support in reconstructing the Church.

Such a scenario is intrinsically possible, even, without any vanity on our part, plausible. For instance Rome no doubt relied on Archbishop Lefebvre's death in 1991 to provoke the disintegration of the Society, but for over three years Rome has been disappointed. Similarly, right now Rome must be hoping that the General Chapter will sow germs of division or disunity between Society members, but you readers have been praying, and the Lord God can all the more easily grant special graces of unity if true fidelity to Himself was the original reason — and it was — for the Papal disapproval putting that unity under strain in the first place.

Nevertheless, while the scenario of special graces of survival for the Society until the recovery of the Pope, is a scenario possible and even plausible, it is neither necessary nor certain, and that is why we need to be wisely grateful. For instance, humanly speaking, it is wholly possible that the devil of discord or even the maneuvers of Rome will get in amongst Society members — Rome is still eagerly angling for individual defections of Society priests. Now may Heaven prevent that any of us should through any fault of his own cause or promote such discord, but regardless of our good will, the pressures are intense, the confusion is great, temptations are multiple, the devil is cunning and human nature by itself remains weak.

So the possibility of the Society stumbling and falling before such time as God brings the Pope back to his Catholic senses remains a possibility which must be kept in mind. What it amounts to is no more than what any Catholic should know: in the Catholic Church itself I have an absolute, faith, hope and trust, because the Catholic Church enjoys Our Lord's own guarantee of survival and protection ("Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Mt XVI, 18); "Going, teach all nations... and behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world" (Mt. XXVIII, 20)). But in all other institutions I have only a relative faith, hope and trust, relative to their fidelity to the Catholic Church, because within that church there are many institutions like the Society of St. Pius X that have come with time, and with time have gone. Upon the Catholic Church I absolutely depend to save my soul, upon the Society of St. Pius X only relatively. So for as long as the Society seems to be the instrument God has given me to serve the Church, I mean to serve the Society with all my heart and soul, but the Society remains in relation to the Church a means to an end.

That is why for each ceremony of ordinations like those of a week ago I am immensely grateful, and for each month that the Seminary can continue to prepare young men to be ordained, and for each year that the Society of St. Pius X is still there to sustain its seminaries, and yet if any or all of these gifts from God were to crack or perish, I would not be entirely surprised nor would my Catholic Faith be weakened. At the beginning of the Church Militant Jesus Christ led his followers through the catacombs and persecution out into the open, and at the end of the Church Militant He may well lead them from the tent in the open field through persecution back to the catacombs. If it comes to that, and if we make it to the catacombs, for many of us it will certainly not have been without the Society but back in the catacombs we may have to do without the Society.

Ah, dear Society! Dear Seminary! Dear seminarians? Regularly I tell them that as Society of St. Pius X seminarians they are on a hiding to nothing, that they have everything to lose and nothing to gain; that the whole world is against them; that the whole world is going to hell in a hand-basket; that the Society of St. Pius X could easily perish; that the future is dark and where there is no gloom it is full of doom. Do you know, I do believe that if any of my dire forebodings actually came true, seminarians would be pleasantly surprised!

Dear friends, the summer is passing by, but you may still be able to make use of the second Doctrinal Session this summer here at the Seminary for men of all ages, from August 30 to September 3. The first Session held just this week was a great success. Testimonials enclosed. Wives, if you wish you could attend, send your husbands to drink in the strong black coffee of doctrine, and when they get home, draw it out of them by dipping yourselves in like a sweet sugar cube!

May you have happy summer months, recreating mind and body, with no offense to God and with good example to neighbor.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

The importance of the SSPX General Chapter in July '94

June 7, 1994

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

As many of you already know, from July 11 to 13 next month is due to take place in Ecône, Switzerland, the General Chapter of the Society of St. Pius X. This is an important meeting of some forty representative members of the Society from all over the world, held every twelve years to elect the Society's main officers, including its Superior General for the next twelve years, and to deliberate on Society policy and affairs.

It is called a Chapter because in the Middle Ages the monks in a monastery would meet regularly to hear a chapter or small section of their Rule being read to them, so the word "chapter" came to be transferred from the section of the Rule, to the reading of the section, to the meeting of the monks to hear the reading, to any assembly of the members of a religious congregation to consult on their affairs. It is called General when they consult on affairs of their Society as a whole, and not just part of it.

There is no need to say how important such an event is in the life of the Society, and so we beg the prayers of all our friends for the occasion. "The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever He will He shall turn it," says Scripture (Prov. XXI, l), and the hearts of forty electors are likewise in God's hand to move which way He will. If He holds back from moving them, they will make human choices, as did the bishops assembled in the Second Vatican Council. If on the other hand God steps in to move the human hearts, they will make choices pleasing to Him, as did the bishops of the First Vatican Council, in 1870. What made the difference? Why did God step in the one case and not in the other? No doubt to a great extent because of the prayers of the people.

Hence the need for our friends to pray for the Society's General Chapter, and hence the enclosed prayer card with a picture of Archbishop Lefebvre and Fr. Barrielle, taken at the end of a thirty-day Retreat of Society members in the 1970's, and with on the other side three prayers slightly adapted from the Roman Missal. A novena prior to the General Chapter would run from Saturday July 2 to Sunday July 10 inclusive.

Mother Church is used to praying for such occasions because she knows that it is God who plays the decisive part. Even in an organization where the leader is designated by popular vote, still his authority and the use he makes of his authority come from above. Scripture again (Prov. VIII, 14-16): "Counsel and equity is mine, prudence is mine, strength is mine. By me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things, by me princes rule, and the mighty decree justice." The influence of leaders over the people they lead is decisive, and the influence for good over the leaders must come from God. That is why when a people prays to Him, He will give them good leaders, but when they turn their backs on Him, He punishes them by letting them have leaders of their own choice, who will lead them to perdition. People cannot lead their leaders, which is why we must pray to God for leaders to lead well.

Take for instance the aftermath of Vatican II. How many faithful Catholics in distress attempted, and are still attempting, to hold their clergy back from the ruinous reforms! Largely in vain. The priests hold from God their sublime authority, and if they are determined to misuse it, there is little the people can do. God could force the free will of His priests, but that is not His way. Is then God without means to intervene, or are the people without recourse? Of course not.

If the people pray in their distress, then God can convert a few of His misleading ministers, and from the rest He can without any injustice can hold back the gift of His grace, whereupon left to their own devices they fall further and further away from Him, until numbers of them quit their religious calling and lose their priesthood or sisterhood altogether, as we have seen since Vatican II, at which point they lose their authority and most of their power to harm the people. And if the people continue to pray in their distress, then God as a free gift can grant them a new generation of priests to replace those fallen away, and these priests He is liable to form from the most surprising material, e.g., fishermen in the case of Our Lord, in order to demonstrate that it is His work and not a work of human hands. Thus God turned His back on the Pharisees, and built from scratch His Apostles.

Here is exactly the story of the Society of St. Pius X, and it is extraordinary to watch the timing! As the Catholic priesthood was being decimated in the aftermath of Vatican II, Archbishop Lefebvre had just enough help from older priests to be able to found a Seminary and a Society to form again true priests on the old model, but by 1977, with a few notable exceptions like Fr. Barrielle, those older priests could not stand the heat of disapproval from Rome, and they left the Archbishop. However, by 1977 the Archbishop had just enough help from his own young priests from within his Society to be able to staff his Seminary in Ecône and to continue the Society's apostolate. The relief arrived in the nick of time!

Since 1977, those juveniles of the Archbishop have all been growing older regularly at a rate of one year every 365 days, so there is some senility creeping even into the Society priesthood! Nevertheless, for those who have eyes to see, it is God and God alone who has raised up this new flowering of the true priesthood in the 1970's, 80's and 90's. He has turned His back on the pharisees of neo-modernism, and He has rebuilt priests virtually from scratch.

The moral of the tale is clear. The fortunes of the Society depend to a large extent upon the prayers of the people. As Catholics appreciate or fail to appreciate what God gives them, so the Society will rise or fall. If then you have any love of anything God has given you through the senilizing juveniles of the Society of St. Pius X, pray for their deliberations and decisions at this General Chapter, which must be a keystone of the Society's future. And may God repay you for the alms of your prayers!

The good news in this connection is that as I have been circulating at this time of year amongst several of the Society's major centres in the United States to give Confirmation, I have been finding everywhere a warm response to the Society's efforts. Our numbers are not growing by leaps and bounds, but all over there are courageous young parents ready to trust God, with children, children, children, so there is certainly a future! There is also quality, insofar as Catholics seem to be learning to trust the Society when it tells them how far liberalism has eaten into their way of life, how far they must repudiate the modern world and its false ideals. This quality of real conversion is what we must look for, and then the quantity or numbers will look after themselves, in God's good time.

The bad news is that the official Church is even accelerating in its downhill plunge. Towards the beginning of last month the Consistory of Cardinals in Rome was due to consider with the Pope a document newly issuing from the Vatican Secretariat of State projecting ways to celebrate the Jubilee Millennial year of 2,000. The Pope then broke his hip and the Consistory was at least delayed, but the projects are no less hair-raising from a Catholic point of view, for instance another major ecumenical meeting of Christians, Jews and Mohammedans, this time on Mount Sinai!

The idea is to bring together the three religions that acknowledge Abraham as their ancestor, but in what sense, for instance, are the Jews of today's Synagogue the descendants of Abraham? Talmudic Jews are the spiritual descendants of the Pharisees, to whom already in his own day Our Lord had to say, "If you be the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham" (Jn. VIII, 39). Jews who reject Jesus Christ reject thereby Abraham, yet here are Christ's own Vicar and many Cardinals apparently ready to pretend they are friends of Abraham! On the mountain of the Ten Commandments the one true God, Lord God of Hosts, three in one and one in three, struck holy terror into the hearts of His people (Exodus XIX, XX). Just how much further will He allow Himself to be mocked by His own ministers?

Lord, have mercy upon Thy Pope and upon Thy Catholic Church and preserve it from corruption! We thank Thee for the immense gift to us of Thy servant Marcel Lefebvre. We beg Thee to guide the deliberations and counsels of the Society he founded.

After the priestly ordinations at Winona on June 25, there are still places on the Doctrinal Sessions (June 28 to July 2 and August 30 to September 3), on the Music Workshop (July 19-24) and on the Men's Retreat (July 25-30), only the Women's Retreat (July 11-16) is fully booked. Make use of these opportunities. Your response to God's gifts is the surest way to ensure their continuance.

With all good wishes, and thanks for your support,

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Veritatis Splendor and two notions of human dignity and human liberty

May 1, 1994

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

When I gave in lecture form in the Argentine two months ago the letter that you read on the pope's latest Encyclical, "The Splendor of Truth", I was advised that an introductory explanation might help. Let me offer you part of that explanation now, because it goes to the heart of much of the confusion in Catholics' minds today.

This confusion arises from mixing up two quite different notions of human dignity, and then two quite different notions of human liberty. Let us start with the two notions of human dignity, which are somewhat easier to disentangle.

Take for example a wine-bottle. What is the value or worth of a wine-bottle? Answer, thrat depends on whether it is empty, or full. Empty, maybe 10 cents. Full, maybe 10 dollars, one may use the same word, "value" or "worth", for when the bottle is empty or full, but there is no comparison between the empty value and the full value, and if one was to confuse the two by trying to sell an empty bottle as though it was full, one would have some angry customers, even if the glass, cork and label of the empty battle were as handsome as could be! In fact the real value of the empty bottle is only its potential one day to be full, and if like most wine-bottles it will only be filled once, then once it has been emptied it is thrown away as worthless. Thus when it comes to a wine-bottle, nobody dreams of confusing its merely potential worth when empty, and its actual worth when full of wine.

However, when it comes to a human being, plenty of people confuse his merely potential worth or dignity when empty, and his actual worth or dignity when full. This is because by loss of faith they have lost grip on the supernatural wine in question, sanctifying grace, and on its value infinitely higher than that of the whole order of mere nature. A Catholic knows by his faith that sanctifying grace is a partaking in God Himself„ such that he is here on earth merely to fill his nature-with as much of that grace as possible by the time he dies. He knows that if at death he goes before his Maker with his natural soul empty of supernatural grace, then however handsome he may have made his soul’s merely natural accomplishments and adornments, like so many labels on the bottle, his Maker will nevertheless be so angry as to throw him away as worthless into the eternal fires of Hell. The natural dignity of a man, or the dignity of his nature merely potential with regard to its being filled with supernatural grace, is as nothing compared with his supernatural or actual dignity when his nature actually contains that grace.

For as the bottle is for wine, so creation is for the Creator, so nature is for grace. True, as the bottle is of great value to carry the wine, so the order of nature and a human nature are indispensable for a man to receive grace in. Nevertheless, as no wine-lover in his right mind glorifies bottles in themselves, so nobody who understands what man is for glorifies his merely natural or potential dignity, or glorifies man in himself.

The problem with the modern world is that by loss of faith in God and in his sanctifying grace, or by its positively turning away from them, the modern world has lost all sense of the full or supernatural or actual dignity of man, and so it glorifies his merely potential dignity as though it were actual or full human dignity. Like glorifying empty bottles. In other words man is the supreme value in himself, by his mere nature. Forget about wine, forget about God. Merely by having human nature, I have the supreme dignity! Glorious glass! What does wine matter? Glorious man! What does grace matter?

This — to a Catholic mind — insanity is the implicit teaching of Vatican II. Its Declaration on Religious Liberty in its opening sentence (picked up in Veritatis Splendor, #31) bases what will be its demand for religious liberty on human dignity, not an man's actual. dignity when he is filled with God, but on his potential dignity which he has merely by being man. That the Declaration does here (#1) mean the potential dignity is clear a little later on when the Declaration (#2) says that even when man refuses the truth, he still retains (the dignity that founds) his right to religious liberty. In other words glass is so glorious that the wine-bottle has a right to remain empty!

Again, to be able to drink wine does presuppose a bottle or its equivalent, but that does not mean that the glass has the glory of the wine! Once there is no more wine, the glass is trashed. Empty of grace at death, a soul, however naturally dignified, is flung into Hell. This is because as the bottle's real glory is not to be glass but to be capable of holding wine, so human nature's real dignity lies in its potential for containing (knowing and loving) God, a potential which however glorious in itself ("O, what a piece of work is man," says Hamlet), is nevertheless nothing in comparison with the glory and actual dignity of a man actually knowing and loving God.

But now read Vatican II quotable in such a way, and "Veritatis Splendor" so quoting it (Gaudium et Spes #17, V.S. #42), as to blur and confuse man's potential and actual dignities:— "Human dignity requires man to act through conscious and free choice, as motivated and prompted personally from within, and not through blind internal impulse or merely external pressure. Man achieves such dignity when he frees himself from subservience to his feelings, and in a free choice of the good, pursues his own end by effectively and assiduously marshalling the appropriate means". The dignity in the first of these two sentences is the natural or potential dignity of man's nature having free will, or the ability to choose freely and not out of instinct or constraint. The dignity in the second of these sentences is the actual dignity that man acquires when he makes a good use of that faculty of free will. These two dignities are quite different realities from one another, even if the second presupposes the first, as wine at table presupposes a bottle. But by the word "such" at the beginning of the second sentence, Vatican II equates the two dignities, which amounts to trashing not the bottle but the wine! This same glorifying of nature to the level of grace, or abasing of grace to the level of nature, this naturalism, is embedded in Vatican II and "Veritatis Splendor", and what it means is the raising of man to the level of God, humanism, or the abasing of God to the level of man, atheism, or both, i.e. atheistic or secular humanism. Dear Lord, have mercy upon us! Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners that your Son's sanctifying grace be found in our souls now and in the hour of our death!

Exactly parallel to the confusion between the two dignities of man is the confusion between his two liberties: on the one hand his natural or potential liberty, or faculty of free will, intrinsic to his rational nature and inalienable from it; on the other hand his moral or actual liberty, or right use of his free will, not intrinsic to his nature but alienable from it by the choosing of any sin. Catholics glorify the second liberty which presupposes the first, but liberals glorify the first liberty regardless of the second, and liberal Catholics by blurring together and confusing the two make themselves much more liberal than they are Catholic.

This confusion between natural and moral liberty, between the faculty and its right use, between free will and "the liberty of the glory of the sons of God" (Rom. VIII,21), is so common and so damaging that it deserves a letter to itself. For instance that liberty which is inalienable, free will, is not a right but a faculty, whereas that liberty which is a right, Christian liberty, is, alas, alienable by sin until the moment we die. Hence to talk of liberty as an "inalienable right" is confusing nonsense, but there is no space left to go into that here.

However, a correct understanding of liberty will be a major part of the two Doctrinal Sessions due to be held this summer at Winona, from June 28 to July 2 and from August 30 to September 3. Participants will be sent one month ahead a small packet to read beforehand, mainly great papal encyclicals refuting modern errors, but also for instance the terrible Vatican II Declaration on Religious Liberty which so hopelessly confuses the two dignities and the two liberties. Sign up, if you wish for a real chance to clear up some confusion.

And also, if you have not already done so, make sure that you let us know if you wish to continue receiving the Seminary newsletter and "Verbum". Otherwise you risk being dropped from our mailing list. Thank you always for your steady and faithful support of the Seminary. You should have six new priests ordained at Winona on June 25, God willing.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+Richard Williamson

Society of St. Pius X is advancing and consolidating in Latin America

April 2, 1994

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

Good news from the Argentine — the Society of St. Pius X is advancing and consolidating in Latin America. Progress is not spectacular, any more than it is anywhere else, but it is re-assuring: the pilot light looks like staying lit, there as elsewhere, until the gas is turned on again.

At the invitation of the Society's District Superior for Latin America (except Mexico), Fr. Xavier Beauvais, and of the Rector of the Society's Latin American Seminary, Fr. Dominique Lagneau, both based in or near Buenos Aires, capital of perhaps the most Catholic country in Latin America, the Argentine, I was down there from the end of February to the middle of March.

By the end of this February in the American Midwest, I was saying to myself, I am getting too old for these winters, indeed to get to Miami I had to re-route round Chicago, socked in by a major snow-storm, However, having fled to the southern hemisphere, where of course everything is upside down but at least they have summer while winter is going on up here, I ran into what were apparently two of the hottest weeks of the Argentine's summer, and I found myself saying, I am getting too old to take the heat. No comment!

Firstly there was a retreat for the priests of the Latin American District, about twenty in number, most of them based in the Argentine, but two on the other side of the Andes in Chile, and three in the far north of the South American Continent, in Columbia. These last three priests are immensely isolated. Air travel is available between all these countries, but it is rather more expensive than within the United States, and our faithful in Latin America are not rich. However, I knew that Winona's benefactors would not mind helping to sustain some isolated Society priests, so the visiting bishop helped out with some airfares. On the priests' behalf, thank you. I know they were happy to be back for a week amongst old friends and colleagues at the Seminary in La Reja which is their "alma mater," or "motherly mother," in the priesthood.

There followed a week's retreat for the old and new seminarians at the seminary, to mark their late summer beginning of the new school year. Thanks to an intensive programme of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius being given in various locations in Latin America by Society priests over the last few summers, priestly vocations have risen so that there are now more than thirty seminarians and five brothers at La Reja, eleven seminarians entering this year. This is no small consolation to the La Reja Seminary priests who went through some lean times following on the Argentine's intra-Society explosion of 1989, when the former Rector marched out at the head of nineteen seminarians! One hopes that the continued preaching of the Ignatian Exercises will maintain the present rate of new vocations, but one must be under no illusions - everything in today's world conspires more and more against Catholic vocations, against youngsters even thinking of giving their lives to God.

What a shame! Little do the youngsters know what happiness they miss. Pyre Barrielle back in Ecône used to quote the old French saying, "If you want to be happy for three hours, get drunk; if you want to be happy for a month, get married; but if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, get ordained a priest." Several married men have told me the "months" should be replaced by "weeks" (Oops! No male chauvinism around here! I am sure married women say the same thing!). However, that is not how it looks to youngsters today. Actually, by their instability and immaturity, many of them are as unfit to get married as they are to get ordained. And whose fault is that? The liberal adults who by their liberalism pretend that one need never endure unpleasantness nor take any consequences — all crosses are to be rejected because nobody has the right to make me suffer. Yet "In suffering is learning," said the ancient Greek poet, Aeschylus. In suffering is maturing. In the Cross is our salvation, our only salvation. Poor youngsters! How will they learn? How will they mature?

For there to catch a glimpse of a different way of life, bring them to the priestly ordinations at Winona this year. Flyer enclosed. Here are extracts from the letter of a non-Society layman written after attending last year's ordinations:

"I finally found a few minutes to set my thoughts to paper regarding the June 19 ordinations... I must tell you that I and many thousands of other traditionalist Catholics agree with and support the positions of the Society - the only impediment to total acceptance for many is the fact that the Holy Father is not 'officially' in the picture. Nevertheless, I saw nothing at the ordinations that indicated that the Society does not recognize the Pope — in fact, I could see nothing of the schismatic attitudes that the mainline Church's powers-that-be keep talking about, and the sermon confirmed those conclusions.

"What I did" see was surprising in many ways. I shall begin with the ceremonies.

"I am still in awe of the magnificent solemnity of what I saw in that tent. I cannot understand how the `mainline' church could trash such beautiful tradition in favor of the banalities that dominate the modernist liturgical worship in the Church today. It has become increasingly more difficult for me to accept the validity of much of the `new' liturgy, and my experience on a foggy Saturday in June at Winona has made it still more so. I saw the Mass again celebrated as it should be, and it was wonderful.

"As 1 knelt on my slicker, I chanced to observe the people around me, and I was immediately impressed by the following:

1. The numbers present. I reckoned the head count to have totaled between 550 to 700, in spite of the weather.

2. They were there to worship God, not each other. The reverence and respect for what was going on was reflected in the actions and faces of all, including the children. What a relief to be free of the howdy-and-shake fiasco!

3. The large number of teenagers and young adults, and the exemplary way in which they conducted themselves. It was so good to see beautiful young women adorned with embroidered veils on their heads and flowing long dresses, and young men who looked and acted like gentlemen.

4. The large number of wives in their late 30's and into their 40's that had children under 2 or 3 years old. I was seated in the back in a row where there were 2 or 3 women whom I judged to be near the end of their child-bearing days who nevertheless had beautiful, healthy small children who were well behaved and distinct pleasure to `be in church with.'

5. The international flavor and variety of those present. After the ceremonies, I `met and mingled' with some who came from `countries far.' One old woman aged over 80 years, came all the way from Winnipeg; she has been coming to the ordinations since the first, and `If God is willing, I will be coming again next jahr!'

"I could go on, but I must keep this letter of reasonable length. Suffice it to say in a single sentence: I am glad that I came to see."

Confirmations this year in Lauzon (Quebec) April 22; Atlanta, GA, May 1; Post Falls, ID, May 8; Colton, CA, May 14; Sacramento, CA, May 15; San Antonio, TX, May 21; Dickinson and Sanger, TX, May 22; St. Mary's, KS, May 27; Richmond, VA, May 29; Pittsburgh, PA, June 4; Buffalo, NY, June 5; El Paso, TX, June 12; Armada and Mancelona, MI, June 19.

We will pray for good weather here on June 25, when Bishop Fellay will perform the ordinations, and. we will pray for vocations, many vocations, many good vocations, from amongst the gracious young ladies and the gallant young gentlemen observed here by our visitor last year!

Sincerely yours in Christ,