SSPX Asia newsletter: July

A major document of the last months which may have passed too unnoticed, is a lecture by Cardinal Walter Kasper, in England, last spring, and published in The Tablet of May 24^th, 2003. In this key lecture, the Cardinal goes at great length to explain that the ultimate goal of the Church is nothing else than to unite all men, at any cost, at all cost. Everything in the Church must bow to this goal of the Unity of Mankind: the Creed, the Sacraments, the Papacy.

Of course, the principle of noncontradiction (a thing is what it is and not something else, a spade is a spade and not a horse) is unknown to these agents of the One World Church, as St Pius X already called them in Our Apostolic Mandate (1910). Words have lost their meaning with these people. Also, notice carefully how they often affirm something and proceed to deny it at the same time (a little like Martin Luther who rejected the Papacy as an invention of the devil, but then became a 'super-pope' himself, not tolerating any opposition to his teaching!)

The Creed: "This concept of pluriformity within unity", says the Cardinal, "has consequences for our ecumenical vision. Firstly it has consequences on our understanding of unity in faith. To confess the same faith does not necessarily mean to confess the same credal formula."

In other simple words: to confess the same faith does not means to believe in the same faith, or to have the same faith. Words no longer matters when we speak of faith. As Bishop Williamson would put it, I believe that 2+2=4, and you believe that 2+2=5, so we both believe in something, so we both have faith, so we agree, we are united in our faith... So says the Cardinal: "we acknowledge our unity in faith, a unity in a pluriformity of expressions."

He gives then an application of this in the famous Joint Declaration on Justification with the Lutheran: "While unresolved problems remain at issue, no Church dividing difference any longer exists with regard to the question of justification. Hence, prior existing divisive contradictions were transformed and reconciled in complementary assertions, expressions, concerns and approaches. "But the "unresolved problems" are precisely what divide Catholic and Protestants in this serious matter of justification!

The Sacraments: "Nor is uniformity required in the sacramental dimension of the Church either. It is well known that sacramental life can be expressed through different rites." And the Cardinal goes on explaining that a liturgical rite, such as the Assyrian anaphora of Adai and Mari, which does not have words of consecration, can be just as valid as a Mass that has them. So, unity in diversity means that the sacramental form doesn't really matter any more... As long as there is 'togetherness' as actually said Cardinal Ratzinger in his books on the Principles of Moral Theology (1982), words are not so important after all.

But the matter of the sacrament is also subject to a revision, for instance the laying of hands at the consecration of a bishop: "The laying on of hands is under this aspect (simply) a sign of co-optation in a collegium". What is important is not to be part of the Apostolic succession by an uninterrupted chain, but simply by "collegial membership in a collegium".

Papacy too, in this context, is at the service of unity. If unity requires it, we must be ready to change the elements, the role, the nature of the papacy: this work is already quite advanced if we listen to the Cardinal: "These insights have led to a re-interpretation of the dogma of the Roman primacy. This does not at all mean that there are still not enormous problems in terms of what such a ministry of unity should look like, how it should be administered, whether and to what degree it should have jurisdiction and whether under certain circumstances it could make infallible statements in order to guarantee the unity of the Church and at the same time the legitimate plurality of local churches. But there is at least a wide consensus about the common central problem, which all churches have to solve: how the three dimensions, highlighted already by the Lima documents on "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry" (1982), namely unity through primacy, collegiality through synodality, and communiality of all the faithful and their spiritual gifts, can be brought into a convincing synthesis."

And the Cardinal to conclude: "So we are united at least in a common problem though the answers still differ. To find a common answer is one of the main problems we are faced with and a challenge requiring further clarification.

"With this exposition of the different aspects of pluriformity within unity and unity within pluriformity we reach the overarching concept of a vision for Christian unity: the concept of communion."

We could say, yes, this looks like the unity of a huge traffic jam! The needs of the Church of the present day is really that which dictates what ought to be sacrificed for the cause of unity.

Such is one of the major principles which underlie a few of the important Vatican II documents, such as Dignitatis Humanae, on Religious freedom, and Nostra Aetate, on the Non-Christian Religions. Actually in the very Opening Address of the Council, Pope John XXIII announced that "the unity of humanity" was the Church's own and proper goal.

Now such a principle of "unity in pluriformity and pluriformity in unity" leads to many consequences in all fields of the Church life, in biblical documents, in canonical laws, in the criteria of 'sainthood'. One has to remember the event at the Coliseum on May 7, 2000, praising the Witnesses of Faith in the XXth century: "The witness to Christ borne even to the shedding of blood has become a common inheritance of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants... This ecumenism in the giving of one's life and in the shedding of one's blood is surely something new, a sign of the times which ought to draw all Christians closer to full visible communion. Unity lived in the endurance of persecution is a call to make further progress towards the unity of a faith professed in life and proclaimed in the mission to all nations." John Paul II)

Consequences especially in the liturgical field and in the ecumenical dialogue as we have seen above. But what people generally do not realize is how far does this search for unity actually goes, how much is the Faith twisted, or to say more correctly, sacrificed for that 'sacred' ecumenical unity.

As we have come, in our series of Asian Newsletters, to deal with the Indian Missions, we will address the question of Hinduism (Hinduism is the main religion of India (83%), compared to 1.71% for Catholicism!). The reader will see, in various articles, the contrast between the attitude of St Francis Xavier and his successors, and of the Conciliar Church. When we speak of conversion, what does it mean? It certainly meant different things to a St Xavier and to a modern Indian priest. To quote the Bishops of Brazil again (see our Oct. - Dec. 2002 editorial) "Today, missionary activity discovers in the indigenous culture evangelical values, to the extent that not only is the Indian evangelized, but is also able to evangelized us, ... by the education of liberty, ...by the links with the religious... The Bishops hold the thesis that the principal mission of the Church is not to catechize and to convert the Indian but to guarantee his values and to guide his cultural progress in order to avoid conflicts and syncretism."

Some of our readers have heard of the four Indian vocations that have entered Holy Cross seminary, in Australia, last March. These four young men spent between 5 and 8 years in the Bombay Major Seminary, and thus have had a direct experience of what inculturation means in the Indian context. Elsewhere in this issue you will find two articles about Hinduism written by one of them. The actual story of their life in the Bombay seminary and the reasons of their exodus will appear in the next issue of this Newsletter.

Since inculturation and its disastrous consequences are put in practice essentially through the activity of priests and religious, it will not be out of place to recall the message of Our Lady of La Salette who did announce the priestly tragedy that was to come. Rarely do we hear of the message of La Salette. Its authenticity is even denied at the La Salette sanctuary itself! Of course, texts as the following are not the most pleasing for modern day clerics:

"The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their bad life, by their irreverences and their impiety in celebrating the holy mysteries, by love of money, love of honor and of pleasures, the priests have become cesspools of impurity. Yes, the priests are asking for vengeance, and vengeance is suspended over their heads. Woe to the priests and to persons consecrated to God, who by their infidelities and their bad life are crucifying anew my Son! The sins of persons consecrated to God cry out towards Heaven and call for vengeance, and see how vengeance is at their doors, because there is no longer found anyone to implore mercy and forgiveness for the people; there are no longer generous souls, there is no longer anyone worthy to offer the Victim without blemish to the Eternal on behalf of the world.'

'Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the antichrist.'

'The Church will be eclipsed, the world will be in consternation"

But were these texts not added by Melanie, at a later date, as some are saying today (in order to escape becoming the target of these texts)? Therefore, could they be un-authentic, apocrypha? Very recently — as recently as 1999 — a French priest, Fr. Michel de Corteville, did a research in the Vatican archives to try to find the original letters that the two children of La Salette had written to Pope Pius IX, in 1851. After months of efforts, he did find the original documents in some stacks of papers of the time. He wrote a thesis on the secret of La Salette, which he published in 2000. In brief: the words quoted above, from the 1879 version of the Secret, correspond perfectly to what the children wrote in 1851, 6 years after the event. We give, after the Dossier on India, a book review of a second more popular book written by Fr. Corteville, which will be followed by the exact text of the documents discovered in the Vatican Archives with their translation. To our knowledge, it is the first time that these recent documents have been translated in English.

Our Blessed Lady rightly cried at La Salette foreseeing the XX^th century's loss of Faith.

Finally, since we are on the subject of priests leading souls astray, how did priests and bishops fall so low, as to even, as it is a sad reality, join the ranks of the enemies of the Church, the Freemasons? Historians (such as E. Barbier) have mentioned that already back in the XVIIIth c. some priests were Masons. No surprise if today then the clergy is full of them. But, how, in the name of God, can a member of the hierarchy, actually become a Mason? The book AA 1025 (Tan Books) tells us how a communist can infiltrate a seminary and become a priest. It is certainly the same for a Freemason. But how does a good priest and a good bishop all of a sudden become a Mason? Can it be? Well, unfortunately yes. However, St Bernard said that no one becomes very bad suddenly, and St Cyril of Jerusalem wrote "he who plays with the devil will have no share with Christ". The devil knows what is our weak point and unless we have a solid spiritual life, we risk greatly to fall. Read the article by Mr. A. de Lassus and many things will become clear.

To sum up and to conclude: this madness for unity at any cost - even at the cost of the truth - suddenly makes sense in the light of Mr. de Lassus' article and of the following text of Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Humanum Genus, on Freemasonry, 1884:

16. If those who are admitted as members are not commanded to abjure by any form of words the Catholic doctrines, this omission, so far from being adverse to the designs of the Freemasons is more useful for their purposes. First, in this way they easily deceive the simple-minded and the heedless, and can induce a far greater number to become members. Again, as all who offer themselves are received whatever may be their form of religion, they thereby teach the great error of this age — that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike. This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions.