Original in french by Reconquista
Translated in English by Reconquista Team

Dear Fathers “resisting from within”,

Instead of worrying about "what will become of me if I were to leave the Society, its spiritual and material comfort, its means of apostolate and all the rest..."?

“What will become of me?"

What about asking yourselves: "what will become of the faithful which will be handed out to more or less liberal priests?"

God knows what He is doing. And if He asks to let go, "to quit the poverty of the comfort" and to join "the wealth of the effort", isn't it because He wants you to acknowledge Him as your absolute master and Lord, as He is the master and Lord of all creatures?

I am a layman. And of laymen also, God sometimes demands this heroism which consists in "doing our duty" without having the slightest idea of what the future might hold, be it for oneself or for one’s spouse and children. In this respect, faithful and priests are treated the same way, which is the way of the Cross.

In the 5th century, Saint Ceratius, disciple of Saint Ambrosius, bishop of Grenoble, was expelled from his diocese by Arianism and, following the recommendations of the Bible, he "shook the dust from his shoes”, leaving this city and joining a hermitage located in Gascogne. This hermitage would not remain a hermitage for very long, because the local people sensed his holiness and his spirit of prayer in the same way flocks sniff the wind. This heroic deed of Saint Ceratius was so blessed by God, that more than 1500 years later, this place is still called "Saintes" in memory for his holiness.

At the time of Vatican II, Archbishop Lefebvre was the only one with Bishop de Castro Mayer (out of 2500 bishops) to split off from and to condemn neo-modernism. This heroic deed was blessed by God through the creation of the Society which is a true lifeboat for the Church on a world scale.

Closer to us, on August 24 1970, Dom Gérard, wishing to maintain the tridentine rite and the traditional monastic life, left his monastery of Notre Dame de Tournay and established himself as a hermit. He first settled in the Alpes and then later joined the chapel of Madeleine in Bédoin. This was a heroic deed, regardless of what happened next.

Even closer to us, Bishop Williamson was framed by the Jєωιѕн lobby which are obsessed with only one thing: proving that Christians are anti-Semitic by nature (on the level of the irreconcilability of the Christianity and Judaism, this is not incorrect) and blasphemous with regards to the Shoah, which is their new "mystery of Redemption". They screamed again with the same hatred which they displayed during the Crucifixion: "He has blasphemed and deserves to die; crucify Him, crucify Him!" Bishop Williamson, at 70 years old plus, found himself left behind, scorned, trampled down by the cowardice of his hierarchy because he remained faithful to principles. When Archbishop Lefebvre was framed on the issue of Islam, did father Schmidberger, hierarchical superior of the Society at the time, disavow him, did he trample him down or scorn him publicly as a senile elderly person who no longer knew what he was saying? And how did Bishop Williamson react? "Lord, may Your will be done; do with me what You please". "Assuredly, you have to go till the end of your episcopal grace, replies God". "Fiat".

The history of the Church is full of similar events in all its ages: priests in Vendée refusing to join the Republic, etc. Biographers who do not know how to revive for us the calvary which some saints endured during certain periods of their life, are liars.

Amid the current mess, this clearly indicates that God takes good care of His servants: who among the Fathers Rioult, Pivert, Salenave or Pinaud ... and the many others that welcomed His call, is left stranded, and alone in a god-forsaken dump? On the contrary, God is blessing their courage with many godsends and thus helps them to prepare the next generation of leaders! Hoping that their friends will follow ... that they will be able to forgive them - wholeheartedly - their disavowing of their past friendships (even those who pretty much turned into Judases)...

Today, God wills that, through faithfulness to principles, many priests leave the Society and find themselves left high and dry, even - and mainly - without a clear vision of what the future holds for them or for the faithful, particularly for the very poor.

Who knows? Maybe after many disappointments among Catholics, it will be a Muslim, a Buddhist, a protestant or a Jєω who will take you in and take care of you in material terms in order to enable you to "bounce back" ... and may even convert after doing so!

When the sky of our intelligence is obscured, when we no longer understand anything, God Himself knows very clearly where He wants to take us. It is Him that we must follow!

Let Him do the steering!

In the midst of darkness or total disarray, one thing is certain: God demands the concrete proof of your faithfulness through your letting go and the total gift of self to His Providence ... highly superior to human prudence, if you ever had the shadow of a doubt!

Go and do skydiving or bungee jumping if you want strong sensations. But what God is asking of you is not that frightening: in His immense goodness, He exempts you from such acrobatics!

After all, is it more risky than a father of a family suddenly becoming unemployed in a completely unfair manner, and having to 'clutch at straws” at over 55 years old, with the care of a wife and 8 children, having to learn from scratch how to work in a totally different way, setting up a business from home ...? Take heart! Ask these faithful having overcome some (very) serious hardships! Many will be able to help you overcome what is most difficult... still I am not convinced that by making you choose to remain faithful to principles, God’s test will be as severe as the test put to some fathers of families (i.e. the father of Saint Bernadette).

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Notes
1. First of all, as stated by Bishop Thomas Aquinas in his Pentecost sermon in Le Puy en Velay, Bishop Fellay uses the exact same language (word for word and argument for argument) than Bishop Rifan at the time when Campos joined Rome.
2. Secondly, if the head of the hierarchy rots everything, do not count on the base to revive the principles that the head has lost. Only a leader whose ideas are clear in his head can do provide unity to an army, as coined in the term “army corps”, not members with a wandering leader looking for a new home.
3. Thirdly, the internal resistance did not play a big role at the liberation… except for abuse. It is the army prepared in North Africa by the generals of the Maréchal who played a decisive role during the offensive against Germans in Tunisia (when Americans had just landed with not enough soldiers), this before getting to the homeland to deliver glorious battles. Bishop Lefebvre often stated that the separation with enemies is necessary, even more when we deal with principles and the contamination of intelligence with liberalism.