REPLY TO CARDINAL OTTAVIANIRome, December 20 1966
Your Eminence,
Your letter on July 24th that concerns the questioning of certain truths was communicated through the good offices of our secretariat to all our major superiors.
Few replies have reached us. Those which have come to us from Africa do not deny that there is a great confusion of mind at the present time. Even if those truths do not appear to be called in question, we are witnessing in practice a diminution of fervor and of regularity in receiving the sacraments, above all the sacrament of Penance. A serious under. underestimating respect for the Holy Eucharist is found, above all in the part of priests, and a scarcity of priestly vocations in French-speaking missions; vocations in the English and Portuguese speaking missions are less affected by the new spirit, but already the magazines and newspapers are spreading the most advanced theories.
It would seem that the reason for the small number of replies received is due to the difficulty in
grasping these errors which are diffused everywhere; the seat of the devil lies mainly in the literature which sows confusion in the mind by descriptions which are ambiguos and equivocal, but under the veil of which one discovers a new religion.
I believe it's my duty to put before you fully and clearly what is evident for my conversations with numerous bishops, priests and laymen in Europe and in Africa and which emerges also from what I have read in English and French territories.
I would willingly follow the order of the truths listed in your letter, I venture to say that the present evil appears to be much more serious than the denial or calling in question of some truths of our faith. In these times it shows itself in an extreme confusion of ideas, in the breaking of the Church's institutions, religious foundations, seminaries, Catholic schools - in short, in what has been the permanent support of the Church. It is nothing else than the logical continuation of the heresies and errors which have been undermining the Church in recent centuries, especially since the Liberalism of the last century which has striven at all costs to reconcile the Church with the ideas that led to the French Revolution.
To the measure in which the Church has opposed to these ideas, she has obtained good results by counteracting them with solid philosophy and theology; on the other hand any compromise with these subversive ideas has brought about alignment with the Church and the civil law with a dangerous tendency to enslave her to civil society.
Moreover, every time that groups of Catholics have allowed themselves to be attracted by these myths, the Popes have courageously called them back to order, enlightening, and if necessary condemning them. Catholic Liberalism was condemned by Pius IX, Modernism by Leo XIII, the Sillon Movement by St. Pius X, Communism by Pius XI, and Neo-Modernism by Pius XII.
Thanks to this admirable vigilance, the Church grew firm and spread: conversions of pagans and Protestants were very numerous, heresy was completely routed, countries accepted a more Catholic legislation.
Groups of religious imbued with these false ideas, however, succeeded in infiltrated them into Catholic Action and into the seminaries, thanks to a certain indulgence on the part of bishops and tolerance of certain Roman authorities. Soon it would be among such priests that the bishops would be chosen.
This was the point at which the Council found itself while preparing, by preliminary commissions, to proclaim the truth in the face of such errors in order to banish them from the midst of the Church for a long time to come. This would have been the end of Protestantism and the beginning of a new and fruitful era for the Church.
Now this preparation was odiously rejected in order to make way to the gravest tragedy the Church has ever suffered. We have lived to see the marriage of the Catholic Church with Liberals ideas. It would be to deny the evidence, to be willfully blind, not to state courageously that the Council has allowed those who profess the errors and tendencies condemned by the Popes named above, legitimately to believe that their doctrines were approved and sanctioned.
Whereas the Council was preparing itself to be a shinning light in today's world, if those pre-conciliar docuмents in which we find a solemn profession of sound doctrine with regard to today's problems, had been accepted, we can and we must unfortunately state that:
In a more or less general way, when the Council has introduced innovations, it has unsettled the certainty of truths taught by the authentic Magisterium of the Church as unquestionable belonging to the Treasure of Tradition.
The Transmission of the jurisdiction of the bishops, the two sources of Revelation, the inspiration of Holy Scripture, the necessity of grace for justification, the necessity of Catholic baptism, the life of grace among heretics, schismatics, and pagans, the ends of Marriage, religious liberty, the last four ends, etc... On these all fundamental tenets the Traditional doctrine was clear and unanimously taught in Catholic universities. Now, numerous texts of the Council on these truths will henceforward be permitted to cast some doubts upon them.
The consequences of all of these issues have quickly been drawn and applied in the life of the Church:
- Doubts about the necessity of the Church and the sacraments lead to the disappearance of priestly vocations.
- Doubts on the necessity for, and nature of the "conversion" of every soul involve the disappearance of religious vocations, the destruction of traditional spirituality in the novitiates, and the uselessness of the missions.
- Doubts on the lawfulness of authority and the need for obedience, cause by the exaltation of human dignity, the autonomy of conscience and liberty, are unsettling all societies beginning with the Church - religious societies, dioceses, secular society, and the family.
Pride has as its normal consequence all the concupiscences of the eyes and the flesh. It is perhaps one of the most appalling of our days, to see the extent to what moral decadence of mostly all Catholic publications have fallen. They speak without any restraint of sɛҳuąƖity, of birth control by every method, of the lawfulness of divorce, of mixed education, of flirtation, of dancing as necessary means of Christian upbringing, of the celibacy of the clergy, etc...
Doubts on the necessity of grace in order to be saved, has caused that Baptism is considered in low esteem so that for the future it is to be put off until later, and has been an occasion to neglect the practice of the sacrament of Penance. Moreover, this is particularly an attitude of the clergy and not of the faithful. It is the same with regard to Real Presence: it is the clergy who act as they no longer believe so that they keep hiding away the Blessed Sacrament, by suppressing all remarks of respect towards the Sacred Species and all ceremonies in Its honor.
Doubts on the necessity of the Church, the only source of salvation, on the Catholic Church as the only true religion, emanating from the declarations on ecuмenism and religious liberty, are destroying the authority of Church's Magisterium.In fact, Rome is not the unique and necessary Magistra Veritatis.
Thus, driven to this by the facts, we are forced to conclude that the Council has encouraged in an inconceivable manner the spreading of Liberal errors. Faith, morals, ecclesiastical discipline are shaken to their very foundations, fulfilling the predictions of all the Popes.
The destruction of the Church is advancing at a rapid pace. By giving an exaggerated authority to the episcopal conferences, the Sovereign Pontiff has rendered himself powerless. What painful lessons in one single year! Yet the Successor of Peter and he alone can save the Church.
Let the Holy Father surround himself with strong defenders of the faith: let him nominate them in tje important dioceses. Let him by docuмents of outstanding importance proclaim the truth, search out error without fear of contradiction, without fear of schisms, without fear of calling in question the pastoral dispositions of the Council.
Let the Holy Father deign: to encourage the bishops to correct faith and morals, each individually in his respective diocese as it behooves every good pastor; to uphold the courageous pastors, to urge them to reform their seminaries and to restore them to the study of St. Thomas; to encourage the superiors to maintain in novitiates and communities the fundamental principles of all Christian asceticism, and above all, obedience; to encourage the development of Catholic schools, a press (publication) informed by sound doctrine, association of Christian families; and finally to rebuke the instigators of errors and reduce them to silence. The Wednesday allocutions cannot replace encyclicals, decrees, and letters to the bishops.
Doubtless I am reckless in expressing myself in this manner! But it is my ardent love that I compose these lines, love of God's glory, love of Jesus, love of Mary, of the Church, of the Successor of Peter, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of (blasphemy).
May the Holy Ghost, to Whom our Congregation is dedicated, deign to come to the assistance of the Pastor of the Universal Church.
May Your Eminence deign to accept the assurance of my most respectful devotion in Our Lord.
+ Marcel Lefebvre
Titular Archbishop of Synnada in Phrygia,
Superior General of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost
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