SELECTIONS BY PAULY FONGEMIE
From The Church Before The Council
Despite the abysmal state of the post-conciliar Church, which should be evident to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, there are still those who claim that we are living in a period of exhilarating renewal in happy contrast with the moribund Church of pre-conciliar days. It seems that even in this age of sophisticated and instant communication there is still truth in the old saying: there are none so blind as those who will not see. Thus in an editorial published on Friday, 2 April 1976, the London Universe was able to proclaim that "the Holy Father is leading the Church forward to a new age of spirituality" and to reproach Archbishop Lefebvre for his "refusal to move forward with the Church of the seventies." It would have been interesting had the editor of The Universe added a few words on precisely where he thought the Church of the seventies was moving. He clearly considers that his paper is in the vanguard of this movement and this is something with which no one could disagree. The Universe had a circulation of 311,512 in 1963 which had declined to 156,872 by August of 1976 - a decrease of 50 per cent.
... Pope John XXIII most certainly did not believe the Church to be in any sort of decline when he convoked the Council. Indeed, when he issued his apostolic constitution Humanae Salutis convoking Vatican II he made a special point of paying tribute to the vitality of the Church as it then existed. It has, he said, ... followed step by step the evolution of peoples, scientific progress, and social revolution. It has opposed decisively the materialistic ideologies which deny faith. Lastly, It has witnessed the rise and growth of the immense energies of the apostolate of in prayer, of action in all fields. It has seen the emergence of a clergy constantly better equipped in learning and virtue for its mission; and of a laity which has become ever more conscious of its responsibilities within the bosom of the Church, and, in a special way, of its duty to collaborate with the Church hierarchy. To this should be added the immense suffering of entire Christian communities, through which a multitude of admirable bishops, priests, and laymen seal their adherence to the faith, bearing persecutions of all kinds and revealing forms of heroism which certainly equal those of the most glorious periods of the Church.
When Pope John wrote this in 1961 who could have imagined that his Council would be prevented from condemning atheistic Communism, which was responsible for this immense suffering? [Emphasis in bold added by the Web Master.] And prevented from condemning it by a process of calculated fraud perpetrated by some of its members, an incident which will be fully documented in Chapter
XI.
In the same apostolic constitution, Pope John points out the contrast between "a world which reveals a grave state of spiritual poverty and the Church of Christ which is still so vibrant with vitality." A Church vibrant with vitality in 1961, according to Pope John, and a Church in a process of self-destruction in 1968, according to Pope Paul. Who would have believed that a debacle of such proportions could occur in so short a time? The Arian and Protestant heresies were gradual processes compared with this. The answer can only be found, as Pope Paul claims, by the entry of the Enemy of man into the Church, an entry which the Prince of this world made through the window to the world opened by Pope John. "I am certain," remarked Cardinal Felici, Secretary General to the Council, "that when in the Council I pronounced the ritual words 'Exeant Omnes' (Everyone out) which all remember, one who did not obey was the Devil ... He is always where confusion triumphs, to stir it up and take advantage of it." [Letters from Vatican City, p. 10]
It is fashionable for Catholic liberals to decry the pre-conciliar Church as concerned with little more than personal piety and indifferent to the injustice and suffering in the world. This is a monstrous travesty of the truth as every adult Catholic must surely know. Never in the history of our planet las so much concern been shown for the material needs of all humanity as that displayed by the Catholic Church in this present century. All over the world selfless priests, members of religious orders, and lay Catholics have established countless schools, hospitals, orphanages, homes for old people; wherever need existed Catholic relief agencies could be found ministering to the hungry, the homeless, the victims of famine, pestilence, or earthquakes. But in the pre-conciliar Church there was never any confusion about what the prime duty of ;he Church was, to preach the Kingdom of God - and when the kingdom of God is preached all else will follow. And there can be no doubt that the service rendered to the material needs of men, incalculable though this most certainly was, pales into insignificance beside the spiritual solace brought by the Church to hundreds of millions of men and women of all races and all nations: the beauty and comfort of Her liturgy, the grace of Her sacraments, the inspiration of Her teaching - these gave meaning to a life which for millions would otherwise have been meaningless; they gave the strength to endure in a life that would otherwise have been unendurable. And above all, the Church was concerned with the truth, the truth that is Christ, the truth that is His Gospel, the truth that we have a Father in Heaven Who loves us. Who sent His Son to die for us so that we can live with Him for ever in the happiness of Heaven.
... Mgr. Lefebvre considers that:
the master-stroke achieved by Satan is to have thrown everyone into disobedience by virtue of obedience. The most typical example of this fact is that of the "aggiornamento" of religious orders. Through obedience religious are made to disobey the very laws and constitutions of their founders which they pledged to observe when they took their vows. This is the cause of the profound confusion which has spread through these communities and in the heart of the Church.
In this case, obedience should be refused categorically. Even legitimate authority cannot demand the execution of evil or dishonourable acts. No one can oblige us to transform our vows into solemn promises. No one can force us to become Protestants or Modernists. The consequences of this blindness are evident and tragic. [The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, p. 59]
The prevailing attitude among so many of the clergy is to accept a particular belief or practice not because it has an inherent and enduring truth or value but because it happens to be the current policy. Thus the very clergy who would have denounced (and rightly so) any layman who had attended a Protestant service before the Council will now denounce any layman who suggests that the faith could be in any way compromised by attending such services. Attendance at Protestant services, although a matter of discipline, most certainly involves vital doctrinal principles. Thus a matter touching upon the very nature of the Church Christ founded is seen in itself as something neutral; all that matters is the current instruction issued by whoever is one rank higher up the hierarchical scale. ...
Another sphere in which there was great scope for advance was the application of Catholic social teaching in the temporal order, primarily the responsibility of an informed laity. The fact of the matter is that the majority of the laity were, and still are, very uninformed - in fact frequently quite ignorant of the fact that the Church has any social teaching. Far too many laymen tended to compartmentalize their religion and failed to realize that being a Catholic involved grave responsibilities regarding their obligations in the temporal order. To give one obvious example, far too few Catholic employers or trade unionists allowed the teaching of the Popes in their social encyclicals to influence the manner in which they co ducted themselves in, say, pay negotiations. Little thought was given to the common good, little thought to justice, to equity, to the effect of a particular settlement on the national economy. For most Catholic employers, just as for non-Catholic employers, the object was to give "them" as little as they possibly could without provoking a strike. For most Catholic workers the object was to get as much as possible out of "them" even if it meant going on strike. When one considers the extent of the Catholic school system in the United Kingdom there can be no doubt that the absence of a large and articulate body of Catholics on both sides of industry intent upon implementing Catholic social teaching indicates a widespread and culpable failure to teach young Catholics their duties in the temporal order. The fact that so many Catholics concerned to bring about social justice, and motivated by sincere idealism, now imagine that the only way they can achieve this is by espousing or at least co-operating with some form of Marxism can be traced back to no small extent to the preconciliar neglect of Catholic social teaching. Truly prophetic voices such as those of Fr. Paul Crane or Hamish Fraser, who tried to combat the almost total apathy with regard to the social teaching of the Church, remained for the most part unheeded - the common lot of prophets.
Similarly, in some nominally Catholic countries before the Council, the complete lack of social justice constituted a scandal. Some Catholics from the more privileged classes felt that they were fulfilling their duties in the social sphere simply by being anti-Communist in a sterile and negative sense. While Catholics clearly have a duty to oppose Communism in the political sphere, the most effective way to overcome it is by working to remove the conditions of injustice which cause so many of the least privileged members of society to look upon Communism as their only hope of achieving a standard of living consistent with human dignity.
There was also a definite need for a widespread liturgical renewal in the pre-conciliar Church - but a renewal on the lines advocated by the liturgical movement and approved by such Popes as St. Pius X or Pius XII, a renewal based on the principles set out in Chapter IX of Cranmer's Godly Order. The pseudo-renewal which has followed Vatican II has nothing in common with the authentic spirit of the papally approved liturgical movement, as Fr. Louis Bouyer, one of its leading advocates, has testified. True liturgical renewal would not have involved discarding the traditional liturgy to be replaced by a continually evolving and ecumenically inspired series of gimmicks - it would have involved utilizing the existing liturgy to its fullest potential, and this potential was infinite.
In a parish where the liturgy came alive the parish came alive in Mesnil St. Loup in France, for example, between the years 1849 and 1903, the saintly Père Emmanuel transformed his parish into what could truly be described as a religious community, mainly through bringing his people to know, to love, and to play their proper part in the liturgy - above all by the use of Gregorian chant. If Père Emmanuel's peasant parishioners could sing Latin vespers in their church each evening - joyfully and easily - then any parish could have done the same. If such parishes had been the rule rather than the only too rare exception, then the history not only of the Church but of the world would have been different.
What has been written here with regard to the need for liturgical renewal in no way conflicts with the reference to the beauty and dignity of the pre-conciliar liturgy made earlier in this chapter. While there were some cases of priests who tended to "gabble" their Mass in a manner which made it unedifying, the majority conformed to the rubrics and this, in view of the nature of the traditional Mass, made it impossible for it not to be an impressive and inspiring ceremony. I well remember how, as a convert with wide experience of very vocal and emotional evangelical Protestant services, as well as several varieties of Anglican liturgy, the first experience of real worship that I encountered was at a low Mass in a working class parish. Only the server made the responses in the packed church, few present had a missal, but the atmosphere of reverence and, at the consecration, of palpable adoration was something which I had never experienced before and which I shall never forget. ...
Finally, when considering the state of the Church before the Council, mention must be made of the Modernist fifth column, the "pernicious adversaries" condemned by St. Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi Gregis, men lodged within the "very bosom" of the Church, determined to destroy her "vital energy" and "utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ". Much will be written of these pernicious adversaries during the course of this book, adversaries whose advance St. Pius X and his successors had been able to contain but whose presence they had been unable to eliminate from the Mystical Body within which, like some malignant virus, they waited for the right conditions to enable them to proliferate and infect the entire organism. Before the Council the Church was indeed, as Pope John claimed, "vibrant with vitality"; there are few signs of vitality in the decomposing body of the post-conciliar Church - but the forces which drained her vitality away existed long before the Council was called. As this book will make clear, the Council created the climate which enabled these forces to launch the attack which has come near to destroying the "vital energy" of the Church in the western countries at least.
Those who have read Dr. von Hildebrand's Trojan Horse in the City of God, and it is worth repeating that this is one of the small number of books which every concerned Catholic should own, will find that he makes a distinction between the official documents of the Council and the so-called "Spirit of Vatican II." He says a great deal in praise of the Council itself, its aims, and its documents. However, as his book was written 1965 such an attitude is hardly surprising. In my own case, the realization that not only the Council itself as an event, but even its official documents, cannot be absolved from responsibility for the present deplorable state of the Church, did not come until 1972 when I read the Abbe de Nantes' very radical criticisms of the conciliar texts: Until this point, as I could prove by citing many articles and pamphlets, I had, like Dr. von Hildebrand, always taken the line that the Council documents were beyond reproach and that the present chaos was the result of their being contradicted or ignored. Indeed, it was with the object of establishing, if only for my own benefit, that the criticisms made by the Abbe de Nantes could not be justified that I began to study the documents more closely. While I still remain a long way from accepting all his arguments - the case made in this book is mildness itself in comparison with his critique - he has made it quite clear that these documents are most certainly far from being the irreproachable and even sublime restatement of Catholic truth which so many of us had at first taken them to be. This view was confirmed when I had the good fortune to obtain a copy of Fr. Wiltgen's book, The Rhine Flows into The Tiber. More will be said regarding this book in Chapter VII. When I read Fr. Wiltgen's book, in 1973, and discovered the background to the formulation of the Council texts, a clear pattern began to merge, a definite and logical progression from the circumstances in which the documents were formulated, the documents themselves, and the events which followed the Council.
In view of the manner in which my own enthusiasm for the Council had been modified I wrote to Dr. von Hildebrand and asked him if his own views had undergone any changes particularly with regard to such instances as his praise for the official documents and "the greatness of the Second Vatican Council" found on page 1 of his book. He has informed me that he has indeed greatly modified his views concerning the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and that while there are still certain points in them which he welcomes, though only a few, a more detailed study has revealed that such harmful tendencies as horizontalism, communitarianism, and false ecumenism can be detected in some of the documents. This was not apparent to him in 1965 when he wrote his book and it would have been hard not to react positively to the official documents when contrasting them with the deplorable books, articles, and lectures of priests and theologians who claimed to be interpreting the "Spirit of the Council." Dr. von Hildebrand has authorized me to mention the fact that he has modified his opinion concerning Vatican II and that he will be making textual changes in the next edition of Trojan Horse in the City of God.
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