 An Open Letter to His Holiness, Benedict XVI Updated April 24, with new signatory IT IS SPRING NOW, and outside the window, yellow daffodils are pushing their dew-drenched heads through the cold drab earth, while all the birds that summer in Maine have returned with their cheerful chorus. Our hearts should be young once again, our spirits uplifted, for God is painting His annual pastel for His creatures who find soothing balm in the beauty of such simplicity. The Vicar of Christ has visited our land, has come to give America a benediction, in itself a very great thing. The mail has been mixed and so has the media response. Will Spring ever come truly anew? My plea is centered on the natural law and the law of the sacred, for many times you referenced the first, while so much of the latter vaporized as if the last tendrils of smoke. The Masses I witnessed bore almost no resemblance to your most recent writing on the Mass. Despite your overtures to Tradition with the Motu proprio and those of your flock who strive to nurture Sacred Tradition and safeguard it for the next generation, as only those who are Catholic must in order to remain Catholic, rejecting all novelty, I knew from what you have said and written, in the way it was presented [the extraordinary as ordinary and vice versa], and even more by what you did not say [will the Novus Ordo be infused into the Tridentine or not], that it would be "business as usual", although adorned with your gentle charm. Your Holiness, I have prayed for you, that "business as usual" would not be so, leaving all to the Providence of God. You came to thank America, to praise her championing of freedom, setting the boundaries for that gift bestowed by Almighty God among other initiatives. You were welcomed in many quarters like a beloved father, yet ... the message muted by the noise of American life multiplied in the blitz of the media cacophony and our worldly hearts, our ears and eyes without comprehension or vision. A glass darkly. A few grasped what it was you ought to have taught us, some others, with animus against Truth, hurled invective tirades, mocked the Holy Catholic Church. The single apology for these profane outbursts was anything but, for it was an opportunity to posit a mere technical correction in order to launch into another attack as heinous as the first only with a larger audience who had tuned in for the supposed apology. The only real apology came from you, repeatedly, while one of the bishops who did much to foster the scandal rests securely tonight embracing his plush sinecure at St. Mary Major in Rome, of all places! And he isn't the only one. We do not understand why, Your Holiness, we do not understand, why? For those who have the gift of true faith in the fullest, they look only to Tradition, for those who are seeking true faith, I pray and trust they will receive it; for those who cast aside the gift, no message would do; and for those who have squandered the gift of true faith, truth was turned into fables, doctrine into opinion, political opinion into doctrine to serve the New World disorder, a complete subversion, another form of diabolical disorientation of which Pope Clement XIII expounded on. Just one more disappointment, one more rendezvous with the tragic, just one more of so many missed opportunities because of the nature of modern socio-political expediency and the dominance of mass media through which everything is filtered and sifted to merge with the contagion of the false spirit of "religion" promulgated at Vatican II concocted by the partisans of modernism in the hierarchy, infecting the hapless faithful. The Church can never formally teach error for we have Christ's promise, so the council was called "pastoral" rather than "dogmatic" but its errors and or contradictions, which were mere opinions, have been taught as if dogmatic. Most of the faithful think they are dogma and believe the heresies and lies they have been inculcated with. So now they actually say that dogma itself can change; in other words, there is no more objective truth, unchanging truth. No matter how many lofty protestions to the contrary, this is the reality, which the Church is not addressing effectively, if at all! How can it, when it permits the scandal of the New Mass in which heresy is promulgated, such as the "Mystery of Faith" which violates the sacred, dogmatic canon of the Council of Trent on the Mystery of Faith. Those who follow Christ and take up their crosses know in what betrayal consists, that of Judas [es] and the clamoring crowd who freed Barabbas and more intimately, in our own personal sins. We have the tribunal of mercy in Confession for the latter, but where do we go to find relief from the other? There is neither justice nor mercy on these shores. It is as if we must exclaim, My God, my God, why hast Thou abandoned us? Except for this brief mention, I purposefully set aside the mass extravaganzas, the pagan retro festival rites, such as young women dressed as if angels romping with tawdry, phony doves, the endless circus to entertain the crowd and impress the media which surely will exploit this sham. Who approved of this? Did you know of it before hand, Your Holiness? Of this I can only lament that I am filled with shame that the world which watched could think this is how Catholics prepare before Holy Mass. And that those who participated, who were subjected to it, had it imposed upon them. Where were the people en masse publicly reciting the Holy Rosary? I know it was said later in the day, and for this may God, indeed, bless America. After so many events to cover, the media managed to mention it had been prayed. The image of those dove-girls will be the lasting one, I fear. Submerged in my own tears, bewildered and alarmed, I must let this non-Apostolic episode go, for truly words fail here! I repeat Pope Clement's admonition, emphasis added: Diabolical error decks itself out with ease in lying colors with some appearance of truth, so that the force of pronouncement is corrupted by a very brief addition or change, and the confession of faith which should have resulted in salvation, by a subtle transition leads to death! No country that willingly tolerates the murder of the innocent in their mothers' wombs, merits much grace from God Who will not be mocked---it simply cannot be a shining examplar---and no members of the Mystical Body of Christ who tolerate the disorientation away from the glory and grandeur of the Ancient and Most Holy Mass for that of a banal production by the people, for the people, of the people; the degradation of the irreplaceable, supreme role of the sacerdotal priesthood as exemplified by Ven. Michael McGivney---there is simply no way one could imagine that saintly priest willingly present at these staged "happenings"; the disregard for the Mother of God's peace plan at Fatima and her urgent appeal; the assault on innocence and purity by sex-saturated "catechism classes" and the pretense that contraception is not an objective evil, merit that grace either. Our leaders and elites are willfully blind because they have immersed themselves in the spirit of the world, preferring the pragmatic over principle, the profane over that which is holy, i.e. to not be touched. The arrogance of man discovering his powers, but not his mastery, knows no bounds. They proclaim "whatever floats our boat" while the ship of state sinks and our bishops let us "do liturgy" like the elites "do lunch". Our prelates and lay vanguard are without excuse. The most scandalous and latest example is the Catholic Senator, Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who gave in to the contemptible demands of the baby-killing Democrats, led by Sen. Boxer of California that a pro-life phrase in a proclamation for the Pope be dropped or else it would not be signed. He caved, rather than heed the monitum of his Pope that it is better to have fewer priests, but holier priests, to wit: better no such resolution than comply with the will of the enemies of the sanctity of life. And the Democratic Senator, the Catholic Casey of Pennsylvania backing for President the most pro-abortion Senator in the Congress. With "pro-life" friends like this, who needs enemies? That would be redundant. The thief within is always stronger and more insidious---those who are silent before evil or who refuse to do their duty, instead, compromising and cooperating with that evil. They are traitors aiding and abetting the infernal one, who loathes the Holy Mass of Tradition and the Rosary of Our Lady and uses our love of liberty to chain us down---to bind us to the madness of license. Where was your insistence on the Social Reign of Christ the King? Every government has the duty to recognize His Reign and to do nothing that would attempt to restrain it. This is Catholic teaching!We have the craven in Congress that we so richly merit---and the media we willing pay homage to, the absurdity of the benighted proclaimed pundits and hailed as sages. And many of our prelates follow along like lemmings after the piper. Holy Father, your mission to the arch nemesis of the US and the natural law---the UN---and visit to Washington and various non-Catholic entities could not fail to be anything more than symbolic psalmody that will fade into sentimental memory, ergo "business as usual". The UN has its own deadly agenda, that is certain, and such being the case, it can never serve as a peacemaker. It claims that everyone has the right to life in its Declaration on Human Rights, then promotes abortion. It asserts that the family has the right to choose what it teaches its children, but it takes that right away in its Charter on the Family, in which it grants rights to children to choose what they want to read. It also grants those same children "reproductive rights", code for abortion and contraception. So much for the family. The UN cannot grant rights, it can only recognize them, for rights come from Almighty God, Whom and which it refuses to acknowledge. The UN will not reform until we do. For now it exists to plunder, to gather the spoils of war without officially declaring war. It is content to raise puny objections while we are at war with each other, the fruit of abortion and pride and greed and self-love while our border to the south dissolves into a chimera even clowns would reject. Previous Popes have addressed the UN without fruit. I repeat, The UN will not reform until we do. The forum over which you have any authority in the present is that of your people, the Catholic Church. The Catholic people no longer grasp the notion of the natural law, written into the hearts of men by Almighty God, for their hearts have been seduced by the corrupt idea that they can have religion and faith without sacrifice of human respect and sanction; all religions are equal now, it is "one's faith" that matters, not what the faith is in or about. The triumph of the Masonic spirit! And so religion is now purely private save an occasional speech here and there, its spark of hope dying as quickly as it is lit, resurrected into a civil religion of one size fits all with a sole exception: In our public schools Muslims can pray but Catholics cannot even mention the name of the One True God or honor His holy days with hymns. Our Catholic-dominated Supreme Court has refused to accept appeals, thereby, in effect, declaring that the public schools have the right to discriminate. Fruit of the "freedom of religion". Fruit of a "Catholic education". We have not converted America, its Masonic ethos is converting us! I am happy you Baptized the Italian Muslim who converted to the True Faith, but we, too, are in need of conversion. America is ever and again missionary territory. The light of justice under the natural law has grown dim because we neglected to attend to it. The natural law is seldom taught in Catholic schools, it is no longer preached from the pulpits and everywhere there is mass confusion, to accompany the confusion at Mass and about the Mass. We no longer know the principles of true justice within the Church and without. Charity is now thought of as justice, and justice, an arbitrary and false charity. A monumental disaster, an utter disorientation. I did not realize the extent of the demise of the natural law and its ally and helpmate, human reason, until I began writing on these pages in exhortation of its application, the limits it justly and rightly imposes on man-made law. The e-mail, more often than not, informed me that Catholics apprehend it not except in some vague way, unable to articulate it or defend it and proclaim its necessary principles in a robust manner. They no longer know what the natural law truly is or even if exists at all. They think it quaint. We have lost so much, in just two generations. No wonder we are an aborting, contracepting society unable to coherently address the claims of those who commit unnatural acts with one another! Until 1930 all of Western civilization, Catholic and non-Catholic alike adhered to the natural law. Without Lambeth's revolt there could have been no Hitler, as day becomes night, even with all the injustices of the First World War. The "final solution" could not have been conceived without every man first declaring that he had the right to decide for himself that he is the author of life, not God. A contracepting people will not be given the priests they need by God; they will then receive the priests they unfortunately deserve and those priests in turn will render unto their people what they first rendered unto themselves, an unclean spirit, defilement for an anti-worship, then slowly an anti-Mass [dumbed down and with shocking irreverence---utterly unworthy of worship of God as He is entitled to in so many churches] for self glorification. So few there are that recognize the folly. There was universally held the sensus fidelium that where the Church is holy, society is more good than it would have been otherwise, and it mattered not whether any particular society recognized this reality or not. It is true. You know this, Your Holiness, but too many of us no longer do. Msgr. Klaus Gamber, whose book on the Holy Mass and its history, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, was endorsed by you as Cardinal Ratzinger wrote on page 113: "We are living in a time when there is little faith left. The call grows louder and louder to save what we can. As strange as this may sound, the truly 'modern' forces in our Church today are not the so-called 'Progressives,' who want to abandon customs developed over time and replace them with experiments of uncertain value, but rather the 'conservatives' who recognize the value of Church tradition and are sensitive to pastoral needs. "In the final analysis, this means that in the future the traditional rite of the Mass must be retained in the Roman Catholic Church, and not only as a means to accommodate older priests and lay people, but as the primary liturgical form for the celebration of Mass. It must become once more the norm of our faith and the symbol of Catholic unity throughout the world, a rock of stability in a period of upheaval and never-ending change." He recognized that the Mass is a catechism not only a propitiatory sacrifice to make satisfaction for sin, in that it teaches as well as sanctifies, thus the phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi, or "as one prays, so one believes". For countless generations simple Catholic folk with little education knew well without confusion of mind and disturbance of soul their holy faith and held it rock-solid, pardon the pun, with little catechesis outside the Mass. My grandparents, who never went beyond the third grade in school, knew their faith from just the Mass, and the sound teaching found in the sermons given by a priest who knew what he believed and why. The New Mass is such a spiritual [not just a physical, spatial] disorientation that it has profoundly affected how and what we believe, priests and laity alike so that the laity seldom receive Catholic instruction from the pulpit but instead receive a polyglot of sentimentality and mass media driven ideas about Catholicism instead of actual Catholicism. After so many years they are genuine hybrids, content with unceasing change, even outright rejecting of Tradition, without which they cannot be authentically, Catholic. "Christian", perhaps, Catholic, no. Years before the pastoral Vatican II, Ven. Pope Pius XII foresaw the coming devastation as predicted by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. The Third Secret, which began "In Portugal the dogma of the faith will be preserved . . ." [meaning elsewhere something quite different from preserving the dogma of the faith] was read by Cardinal Chiappi, Pope John Paul II's house theologian, who said it concerned apostasy of the faith, starting with the top of the hierarchy. Pius XII had not read the Secret when he said, again emphasis in bold added by me: "I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to little Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul . . . I hear all around me innovators, who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her historical past. A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?' " Holy Father, you came and went so quickly. We saw you through the lens of the media but you did not see us, your little ones, the flock scattered and marginalized throughout the land. We have neither high office, nor coin of the realm. We need you, too. Come back, for your children are wretched and perish for a lack of knowledge. Come back, O St. Catherine's "Sweet Christ on earth", return to your people, come not in a cavalcade and with fanfare, return to us simply as Christ walked among His Own in the hills, return for those who cannot obtain "tickets", who dwell in tumble-down homes on the edge of poverty, walk among us, we who have our own "ground zeroes" by the thousands upon thousands---so many families torn asunder by disparate beliefs---say the Immemorial Mass for us, let Gregorian chant fill our barren sanctuaries sine guitar, speak to us and see us as we are with our hearts breaking, our parishes dwindling, obey Christ and "feed His sheep" if you love Him. See what the policies of our country with the succor of countless Catholics have done to deplete our meager coffers and deject our spirits because the children of the illegal aliens---not the children of law-abiding immigrants---have more "rights" than we do. I place the term, rights, in quotes because you yourself said to the UN that rights as true rights have been redefined unjustly, in so many words. We ought to love our neighbor as ourselves; but we are someone else's neighbor, too, and we are not loved. There is no reciprocity of rights and respect for the property of law-abiding citizens who are struggling to feed their own families. Americans are the most generous on earth, but those who have other ideas for America are taking advantage of our generosity to destroy us from within, not so much from without. They receive driving licenses which they use to illegally vote, skewing our elections to favor national dissolution. Non-citizens voting! The Church teaches the justice of national sovereignty, this too, is part of the natural law. I cite from your speech to the UN, emphasis added: Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made. Come to our rescue, do not give aid and comfort to those who want to destroy national sovereignty, by misplaced compassion which only serves to confirm our wayward, statist, socialist-leaning bishops that they are morally justified while they ignore many pernicious evils. They tell us to break the law, just laws, while ignoring the unjust law of abortion other than a platitude here and there. They set up sanctuaries for lawbreakers, some of them drug peddlers and members of violent, savage gangs, strip our sanctuaries of the sacred and will not lead us to protest before the sanctuaries of Satan, the altars of abortion. A contrarian spirit and the shameful inversion of truth! Come and tell our bishops and priests in our very presence that they must preach on the evils of our day apart from the "doctrine of diversity", the evils of pornography, contraception, sex education; show them by close example why it is that we must preserve the Traditional Mass by saying it for us in our little churches. Your flock is starving. Feed us. Feed us! Restore the sacred and instill in the hearts of the faithful the willingness to foster the sanctity of life, these two are intimately related and interdependent. Do not just tell us, show us! But most of all, Papa Benedetto, come and see us in those parishes and dioceses where we ask for bread from our bishops and we receive but stones, where Tradition and the Holy Mass of Tradition come only at the price of a king's ransom. Your Holiness, most sincerely in the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Peter Yzaguirre, Omaha, Nebraska Mrs. Pauly Fongemie Maine, USA April 20, in the Year of Our Lord, 2008  E-MAIL www.catholictradition.org/open-letter.htm |