Fr. Joseph Pfeiffer - 14th Sunday after Pentecost - September 2, 2012

Transcription

1 Fr. Joseph Pfeiffer - 14th Sunday after Pentecost - September 2, 2012 Today is the 14th Sunday after Pentecost. The Epistle is taken from St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians, Chapter 5. Brethren: Walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh, for the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, for these are contrary one to another so you do not the things that you would. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies, murders, drunkenness, revelings and such like, of which I foretell you as I have foretold you that they who do such things shall not obtain the Kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. Against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences. And then the Gospel, taken from that according to St. Matthew, Chapter 6. At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will sustain the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore, I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat, and the body more than the raiment? Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labor not, neither do they spin. But I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. Now, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more you, O ye of little faith? Be not solicitous therefore saying: What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knowest that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you besides. Thus far are the words of today's Holy Gospel. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Today's Gospel is taken from the Sermon on the Mount. No man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will sustain the one and despise the other. We are in a time since the Vatican Council that we're trying to find a way to serve both masters, the temptation for all of us, because our world has become more materialistic than it has ever been in all of history. You cannot serve both God and mammon. The whole passage in the Gospel today talks about mammon. Mammon refers to money. It refers to the sustenance, clothing, shelter, all those things that we need for our human life. These things are called mammon. We cannot serve both God and mammon. There will always come a conflict in the supernatural life where one day we'll have to choose between God and mammon. There will always be those in the Church who are tempted to try to find a way to serve both masters. Every man must eat. Some people live for eating. For some of us, it's more of a problem. But nonetheless, some live for eating, some live for the various pleasures, some live for money. In our culture today, there's become the theology of mammon. The theology of mammon has entered into the Catholic Church. It's entered into our ranks. Pope St. Pius X told us that the grand sewer of all heresies is Modernism. Modernism is not only the belief that truth changes and what was true yesterday is no longer true today -- evolution inside of the Church, the greatest error of our times -- it's not only evolution, but it is one of the principles of evolution that comes in. 1

2 One of the principles of evolution is the survival of the fittest. And the idea of the survival of the fittest is, who survives? The man that takes care of number one. My job is to take care of me. My job is to take care of my own responsibilities. Now, you can take this belief and you can become an animal. You go into the business world, and there's a world of animals in which every, single dog is trying to kill every other dog. The goal of every businessman is to increase his business and destroy his neighbor. But then you can take this error and you can baptize it. You can throw Holy Water on it. When you throw Holy Water on it and you baptize it and you spiritualize it and you take that same error, the survival of the fittest is what Charles Darwin called it; the serving of mammon is what Our Lord Jesus Christ called it. And Charles Darwin gave it a new name, and then the followers of Charles Darwin and evolutionists throughout the world gave it a whole philosophy and a whole theology that there's people that survive because they are tough or they're lucky, and there's people that don't survive because they're not tough and they're not lucky. And this enters into our Church. And how does it enter into the Catholic Church, the survival of the fittest? What is the purpose of a young Catholic man? We even tell our people: You need to grow up and take care of yourself. You have to save your own soul. Now, Christ told us we have to save our souls. And so, we take the salvation of my own soul and we say, I have to save my own soul. And we twist it into a new theology. Saving my own soul means I take care of me. All that matters, is that I've got a Latin Mass in my backyard. All that matters, is I've got what I need. You know, when you realize there's not enough electricity, everybody wants an electricity plant and we all vote for an electricity plant. Then you discover they are going to build the electricity plant in your backyard. You then develop a campaign: We don't need an electricity plant. Now, before you were in favor of an electricity plant because you needed electricity. When you discover they are going to put it in your backyard, you start a campaign saying: Why does it have to be in my backyard? Why can't it be in somebody else's backyard? You win your campaign. Then someone else starts a campaign. He doesn't want an electricity plant because it got moved into his backyard. And everyone is considering "me." I want electricity for me, but I don't want an electricity plant in my backyard. What matters is: The purpose of electricity is me. The purpose of highways is me. The purpose of God is me. The purpose of church is me. The purpose of wife is me. The purpose of husband is me. The purpose of children is me. A woman who is a Feminazi, she's living a feminist life. She runs around and she is going to be a business lady. And she feels like she's lonely when she's 35, and so now she takes 6,000 fertility pills. Before, she took 6,000 abortion pills. Now she takes 6,000 fertility pills and she wants a baby. Why? Because she feels lonely in her old age and she wants a little baby to comfort her. And the baby is born, and what's the purpose of that baby? Me. And then the theology is passed to the baby. And then they go to the Latin Mass. The ladies get holy and put on their dresses. The guys get tough and, you know, they drink a different kind of beer and they go into the church and they go to the Latin Mass. Do they change their theology? No. What is the purpose of school? I need a school that lasts as long as I have children of school age. After that, they can close the school. If I move too far away or I don't like the school, they can close the school. If it's not good for me anymore, it doesn't need to be a school. But if I need a school, there must be a school. It's very important to have schools. But if you don't have children, a school is a waste of money. If you don't have children, then the school is not needed. If you don't like the school, then the school is bad and they should close that school because, after all, it's a bad school. What's the principle? Me, me, me: the survival of the fittest. But what it says in the Gospel today: We cannot serve two masters, God and mammon. St. Augustine, when he talks about mammon, says, "Two loves built two cities: the love of God leading even to the despising of self, and the love of self-leading even to the despising of God." 2

3 Why do we love food? Why do we love houses? Why do we love churches? Why do we love each according to our own sensibilities? Because we love ourselves. And then we take the Catholic Faith and we twist it. It happens slowly. Father Hannifin, my old Irish pastor, used to say: When you lose the Faith, you do not lose it in a minute. It goes over time slowly, slowly, slowly. And then we get our comfortable house. Then we get our comfortable things. I remember one man in the gulag in Russia, he was captured by the Communists. He was tortured, no problem. He was starved, no problem. And the man described many years later the most difficult day and the greatest torture that he ever received in the gulag. He says one time, the Communist agent came to him and said, Things are getting better for you now. We have written to the City and the head of the Politburo in your city, and your wife, she may be allowed to come and visit you. And they talked about it for several months. And then they said: We finally got permission. Your wife can come and see you. And she's going to come in three weeks. And she's going to come in two weeks. And she's going to come in one week. She's going to come tomorrow. And then they cleaned him up, gave him good food. And after they cleaned him up and gave him good food and he got himself all in order with good clean clothes, they gave him a shower, they went outside and said: Your wife, we never talked to her. Your wife isn't coming. As far as we know, your wife is dead. Put the rags back on and go back in the gulag or sign the confession. He broke down. And he said that of all the tortures that he had received, this was the greatest. They had built up his hope and built up his hope and built up his hope, and he thought his wife was coming. And when he discovered that the letters were false, the information was false, at the last moment, they said, Here's your nice clean clothes and there's your rags. Put them back on. And he gave in. This is the temptation that's being given to the Society of St. Pius X right now. Promises are being made: Rome wants you back in the Church. And what do we want? Justice. What is the superior saying? We want justice for Archbishop Lefebvre. We want justice for ourselves. Archbishop Lefebvre never asked for justice for himself. You know, St. Athanasius was excommunicated several times, and they threatened to kill him multiple times. If you look at the history of the Church, the excommunications of St. Athanasius were never lifted. He figured that being in Heaven and being a saint was good enough. There is no need for the lifting of the excommunications. There is no need of justice for St. Athanasius because his justice was that he stood up against the excommunications. His justice was that he was not afraid to be killed for the Faith. His justice was that he kept his mind and his heart and his Faith upright before God until he died. And so, the Church gave him justice when the Church canonized him a saint. No need to lift empty and foolish excommunications. So, what is the temptation? We're going to lift your excommunications and people are going to respect you more, people are going to love you more. You're going to be more respected and loved because the excommunications have been lifted; and don't we all want justice? I remember at one of our priests meetings a few months ago: Don't we all want justice for Archbishop Lefebvre? And three of us priests said, No, we don't want justice for Archbishop Lefebvre. We don't need justice for Archbishop Lefebvre. He died for the justice which is the justice of the uprightness of God inside of my heart, inside of my mind, inside of my Holy Church. He died for the justice of God, and he lived according to that justice. We don't need justice from a man. We don't need a man to approve of that. If he approves, fine; he will be blessed by God. If he disapproves, fine; he will be cursed by God. But in neither case, does that benefit me. As a soldier of Christ, my duty is to follow Christ. It was a temptation to the Society of St. Pius X to say: We're going to lift your excommunications. You're going to receive a badge of honor again. You're going to be able to walk around proud again inside the Church. And we forgot that our purpose is to fight Modernism and our purpose is to fight the errors in the Church. Our purpose is to fight the loss of Faith. And the answer is when the Faith comes 3

4 back to the Pope and the Faith comes back to the bishops, and the Faith comes back to the priests and the Faith comes back to the churches, this is our vindication. It is not our vindication that excommunications be lifted. If they lift them, fine -- except they can't be lifted because they were never excommunicated. If they declare them null and void, fine. But there's no need for that. It isn't what the Church needs. Furthermore, it can cause scandal because to lift an excommunication is an act of mercy; and it signifies that the excommunication was valid. The President has the power to take any murderer on death row and can say, I pardon you, just on his own power as an act of mercy. And it is not only a right of presidents; it's a traditional right of kings throughout all time. And all Christian kings exercised this power in order to imitate the mercy of Christ. In all Catholic kingdoms, kings would say: Go to murderer's row, and they would pick one of the murderers and say: You are pardoned; and that murderer was pardoned, and he went out in the streets and he could get a job and work in society, and he could never be punished anymore for the grave crime he committed. That power shows the goodness of the king. It doesn't show the innocence of the man that was pardoned. So likewise. when our excommunications are so-called lifted, it does not show the righteousness of the four bishops. It shows the mercy of the Holy Pope. Now, in this case, it is no act of mercy of the Holy Pope. In this case, it is the Pope using it as a tool to deceive the followers of Catholic Tradition into believing that he has changed. And it is also a tool to be used for the Modernists to begin to accept us more than they did before. So, the Modernists and the traditionalists become friends; and what happens is, when one billion Modernists become friends with 1,000 Traditionalists and they go to a party together, the Modernists don't stop drinking. You don't give O'Doul's to everybody. You can all have O'Doul's non-alcoholic drinks. They are going to take your O'Doul's and throw it down the toilet. We think that we can go in with the Modernists and drink with them and then they're going to stop being drunks. And we're going to stand on top of the bar and say, See all this good whiskey from Kentucky? You see all this good beer? You see all this good stuff? Don't drink it anymore, it's bad. Here's O'Doul's. It's not going to work. We normally tell alcoholics, generally it's a bad thing to go to a bar and sit there for four hours and say, I'm not going to drink, I'm not going to drink, I'm not going to drink. It doesn't work. We can't go inside of the house of the Modernists, be with the Modernists and say, We're not going to drink. What's the temptation? The temptation is to think too much of ourselves; and as we think too much of ourselves, we begin to think about our justice, our excommunications being lifted, our being approved by Rome, imagine the good we can do when we get approved. Once we get approved: Oh, you guys are approved now. We're so happy. But when the SSPX gets approved, we re not going to be so happy because they don't like Catholic Tradition. If they accept our approval, they will accept it only as a compromise, that our approval signifies that we now tolerate the Council. Our approval signifies that we now tolerate the New Mass. When I was visiting a priest in the Novus Ordo Church a month ago, a priest came and saw me -- he says the Latin Mass sometimes -- he said, You're a Society of St. Pius X priest. Yeah, I'm a Society of St. Pius X priest. Okay. Well, welcome. I heard you guys are coming back to Rome. Welcome back to Home Sweet Rome. Welcome back to Home Sweet Rome. He believes that by our excommunications being lifted, he believes that by our coming back to the Church, we're coming back to Rome and we're giving up our schism of the last 25 years. And he's praying that we give up our schism. And this is the view of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Catholics throughout the world. 4

5 When the day comes that we get approved, on that day, all of them will believe, and rightly so, that we have taken care of ourselves and that we have taken care of our own spiritual health and we have been cured from our spiritual disease of excommunication and we have been cured from our spiritual disease of schism and we have been cured our spiritual disease of excessive right-wing extremist criticism of Vatican II. Now, we still have bumps and bruises. We're still not going to like everything. We're still going to criticize, but that's going to be allowed for a while. We understand. It's just good to have you back in the fold. And when you try to tell them that's not the way it is, they won't believe. And it will be the definition of a scandal. A scandal means a stumbling block, that which makes people fall over, that which makes them trip away from God. Archbishop Lefebvre made it very clear: We cannot serve both God and mammon. We serve God and it is not in our best interests to take care of our best interests. For he who seeks his own life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for My sake shall find it. So, the best way to live is to be ready to die. But what are we ready to die for? Everybody is ready to die for something. I remember when I first arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, there was a man -- we always in the Society live in a bad part of town, so we used to hear gunshots every night. When I was in India, I heard the noise, I thought it was gunshots. It was like being back in Phoenix. They told me, no, that was firecrackers. I'm used to gunshots, disappointed. But nonetheless in Phoenix, we used to hear gunshots every night, the gangs shooting each other. The cops never show up. They pick up the dead bodies in the morning. One guy was shot in front of our church, they came and picked the dead body up in the morning. Another guy shot, comes running through our church, wounded, bleeding through our church. My first week arriving there, there was a man that didn't want to be mugged, and so he was killed and $4.13 were taken off him. He died rather than lose $4.13. Only there were two problems. One, he died. Two, he lost $4.13. He did not benefit in any way from choosing to die when the young gang-man put his gun to his head: Give me all your money. He said, I'm not giving you my money. If you don't give me your money, I'm going to blow your brains out. I don't care, I'm not giving you my money. And then he blew his brains out. And he took the $4.13. He died. Everyone is willing to die for something. The question is, What? We must be willing to die for Christ, willing to die for the truth, willing to die for the Faith and not willing to die for our own justice, for our own approval. These are not reasons of death, and they are not reasons to live, either. We are not going into the Church in order to be approved. Archbishop Lefebvre made it very clear. I'm going to read some of these quotes in this flyer here put out by Father Libietus. In 1987, Archbishop Lefebvre speaking to Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI: You need to be approved inside the Church. You need to get your own little thing inside the Church. And Archbishop Lefebvre said, I said to him, Cardinal Ratzinger who is now Pope Benedict XVI, even if you grant us a bishop, even if you grant us some autonomy from the bishops, even if you grant us the 1962 liturgy, even if you allow us to continue running our seminaries in the manner that we are doing right now, we cannot work together. It is impossible, impossible, because we are working in diametrically opposing directions. You are working to de-christianize society, the human person and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them. We cannot get along together. Rome has lost the Faith, my dear friends. Rome is in apostasy. I am not speaking empty words. That is the truth. Rome is in apostasy. One can no longer have any confidence in these people. They have left the Church. They have left the Church. They have left the Church. It is certain, certain, certain." It's very clear what his opinion was. 5

6 And in '88: "One is driven to wonder how intelligent persons can make a statement like: They prefer to be mistaken with the Pope than be with the truth against the Pope. That is not what the natural law teaches nor the Magisterium of the Church. St. Thomas Aquinas says, If there was a question of danger for the Faith, the superiors would have to be rebuked by their inferiors, even in public. I was told recently by several different priests, you know: Why don't you preach on the Epistle and the Gospel? Give some kind of preaching on the Epistle and Gospel and don't preach these divisive things. Each of these quotes is from a sermon of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of our Society. He once preached in a sermon in Ridgefield, Connecticut: They call me a rebel. They are right. I am a rebel. I am a rebel against this Modernist Church. I am a rebel against these Modernist things. But I am not a rebel against Eternal Rome and our Holy Church. He is a rebel against these things. He said that in another sermon. What are we supposed to preach? St. Jerome tells us the priest will be judged if he does not warn his faithful against the sins and dangers that are before them, he will be judged for those sins and dangers. But if he does warn the faithful about the sins and dangers that are before them, then he will not be judged for their sins and dangers. The duty of a priest is to bark. St. Bernard says a priest is a dog. And a dog is worthless if he doesn't bark. If you have a guy come into your house and you have one of those dogs that licks criminals to death, it is not a very good dog. The dog has to bark. The dog has to warn. And St. Bernard says a priest is a dog and he must bark. Back in 1997, some of our priests left the Society of St. Pius X. They went over to Rome and made a deal with Rome, some priests, Father Carlos Urrutigoity and some others. Father Hewko, one of our priests, he was being tempted to go with them. And he heard that they were in Shohola, they were in Scranton. They didn't know he was coming. So, he said, I'll stop by and see them. So, he walked in to see them, and there were seven priests and they didn't expect him to be there. Father Bisig was there, the superior of the Fraternity of St. Peter, some other Fraternity of St. Peter priests, Father Urrutigoity, some of our priests who had left, seven of them. And he said, All right, Fathers, what about Vatican II? Well, you know, we have to take it What about Vatican II? Isn't it a Council with heresy in it? And they said, Well, no, no, not really. We have to understand it in the right kind of way. Well, you said when you left the Society two months ago that you were going to continue to condemn the errors of the Council and now you're approved by the local Bishop and now your friends with Father Bisig. Are you going to continue to condemn the Council? Well, no. We're against all bad things, but we have to be balanced. We have to be understanding. And then Father Hewko told them: St. Bernard says, A priest is a dog and a dog is worthless unless he barks. Where is your bark? And they said... Father Bisig wrote a huge document of hundreds of pages defending Assisi, the same Father Bisig who said in 1988, We're never going to compromise, we're accepting the approval of Rome, we're accepting the protocol of May 5th that you, Archbishop Lefebvre, refused to accept. We're going under Rome but we're not going to compromise. We're only getting approved. But here's the problem of being approved. The time comes when you have to decide: What's more important, my being approved or my being faithful to God? Archbishop Lefebvre didn't worry about being approved. In 1988 he preached a sermon at the consecrations: There may come condemnations. Let them come. They are of no value. They mean nothing to us, for we are doing the work of Tradition. We are doing Operation Survival. And it is "Operation Survival" for the good of our Holy Church. The work that we're doing is for the good of the Holy Church. And he says regularly: We must warn the faithful. 6

7 To read a few more quotes of Archbishop Lefebvre, What is happening now? In 1989, after the consecrations in the "Fidelity" magazine of '89, a French magazine of the Society, Archbishop Lefebvre says, We would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order supposedly to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion. We repeat, we would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order supposedly to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion. It is the illusion that is told to me yesterday, the illusion that is told to me by several priests and faithful over the last few weeks that we have to go in the Conciliar Church and we're going to be able to go inside the cathedrals and we're going to go inside the dioceses and be professors inside the Modernist seminaries and we're going to convert the Church. But Archbishop Lefebvre, who was a churchman longer than we have been a Society, said This is a complete illusion. It is not the subjects that make the superiors but the superiors who make the subjects. Amongst the whole Roman curia, amongst all the world's bishops, who are progressives, I would have been completely swamped. I would have been able to do nothing." We re seeing that already amongst many priests. Father Emerson, the first Fraternity of St. Peter priest to be allowed to be a pastor, now he is no longer a member of the Fraternity of St. Peter, but he was the first one, an American priest, an ex-sspx priest, the first one to be a pastor in Pennsylvania or in England, I forget which. It may have been in England. But he had a problem because he had Novus Ordo priests under him and he was the pastor, and there were some fights going on about Holy Communion. So, he had to put in his bulletin: When people receive Communion in the hand, we can't do anything about it; we're just going to have to allow it. We know that in our Traditional Mass, we don't do Communion in the hand. But with the New Mass, we can't stop the other ones from having Communion in the hand. That was in the bulletin. The pastor, Father Emerson, he didn't think that would happen to him, but it did. I remember in one case in India, we were allowed to say Mass in the Church of the Tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle. We have the 9 a.m. Mass scheduled. And just the day before the Mass, we're going to come in, say a 9 a.m. Latin Mass in the main Church. And I spoke with a priest two-weeks before. I'm friends with the pastor of that Church, and I said, Look, Vatican II is bad, the New Mass is bad, all my usual speech. And he had no problem with it. So, then they decided -- I didn't ask for it; some of the faithful asked for it -- that we could have a Mass inside. And just before the Mass, the night before, all scheduled: Oh, by the way, you can't condemn the Council. And by the way, you can't be negative about the New Mass. Just say positive things. The condition was given. When was it given? At the last moment. We could have hundreds and hundreds of people at our Mass. Look at all the good that could be done. All I have to do is close my mouth. And we said, No, we can't meet these false conditions. They're traps. And he explains it more. Continuing Archbishop Lefebvre, quoting the same passage from 1989, "I do not think it is a true return to Tradition." as for the Pope appointing conservative bishops. Pope John Paul II in '89 appointed a few bishops. Archbishop Lefebvre responds, "I do not think it is a true return to Tradition. Just as in a fight, when the troops are going a little too far ahead, one holds them back, so they are slightly putting the brakes on the impulse of Vatican II because the supporters of the Council are going too far. The supposedly conservative bishops are wholly supportive of the Council and the post-conciliar reforms. No, all of that is tactics, which you have to use in any fight. You have to avoid excesses." Asked about the signs of benevolence to Tradition, he replies, "There are plenty of signs showing us that what you are talking about is simply exceptional and temporary." Great example: 2006, Good Shepherd Institute: You can have your Latin Mass in this diocese in France. You can teach the catechism. You can condemn the Council. You can condemn the errors. There are plenty of signs that this is simply exceptional and temporary, says Archbishop Lefebvre. What does he know? He's only an 80-something-year-old man with Alzheimer's perhaps. But that's what he said. Guess what happened? Six years later, March 23, 2012, Monsignor Pozzo writes a letter to the Good 7

8 Shepherd Institute in which he says: The decision of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, you are too exclusive in your use of the Latin Mass. You cannot be exclusive in the use of the Latin Mass. You must practice the Latin Mass in the spirit of Summorum Pontificum. You must accept the New Mass. You must teach the Catechism of the Catholic Church (a Modernist catechism published in 1991) in your seminary. You must teach the 16 documents of the Vatican Council II. You're not doing that. And the superior is removed, replaced. Now he has a canonical case going on with Rome. Father Laguerie is appealing his removal to the men that are responsible for his removal. The appeal is ongoing at this time. It was "exceptional and temporary." 2012 was the end of the temporary peace of the Good Shepherd Institute and the beginning of our planned peace. And our planned peace will be exceptional and temporary, also. Continuing Archbishop Lefebvre: "So I do not think it is opportune to try contacting Rome. I think we must still wait, wait, unfortunately, for the situation to get still worse on their side. But up until now, they do not want to recognize the fact; that is, what can look like a concession is in reality a maneuver to separate us from the largest number of faithful as possible. This is the perspective in which they seem to be always giving a little more and a little more and even going very far. We must absolutely convince our faithful that it is no more than a maneuver. How do you convince the faithful? Where is the place where it is the duty of a priest to convince the faithful? It is called the pulpit. This is the place where the priest must stand and convince the faithful. Suppose that our house is surrounded and there are all kinds of Al Qaeda agents outside and there's bombs at the door, machine guns and cannons and they're going to kill us all. And the priest stands up and gives a sermon, Today we're going to read the interpretation of St. Athanasius and St. Jerome on the passage of the sermon today. And he mentions nothing about the battle, mentions nothing about how to prepare yourself for death, mentions nothing about how to stand up as a Catholic in the middle of this fight but only talks about the Epistle and the Gospel in some kind of spiritual and, perhaps, meaningless way. We are at war. The souls of the Catholics in Tradition are in danger of losing their Faith. We are in danger of going away from God. This is our situation today. Archbishop Lefebvre warned us many times before his death because he saw that the time would come when we would have to face this temptation. And he left us the words of our Holy Founder, himself, that we can call upon because he has laid the road map of how to deal in this time of crisis. We must absolutely convince our faithful that it is no more than a maneuver, that it is dangerous to put oneself into the hands of Conciliar bishops and Modernist Rome. It is the greatest danger threatening our people. And our people are talking about it now: We're going to be able to go in. remember that day in India, there was another priest with me who was a very staunch anti- Modernist priest. On that particular day he was confused. He said, Well, I'll go in and say the Mass. And I told him, Father, tomorrow you go in and say the Mass without condemning the Council, abiding by the conditions given to you, and next Sunday I'm scheduled to say the Mass; I'm not going to go in there and say that Mass. I refuse. And I'm going to say Mass right here in this school. And the people are going to say: Why did one Father go to the Mass over there and why did the other Father refuse? And I will tell them, because the Father, who I am friends with and I'm still friends with him to this day, this Father said that I cannot preach against the errors of Vatican II or against the errors of the New Mass and I have to be positive in my Latin Mass and not negative. And that is a compromise; therefore, I refuse to do it. And there will be a split between us. And the other Father said, You're right. He was in a state of temporary confusion. And he did not go along with it. 8

9 Continuing the 1989 quote from Archbishop Lefebvre, "If we have struggled for 20 years to avoid the Conciliar errors --" now we can say 40 years "-- it was not in order to now put ourselves in the hands of those professing these errors." Who is the specific one we're putting ourselves in the hands of? Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, the very one specifically that Archbishop Lefebvre would not put himself into the hands of, the same man, still alive 20 years later and now our Pope. 1990: "Some people are always admiring the grass in the neighbor's field. They look to our enemies on the other side. After all, we must be charitable. We must be kind. We must not be divisive. After all, they are celebrating the Tridentine Mass. They are not as bad as everyone says. But they are betraying us, betraying us. They are shaking hands with the Church's destroyers. They are shaking hands with the people holding Modernist and liberal ideas condemned by the Church, so they are doing the devil's work. We repeat these words now. Pope Benedict XVI at this time just had Assisi 3, October of Part of what Archbishop Lefebvre says: The greatest rupture of the Church was Assisi. That was the great scandal. 1986, the high point of this rupture with the previous Magisterium of the Church took place at Assisi after the visit to the synagogue. Pope Benedict XVI has visited the synagogue at least six or seven times. Every year he visits the synagogue. John Paul II got around to doing it twice in 27 years. Archbishop Lefebvre said: This is the high point. Remember that the Jews said 2,000 years ago, Let His blood be upon us and upon our children. And now we take to the synagogue of the nonconverted Jews and we tell them that they are vehicles of salvation, though they are the vehicles that have rejected Jesus Christ. And the Church tells us and the holy Sacred Scripture tells us the Jews will have their day of glory in the future when they turn to Christ, when they convert to Christ. But this is not their day of glory. At the end of the world, the Jews will have their day of glory and they will be the leaders against the anti-christ. And they will come back to the fold of Our Lord Jesus Christ and they will accept him as the Messiah, and there is no other glory for a Jew than Jesus Christ. And therefore, we do not worship with a false worship with them, but John Paul II did and Benedict XVI has many times, and he repeated Assisi only a few months ago. And he said, The spirit of Assisi. We must maintain the spirit of Assisi, that spirit which so scandalized Archbishop Lefebvre that he took it as one of the great signs from Heaven that he must consecrate bishops, that he must continue the work of Tradition, of "Operation Survival," which operation is still necessary in But they are betraying us. They are betraying us. They are shaking hands with the Church's destroyers. They are shaking hands with the people holding Modernist and liberal ideas condemned by the Church, so they are doing the devil's work. They are now saying, so long as they grant us the Old Mass, we can shake hands with Rome, no problem. And that's essentially what Menzingen is saying now: Give us our freedom to have our Mass. Give us our freedom to continue to preach the truth and condemn the promoters of the error, not the errors themselves. But we are saying: We are seeing how it works out. They are in an impossible situation, impossible. One cannot both shake hands with Modernists and keep following Tradition, not possible, not possible. Now, to stay in touch with them, to bring them back to convert them to Tradition, yes, if you like, that's the right kind of ecumenism. Now, this is important, Archbishop Lefebvre said that. People are telling us, you are saying stay away from the Church. You're saying they're all bad men, all those priests are bad men, all those bishops are bad men, you're saying we can have nothing to do with them. You're saying that we have to wait until they're all perfect saints and all ready to be canonized and then we go back. The answer is no. We always maintain contact with them. In my own case, that's been my duty the last five years, visiting more than 300 priests more than 20 to 25 bishops in order to speak to them about conversion to Tradition, not about how wonderful their life is inside of their Modernist Conciliar Church. Oftentimes we walk the streets and speak with Hindus and Muslims and Protestants and speak 9

10 with Novus Ordo Catholics, and everyone is welcome. But why do we meet them? To bring them Christ. Why do we meet them? To bring them to Christ and to bring Christ to them. We carry the truth. Our Lord Jesus Christ said: Blessed are the feet of the carriers of the Gospel of Peace. [Romans 10:15; Isaias 52:7] And we are supposed to be the carriers of the Gospel of Peace. And wherever our feet take us is where the Gospel must go. That is our duty. And when we have contact with Romans, with Modernists, with Conciliarists, we love them. We are good with them. We have many a good beer with quite a few of them. Even better when they pay for it. But many times, we meet and we are friends with many. But what is our purpose? Our purpose is to convert them. St. Joseph Cafasso, a friend of St. John Bosco, says, Remember, a priest is a fisherman; and a fisherman is a layer of traps. That's what a fisherman is. And as priests, he said in a talk to priests, you must remember, everywhere you go, carry a trap. When you meet with someone, there is a hook. When you meet with someone, there is a net. There might even be a little beautiful worm on the end of the hook. You might like the worm, but we have the hook. And everything we do as priests is fishermen. St. Joseph Cafasso says: Remember a priest is a fisherman and a fisherman is a layer of traps. Everywhere you go, you want to trap souls. Everywhere you go, you want to trap men for God. We are not considering our own welfare or our own justice or our own protection or our own food, our own sustenance. God will take care of that like it says in the Gospel today: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all other things will be added unto you besides. It's a false accusation to say we are against dealing with the modern Catholics. We deal with them every day and we are happy to deal with them. Archbishop Lefebvre: "Now to stay in touch with them, to bring them back, to convert them to Tradition, yes, if you like; that's the right kind of ecumenism. But give the impression that, after all, one almost regrets any break, that one likes talking to them, no way, unbelievable, unimaginable." He was offended that people were upset about the break. Oh, we have been excommunicated, I feel so horrible being excommunicated. You know, in 1988, we didn't feel horrible. In 1988, all the superiors, I don't know how many, several hundred, wrote letters to Rome: Please excommunicate us. You only excommunicated the four bishops. We feel hurt that we were left out. Please excommunicate us. That was our attitude in '88. Excommunication was a banner. St. Athanasius carried it as his glory just like Our Lord Jesus Christ when He rose from the dead, He had wounds and they were not removed from His hands. They were not removed from His feet. They were not cured because they were His glory. And so likewise in the lives of the saints, those wounds are our glory. St. Paul is pictured with a sword. Why? Because a sword was his means to glory. It was a sword that chopped off his head. St. Peter is pictured with his cross upside-down because it was his means to glory, and so on with each of the saints. The attacks of the devil are our means to glory. We're not be disturbed by them or try to remove them. It is rather by accepting these attacks and by standing firm for the truth and condemning wholly the errors and practicing charity to souls in real circumstances that we bring souls to Christ and seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice and He shall take care of us. Continuing Archbishop Lefebvre, 1990, "What kind of relations can you have with people like that?" that are worried about the break. "This is what causes a problem with a certain layfolk who have a kind of deep-down regret that they are no longer with the people they used to be with. It is a pity that we are divided, they say. Why not meet up with them? Let's go and have a drink together, reach out a hand to them. That's a betrayal. Those saying this give the impression that, at the drop of a hat, they would cross over and join those who left us. They must make up their minds." September 6, 1990, Archbishop Lefebvre, just a few months before he died, to the priests in Econe. And then Father Libietus, who put together this flyer, continues: "So we must make up our minds. We cannot serve God and mammon, Tradition and Modernism. We cannot love the SSPX and the evolving Novus SSPX. We will love one and hate the other or vice versa. Archbishop Lefebvre, the former Superior 10

11 General of the Holy Ghost Fathers and the founder who gave the foundation and spirit to the SSPX still speaks today from beyond the grave. As Our Lord said of Himself, My words shall not pass away. We can say the same thing of the Archbishop. He offers his spirit to teach you all things and bring all things to your mind whatsoever he shall have said to you. His words shall not pass away. Read him, know him, love him, follow him, and you will be on the safe path." We want to maintain the safe path of our Holy Founder. We have given our whole lives to our Holy Church in the Society of St. Pius X, and now they want to throw us out, but we will not be thrown out. We will maintain the spirit and teaching of our founder, and may God give us the grace to do so usque ad mortem ( even unto death ) and that we must maintain the spirit of our founder because it is the spirit that is necessary to combat the errors of Vatican II, Modernism, the crisis in our Church today, not because of him; he was an instrument of God. We follow our Holy Church. We follow the holy truth. We must condemn the errors. And we must not be concerned for our own selves, that we need justice to lift the excommunications -- we do not -- that we need approval from Rome so people can't yell at us anymore. I think some of the priests don't realize about marriage. Some of you have heard of people who have gotten married. In marriage, you think when you get married you won't be criticized anymore, until you get married. When you get married, you find that every day she's waiting for you in order to curse you, in order to criticize you, in order to make your life a living hell. And you got 55 more years. Some of our priests have forgotten what marriage is like. They can go and get married to the Wicked Witch of the West. We will stay where we are. We'll close it at that, and God bless you all. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 11