Open letter to Pope John Paul II: an episcopal manifesto [Catholic Caucus]

May Your Holiness permit us, with an entire filial openness, to submit to you the following considerations. During the last twenty years the situation in the Church is such that it looks like an occupied city.

Thousands of members of the clergy, and millions of the faithful, are living in a state of anguish and perplexity because of the "self-destruction of the Church." They are being thrown into confusion and disorder by the errors contained in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the post-conciliar reforms, and especially the liturgical reforms, the false notions diffused by official documents and by the abuse of power perpetrated by the hierarchy.

In these distressing circumstances, many are losing the Faith, charity is becoming cold, and the concept of the true unity of the Church in time and in space is disappearing. Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer after 1988 Episcopal Consecrations Archbishop Lefebvre with Bishop de Castro Mayer after the 1988 Episcopal Consecrations

In our capacity as bishops of the Holy Catholic Church, successors of the Apostles, our hearts are overwhelmed at the sights throughout the world, by so many souls who are bewildered yet desirous in continuing in the faith and morals which have been defined by the Magisterium of the Church and taught by Her in a constant and universal manner.

It seems to us that to remain silent in these circumstances would be to become accomplices to these wicked works (cf. II Jn. 11).

That is why we find ourselves obliged to intervene in public before Your Holiness (considering all the measures we have undertaken in private during the last fifteen years have remained ineffectual) in order to denounce the principal causes of this dramatic situation, and to beseech Your Holiness to use his power as Successor of Peter to "confirm your brothers in the Faith" (Luke 22, 32), which has been faithfully handed down to us by Apostolic Tradition.

To that end we have attached to this letter an appendix containing the principal errors which are at the origins of this tragic situation and which, moreover, have already been condemned by your predecessors. The following list outlines these errors, but it is not exhaustive: A latitudinarian and ecumenical notion of the Church, divided in its faith, condemned in particular by the Syllabus, No. 18 (Den. 2918).

A collegial government and a democratic orientation in the Church, condemned in particular by Vatican Council I (Den. 3055).

A false notion of the natural rights of man which clearly appears in the document on Religious Liberty, condemned in particular by Quanta cura (Pius IX) and Libertas praestantissimum (Leo XIII)

A Protestant notion of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, condemned by the Council of Trent, Session XXII.

Finally, and in a general manner, the free spreading of heresies, characterized by the suppression of the Holy Office.

The documents containing these errors cause an uneasiness and a disarray, so much the more profound as they come from a source so much the more elevated. The clergy and the faithful most moved by this situation are, moreover, those who are the most attached to the Church, to the authority of the Successor of Peter, and to the traditional Magisterium of the Church.

Most Holy Father, it is urgently necessary that this disarray come to an end because the flock is dispersing and the abandoned sheep are following mercenaries. We beseech you, for the good of the Catholic Faith and for the salvation of souls, to reaffirm the truths, contrary to these errors, truths which have been taught for twenty centuries in the Church.

It is with the sentiments of St. Paul before St. Peter, when he reproached him for having not followed "the truth of the Gospel (Gal. 2, 11-14), that we are addressing you. His aim was none other than to protect the faith of the flock.

St. Robert Bellarmine, expressing on this occasion a general moral principle, states that one must resist the pontiff whose actions would be prejudicial to the salvation of souls (De Rom. Pon., I.2, c.29).

Thus it is with the purpose of coming to the aid of Your Holiness that we utter this cry of alarm, rendered all the more urgent by the errors, not to say the heresies, of the new Code of Canon Law and by the ceremonies and addresses on the occasion of the Fifth Centenary of the birth of Luther. Truly, this is the limit!

May God come to your aid, Most Holy Father. We are praying without ceasing for you to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

H.E. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, International Seminary of St. Pius X Econe, Switzerland

H.E. Bishop Antonio de Castro-Mayer Riachuelo 169, C.P. 255 28100 Campos, (RJ) Brazil

More on this from Saint Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, which Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro-Mayer apparently decided not to include in the inquiry of 1983:

Now the fifth true opinion, is that a Pope who is a manifest heretic, ceases in himself to be Pope and head, just as he ceases in himself to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church: whereby, he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the opinion of all the ancient Fathers, who teach that manifest heretics soon [mox] lose all jurisdiction, and namely St. Cyprian who speaks on Novation, who was a Pope in schism with Cornelius: “He cannot hold the Episcopacy, although he was a bishop first, he fell from the body of his fellow bishops and from the unity of the Church” [332].

From De Romano Pontifice, Book II, Chapter 30

What would have happened had the Archbishop and Bishop followed up with the above observation of Saint Robert Bellarmine?

(Above quote cited from http://novusordowatch.org/de-romano-pontifice-book2-chapter30/)

You don’t suppose that the Dubia cardinals who have been stood up by Francis “the Pope of Mercy and Dialog” (no comment to their all too important Dubia) will get anywhere near the conclusions of the saint do you? They seem to realize that not only would Francis’ goose be cooked but theirs as well, for they each signed on to the Novus Ordo mess long ago, and would need to renounce numerous heresies personally, and would thus become outlawed by the Novus Ordo apostates.

Why, they could be out on the street without a job! Maybe one could fill in for a protestant minister, one such as Muller, who doesn’t really believe in transubstantiation!

Having no response from their pontiff they offer the Novus Ordo flock no meaningful follow-up, just platitudes. Will the Novus Ordites INSIST that they prosecute Francis? Or will they just acquiesce and blissfully go on with life as the drama unfolds?

Most Holy Father, it is urgently necessary that this disarray come to an end because the flock is dispersing and the abandoned sheep are following mercenaries. We beseech you, for the good of the Catholic Faith and for the salvation of souls, to reaffirm the truths, contrary to these errors, truths which have been taught for twenty centuries in the Church.

And the SSPX etal is still waiting for this reaffirmation for 50+ years now.

As it will be for "the Dubia"....

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