Fr. Hewko always speaks the truth- when in the SSPX and now!
Dec 29, 2017 3:39:18 GMT
Post by Deus Vult on Dec 29, 2017 3:39:18 GMT
Sermon given by Fr. David Hewko
at the First Mass of a newly ordained Priest
Winona, 17th June, 2012
excerpts:
Christ tells us, “My sheep hear My voice.” My voice. Whose voice is that? It’s the voice of God Himself, Jesus Christ the Eternal God made flesh, the King, the High Priest. And that voice, how do we know the truth, the knowledge, with all the tidal wave of confusion, with all the lies? Where do we find, where do we hear the Truth? Where do we go? Archbishop Lefebvre gives us the answer when he gave the Episcopal Consecrations in 1988. He said in his sermon, “I hear the voices of all these popes since Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, telling us, ‘What will you do with our teachings? What will you do with the Catholic Faith? Are you going to abandon it? Do not abandon the Church.’” “And what we,” then he said, “what we condemned in the past, the present Roman authorities have embraced and are professing.” The condemnations, where are these condemnations? Socialism, Liberalism, Communism, Modernism, Zionism, they’ve all been condemned. And all the modern errors. And he said in his sermon, “I hear these voices echoing the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, echoing the voice of the Blessed Trinity, ‘Do something about it or all will be lost! Souls will be lost!’” And that defines the fight that we’re in."
And Fr. Reuter, this is our fight, this is it: To stand opposed to the whole wave of apostasy, standing on the rock-solid shoulders of the great popes. We have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. There’s no confusion in their encyclicals, that’s for sure.
And all of us, all of us, as we were told in the seminary and Archbishop Lefebvre himself admitted it, “I was a liberal, I believed in separation of Church and State, I believed in the modern errors.” We’re all liberals in some way. We’ve got to wash it out, we’ve got to soak it out, we’ve got to fight it out, dig it out, pull it out every day. It’s in us, it’s in our blood, it’s in our society, it permeates, as Gregory XVI said, like a black fog out of Hell, the smoke seen by St. John in the Apocalypse has spread all over the earth which are the liberal errors of Modernism, Communism, Socialism, and all those errors.
Three times Archbishop Lefebvre said in the sermon of the Consecrations, “We have to wait. We have to fight on and wait until Tradition finds its rightful place in Rome.” Three times he said this. Now I ask you, dear faithful, dear Fathers, and all of you, do we see Tradition back in Rome? Go down to your local diocese, go down to your local parish church. Has Tradition come back, with all the charismatic dancing and altar girls and irreverence and sacrileges and goofy priests saying goofy things? Is that Tradition come back?
So Fr. Reuter, to sum it up, obedience. The priest must be obedient, truly obedient to Tradition, truly obedient to the Catholic Faith of all time, and obedient to our superiors so long as they are protecting the Faith and upholding our holy statutes. But there was a time in history, not too long ago, when the priests should have been disobedient and not let their parishes accept the New Mass and the new catechisms. So we have to be, Fr. Reuter, truly obedient, always. Blind obedience is not Catholic! True obedience is founded on humility of heart to the voice of Our Lord the Good Shepherd and submits the mind and the heart to Him, speaking through one’s superiors, for the common good, and the lawful orders that go according to the Faith.
Full sermon:
This day is a great joy for the Catholic Church, a great joy for the family of Fr. Reuter and all the families of the priests today offering their first Masses. What a great grace, what a great happiness for the Catholic Church of all time, the Catholic Church of Tradition!
Ten years ago on June 29th, Fr. Reuter and I were there present for the death of Fr. John of the Cross, who was a model monk and priest. He taught us many things. He said many things. Among some of the pearls of wisdom he left us was, “monks (and we could add priests and probably nuns, too), monks, when they’re young they look holy, but they’re not. And when they’re middle aged, they don’t look holy, and they’re not. And when they’re old and bent over and feeble, they don’t look holy, but they are!” And that defines the life of holiness. It’s an everyday battle for the sanctification of our own soul as priests. To drink everyday from the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, the King; there we draw our strength. And to fulfill the one request, as Bishop Sheen says, the one request He asked of His priests… and, Fr. Reuter, I am sure you probably do already, and I encourage you to do this your whole priestly life; aside also from your Breviary, which is very powerful; aside also from the Holy Mass you will offer every day, is the Holy Hour. “Will you not spend one hour with Me?” And it’s there you will find your light, your strength, your wisdom, your romance, your love, your death, your glory. Because Jesus Christ the King dwells there for us in the Blessed Sacrament. And for the priest and for all religious and for the faithful that is our strength!
And this shows the outpouring of the love of God. “Deus caritas est,” says St. John. “God is Charity.” And He pours out His love to souls like a second flood, over the human race, to drown us, as it were, in the incredible love of God. He gives us today a beautiful day, the sun, the gravity, the planets in perfect mathematical circulation. He gives us the air we breathe. And He gives us His life in our soul by grace and gives us His own Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist, a great Treasure. And this is the great motto of our Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, Credidimus Caritati. We have believed in the Charity.
And you good fathers and good mothers, you know, as you grow spiritually, you know what this means. Charity is in sacrifice. The life of a priest is a continual self giving. “He is an eaten man,” says St. John Vianney. The sisters and our dear brothers and monks submit to a Holy Rule, and through this, and their sacred vows, they become sanctified. And their life is the life of Charity, to be crucified as a victim with Jesus on the Altar, out of love for Him. So this is the real love. It’s not the love as many Novus Ordo bishops today are preaching in many churches throughout the world, l-u-v, a false charity; that we must acknowledge all the false religions, we must embrace the Jews and the Protestants and Lutherans and have ecumenical services. This is not the true Charity, not at all! That has been condemned by the Church.
Christ tells us, “My sheep hear My voice.” My voice. Whose voice is that? It’s the voice of God Himself, Jesus Christ the Eternal God made flesh, the King, the High Priest. And that voice, how do we know the truth, the knowledge, with all the tidal wave of confusion, with all the lies? Where do we find, where do we hear the Truth? Where do we go? Archbishop Lefebvre gives us the answer when he gave the Episcopal Consecrations in 1988. He said in his sermon, “I hear the voices of all these popes since Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, telling us, ‘What will you do with our teachings? What will you do with the Catholic Faith? Are you going to abandon it? Do not abandon the Church.’” “And what we,” then he said, “what we condemned in the past, the present Roman authorities have embraced and are professing.” The condemnations, where are these condemnations? Socialism, Liberalism, Communism, Modernism, Zionism, they’ve all been condemned. And all the modern errors. And he said in his sermon, “I hear these voices echoing the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, echoing the voice of the Blessed Trinity, ‘Do something about it or all will be lost! Souls will be lost!’” And that defines the fight that we’re in.
Let me give a quote from the Archbishop himself. “And it is striking to see,” this is three years after the consecrations, “it is striking to see how our fight is now exactly the same fight as was being fought then by the great Catholics of the nineteenth century in the wake of the French Revolution. And by the popes, Pius VI, Pius VII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and so on, Pius X, down to Pius XII, their fight is summed up in the Encyclical, Quanta Qura, with the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, and Pascendi of Pius X. These are the two great documents, sensational and shocking in their day, laying out the Church’s teaching in the face of the modern errors, the errors appearing in the course of the Revolution, especially the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This is the fight we are in in the middle of today. Exactly the same fight.”
And Fr. Reuter, that’s why I am addressing you as a priest of the Society of St. Pius X. This is the founder speaking, this is our father speaking, echoing the words of the infallible authority of the constant Magisterium of the Catholic Church. And as you know, the enemy is always about, and he seeks to destroy the Spouse of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church. Listen to Mr. Prelot in his book, Liberal Catholicism. He was a senator in France. In 1969 he wrote this. Listen to his words, “We struggled for a century and a half to make our ideas prevail inside the Church, and we did not succeed. Then came the Second Vatican Council, and we triumphed. Ever since, the theses and principles of liberal Catholicism have been definitively and officially accepted by the Holy Church.”
What are these principles that the Freemasons since the French Revolution have so brazenly and boldly raised up in the Declaration of the Rights of Man against the Rights of God? What are these, summed up? Archbishop Lefebvre speaks about them all the time. Read his books, read his sermons to keep clear in this confusion of our times. And he sums them up into three: Religious liberty. Religious liberty, which is a very serious sin, a very striking, bold attack against Jesus Christ in His Kingship in society. And it is not small. This error is huge. And it’s been condemned by the Church over and over and over again. And it triumphed at Vatican II. And in the name of religious liberty, you realize, dear faithful, dear Fathers, what happened in the name of religious liberty. Small effects? No. The smashing , literally the smashing of the great Catholic countries. One by one they fell. And it was the Vatican itself who made the political moves to tear off the crown of Jesus Christ, to tear off the Catholic constitution of Ireland, Spain, Colombia, Philippines, just to name a few, and Italy in 1984. And do you realize what this means? It means the flooding in of the false religions. That means the state cannot profess the True Religion, cannot acknowledge Jesus Christ as King. And this is, as Archbishop Lefebvre often, very often said, repeating the popes of all time, this is public apostasy. This is putting Man in the place of God.
And Fr. Reuter, this is our fight, this is it: To stand opposed to the whole wave of apostasy, standing on the rock-solid shoulders of the great popes. We have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. There’s no confusion in their encyclicals, that’s for sure.
Also, what else triumphed in the Vatican Council was ecumenism. The false ecumenism which is prevalent today, prevalent today! Listen to a high-up Freemason in France. He said, “One can say that ecumenism is the legitimate son of Freemasonry. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Israelites, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Freethinkers, Free-believers, to us they are only our first name. Freemasonry is our family name.”
And, of course, collegiality. Collegiality is the democracy within the Church. And the principle of religious freedom, that is, freedom of conscience, but the error is: “I can believe what I darn well please and still go to Heaven.” That’s condemned by the Catholic Church, by Jesus Christ Himself. “Who does not believe and is not baptized will be condemned.” Christ is not an option. He is our God, He is our King, He is our Redeemer and there is no other!
And that is why Archbishop Lefebvre very clearly said we have to reject the Vatican Council in her errors. And the errors are not small, little misconceived values. They are errors condemned by the Roman Catholic Church of all time with no ambiguity and with very clear and strong language. For example, the popes will call religious liberty “insanity.” St. Pius X will call it “delirium.” And listen to our Founder again, listen to him, because his words still ring true:
“What have the liberal Catholics been seeking for a century and a half? To make a marriage between the Church and the Revolution.” And this, Bishop Tissier mentioned at the ordinations two days ago. “To wed the Church and subversion. To wed the Church and the forces that destroy society, all societies, families, civil and religious. This wedding of the Church is described in the Council. Take the schema, Gaudium et Spes; that’s a Vatican II document.” So let nobody tell you it’s just a false interpretation or an exaggerated interpretation after the Council. The errors are built right into the Council. And if you have any doubts on that, read I Accuse the Council, by Archbishop Lefebvre. “It is necessary,” says the document, “to marry the principles of the Church with the conceptions of modern man. What does that mean? That means that it is necessary to wed the Church, the Catholic Church, the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ with principles that are contrary to this Church, that undermine it and which have always been against the Church. Precisely it is this marriage that was attempted in the Council by men of the Church and not the Church. For the Church can never permit such a thing. For a century and a half, all the Sovereign Pontiffs have condemned liberal Catholicism, have refused this marriage with the ideas of the Revolution, those who adored the goddess of reason. The popes had never been able to accept such things.”
“And during this Revolution priests were sent to the scaffold, their heads chopped off. Nuns were persecuted and also executed. Remember the pontoons of Nantes in France where faithful priests were assembled onto boats and were then sunk to drown. That is what the revolution did. And well, dear brethren what the revolution did is nothing compared to what the Second Vatican Council is doing, nothing! It would have been better for the thirty, forty, or fifty thousand priests who have left their cassocks and violated their vows and their oaths made before God; it would have been better for them to have been martyred or sent to the scaffold. At least they would have saved their souls!”
And Archbishop Lefebvre is consistent always, every decade, every year in the battle for the Faith. So read, read what he says. And Fr. Reuter, deep in your mind, deep in your soul, already in the seminary the good priests here have trained you in all the great doctrines of our Holy Faith. And you know the acts of the Magisterium. You know these great encyclicals. You studied them. And now you must meditate on them, pray on them!
And all of us, all of us, as we were told in the seminary and Archbishop Lefebvre himself admitted it, “I was a liberal, I believed in separation of Church and State, I believed in the modern errors.” We’re all liberals in some way. We’ve got to wash it out, we’ve got to soak it out, we’ve got to fight it out, dig it out, pull it out every day. It’s in us, it’s in our blood, it’s in our society, it permeates, as Gregory XVI said, like a black fog out of Hell, the smoke seen by St. John in the Apocalypse has spread all over the earth which are the liberal errors of Modernism, Communism, Socialism, and all those errors.
Three times Archbishop Lefebvre said in the sermon of the Consecrations, “We have to wait. We have to fight on and wait until Tradition finds its rightful place in Rome.” Three times he said this. Now I ask you, dear faithful, dear Fathers, and all of you, do we see Tradition back in Rome? Go down to your local diocese, go down to your local parish church. Has Tradition come back, with all the charismatic dancing and altar girls and irreverence and sacrileges and goofy priests saying goofy things? Is that Tradition come back?
And let’s look at Rome. And let’s look (obviously with respect and with filial respect and love even), at the Holy Father, the Pope. We are not sedevacantists. He is the pope. He is our father. But like a president, he can be a ‘so-and-so’ but he is still the president. And the pope is the Holy Father, he is. He’s the Vicar of Christ. But what are his actions? What have you seen? Everyday there is something new. And we can’t be deceived by the pro multis, a few crumbs to Tradition. When he visited the mosque, he took his socks off, faced Mecca. He has visited the Jews’ synagogues over and over again. The meeting of Assisi, the horrible scandal of Assisi. And Archbishop Lefebvre said about the spirit of Assisi, we must reject this because it will undermine our Faith, undermine the Faith of your families and your children. The spirit of Assisi is this ecumenical spirit, based on the instructions of the Council of Vatican II. You’ll find it right in the texts.
And lest we be deceived, dear faithful, lest we be deceived, I have in my hands the Summorum Pontificum. Now I was a little naïve, too. When this came out, I thought, well, that’s great, the Latin Mass is finally freed; it’s been declared that it’s never been abrogated. This is great! But then I read the text and it’s quite shocking. And, Catholics, we have to oppose the errors in here. Yes, it is a concession, it is a concession. The Latin Mass is free, no one can hinder the priest from saying it. But listen to a few words of this. “It must be said that the Missal published by Paul VI,” that is, the New Mass, made with the help of six Protestant ministers, written by a Freemason, which attacks the Kingship of Christ, attacks the Real Presence, and as Fr. Zigrane told me, (he is a priest of the Galveston diocese, a Canon lawyer for fourteen years; he joined the Society of St. Pius X down in our priory in Texas). Fr. Zigrane told me the New Mass is most dangerous to the priest himself, to make him lose his Faith. And here’s what it says, “This Mass of Paul VI obviously is and continues to be the normal form, the ordinary form of the Eucharistic Liturgy. The last version of the Missale Romanum prior to the Council (that’s our Mass, the Tridentine Mass) and used during the Council will now be able to be used as an extraordinary form of the liturgical celebration.” In other words, it is okay to be used and we’ll tolerate it. It’s not hindered anymore. It never was. “It is not appropriate to speak of these two versions of the Roman Missal as if they were “two Rites.” Rather, it is a matter of a twofold use of the one and the same rite.” You can’t mix water and oil. I read out a little more, “The new Missal will certainly remain, (the New Mass) will certainly remain the form of the Roman Rite not only on account of the juridical norm but also because of the actual situation of the communities of the faithful.” What if the faithful have lost their Faith and the priests have misled them all these years since the Second Vatican Council? And they want bands and rock music and bouncing and dancing. That’s what the democracy wants. And I finish here, “There is no contradiction,” he says, (this is the Holy Father), “there is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal.” No contradiction? What are the fruits? Archbishop Lefebvre said look at the fruits! You know, one time Rome told Archbishop Lefebvre, “Look, everything will be solved between us, this drama, if you accept the New Mass and just say it once in your seminary. Just say it once. No problem, everything over, politics done.” Archbishop Lefebvre, (a rock he always was, thank God), he said, “No, I cannot accept the New Mass, not even once, because it is a direct attack against the Faith, with its subtle phrases and subtle formulae.” So when we see the pro multis put back in the Consecration, alright, that’s great, hoorah for Tradition. But what is veiled in this? Archbishop Lefebvre and our superiors of the Society of St. Pius X, they say obviously we can’t accept that. Obviously, it’s unacceptable.
The lifting of the excommunications, well, we’re still waiting for our Founder, for his excommunication to be lifted. But let me just draw another text from March of this year just in case any of us might be thinking, “Well, you know, this pope, is, he’s kinder to Tradition, it looks like things are going great, it’s another springtime.” We must not be deceived. We must pray, we must pray. Listen to this. This is the Letter for the Clergy, a letter to the priests from the Congregation for the Clergy, March of this year, not ten years ago, not thirty years ago, this year. And the pope calls for a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, October 11, 1962, fifty years ago, (have mercy on us!). He says further about the new evangelization for the transmission of the Christian Faith. I read: “We will therefore be expected to work in depth on each of these chapters (all the priests will have to work in depth on this, what is it?) on (here we go again) on the Second Vatican Council, so that it may be accepted once again as the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century, a sure compass by which to take our bearings in the new century now beginning, increasingly powerful for the ever-necessary renewal of the Church.” And so, Vatican II all the way. Vatican II, dying? You see, it’s not. Second point: “On the Catechism of the Catholic Church (this is the New Catechism permeated with the liberal errors), “that it may be truly accepted and used as a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion and sure norm for the teaching of the Faith.” Is that a sign of Rome coming back to Tradition, dear faithful? It’s in black and white.
Remember what happened last October. You know, in the first Assisi, Archbishop Lefebvre sent to the Holy Father, (of course with all respect; he always had respect for the authorities). But he always spoke up for the Truth. And he sent to the pope those pictures, you remember the drawings? Pope John Paul II at the gate having the ecumenical Assisi meeting and Christ the King and Mary saying, “No entrance into Heaven, no, ecumenists can’t enter here.” And the devil is on the side whispering, “Over here, buddy.” It’s a frightening image, but it’s very real, very true. How serious this matter is! The Assisi meetings are an attack against Jesus Christ as God, Jesus Christ as King. It’s a very serious sin against the First Commandment. And Archbishop Lefebvre, seeing this, he said, “We have to absolutely refuse this apostasy.” And this pope, again, he’s our father and with all respect, what do we do? He has all the world religions and (more than that), invited the voodoo doctor, sorcerer, to perform some who-knows-what ceremony invoking the devils at the pulpit. And the atheist woman stood there, and she said, “I want to thank the Holy Father for inviting me to speak at this Assisi meeting to represent all the nonbelievers.” Dear faithful, it’s frightening and it’s real. It’s happening, it’s happening! Be under no illusion. It’s happening before our eyes!
Two weeks before Assisi something also unheard of, in the history of the Council, but another step of degradation and apostasy, the document that came out from Rome, calling for the one world religion, a one world government, a one world authority. What do you think that’s going to be? St. Pius X warned, in his Apostolic Mandate on the Sillon “these enemies of Christ are working for a one world government, a one world religion, where there will be no dogmas, no morals.” You can believe what you want as long as you accept to be part of this supra-Ecumenical Church. It is very frightening to read the texts of Vatican II and the words of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, and of this pope, and of Paul VI. It’s frightening, though we can’t be under illusion.
And we wonder why the Virgin Mary begged us to pray the Rosary that the pope consecrate Russia? Dear faithful, look at the results of those who have gone under Rome. I’ve had to talk to two priests personally. I battled with one, 7 hours long, not to go with Rome, to not compromise the Faith. And seven hours we battled. And he is saying the same thing about the popes, Tradition, Archbishop Lefebvre. We can’t compromise, I told him. But then I asked him, “What about Religious Liberty?” He said, “Well, we have to dialogue about that with Rome.” And another one, with St. Peter’s, said, “Well, we have to accept, we have to obey.” And they were told not to be polemical. And St. Peter’s has become totally neutralized, St. Peter’s Society. Look at Le Barroux. Archbishop Lefebvre said in five years they’ll have the New Mass. He was right. Look at Campos, glorious Campos under Bishop de Castro Mayer! It crumbled. The Redemptorists in Scotland, what happened? They’re neutralized, they can’t do anything. And the most recent: the Good Shepherd Institute. They were told to accept Vatican II and teach it in their seminaries. This happened this March! So the greatest service we can do to the Church, as our superiors know so well, is to oppose these errors and never compromise.
And that is, Fr. Reuter, we have to stand as brothers, as brothers with all the Society priests, with all our four bishops, opposed to this onslaught against the Faith. Archbishop Lefebvre himself told Pope Paul VI, he said, “Holy Father, either I follow the 262 popes before you and therefore go against you and John XXIII, or I have to follow you and obey you, and therefore disobey all of Catholic Tradition and all the 262 popes before you. What do I do? I have to stay with the Faith of all time.” And you know, the poor Archbishop, the badges of honor he had: suspension, excommunication, being smashed by the media, being turned away from so many friends of his. And he did not waver. And that’s what we must imitate, us priests. Again, the words of the Archbishop. This is Archbishop Lefebvre, this is two years after the Consecrations, “While we find ourselves in the same situation, we must not be under any illusions. Consequently, we are in the thick of a great fight, a great fight. We are fighting the fight guaranteed by a whole line of popes. Hence, we should have no hesitation or fear, hesitation such as ‘Why should we be going on our own? After all, why not join Rome, why not join the pope?’ Yes, if Rome and the pope were in line with Tradition, if they were carrying on the work of all the popes of the nineteenth and of the first half of the twentieth century, of course, of course. But they themselves admit that they have set out on a new path. They themselves admit that a new era began with Vatican II. They admit that it’s a new stage in the Church’s life, entirely new, based on new principles. We need not argue the point, they say it themselves, it is clear. I think that we must drive this point home with our people in such a way that they realize their oneness with the Church’s whole history, going back well beyond the Revolution. Of course. It is the fight of the City of Satan against the City of God. We must not worry. We must trust in the grace of God!”
Dear faithful, just a little flashback, a little reminder of the glorious fight of our forefathers. At the French Revolution, the same principles that are being forced on us by Vatican II for the last forty years, the same liberal principles: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. At the French Revolution, you had the great Vendee. What was the Concordat between the Vendee and the Revolution? The Revolution crushed them. They fought hard, they fought nobly, they died noble in battle, like the Maccabee brothers. “Better to die in battle than to see the laws of our fathers trampled on and our sanctuary” turned into a dancing hall. Better to resist, and they did, and how much blood! How many mothers, children in the Vendee were slaughtered. If you want to hear a very good talk on that, listen to Mr. Christopher Check’s talk on the Vendee.
And let’s look at Mexico, 1926-1930. Do we make peace treaties with the enemies of Christ? Do you know what kind of “peace treaties” they make? In 1930, I think it was July 29th (N.B. The actual date was June 21st). The pope told the Cristeros, because he believed his bishops who informed him that “the war was useless, useless bloodshed.” And the good pope, Pius XI, he had to believe his bishops, but these bishops were liberals. And he believed them. He believed them. And he told the Cristeros, on that day, “Make a contract with the Freemasons, with the government, and the war will be over.” Useless bloodshed? No. They were winning the war! All they had to do was take Mexico City, and they would re-establish a Catholic government. But what happened? That day they all were lined up in the town squares, all these great Cristeros, little boys standing next to their dads, with their Winchester .30-30s, and they obeyed. “Okay, we’ll obey the pope.” One by one, they threw down their weapons, down on the ground, one by one, whole troops of hundreds. And these Freemasons, do they keep their treaty, their word? They lifted their .30-30s and pistols and opened fire. It is a fact of history, faithful and dear Father, a fact of history that on that day, more were killed than the four years of the war. And Archbishop Lefebvre said many times in his sermons, “You don’t dialogue with the devil, with the enemies of Christ. You can’t.” And we must imitate these great fathers before us!
So Fr. Reuter, to sum it up, obedience. The priest must be obedient, truly obedient to Tradition, truly obedient to the Catholic Faith of all time, and obedient to our superiors so long as they are protecting the Faith and upholding our holy statutes. But there was a time in history, not too long ago, when the priests should have been disobedient and not let their parishes accept the New Mass and the new catechisms. So we have to be, Fr. Reuter, truly obedient, always. Blind obedience is not Catholic! True obedience is founded on humility of heart to the voice of Our Lord the Good Shepherd and submits the mind and the heart to Him, speaking through one’s superiors, for the common good, and the lawful orders that go according to the Faith. Secondly, dear Fr. Reuter, study. You’re going to be very busy as a priest, but do make time to study; spiritual reading. Bishop Williamson used to tell us in the seminary, “An article a day keeps the modernists away. An article of the Summa of St. Thomas keeps the modernists away.”
So soak yourself, continue, all of us priests, all these good priests here who came to ordinations battle scarred, wounded by the battles with Hell and the salvation of souls, working hard, up late at night sometimes, going to sick calls in the middle of the night, tending to the poorest of the poor and the most sinful of the sinful. Be like Fr. John of the Cross who told us, “Be a living Heart of Jesus. Let people see in you the sweetness of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” that you will lay down your life for your sheep. And never tell someone, “I can’t come to the sick call this week, I’m too busy.” Or if they’re dying, “I’m too busy.” You will never do that. But it happens a lot. We hear a lot of that in the Novus Ordo. And so, they call us (SSPX) priests.
And with sinners, as Fr. John of the Cross told us priests in the monastery, and Fr. Cyprian, “Love above all the greatest sinners.” Not their sins, but love their souls that Christ shed His Blood for. And in Confession, raise them to the hope of being washed in Christ’s Blood and living in God’s grace and of saving their souls! You will have this many times. Please, never be one of those priests, (and the Archbishop mentioned this also once), “Be firm in the confessional, but be very gentle and never severe,” never rude, never reckless with these souls. Every soul that comes to Confession and for spiritual advice, is a soul bought by Christ’s Blood, and we have no right to be not the Good Shepherd. We must be the Good Shepherd!
And lastly, and I promise, this is the last point, only She can help us now, the Virgin Mother! And you are a priest, you were ordained a priest two days ago, and you share the priesthood, a quasi-hypostatic union. What incredible words of St. Thomas Aquinas! You are “another Christ”, born in the womb of the Virgin Mary. You were ordained a priest like Christ was in the cathedral of the womb of the Virgin Mary. Your priesthood is directly connected to Mary, the Virgin Mother. So give Her your priesthood! Live in the Virgin Mary. As Fr. Le Roux said last week in Auriesville, “Priests must not only be devoted to Mary, be in Mary, live in Her.”
So, stand strong and souls will turn to you, and never compromise. In 1937, when all of Spain was being recklessly destroyed by the Communists, in Barcelona alone, the priests were arrested, 400 of them, martyred. Not one of them apostasized. Not one! They were good priests. One of them stood before the firing squad of the Communists, and the Communists said, “Alright, do you have any last words before we blow your brains out?” He said, “Yes, I do.” He said, “Firstly, I don’t need, (when offered) a handkerchief around my eyes.” He said, “When I was a boy, I prayed for three things. One: That I might be a priest. Two: That I might die a martyr. And three: If I die a martyr, I take a soul with me. God has granted me two of my wishes. What more can I ask of so loving a God?” And right then, one of the Communists soldiers, moved by grace, threw down his rifle, walked up to the priest, stood by him and said, “Father, you’ve got your third wish!” Both of them were executed, and their souls flew straight to Heaven. That is our model for this battle.
So let’s pray the Rosary, dear faithful, that the pope consecrates Russia. That’s the real solution! Negotiations,… all that, the real solution is that the pope consecrate Russia. And let’s go, Fr. Reuter, right now, you are going to go to the altar and re-enact the great Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Let’s adore Him. And pray for Fr. Reuter in his first Mass that he be a faithful priest with all his brothers ordained together, that they fight all the way to the end. And like that priest, die ready for battle, die with your battle boots on and attain Heaven, and join our dear Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre!
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
at the First Mass of a newly ordained Priest
Winona, 17th June, 2012
excerpts:
Christ tells us, “My sheep hear My voice.” My voice. Whose voice is that? It’s the voice of God Himself, Jesus Christ the Eternal God made flesh, the King, the High Priest. And that voice, how do we know the truth, the knowledge, with all the tidal wave of confusion, with all the lies? Where do we find, where do we hear the Truth? Where do we go? Archbishop Lefebvre gives us the answer when he gave the Episcopal Consecrations in 1988. He said in his sermon, “I hear the voices of all these popes since Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, telling us, ‘What will you do with our teachings? What will you do with the Catholic Faith? Are you going to abandon it? Do not abandon the Church.’” “And what we,” then he said, “what we condemned in the past, the present Roman authorities have embraced and are professing.” The condemnations, where are these condemnations? Socialism, Liberalism, Communism, Modernism, Zionism, they’ve all been condemned. And all the modern errors. And he said in his sermon, “I hear these voices echoing the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, echoing the voice of the Blessed Trinity, ‘Do something about it or all will be lost! Souls will be lost!’” And that defines the fight that we’re in."
And Fr. Reuter, this is our fight, this is it: To stand opposed to the whole wave of apostasy, standing on the rock-solid shoulders of the great popes. We have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. There’s no confusion in their encyclicals, that’s for sure.
And all of us, all of us, as we were told in the seminary and Archbishop Lefebvre himself admitted it, “I was a liberal, I believed in separation of Church and State, I believed in the modern errors.” We’re all liberals in some way. We’ve got to wash it out, we’ve got to soak it out, we’ve got to fight it out, dig it out, pull it out every day. It’s in us, it’s in our blood, it’s in our society, it permeates, as Gregory XVI said, like a black fog out of Hell, the smoke seen by St. John in the Apocalypse has spread all over the earth which are the liberal errors of Modernism, Communism, Socialism, and all those errors.
Three times Archbishop Lefebvre said in the sermon of the Consecrations, “We have to wait. We have to fight on and wait until Tradition finds its rightful place in Rome.” Three times he said this. Now I ask you, dear faithful, dear Fathers, and all of you, do we see Tradition back in Rome? Go down to your local diocese, go down to your local parish church. Has Tradition come back, with all the charismatic dancing and altar girls and irreverence and sacrileges and goofy priests saying goofy things? Is that Tradition come back?
So Fr. Reuter, to sum it up, obedience. The priest must be obedient, truly obedient to Tradition, truly obedient to the Catholic Faith of all time, and obedient to our superiors so long as they are protecting the Faith and upholding our holy statutes. But there was a time in history, not too long ago, when the priests should have been disobedient and not let their parishes accept the New Mass and the new catechisms. So we have to be, Fr. Reuter, truly obedient, always. Blind obedience is not Catholic! True obedience is founded on humility of heart to the voice of Our Lord the Good Shepherd and submits the mind and the heart to Him, speaking through one’s superiors, for the common good, and the lawful orders that go according to the Faith.
And Fr. Reuter, this is our fight, this is it: To stand opposed to the whole wave of apostasy, standing on the rock-solid shoulders of the great popes. We have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. There’s no confusion in their encyclicals, that’s for sure.
Full sermon:
This day is a great joy for the Catholic Church, a great joy for the family of Fr. Reuter and all the families of the priests today offering their first Masses. What a great grace, what a great happiness for the Catholic Church of all time, the Catholic Church of Tradition!
Ten years ago on June 29th, Fr. Reuter and I were there present for the death of Fr. John of the Cross, who was a model monk and priest. He taught us many things. He said many things. Among some of the pearls of wisdom he left us was, “monks (and we could add priests and probably nuns, too), monks, when they’re young they look holy, but they’re not. And when they’re middle aged, they don’t look holy, and they’re not. And when they’re old and bent over and feeble, they don’t look holy, but they are!” And that defines the life of holiness. It’s an everyday battle for the sanctification of our own soul as priests. To drink everyday from the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, the King; there we draw our strength. And to fulfill the one request, as Bishop Sheen says, the one request He asked of His priests… and, Fr. Reuter, I am sure you probably do already, and I encourage you to do this your whole priestly life; aside also from your Breviary, which is very powerful; aside also from the Holy Mass you will offer every day, is the Holy Hour. “Will you not spend one hour with Me?” And it’s there you will find your light, your strength, your wisdom, your romance, your love, your death, your glory. Because Jesus Christ the King dwells there for us in the Blessed Sacrament. And for the priest and for all religious and for the faithful that is our strength!
And this shows the outpouring of the love of God. “Deus caritas est,” says St. John. “God is Charity.” And He pours out His love to souls like a second flood, over the human race, to drown us, as it were, in the incredible love of God. He gives us today a beautiful day, the sun, the gravity, the planets in perfect mathematical circulation. He gives us the air we breathe. And He gives us His life in our soul by grace and gives us His own Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist, a great Treasure. And this is the great motto of our Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, Credidimus Caritati. We have believed in the Charity.
And you good fathers and good mothers, you know, as you grow spiritually, you know what this means. Charity is in sacrifice. The life of a priest is a continual self giving. “He is an eaten man,” says St. John Vianney. The sisters and our dear brothers and monks submit to a Holy Rule, and through this, and their sacred vows, they become sanctified. And their life is the life of Charity, to be crucified as a victim with Jesus on the Altar, out of love for Him. So this is the real love. It’s not the love as many Novus Ordo bishops today are preaching in many churches throughout the world, l-u-v, a false charity; that we must acknowledge all the false religions, we must embrace the Jews and the Protestants and Lutherans and have ecumenical services. This is not the true Charity, not at all! That has been condemned by the Church.
Christ tells us, “My sheep hear My voice.” My voice. Whose voice is that? It’s the voice of God Himself, Jesus Christ the Eternal God made flesh, the King, the High Priest. And that voice, how do we know the truth, the knowledge, with all the tidal wave of confusion, with all the lies? Where do we find, where do we hear the Truth? Where do we go? Archbishop Lefebvre gives us the answer when he gave the Episcopal Consecrations in 1988. He said in his sermon, “I hear the voices of all these popes since Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, telling us, ‘What will you do with our teachings? What will you do with the Catholic Faith? Are you going to abandon it? Do not abandon the Church.’” “And what we,” then he said, “what we condemned in the past, the present Roman authorities have embraced and are professing.” The condemnations, where are these condemnations? Socialism, Liberalism, Communism, Modernism, Zionism, they’ve all been condemned. And all the modern errors. And he said in his sermon, “I hear these voices echoing the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, echoing the voice of the Blessed Trinity, ‘Do something about it or all will be lost! Souls will be lost!’” And that defines the fight that we’re in.
Let me give a quote from the Archbishop himself. “And it is striking to see,” this is three years after the consecrations, “it is striking to see how our fight is now exactly the same fight as was being fought then by the great Catholics of the nineteenth century in the wake of the French Revolution. And by the popes, Pius VI, Pius VII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and so on, Pius X, down to Pius XII, their fight is summed up in the Encyclical, Quanta Qura, with the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, and Pascendi of Pius X. These are the two great documents, sensational and shocking in their day, laying out the Church’s teaching in the face of the modern errors, the errors appearing in the course of the Revolution, especially the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This is the fight we are in in the middle of today. Exactly the same fight.”
And Fr. Reuter, that’s why I am addressing you as a priest of the Society of St. Pius X. This is the founder speaking, this is our father speaking, echoing the words of the infallible authority of the constant Magisterium of the Catholic Church. And as you know, the enemy is always about, and he seeks to destroy the Spouse of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church. Listen to Mr. Prelot in his book, Liberal Catholicism. He was a senator in France. In 1969 he wrote this. Listen to his words, “We struggled for a century and a half to make our ideas prevail inside the Church, and we did not succeed. Then came the Second Vatican Council, and we triumphed. Ever since, the theses and principles of liberal Catholicism have been definitively and officially accepted by the Holy Church.”
What are these principles that the Freemasons since the French Revolution have so brazenly and boldly raised up in the Declaration of the Rights of Man against the Rights of God? What are these, summed up? Archbishop Lefebvre speaks about them all the time. Read his books, read his sermons to keep clear in this confusion of our times. And he sums them up into three: Religious liberty. Religious liberty, which is a very serious sin, a very striking, bold attack against Jesus Christ in His Kingship in society. And it is not small. This error is huge. And it’s been condemned by the Church over and over and over again. And it triumphed at Vatican II. And in the name of religious liberty, you realize, dear faithful, dear Fathers, what happened in the name of religious liberty. Small effects? No. The smashing , literally the smashing of the great Catholic countries. One by one they fell. And it was the Vatican itself who made the political moves to tear off the crown of Jesus Christ, to tear off the Catholic constitution of Ireland, Spain, Colombia, Philippines, just to name a few, and Italy in 1984. And do you realize what this means? It means the flooding in of the false religions. That means the state cannot profess the True Religion, cannot acknowledge Jesus Christ as King. And this is, as Archbishop Lefebvre often, very often said, repeating the popes of all time, this is public apostasy. This is putting Man in the place of God.
And Fr. Reuter, this is our fight, this is it: To stand opposed to the whole wave of apostasy, standing on the rock-solid shoulders of the great popes. We have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. There’s no confusion in their encyclicals, that’s for sure.
Also, what else triumphed in the Vatican Council was ecumenism. The false ecumenism which is prevalent today, prevalent today! Listen to a high-up Freemason in France. He said, “One can say that ecumenism is the legitimate son of Freemasonry. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Israelites, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Freethinkers, Free-believers, to us they are only our first name. Freemasonry is our family name.”
And, of course, collegiality. Collegiality is the democracy within the Church. And the principle of religious freedom, that is, freedom of conscience, but the error is: “I can believe what I darn well please and still go to Heaven.” That’s condemned by the Catholic Church, by Jesus Christ Himself. “Who does not believe and is not baptized will be condemned.” Christ is not an option. He is our God, He is our King, He is our Redeemer and there is no other!
And that is why Archbishop Lefebvre very clearly said we have to reject the Vatican Council in her errors. And the errors are not small, little misconceived values. They are errors condemned by the Roman Catholic Church of all time with no ambiguity and with very clear and strong language. For example, the popes will call religious liberty “insanity.” St. Pius X will call it “delirium.” And listen to our Founder again, listen to him, because his words still ring true:
“What have the liberal Catholics been seeking for a century and a half? To make a marriage between the Church and the Revolution.” And this, Bishop Tissier mentioned at the ordinations two days ago. “To wed the Church and subversion. To wed the Church and the forces that destroy society, all societies, families, civil and religious. This wedding of the Church is described in the Council. Take the schema, Gaudium et Spes; that’s a Vatican II document.” So let nobody tell you it’s just a false interpretation or an exaggerated interpretation after the Council. The errors are built right into the Council. And if you have any doubts on that, read I Accuse the Council, by Archbishop Lefebvre. “It is necessary,” says the document, “to marry the principles of the Church with the conceptions of modern man. What does that mean? That means that it is necessary to wed the Church, the Catholic Church, the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ with principles that are contrary to this Church, that undermine it and which have always been against the Church. Precisely it is this marriage that was attempted in the Council by men of the Church and not the Church. For the Church can never permit such a thing. For a century and a half, all the Sovereign Pontiffs have condemned liberal Catholicism, have refused this marriage with the ideas of the Revolution, those who adored the goddess of reason. The popes had never been able to accept such things.”
“And during this Revolution priests were sent to the scaffold, their heads chopped off. Nuns were persecuted and also executed. Remember the pontoons of Nantes in France where faithful priests were assembled onto boats and were then sunk to drown. That is what the revolution did. And well, dear brethren what the revolution did is nothing compared to what the Second Vatican Council is doing, nothing! It would have been better for the thirty, forty, or fifty thousand priests who have left their cassocks and violated their vows and their oaths made before God; it would have been better for them to have been martyred or sent to the scaffold. At least they would have saved their souls!”
And Archbishop Lefebvre is consistent always, every decade, every year in the battle for the Faith. So read, read what he says. And Fr. Reuter, deep in your mind, deep in your soul, already in the seminary the good priests here have trained you in all the great doctrines of our Holy Faith. And you know the acts of the Magisterium. You know these great encyclicals. You studied them. And now you must meditate on them, pray on them!
And all of us, all of us, as we were told in the seminary and Archbishop Lefebvre himself admitted it, “I was a liberal, I believed in separation of Church and State, I believed in the modern errors.” We’re all liberals in some way. We’ve got to wash it out, we’ve got to soak it out, we’ve got to fight it out, dig it out, pull it out every day. It’s in us, it’s in our blood, it’s in our society, it permeates, as Gregory XVI said, like a black fog out of Hell, the smoke seen by St. John in the Apocalypse has spread all over the earth which are the liberal errors of Modernism, Communism, Socialism, and all those errors.
Three times Archbishop Lefebvre said in the sermon of the Consecrations, “We have to wait. We have to fight on and wait until Tradition finds its rightful place in Rome.” Three times he said this. Now I ask you, dear faithful, dear Fathers, and all of you, do we see Tradition back in Rome? Go down to your local diocese, go down to your local parish church. Has Tradition come back, with all the charismatic dancing and altar girls and irreverence and sacrileges and goofy priests saying goofy things? Is that Tradition come back?
And let’s look at Rome. And let’s look (obviously with respect and with filial respect and love even), at the Holy Father, the Pope. We are not sedevacantists. He is the pope. He is our father. But like a president, he can be a ‘so-and-so’ but he is still the president. And the pope is the Holy Father, he is. He’s the Vicar of Christ. But what are his actions? What have you seen? Everyday there is something new. And we can’t be deceived by the pro multis, a few crumbs to Tradition. When he visited the mosque, he took his socks off, faced Mecca. He has visited the Jews’ synagogues over and over again. The meeting of Assisi, the horrible scandal of Assisi. And Archbishop Lefebvre said about the spirit of Assisi, we must reject this because it will undermine our Faith, undermine the Faith of your families and your children. The spirit of Assisi is this ecumenical spirit, based on the instructions of the Council of Vatican II. You’ll find it right in the texts.
And lest we be deceived, dear faithful, lest we be deceived, I have in my hands the Summorum Pontificum. Now I was a little naïve, too. When this came out, I thought, well, that’s great, the Latin Mass is finally freed; it’s been declared that it’s never been abrogated. This is great! But then I read the text and it’s quite shocking. And, Catholics, we have to oppose the errors in here. Yes, it is a concession, it is a concession. The Latin Mass is free, no one can hinder the priest from saying it. But listen to a few words of this. “It must be said that the Missal published by Paul VI,” that is, the New Mass, made with the help of six Protestant ministers, written by a Freemason, which attacks the Kingship of Christ, attacks the Real Presence, and as Fr. Zigrane told me, (he is a priest of the Galveston diocese, a Canon lawyer for fourteen years; he joined the Society of St. Pius X down in our priory in Texas). Fr. Zigrane told me the New Mass is most dangerous to the priest himself, to make him lose his Faith. And here’s what it says, “This Mass of Paul VI obviously is and continues to be the normal form, the ordinary form of the Eucharistic Liturgy. The last version of the Missale Romanum prior to the Council (that’s our Mass, the Tridentine Mass) and used during the Council will now be able to be used as an extraordinary form of the liturgical celebration.” In other words, it is okay to be used and we’ll tolerate it. It’s not hindered anymore. It never was. “It is not appropriate to speak of these two versions of the Roman Missal as if they were “two Rites.” Rather, it is a matter of a twofold use of the one and the same rite.” You can’t mix water and oil. I read out a little more, “The new Missal will certainly remain, (the New Mass) will certainly remain the form of the Roman Rite not only on account of the juridical norm but also because of the actual situation of the communities of the faithful.” What if the faithful have lost their Faith and the priests have misled them all these years since the Second Vatican Council? And they want bands and rock music and bouncing and dancing. That’s what the democracy wants. And I finish here, “There is no contradiction,” he says, (this is the Holy Father), “there is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal.” No contradiction? What are the fruits? Archbishop Lefebvre said look at the fruits! You know, one time Rome told Archbishop Lefebvre, “Look, everything will be solved between us, this drama, if you accept the New Mass and just say it once in your seminary. Just say it once. No problem, everything over, politics done.” Archbishop Lefebvre, (a rock he always was, thank God), he said, “No, I cannot accept the New Mass, not even once, because it is a direct attack against the Faith, with its subtle phrases and subtle formulae.” So when we see the pro multis put back in the Consecration, alright, that’s great, hoorah for Tradition. But what is veiled in this? Archbishop Lefebvre and our superiors of the Society of St. Pius X, they say obviously we can’t accept that. Obviously, it’s unacceptable.
The lifting of the excommunications, well, we’re still waiting for our Founder, for his excommunication to be lifted. But let me just draw another text from March of this year just in case any of us might be thinking, “Well, you know, this pope, is, he’s kinder to Tradition, it looks like things are going great, it’s another springtime.” We must not be deceived. We must pray, we must pray. Listen to this. This is the Letter for the Clergy, a letter to the priests from the Congregation for the Clergy, March of this year, not ten years ago, not thirty years ago, this year. And the pope calls for a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, October 11, 1962, fifty years ago, (have mercy on us!). He says further about the new evangelization for the transmission of the Christian Faith. I read: “We will therefore be expected to work in depth on each of these chapters (all the priests will have to work in depth on this, what is it?) on (here we go again) on the Second Vatican Council, so that it may be accepted once again as the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century, a sure compass by which to take our bearings in the new century now beginning, increasingly powerful for the ever-necessary renewal of the Church.” And so, Vatican II all the way. Vatican II, dying? You see, it’s not. Second point: “On the Catechism of the Catholic Church (this is the New Catechism permeated with the liberal errors), “that it may be truly accepted and used as a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion and sure norm for the teaching of the Faith.” Is that a sign of Rome coming back to Tradition, dear faithful? It’s in black and white.
Remember what happened last October. You know, in the first Assisi, Archbishop Lefebvre sent to the Holy Father, (of course with all respect; he always had respect for the authorities). But he always spoke up for the Truth. And he sent to the pope those pictures, you remember the drawings? Pope John Paul II at the gate having the ecumenical Assisi meeting and Christ the King and Mary saying, “No entrance into Heaven, no, ecumenists can’t enter here.” And the devil is on the side whispering, “Over here, buddy.” It’s a frightening image, but it’s very real, very true. How serious this matter is! The Assisi meetings are an attack against Jesus Christ as God, Jesus Christ as King. It’s a very serious sin against the First Commandment. And Archbishop Lefebvre, seeing this, he said, “We have to absolutely refuse this apostasy.” And this pope, again, he’s our father and with all respect, what do we do? He has all the world religions and (more than that), invited the voodoo doctor, sorcerer, to perform some who-knows-what ceremony invoking the devils at the pulpit. And the atheist woman stood there, and she said, “I want to thank the Holy Father for inviting me to speak at this Assisi meeting to represent all the nonbelievers.” Dear faithful, it’s frightening and it’s real. It’s happening, it’s happening! Be under no illusion. It’s happening before our eyes!
Two weeks before Assisi something also unheard of, in the history of the Council, but another step of degradation and apostasy, the document that came out from Rome, calling for the one world religion, a one world government, a one world authority. What do you think that’s going to be? St. Pius X warned, in his Apostolic Mandate on the Sillon “these enemies of Christ are working for a one world government, a one world religion, where there will be no dogmas, no morals.” You can believe what you want as long as you accept to be part of this supra-Ecumenical Church. It is very frightening to read the texts of Vatican II and the words of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, and of this pope, and of Paul VI. It’s frightening, though we can’t be under illusion.
And we wonder why the Virgin Mary begged us to pray the Rosary that the pope consecrate Russia? Dear faithful, look at the results of those who have gone under Rome. I’ve had to talk to two priests personally. I battled with one, 7 hours long, not to go with Rome, to not compromise the Faith. And seven hours we battled. And he is saying the same thing about the popes, Tradition, Archbishop Lefebvre. We can’t compromise, I told him. But then I asked him, “What about Religious Liberty?” He said, “Well, we have to dialogue about that with Rome.” And another one, with St. Peter’s, said, “Well, we have to accept, we have to obey.” And they were told not to be polemical. And St. Peter’s has become totally neutralized, St. Peter’s Society. Look at Le Barroux. Archbishop Lefebvre said in five years they’ll have the New Mass. He was right. Look at Campos, glorious Campos under Bishop de Castro Mayer! It crumbled. The Redemptorists in Scotland, what happened? They’re neutralized, they can’t do anything. And the most recent: the Good Shepherd Institute. They were told to accept Vatican II and teach it in their seminaries. This happened this March! So the greatest service we can do to the Church, as our superiors know so well, is to oppose these errors and never compromise.
And that is, Fr. Reuter, we have to stand as brothers, as brothers with all the Society priests, with all our four bishops, opposed to this onslaught against the Faith. Archbishop Lefebvre himself told Pope Paul VI, he said, “Holy Father, either I follow the 262 popes before you and therefore go against you and John XXIII, or I have to follow you and obey you, and therefore disobey all of Catholic Tradition and all the 262 popes before you. What do I do? I have to stay with the Faith of all time.” And you know, the poor Archbishop, the badges of honor he had: suspension, excommunication, being smashed by the media, being turned away from so many friends of his. And he did not waver. And that’s what we must imitate, us priests. Again, the words of the Archbishop. This is Archbishop Lefebvre, this is two years after the Consecrations, “While we find ourselves in the same situation, we must not be under any illusions. Consequently, we are in the thick of a great fight, a great fight. We are fighting the fight guaranteed by a whole line of popes. Hence, we should have no hesitation or fear, hesitation such as ‘Why should we be going on our own? After all, why not join Rome, why not join the pope?’ Yes, if Rome and the pope were in line with Tradition, if they were carrying on the work of all the popes of the nineteenth and of the first half of the twentieth century, of course, of course. But they themselves admit that they have set out on a new path. They themselves admit that a new era began with Vatican II. They admit that it’s a new stage in the Church’s life, entirely new, based on new principles. We need not argue the point, they say it themselves, it is clear. I think that we must drive this point home with our people in such a way that they realize their oneness with the Church’s whole history, going back well beyond the Revolution. Of course. It is the fight of the City of Satan against the City of God. We must not worry. We must trust in the grace of God!”
Dear faithful, just a little flashback, a little reminder of the glorious fight of our forefathers. At the French Revolution, the same principles that are being forced on us by Vatican II for the last forty years, the same liberal principles: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. At the French Revolution, you had the great Vendee. What was the Concordat between the Vendee and the Revolution? The Revolution crushed them. They fought hard, they fought nobly, they died noble in battle, like the Maccabee brothers. “Better to die in battle than to see the laws of our fathers trampled on and our sanctuary” turned into a dancing hall. Better to resist, and they did, and how much blood! How many mothers, children in the Vendee were slaughtered. If you want to hear a very good talk on that, listen to Mr. Christopher Check’s talk on the Vendee.
And let’s look at Mexico, 1926-1930. Do we make peace treaties with the enemies of Christ? Do you know what kind of “peace treaties” they make? In 1930, I think it was July 29th (N.B. The actual date was June 21st). The pope told the Cristeros, because he believed his bishops who informed him that “the war was useless, useless bloodshed.” And the good pope, Pius XI, he had to believe his bishops, but these bishops were liberals. And he believed them. He believed them. And he told the Cristeros, on that day, “Make a contract with the Freemasons, with the government, and the war will be over.” Useless bloodshed? No. They were winning the war! All they had to do was take Mexico City, and they would re-establish a Catholic government. But what happened? That day they all were lined up in the town squares, all these great Cristeros, little boys standing next to their dads, with their Winchester .30-30s, and they obeyed. “Okay, we’ll obey the pope.” One by one, they threw down their weapons, down on the ground, one by one, whole troops of hundreds. And these Freemasons, do they keep their treaty, their word? They lifted their .30-30s and pistols and opened fire. It is a fact of history, faithful and dear Father, a fact of history that on that day, more were killed than the four years of the war. And Archbishop Lefebvre said many times in his sermons, “You don’t dialogue with the devil, with the enemies of Christ. You can’t.” And we must imitate these great fathers before us!
So Fr. Reuter, to sum it up, obedience. The priest must be obedient, truly obedient to Tradition, truly obedient to the Catholic Faith of all time, and obedient to our superiors so long as they are protecting the Faith and upholding our holy statutes. But there was a time in history, not too long ago, when the priests should have been disobedient and not let their parishes accept the New Mass and the new catechisms. So we have to be, Fr. Reuter, truly obedient, always. Blind obedience is not Catholic! True obedience is founded on humility of heart to the voice of Our Lord the Good Shepherd and submits the mind and the heart to Him, speaking through one’s superiors, for the common good, and the lawful orders that go according to the Faith. Secondly, dear Fr. Reuter, study. You’re going to be very busy as a priest, but do make time to study; spiritual reading. Bishop Williamson used to tell us in the seminary, “An article a day keeps the modernists away. An article of the Summa of St. Thomas keeps the modernists away.”
So soak yourself, continue, all of us priests, all these good priests here who came to ordinations battle scarred, wounded by the battles with Hell and the salvation of souls, working hard, up late at night sometimes, going to sick calls in the middle of the night, tending to the poorest of the poor and the most sinful of the sinful. Be like Fr. John of the Cross who told us, “Be a living Heart of Jesus. Let people see in you the sweetness of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” that you will lay down your life for your sheep. And never tell someone, “I can’t come to the sick call this week, I’m too busy.” Or if they’re dying, “I’m too busy.” You will never do that. But it happens a lot. We hear a lot of that in the Novus Ordo. And so, they call us (SSPX) priests.
And with sinners, as Fr. John of the Cross told us priests in the monastery, and Fr. Cyprian, “Love above all the greatest sinners.” Not their sins, but love their souls that Christ shed His Blood for. And in Confession, raise them to the hope of being washed in Christ’s Blood and living in God’s grace and of saving their souls! You will have this many times. Please, never be one of those priests, (and the Archbishop mentioned this also once), “Be firm in the confessional, but be very gentle and never severe,” never rude, never reckless with these souls. Every soul that comes to Confession and for spiritual advice, is a soul bought by Christ’s Blood, and we have no right to be not the Good Shepherd. We must be the Good Shepherd!
And lastly, and I promise, this is the last point, only She can help us now, the Virgin Mother! And you are a priest, you were ordained a priest two days ago, and you share the priesthood, a quasi-hypostatic union. What incredible words of St. Thomas Aquinas! You are “another Christ”, born in the womb of the Virgin Mary. You were ordained a priest like Christ was in the cathedral of the womb of the Virgin Mary. Your priesthood is directly connected to Mary, the Virgin Mother. So give Her your priesthood! Live in the Virgin Mary. As Fr. Le Roux said last week in Auriesville, “Priests must not only be devoted to Mary, be in Mary, live in Her.”
So, stand strong and souls will turn to you, and never compromise. In 1937, when all of Spain was being recklessly destroyed by the Communists, in Barcelona alone, the priests were arrested, 400 of them, martyred. Not one of them apostasized. Not one! They were good priests. One of them stood before the firing squad of the Communists, and the Communists said, “Alright, do you have any last words before we blow your brains out?” He said, “Yes, I do.” He said, “Firstly, I don’t need, (when offered) a handkerchief around my eyes.” He said, “When I was a boy, I prayed for three things. One: That I might be a priest. Two: That I might die a martyr. And three: If I die a martyr, I take a soul with me. God has granted me two of my wishes. What more can I ask of so loving a God?” And right then, one of the Communists soldiers, moved by grace, threw down his rifle, walked up to the priest, stood by him and said, “Father, you’ve got your third wish!” Both of them were executed, and their souls flew straight to Heaven. That is our model for this battle.
So let’s pray the Rosary, dear faithful, that the pope consecrates Russia. That’s the real solution! Negotiations,… all that, the real solution is that the pope consecrate Russia. And let’s go, Fr. Reuter, right now, you are going to go to the altar and re-enact the great Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Let’s adore Him. And pray for Fr. Reuter in his first Mass that he be a faithful priest with all his brothers ordained together, that they fight all the way to the end. And like that priest, die ready for battle, die with your battle boots on and attain Heaven, and join our dear Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre!
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.