This, my friends -- the confirmation of the brethren during a time of great despair -- is what The Remnant is all about. We're not here to overwhelm the powerful enemies of the Catholic Church with some imagined globalist news machine of our own. We're the remnant, remember? And as such we're proud to be counted among those who are left,who have kept the old Faith and who will (please God) outlive the revolution. Doing our part to help a few of our brothers and sisters persevere in the old Faith (and to be inspired and encouraged by them in return) is why we get out of bed in the morning.
We're trying to team up with the "little people," as my late father was so fond of pointing out after he'd left The Wanderer to found The Remnant 50 years ago. He often wrote of the “little people” and the “language of silence.” Why? Because I think he knew it is only the spirit of the “little people”—those who stood in silent belief first in Bethlehem and then at the foot of the Cross—that will help us persevere to the bitter end.
Can we still count ourselves in their humble company, or have we become pathetically acceptable to high priests and Romans in high places? Have we begun to blend in with the crowd that persecuted those who mattered most to Jesus Christ?
As my father waged his lonely war for the restoration of the old Latin Mass in the dark days after the Second Vatican Council, he warned his readers of the dangers of becoming puffed up with pride in the name of service rendered to a worthy cause.
Almost fifty years later I sometimes fear that as there’s no one left from the old days to provide those pertinent warnings, we risk falling out of the company of “little people”—the anonymous shepherds, for example, content to watch their sheep by night or go with angels to the nursery of a King, whatever God asked of them.
We venerate the memory of history's “little people” -- the often nameless, faceless friends of Jesus Christ -- recalling their example and committing to remain in the quiet company of those who “not only confound the wise and put to flight all wickedness when they have a mind to, but whose power is such that Our Lord Himself singles them out for special attention, declaring that even Heaven considered them to be a special adornment.”
Can that be still said of us today? Will we remain faithful and true and devoted to them as to a noble principle and common cause – or will we, like modern-day pagans, succumb to the evil spirit of narrow egoism and loveless petty bickering which has become the hallmark of our times and which threatens to engulf and destroy what was once the Christian West?
Bluntly stated, will the spirit not of Christ but of Anti-Christ succeed in penetrating our ranks, too? Will there be ‘traditionalists’ who, not unlike the modernists, will be persuaded to believe and to act as though it mattered little whether we ourselves be reformed and renewed in Christ Jesus, but rather that it is the Church and society which must in the first place be overhauled and reconstituted in our image and likeness?
Do we honor the memory of the “little people” when we stoop to remind the world that we were “right all along” and that everyone else was wrong? Do we retain the right to be counted among them when we become inordinately puffed up and proud?
We have no special mandate, no real or direct commission from Jesus Christ to reform or rebuild His divinely established and divinely upheld Church. Our job is simple-- to remain true to God, true to one another and to the promises of our baptism. To watch and wait. To keep the old Faith.
We cannot abandon Holy Mother Church, regardless of the vile men who now hold her captive. Where would we go? We cannot start our own church. Nothing else short of the Bride of Jesus Christ will ever do for us. She is ours and we must stay at the foot of her Cross now, holding fast to her bloodied feet even as Magdalene held fast to His.
There is no worldly glory in that, but for the "little people" there is no honor more sublime. And there is no excuse to give in to despair or arrogance, for they had no place either in Bethlehem’s stable or on Calvary’s summit. The “little people” knew this and we must never forget what it means even now as the whole world turns against the followers of Jesus Christ.
The Remnant and Catholic Family News have written a letter on behalf of the "little people" to the Pope in Rome, reminding him of what the Church teaches, what our mothers and fathers, nuns and priests, taught us when we were children in Catholic school, and how opposed that is to what we're hearing now, even from his own lips.
I pray God that we were right to take this bold step, and the letters and email from our fellow "little people" expressing support for this initiative seem to suggest that we were. If so, all glory and honor to Him! If not, may He forgive us. Either way and to paraphrase the great Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, we are only attempting to hand on (and defend) what we have received as best we know how.
By the way, the entire Open Letter is now available online and in the current print edition of The Remnant.