When I entered the Catholic Church thirty years ago, I did so with full awareness that my chosen religion was in a state of crisis, with millions of souls having left the Church, and millions more having settled into cafeteria-Catholicism. I also knew that my decision to follow what the Church had taught prior to Vatican II (commonly referred to as Traditional Catholicism) would mean that I would be scorned by fellow Catholics and even persecuted by Rome. Then, as now, I knew this was a minuscule price to pay for the unfathomable blessing of finding the only religion that has legitimate claims to being the one true religion.
Many serious Catholics understandably believe that Francis’s hostile occupation of the papacy marked a dramatic worsening of the crisis in the Church, but the more accurate assessment is that Bergoglio’s words and deeds revealed much of the existing damage that had been hidden from the view of non-Traditional Catholics.
Despite many superficially interesting developments over the past thirty years — most especially with Francis and his Synodal Church — the crisis is essentially the same one that has been causing so much damage since Vatican II. Liturgical innovation, false ecumenism, and doctrinal confusion had already caused so many problems by 1972 that Paul VI suggested that the ‘smoke of Satan’ had entered the Church:
“Through some cracks the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: there is doubt, uncertainty, problematic, anxiety, confrontation. One does not trust the Church anymore; one trusts the first prophet that comes to talk to us from some newspapers or some social movement, and then rush after him and ask him if he held the formula of real life. And we fail to perceive, instead, that we are the masters of life already. Doubt has entered our conscience, and it has entered through windows that were supposed to be opened to the light instead. . . Even in the Church this state of uncertainty rules. One thought that after the Council there would come a shiny day for the history of the Church. A cloudy day came instead, a day of tempest, gloom, quest, and uncertainty. We preach ecumenism and drift farther and farther from the others. We attempt to dig abysses instead of filling them.” (June 29, 1972)
Traditional Catholics consider this statement to be one indication, among countless others, that the deviations from what the Church had taught and practiced prior to the Council are to blame for the crisis. Indeed, Pius XII and his predecessors had consistently warned us against the errors promoted by Vatican II’s liberal theologians, and many of those errors made their way into the Council’s documents through deliberate ambiguities. Traditional Catholics did not develop their objections to the Vatican II revolution out of thin air . . . instead, they simply believe that the pre-Vatican II popes were correct when they unambiguously warned us against the errors that have thrived in Rome and throughout the Church for sixty years.
If everything in the Church was relatively healthy before Francis, how can we account for the fact that there were only a handful of cardinals and bishops who opposed his anti-Catholic efforts? Francis was only possible because the crisis was already so far advanced before Bergoglio was even a bishop.
As with many other things in life, the longer that a process of devastation or disease persists without adequate opposition, the more obvious the harms will be. Many serious Catholics understandably believe that Francis’s hostile occupation of the papacy marked a dramatic worsening of the crisis in the Church, but the more accurate assessment is that Bergoglio’s words and deeds revealed much of the existing damage that had been hidden from the view of non-Traditional Catholics. Common sense confirms this: if everything in the Church was relatively healthy before Francis, how can we account for the fact that there were only a handful of cardinals and bishops who opposed his anti-Catholic efforts? Francis was only possible because the crisis was already so far advanced before Bergoglio was even a bishop.
Seen in this way, the Francis years should have opened the eyes of all serious Catholics to the reality that the Traditional Catholic position is correct. While this restoration of vision took place on a limited scale, a growing number of experts — who had seen little reason for concern about the crisis in the Church prior to Bergoglio — stepped up to assure confused Catholics that the crisis began when Benedict XVI stepped aside. Unfortunately, this self-evidently ridiculous narrative took hold, perhaps because it spared Catholics from having to reflect on what had actually taken place since the Council. As a result, the majority of Catholics remain at least partially blind to the true nature of the crisis, and Traditional Catholics are still maligned by those who paradoxically insist that Vatican II was correct in teaching that we must respect and protect the religious beliefs of all men.
Unjust persecution of Traditional Catholics is neither surprising nor particularly distressing (other than the fact that it often involves sins against charity and the Faith). When Satan and his minions are waging an unprecedented attack on the Mystical Body of Christ, we would surely be on the wrong side of the battle if we found favor with those carrying out the destruction.
Obviously, though, Traditional Catholicism offers far more than this reassuring sign that we are on the right side of the battle. We can better appreciate why Traditional Catholicism is God’s great gift to the world today by considering that it alone: retains continuity with the Faith of the saints, consistently produces good fruits, offers a logically coherent explanation for the crisis, comports with the Fatima warnings, and is the way to combat today’s errors.
Traditional Catholicism Alone Retains Continuity with the Faith of the Saints. We are routinely told that we must “interpret Vatican II in light of tradition” but this direction is typically offered as a rebuke without any effort to provide a way to carry out this seemingly impossible task. Without guidance from the hierarchy on how we must reconcile Vatican II with tradition, we are left with the same process of private interpretation that characterizes the Protestant sects.
In contrast, Traditional Catholicism is nothing other than the religion practiced by all the saints prior to Vatican II. Ultimately, what distinguishes Traditional Catholicism from its alternatives is a determination to conform to the standard that St. Vincent of Lérins articulated in his Commonitorium:
“Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense ‘Catholic,’ which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.”
It is completely untenable to hold that our holy ancestors would recognize the Synodal Church as the Catholic Church. If we are looking for a religion that St. Pius X, St. Therese, St. Thomas More, and St. Thomas Aquinas would recognize as their own, then the only option is Traditional Catholicism.
Trying to explain the crisis as a failure to properly implement Vatican II is even more preposterous because it is precisely the headline initiatives of the Council — such as ecumenism, religious liberty, and liturgical “reform” — that have fueled the crisis.
Traditional Catholicism Alone Consistently Produces Good Fruits. It would be rash to assume that there are no good fruits outside of Traditional Catholicism. Many good men and women do their best to become saints by attending the Novus Ordo Mass, displaying heroic perseverance in the face of so many scandals. By all indications, though, such good fruits are the exception rather than the rule.
Traditional Catholics also have to persevere in the practice of their religion, but this is required principally because Rome dedicates so much effort to persecuting those who adhere to the Faith as it existed prior to the Council. Despite this persecution, we consistently find so many indications of fruitful Catholic life in Traditional Catholic communities: abundant priestly and religious vocations, large Catholic families, regular Mass attendance, near universal acceptance of the Church’s teachings, and real sacrifices to support the growth of Traditional Catholicism (at the same time that the mainstream Church is downsizing). Our Lord told us to judge by fruits (Matthew 7:16-20), and so we can clearly see that the tree of Traditional Catholicism is holy and pleasing to God.
Traditional Catholicism Alone Offers a Logically Coherent Explanation for the Crisis. To the extent that Traditional Catholicism’s opponents recognize the crisis in the Church, they tend to attribute it to overall societal changes or to a failure to properly implement Vatican II. If overall societal changes were to blame, then this cause would similarly cripple Traditional Catholicism. But, as discussed above, Traditional Catholicism’s bountiful and healthy fruits demonstrate that this is not the case.
Trying to explain the crisis as a failure to properly implement Vatican II is even more preposterous because it is precisely the headline initiatives of the Council — such as ecumenism, religious liberty, and liturgical “reform” — that have fueled the crisis. Moreover, if it was merely a matter of misinterpreting the Council, then Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV obviously could have dedicated all necessary attention to rectifying the matter. This has never happened. So these common explanations for the crisis are completely nonsensical.
On the other hand, every passing day shows us that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s explanation for the crisis from his famous 1974 Declaration is entirely correct:
“We hold fast, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith, to Eternal Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth. We refuse, on the other hand, and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it. All these reforms, indeed, have contributed and are still contributing to the destruction of the Church, to the ruin of the priesthood, to the abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the sacraments, to the disappearance of religious life, to a naturalist and Teilhardian teaching in universities, seminaries and catechectics; a teaching derived from Liberalism and Protestantism, many times condemned by the solemn Magisterium of the Church.”
If only the hierarchy had understood and agreed with this simple explanation, the crisis might have been ended fifty years ago. As it is, though, Rome has dedicated considerable resources to counteracting Archbishop Lefebvre’s message (and still does today), while doing essentially nothing to combat the actual crisis. Thus, every passing day further confirms that the Traditional Catholic explanation for the crisis is correct.
God did not abandon His Church in this crisis. Prior to Vatican II, the popes consistently warned against all of the errors that have plagued the Catholic Church for the past sixty years. God inspired these popes to provide their holy guidance for a reason.
Traditional Catholicism Alone Comports with the Fatima Warnings. The bewildering combination of blindness and malevolence from the hierarchy itself requires an explanation because it implicates the indefectibility of the Church even more directly than the other aspects of the crisis. As discussed in a previous article, many Traditional Catholics believe that God has provided a consoling explanation for this problem in the form of the Fatima messages.
A few years prior to his election to the papacy, the future Pius XII had warned against the “suicide of altering the Faith”:
“I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. . . . I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past. A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?’”
This is what we see today, and it is what so many Catholics saw in the years following the Council. Sister Lucia was adamant that Our Lady of Fatima had wanted the Third Secret of Fatima to be released in 1960 because it would be more clear at that time. If it had been released in 1960, Catholics would presumably have understood that it related to the changes that took place at the Council. The fact that the Third Secret was not released in 1960 supports the credible accounts that it relates to apostasy at the top of the Church: why would those promoting that apostasy have any interest in revealing a message to that effect?
Traditional Catholics can also find consolation in the fact that the Fatima messages tell us that God will solve the crisis through the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We do not need to solve it through any ingenuity on our part — rather, our task is to be as faithful as we can to what the Church has always taught and try to become saints.
Traditional Catholicism Alone Is the Way to Combat Today’s Errors. God did not abandon His Church in this crisis. Prior to Vatican II, the popes consistently warned against all of the errors that have plagued the Catholic Church for the past sixty years. God inspired these popes to provide their holy guidance for a reason; and although it was not sufficient to prevent the crisis spurred on by the Council, we can find an even more essential purpose for the papal guidance today: it shows us why the crisis has occurred and what we must do to combat the errors plaguing the Church.
Traditional Catholicism puts into practice the guidance that God gave us through the pre-Vatican II popes by transmitting the Church’s immutable truths, opposing the errors that proliferated in wake of the Council, and encouraging us to become saints. This alone will not “solve” the crisis, because only God’s direct intervention can do that. But practicing Traditional Catholicism is undoubtedly the only effective way to do as much as we can to combat today’s errors.
Traditional Catholicism is God’s great gift to the world because it is simply the religion that He gave us two thousand years ago. What makes it even more precious today, though, is that God protects and sustains it even while the ostensible leaders of the Church do so much to oppose it. It is as though the miracle of Daniel in the lions’ den has been playing out continuously for sixty years wherever the true Faith is retained — those who can see it know that their Traditional Catholic Faith is the precious pearl that is worth any price it costs us. Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us!
