Remnant Editor’s Note: Father Patrick de la Rocque, SSPX, is the Parish Priest of the Society of St. Pius X’s largest church in Paris, the famous Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet. He was also one of the four theologians on the SSPX side during the doctrinal discussions under Pope Benedict. As part of our ongoing discussion of both the pros and the cons of a possible SSPX regularization, Father de la Rocque raises an interesting argument in favor of exercising extreme caution. This article appeared in the March 2017 edition of Le Chardonnet, the parish bulletin of Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet, Paris, and was posted on the SPPX French District website La Porte Latine. We’re grateful to our friend and important European ally for this exclusive Remnant translation, and would once again ask for prayers on his behalf. MJM 

On the 4th February last, the area around the Vatican woke up to find itself covered with posters calling out to the Pope: “Eh, Francis! You have commissioned Congregations, dismissed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, you have ignored Cardinals… But where is your mercy?”

Attempting to exude the gravitas of well-intentioned resignation, our pontiff, who just appeared for the second time on the cover of Rolling Stone, is now sighing all over the Internet that the vocations crisis may just force him to ask some viri probati (married viri probati, mind you) to step up to the sacred plate.  After all, seminaries these days are as empty as St. Peter’s Square.  What is a Supreme Pontiff supposed to do?

Never mind that Pope Francis’ own yes-man from Malta has finally stated openly what, until now, has remained menacingly implied pretty much everywhere during these long post-Vatican II decades:  namely, that any young man who feels truly called to become an alter Christus in the unlimited service of God is very welcome not to let the door hit him on his way out.  But for purposes of mainstream consideration, all we are supposed to talk about is the fact that there aren’t enough priests, which leaves a serious-minded and good-hearted shepherd like Pope Francis between a rock and a hard place.  Even the Holy Spirit would have to admit (wouldn’t He?) that desperate times call for desperate measures.

Editor's Note:This excellent article is a Remnant translation of "Défense du celibat sacerdotal" by the SSPX French District back in 2013 in its Lettre a nos freres pretres.  It can be read in French here. Our translator has not asked for credit but would very much appreciate your prayers for his intentions. MJM

Priestly celibacy, which the Catholic Church has kept for centuries like a sacred jewel, has been, for a number of years, the object of doubts, challenges, and even virulent attacks. The consciences of Catholics are troubled, while aspirants to the priesthood and priests are perplexed. It is therefore necessary to examine this question in the light of the Gospel and of the authentic Tradition of the Church.

Objections against priestly celibacy

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Breitbart links to The Remnant's Open Letter to President Trump, asking for an investigation into U.S. interference in Pope Benedict's resignation, after Italian archbishop says Benedict resigned under "tremendous pressure." 

Plus, a Protestant minister's reaction to Pope Francis on atheists, EWTN, Phil Lawler and Deal Hudson on Pope Francis's revolution.

 

Pope Bergoglio is a man in a hurry. It is almost as if he working on some sort of deadline to impose his designs upon the Church—a deadline of four years to be exact, as LifeSiteNews reminded us regarding an anonymous comment by one of the cardinals who voted for this disaster of a Pope: “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things.”

The co-conspirators themselves have openly admitted the existence of a plot to elect Bergoglio to “change things” in the Church rapidly and “irreversibly” in ways exceeding even the catastrophic innovations of the past fifty years—or so they thought. Pope Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, spoke of “a dramatic struggle” during the 2005 Conclave “between the “so-called ‘Salt of the Earth Party’ (named after the book interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) comprising ‘Cardinals Lopez Trujillo, Ruini, Herranz, Ruoco Varela or Medina’ and their adversaries: ‘the so-called St. Gallen group’ that included Cardinals Danneels, Martini, Silvestrini or Murphy O’Connor’ — a group Cardinal Danneels referred jokingly to as “a kind of mafia-club…” Another member of the “mafia-club” is Walter Kasper, the German arch-heretic who had fallen into obscurity until Bergoglio’s arrival on the scene.

Archbishop Lefebvre and Remnant Founder, Walter Matt, 1976

 

The following article was written by my father, Walter L. Matt, in the December 31, 1969 issue of The Remnant. In it, my father (RIP) offers a sample of how early traditionalists reacted immediately and vehemently against the New Mass. I would direct our readers’ attention, however, to the tone of fealty which permeates my father’s supplications to the Holy Father at the time, begging him not to destroy the old Mass. And yet my father was certainly no fan of Pope Paul VI! These men were not renegades, obviously. They were loyal sons of the Church who were witnessing the auto-demolition of the Catholic Church they’d loved and served all their lives.

As his pontificate nears its fourth anniversary, Pope Francis ever more clearly reveals a megalomaniacal conviction that the Church and her teaching are his to remake as he sees fit. Praising his own rather absurdly denominated “Apostolic” Exhortation opening the door to Holy Communion for public adulterers, Francis told the Jesuit general congregation gathered in Rome last October that Amoris Laetitia represents nothing less than a radical change in the Church’s view of “the whole moral sphere,” which at the time he was a seminarian “was restricted to ‘you can,’ ‘you cannot,’ ‘up to here, yes, but not there.’ It was a morality very foreign to discernment.”

Saint Padre Pio was the first stigmatized Priest in the Church, sent from God to be a sign for our times. Francesco Forgione (born 1887) received the five wounds of Christ only after ordination (1910) when he began offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and became known as Padre Pio. These visible and bleeding wounds of Christ, which he had received on September 20, 1918, had disappeared from Padre Pio by the time that he completed his last Mass on September 22, 1968 – two days after the 50th Anniversary. The wounds were related to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

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This month marks the second anniversary of the martyrdom of 21 Coptic Christians at the hands of Islamic terrorists. Their crime? Loving Christ enough to die for Him. Would Roman Catholics do the same? What motivates martyrs, if not love?  Michael Matt asks the question: Is it because the New Order no longer speaks of Holy MOTHER Church that so few of her sons seem willing to die for her anymore?

What have we lost? What was life in the Church like just 40 years ago? Growing up Catholic...and remembering what we lost. Scapulars. Meat-less Friday. Ember Days. Midnight Masses. Catholic Schools. Unlocked churches. Kids on bikes (sans helmet). Dogs without leashes. Large Catholic families. Remember?

Michael Matt 'goes off' on the revolution of Vatican II, pointing out what life was like before Catholics got "sophisticated."