Appendices to the Open Letter to Bishops, September 2019

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Appendices to the Open Letter to Bishops, September 2019

Appendices:

Appendix 1: Vatican II as catalyst
Appendix 2: A chain of irregular acts
Appendix 3: Opening Address of Pope John XXIII
Appendix 4: Destruction of norms
Appendix 5: Continuity, substantial or material
Appendix 6: The false portrayal
Appendix 7: The stakes are too high to simply ignore the facts, a proposed solution
Appendix 8: The rationale

Appendix 1: Vatican II as catalyst

Introduction

“Confusion, bitterness in human relations and fratricidal wars” are manifestly and symptomatically apparent in the Church. It appears obvious that Vatican II is the catalyst for all these “lethal fruits”. From the clear and prophetical explanation by Pope John XXIII in his Opening Address to the Council, we may ask why these lethal fruits exist since that time?

He stated that: ‘Men are either with Him and His Church, and then they enjoy light, goodness, order, and peace. Or else they are without Him, or against Him, and deliberately opposed to His Church, and then they give rise to confusion, to bitterness in human relations, and to the constant danger of fratricidal wars’[ref 1].

It is a fact that most of you were ordained after the Second Vatican Council. At the opening of the Council, maybe only the eldest among you were young seminarians, while others were still in their childhood or even among the growing population of “not-yet-born” at that time. Therefore, the Council is becoming more and more an historical event of which one has only second hand knowledge. This confronts us with contradictory ways of understanding it, where the underlying vague hermeneutics like ‘continuity’ and ‘discontinuity’ are the main problems (Appendix 5)

Vatican II and the hermeneutic of Pope John XXIII.

We maintain that this ‘confusion, bitterness in human relations and fratricidal wars’ is a direct consequence of the fact that a majority of Council Fathers and their theologians had acted in free will, contrary to a ‘humble and gracious collaboration concerning the inspiration of the Holy Spirit’ even on the first working day of the Council. Through a chain of successive irregularities the Council’s legal framework was deliberately broken, by which Pope John XXIII was put in the situation of ‘a fait accompli’ (Appendix 2). This clearly demonstrated the lack of ‘a humble and gracious collaboration with the intention of the Holy Spirit’. Surely, it is obvious that these acts cannot remain without direct consequences regarding the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for each individual Council Father involved. Moreover, in fact, the deliberate ambiguities and contradictory texts present in the Council Documents proves that besides the Holy Spirit another spirit was present among the Council Fathers

Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that by allowing these irregular acts and their lethal fruits, the Holy Spirit always respects the free will of man, even those of each individual Council Father and their theological advisors. This can be seen as the same as Jesus respecting the free will of both, Judas, who delivered Him to the Sanhedrin, as well that of Peter, who denied knowing Him three times. Whereas, at the same time and above all in a wonderful way, the Holy Spirit also protected the Pastoral Council against creating full heresies. This is manifest by the possibility to interpret the Council’s documents by free will, in accordance with the rule set by the lawmaker of the Council, Pope John XXIII, when he stated ‘a renewal in unity and in accordance with the Doctrine taught by the Fathers’[ref 1 ]. He clearly stated this hermeneutic, as being: ‘a renewal’, not in discontinuity or a vague kind of continuity (Appendix 5), but explicitly ‘in unity and in accordance with the Doctrine taught by the Fathers’ and it should ‘never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers’ [ref 1](Appendix 3). Thereby, given that the Council was set up as Pastoral, the full Doctrine of the Church is the leading guide for that pastorate and has to be maintained ‘pure and integral’ and undoubtedly ‘without attenuations or distortion’[ref 1].

This should be the hermeneutic rule for interpreting and referring to the Second Vatican Council. It is obvious that the Council’s documents with their deliberate ambiguities, contradictory texts and one-sided use of doctrine cannot be interpreted well without considering the entire Doctrine. That remains the underlying fundamental guiding principal for interpretation of the Council documents.

In addition, we provide evidence that false portrayals of Pope John XXIII and the Council’s objectives have been deliberately created (Appendix 6). This has led in subsequent years to a deliberate and deceitful referencing of the so-called ‘spirit of the Council’ for interpreting the Council’s documents, in a manner contradictory to the hermeneutic law that Pope John XXIII had set in his Opening Address, and already mentioned above. Thereby, evidently, the suggestion that this ‘spirit of the Council’ is identical with the Holy Spirit is a method to imprison the Holy Spirit into their liberal ideology and therefore a grave sin against the Holy Spirit. This reference to the ‘Spirit of the Council’ has led to a departure ‘from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers’, by which more and more faithful have lost their Faith. Others wandering as sheep have found themselves focussing on Sacred Tradition (i.e. ‘the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers’) as their anchorage of Faith. While some others, who consider that the false portrayals were true, have accused Pope John XXIII of laying down what is contained in these false portrayals. Therefore, those who have created and cherished these false portrayals and hermeneutic or who have continually proclaimed them, bear a great responsibility for the consequences we now bear witness to.

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Appendix 2: A chain of irregular acts

[ref. 2, ref. 3, ref. 4, ref. 5, ref. 6]

This concerns a chain of irregular acts on October 13th, 1962, the first working day of the Council, which were deliberately initiated by Father Yves Congar O.P. and discussed by the French Bishops the previous evening, October 12th. These irregular acts that put Pope John XXIII in a situation of ‘a fait accompli’, are enumerated as follows:

Cardinal Liénart, a member of the Presidium, read a paper prepared by Mgr. Garonne. This was doubly irregular; firstly the intervention itself, and secondly by addressing the request for changing the Council’s rule for that specific day to the Council Fathers instead of towards the Holy Father;
An intervention by Cardinal Frings, also a member of the Presidium, confirming the intervention by Cardinal Liénart. He also did this in the name of Cardinal König, who did not belong to the Presidium. Evidently, this meant that the French informed these German Cardinals, prior to this first session;
The applause started by a few Council Fathers, but then grew to include the majority, while applauding was officially forbidden;
The change of the Council’s rule by the Presidium, thereby putting Pope John XXIII in a situation of 'a fait accompli';
The lie told by Cardinal Liénart to convince the Pope that his intervention was a spontaneous and charismatically inspired act, while it was deliberate, premediated and prepared the evening before. The text of his intervention was prepared for him on paper.

This chain of deliberately irregular acts show a freely willed lack of a ‘humble and gracious collaboration concerning the inspiration of the Holy Spirit’ of the Cardinals, Bishops and theological advisors involved.

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Appendix 3: Opening Address of Pope John XXIII

To further explain and clearly illustrate these false portrayals, consider the following quotations taken from the Opening Address of Pope John XXIII on October 11th, 1962, to the Council. These were the stated goals and objectives of the Second Vatican Council [ref. 1]:

The sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously;
The Church should never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers;
Men, without the assistance of the whole of revealed doctrine, cannot reach a complete and firm unity of minds with which are associated true peace and eternal salvation.
The truth of the Lord will remain forever;
Not, certainly, that there is a lack of fallacious teaching, opinions, and dangerous concepts to be guarded against and dissipated. But these are so obviously in contrast with the right norm of honesty, and have produced such lethal fruits that by now it would seem that men of themselves are inclined to condemn them, particularly those ways of life which despise God and His law or place excessive confidence in technical progress and a well-being based exclusively on the comforts of life;
Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us, pursuing thus the path which the Church has followed for twenty centuries;
The salient point of this Council is not, therefore, a discussion of one article or another of the fundamental doctrine of the Church which has repeatedly been taught by the Fathers and by ancient and modern theologians, and which is presumed to be well known and familiar to all;
The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. And it is the latter that must be taken into great consideration with patience if necessary, everything being measured in the forms and proportions of a Magisterium which is predominantly pastoral in character;
To transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion, which throughout twenty centuries, notwithstanding difficulties and contrasts, has become the common patrimony of men. It is a patrimony not well received by all, but always a rich treasure available to men of good will.

Clearly, these quotations from Pope John XXIII are fully in accordance with his Encyclical Ad Petri Cathedram, 1959, in which he condemned in harsh terms anyone who denies the revealed Truth or interferes by the spread of lies or indifferences. It is obvious from the citations that Pope John XXIII showed absolutely no desire to change one iota of Doctrine. From this Opening Address one can only conclude that he sought to continue the traditional teaching of the Fathers, his ‘recent and not-so-recent predecessors’. This clearly in order to ensure that the primary guiding rule of the Council should be understood as: a renewal in unity and in accordance with the Doctrine taught by the Fathers: i.e. the Church should 'never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers’.

Moreover, the ‘renewal’ clearly meant how more efficaciously ‘to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion’. Thereby it appears, as a ‘conditio sine qua none’, that the use of the term ‘medicine of mercy’ may never be decoupled from the need to explain ‘the validity of its doctrine more fully’, i.e. ‘pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion'.

Pope John XXIII did not abrogate any condemnations made by his predecessors; rather he spoke about ‘uncertain opinions of men’, ‘new-born errors’, and ‘fallacious teaching, opinions, and concepts to be guarded against’. In that way he confirmed the condemnation of the main principles of the New Theology made by Pius XII in his 1950 Encyclical ‘Humani Generis.

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Appendix 4: Destruction of norms

The first sentence of ‘Dignitatis Humanae, (DH 1), one of the minor documents of Vatican II, must be highlighted:

The dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man, and the demand is increasingly made that men should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty

This sentence is very ambiguous. Surely, within the context of the whole doctrine this should be read in accordance with the Council’s guiding rule: ‘never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers’.

By not referring to the consequences of original sin on human dignity, leaves this quotation open to false interpretations in accordance with the modernist evolutionary liberal ideology that denies original sin. In this way, the specific wording: ‘not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty’ implied a release from the disciplinary obligation to the norms, by leaving these norms to be a subject of conscience. Moreover, the addition ‘men should act on their own judgment’ meant that norms do not need to be taught anymore, because any norm is then considered as coming from outside and thus driven by coercion. Consequently, by not teaching these norms, the conscience lacks any proper information and cannot be motivated by a sense of duty anymore. So, due to the false interpretation that has been so aggressively dictated by dissident-theologians after the Council, the properly informed conscience has been replaced by undefined and subjective ‘feelings’ that differ from the original norms held prior to the Council. Eventually this created a situation in which the newly developed practices became the absolute norm, an orthopraxis that is rigidly enforced and made obligatory for all faithful, despite the fact that the traditional norms were never abrogated.

Nowadays, all faithful that feel themselves attached to and obliged by the traditional norms of the Church’s Doctrine are accused of rigidness by those who in turn rigidly enforced everyone to obey this ‘new orthopraxis'. This is even more so the case for the younger generations born since the Council, who have known no differently.

Furthermore, another remarkable example of the same ambiguity can be found in the liturgical reform. Here, the same liberal interpretation of DH1 has led to the removal of the first part of the second prayer from the Offertory of the H. Mass, under the guise of liturgical reform.

The original Offertory stated:

O God, Who wonderfully formed the dignity of human nature, and more wonderfully restored it, grant us through the mystery of this water and wine, to be made participants of His divinity, Who condescended to become a partaker of our humanity Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who with Thee, lives and reigns in unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

Whereas, in contrast to the original prayer, the reformed Offertory only prays the following:

By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.

This original prayer expressed the fullness of the ‘Lex Credendi' very well. On the one hand, God had formed the dignity of human nature so wonderfully. On the other hand, human dignity has been wounded by the origin sin of Adam and then God restored human dignity more wonderfully through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ by His Crucifixion, in which we can participate only through the water of Baptism and the wine of His Blood, as he is the Door to Heaven. This prayer that in the daily Mass implicitly expresses the continuing reminder of original sin has simply been removed without any replacement. Factually, this suppression of the daily reminder of the notion of original sin from the actual memory of the faithful, has weakened any resistance against the destruction of norms by means of the false modernist liberal ideology that has seemingly taken over the Church since Vatican II.

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Appendix 5: Continuity, substantial or material

While the expression ‘continuity’ can be understood well, as a deepening of the Truth ‘in unity and in accordance with the Doctrine taught by the Fathers’, it is nevertheless open to misinterpretation. The term ‘continuity’ fundamentally implies a ‘change’ without discontinuity, by which this principle leaves an opportunity open to depart from ‘the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers’ by means of a continuous number of infinitely small steps. This is a change, which can only be recognized later, as contradictory. The smaller the steps and the more time each step takes the later the substantial change will be recognized. Therefore, ‘continuity’ does not express per-se, the same intention as that expressed by the Popes John XXIII and Paul VI with the words: ‘in unity and in accordance with the Doctrine taught by the Fathers’.

Moreover, the term ‘continuity’ also conceals another danger. A comparison can be made with physics, in which the conservation of matter is a fundamental principle. When an explosion destroys any physical form, the conservation of matter guarantees the continuation of matter, from which new forms can built up. Therefore, any change or break in form always is associated with conservation of matter. This gives rise to the opportunity that a break in form can be logically argued as a ‘continuity’ due to the conservation of matter. In the same manner, the deliberate execution of long term discontinuity of form through small incremental steps is also argued as ‘continuity’, by stating that the evolution of a ‘continuity’ development of one form into another is comparable with the ‘continuity’ of material processes.

Apparently, this material ‘continuity’ actually conceals a true discontinuity in form and therefore it is not fundamentally a ‘continuity’ but really a ‘break’ or ‘discontinuity’. Calling this material ‘continuity’ a real ‘continuity’ is a real lie!

A further analogy is useful, to illustrate the abuse of logic and of the term ‘continuity’ by the modernists, concerning the Church since Vatican II. Knowledge of material processes are fundamentally necessary for creating manmade objects and these processes are factually irreversible. Material ‘continuity’ (conservation of matter) is misused in this context by the modernists to confuse the issue and make their case.

The suggested claim of a full break with the past is actually ideologically based. While in contrast, the substantial ‘continuity’ with the past is an undeniable fact and the claim of irreversibility of the break with tradition prior to Vatican II is a lie. As an illustration, this is what has happened to a large number of religious congregations. While these congregations have continued materially, their spiritual forms grounded in the founder’s spirituality, have been so drastically changed, due to the post-Council reform of the religious vows, that they have substantially lost or broken with their original spirituality. In other words while they have actually suffered an engineered or deliberate break with their past, the suggestion that these changes are irreversible and cannot be revoked is however a real lie.

In conclusion, an irreversible break with the past cannot actually have occurred in the Church since Vatican II. Any break that has occurred can be restored by conversion, while truthfully Vatican II has to be understood as being substantially in unity with the Doctrine of Faith prior to the Council.

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Appendix 6: The false portrayal^,

Among others, these false portrayals become clear by referring to the quote from the Opening Address of Pope John XXIII about the ‘prophets of doom’[ref. 1]. Even during the Council, by using the pseudonym ‘Xavier Rynne’[ref. 7], a Redemptorist priest and theology professor had anonymously made such a false portrayals in his book ‘Letters from Vatican City’ [ref. 7], which was internationally published in several languages. He wrote suggestively that regarding this quotation, Pope John XXIII would mention here the conservative Curial Cardinals, and that he would agree with the objectives of the dissident liberal Council Fathers. With this he made a statement that is still hugely cherished by the liberal wing, as it was even recently referred to in that way by Pope Francis in his Opening Address to the Synod of Youth.

But to whom do these ‘prophets of doom’ refer? For a good understanding of whom Pope John XXIII had referred to here, consider firstly the full context of this quotation. He stated:

In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times, they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty. We feel we must disagree with those prophets of doom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand

So, to which of the following groups among the Council Fathers did Pope John XXIII refer to [ref. 8]?

Was it the conservative wing, who accepted to discuss the preparatory documents, which were called by Pope John XXIII in his Opening Address as the ‘initial gift of celestial grace’? At the time of the Opening Address, they had nothing to fear from this Council, and in what way would they have been motivated to predict ‘doom’-scenarios for the Church and the world, by seeking to prevent the Council? Moreover, they had encouraged Pope John XXIII to call this Council;
Alternatively, was it the liberal wing, who disagreed with this ‘initial gift of celestial grace’ and worked deliberately on its replacement? They had at the time of the opening address, to fear for a full condemnation of their liberal thoughts by the Council, as this was clearly present in the preparatory documents and even mentioned in the Opening Address by Pope John XXIII himself. Herein he condemned the ‘uncertain opinions of men’, the ‘new-born errors’, as well as acknowledging that there certainly were ‘fallacious teachings, opinions, and concepts to be guarded against[ref. 1]’.

Secondly, it is reported that the German Episcopate sent Cardinal Frings to Pope John XXIII requesting for a delay of the Council [ref. 9]. How would they have sketched the future of the Church and the World to convince the Pope to stop or at least to delay the Council? Would that not be a ‘doom'-scenario for the Church and the world, if the Church would go on in the way as indicated by the preparatory documents? Isn’t Cardinal Frings then clearly one of the ‘prophets of doom’ Pope John XXIII mentioned?

Is it therefore not obvious from this evidence, that it must have been the liberal wing, to whom the Pope referred? Because of their knowledge of the progress of the preparatory work, they had the most to fear for the outcome of the Council and therefore had every motive to come up with ‘doom'-scenarios for the Church and the world in order to prevent the Council proceeding as originally planned. Furthermore, at the start of the Council, the liberal wing confronted Pope John XXIII with ‘a fait accompli’. They deliberately broke the Council’s framework on the first working day of the Council, creating a conditional situation to reject and replace the preparatory documents. Was it not the liberal wing, which after the Council made efforts to replace the hermeneutic rule as set by Pope John XXIII’s objectives for the Council?

Even despite Pope Paul VI repeating the original hermeneutic rule in his closure address to the Council: i.e. ‘never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers’, they changed this guiding rule for a vague and ambiguous ‘spirit of the council’. In this way, by using a false hermeneutic, they tried to eliminate all undesired conservative influences, including the interventions by Pope Paul VI and the original hermeneutic rule of Pope John XXIII.

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Appendix 7; The stakes are too high to simply ignore the facts, a proposed solution

The sources of the ‘confusion, bitterness in human relations and fratricidal wars’ that is evidently present in the Church since the Second Vatican Council, have clearly been identified. Here a solution to solve this problem will be presented. Because the problem started due to the lack of ‘a humble and gracious collaboration concerning the inspiration of the Holy Spirit’ and continued with the introduction of the vague concept ‘spirit of the Council’ in place of the clear hermeneutic rule set by Pope John XXIII, this problem is in essence of a supernatural origin. The stakes are too high for simply ignoring this fact. It can therefore only be solved by supernatural means, in a manner, which expresses unity between three critical public acts of the Church, namely:

Begging for Mercy,

Declaration of a (renewed) Manifesto of Faith, and

By doing Penance.

The three step proposed solution is explained herewith:

First: In a gracious and humble manner, the Church, through the Pope, together with the entire Hierarchy, shall publicly make a request for Mercy from the Holy Spirit. This needs to be done by taking into account that the lack of a ‘humble and gracious collaboration concerning the inspiration of the Holy Spirit’ and its consequent ‘confusion, bitterness in human relations and fratricidal wars’, has penetrated profoundly into the Church. It has left virtually no one unaffected; the whole Church is suffering from its consequences.
Second: A public Manifesto of Faith shall be made by the Church, through the Pope and repeated by the Hierarchy.
This Manifesto is vitally necessary because of the many ambiguities and contradictions caused by the lack of a ‘humble and gracious collaboration concerning the inspiration of the Holy Spirit’. The Manifesto can follow the model of an extended Creed, such as that made by Pope Paul VI (Motu Proprio Solemnia Hac Liturgia, June 1968) following the request from the first Bishop’s Synod in 1967. In accordance with the Council’s Opening Address of Pope John XXIII, this Manifesto of Faith shall explain the full Doctrine ‘pure and integral’, ‘without attenuations or distortion’ and in an understandable way without any ambiguity. This is essential, because the Church may ‘never depart the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Father’, and above all, She shall always act ‘in unity and in accordance with the Doctrine taught by the Fathers’.
Third: The Church must publicly do penance. This is fundamentally necessary also due to the lack of ‘a gracious collaboration concerning the inspiration of the Holy Spirit’ by the majority of Council Fathers, and because so many Bishops, priests and religious as well as the lay people have rejected the hermeneutic, as defined by Pope John XXIII or have overreacted to that in a bad way. Such penance shall be done by obliging all priests to celebrate individually – not as concelebrants - a number of Holy Masses that shall include reading (in whole or in parts) the Manifesto of Faith as a homily, by fasting and Eucharistic adoration. The intention of those Holy Masses shall be for healing of the wounds due the lack of gracious collaboration, for the conversion of all those who are still attached to that revolutionary spirit, and for the repose of the souls of those who have already died.

However, as long as these public acts have not yet been done, the Cardinals and Bishops have the duty to continuously request that it be done. Meanwhile they can stimulate the Church in this request by doing such acts on their own at diocesan level. This can be done in a similar way to that of His Eminence Cardinal Müller’s declaration of his ‘Manifesto of Faith’ on February 8th, 2019.

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Appendix 8: The rationale

The rationale for proposing that ‘all priests shall celebrate individually – not as concelebrants - a number of Holy Masses’, is because only in this way one can be sure that all priests will be confronted individually with the text of the Manifesto as a penitential act.

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References

‘Opening address of the Second Vatican Council (October 11th)’, Pope St. John XXIII (1962); [because the Vatican website does not provide an English translation of this Opening Address, the translation at https://www.ourladyswarriors.org/teach/v2open.htm has been used here that has been verified by the official Dutch translation].
'Henry de Lubac S.J., Vatican Council Notebook', vol. 1, Henry de Lubac (2015); Ignatius Press, ISBN978-1-58617-305-0.
'My Journal of the Council’, Ives Congar O.P. (2012, English translation); Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minesota, ISBN 978-0-8146-8029-2.
'Theological Highlights of Vatican II', Joseph Ratzinger (1966, edition 2009), Paulist Press, ISBN978-0-8091-4610-9.
'Iota Unum, A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century', Romano Amerio (1985, Dutch translation), Angela Press, ISBN: 9780963903211;
'Das Zweite Vatkanische Konzil, Eine bislang ungeschriebene Geschichte', Roberto de Mattei (2012); 2. Korrigierte und erweiterte Auflage, Kirchliche Umschau, ISBN 978-3-932691-98-0;
'Letters from Vatican City', Xavier Rynne (1963); Farrar, Straus and Company, New York [Dutch translation, Ambo boeken].
'Papst Johannes XXIII begegnen', Alexandra von Teuffenbach (2005), Sankt UlrichVerlag GmbH, ISBN 3-936484-47-3:
'Konzilstagebuch Sebastian Tromp SJ', Band 1/1 (1960-1962), Alexandra von Teufenfach (2006); Editrice Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, ISBN 88-7839-057-7.