Father Martin's Monthly Newsletter

Volume 1, No. 2	December Message	December 12, 1997

In the mid-sixties when this splitting started, it was practically unnoticed by the generality of Roman Catholics; most of them were preoccupied with the tidal wave of changes sweeping through every nook and cranny of Church life. But the split proceeded to develop steadily over a space of thirty years, to the point that today the two camps are easy to identify as two quite distinct form of Catholicism splitting the one billion membership of the Church. They have even acquired names which clearly indicate what each camp maintains as its distinguishing characteristic and as its difference from the other.

Both camps look to the Second Vatican Council (hereafter: Vatican Two). Both use it as the measuring-rod of their Catholicism and as the root-cause of their (by now) mutual and irreconcilable opposition.

One camp houses the bulk of Roman Catholics, clergy and laity, throughout the world of the 'nineties, including the present Pope, most of the living Roman Cardinals, the vast majority of bishops, priests, religious orders and congregations and pious institutes. In fact, you can say with almost 100% accuracy, that the members of any publicly functioning part in the official Roman Catholic Church organization belong in this camp, and -- publicly, at least--conform to its rules.

The distinguishing trait of this camp is the wholesale acceptance of the new form of Catholicism, which developed very quickly in the aftermath of Vatican Two. "Developed" is not really an accurate term in this context because it implies an evolution--organic in its own way- from one stage into another. There was nothing evolutionary and organic about the rude change literally forced on Roman Catholics by an ecclesiastical clique who seized the reins of power at Vatican Two. It was revolutionary. The new form of Catholicism was imposed by papal ukase and Episcopal finagling.

This new form of Catholicism appears chiefly in the Church ceremonies performed at the confection and conferring of what Roman Catholics call the Seven Sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Eucharist, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, Matrimony). Instead of the traditional Roman Catholic Mass as codified by Pope Gregory the Great (6th century) and Pope St. Pius V and the Council of Trent (16th century) and used throughout the Church Universal until the late nineteen-sixties, a totally new ceremony was created by a team of six Protestant clergymen and two Catholic priests, at the behest of Pope Paul VI. Its creators based their creation on Martin Luther's "Mass" traditional Roman Catholic Mass as codified by Pope Gregory the Great

In addition, the new form of Catholicism is to be found in the sixteen main documents officially issued by Vatican Two (with Pope Paul VI's approval). They are accepted unquestioned by these who belong to this camp. Both the Bishops of Vatican Two and Paul VI himself describe those documents as pastoral and as non-dogmatic. No statement in these documents--except that of an already defined dogma--to be accepted by any Roman Catholic under pain of sin. Because this new form of Catholicism was propagated as coming from Vatican Two, and because those documents of the Council are accepted holus-bolus, those Catholics in this camp are handily called Conciliarists for they claim Vatican Two as the justification for their new form of Catholicism.

The second camp of Roman Catholics includes all those who do not accept this new form of Catholicism in its Church ceremonies, and who have great difficulties in accepting all of the teaching expressed in those sixteen official documents. As for religious ceremonies, the Catholics in this camp prefer the traditional form of Catholicism. In doctrine, they feel at home only in the traditional formulations. They, therefore, describe themselves as "Traditional" or "Traditionalist".

At first sight, it would seem to be somewhat of an escogitation to speak about the Traditionalist camp as splitting Roman Catholicism with the Conciliarists, or as being of any real consequence in the overall picture of late 20th century Catholicism. Numerically, the Traditionalist camp seems insignificant; to date, its membership would amount, at its maximum, to no more than 7-10 million which is about 1% of the one billion Roman Catholics in our world. This numerical insignificance can be most graphically illustrated by comparing the scope of Conciliarists and Traditionalists within the 19,000+ Roman Catholic parishes in the U.S.A.

On any given Sunday or day of obligation in the course of this year 1997, the Traditionalist Mass was said in not more than 350 parishes. In contrast, the Novus Ordo ceremony has been used in the vast majority of those 19,000+ parishes.

This numerical insignificance is exactly paralleled by the functional insignificance of Traditionalists in the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church bureaucracy. That is to say, in the day-to-day running of the Church's organization and in the overall religious and socio-cultural and political decisions of that organization. From the Pope in Rome down to the lowliest monsignor in the smallest diocese, there is no outstanding and acknowledged prelate in any--even minor-key position who openly and actively professes to be a Traditionalist.

It has been continuously noted that no genuine Traditionalist has been allowed to attain any eminence or position of major influence in the Church organization; and this is true right up to the top most levels of Vatican administration as well as down the descending ranks of clergymen and officials, male and female.

There is a very good reason for this scarcity. The Conciliarist reaction to any Traditionalist element is quite fierce; and the Conciliarist stranglehold on the Church organization is so remittingly hostile and exclusionist and thorough that, if any clerical functionary in the organization displays obvious signs of adopting or even of favoring Traditionalist views and practices, he is immediately made to feel that he is being watched and suspected as someone who is not "mainstream", as the saying goes. The use of a Latin tag in his sermon, a direct reference to Hellfire as the divine punishment for sins of contraception or homosexuality, or any other little traditionalist trait can make all the difference to an entire career in the Church organization. Conciliarists become almost paranoid by any obvious preference for the "old Church" practices and teachings. If someone perseveres along Traditionalist lines, he will be relieved of his functions and, in many instances, eliminated from the organization by summary ukase.

In more than one U.S. diocese, the Bishop makes use of some secular institution run by trained psychologists whose aim is to bring the "aberrant" cleric back to this Conciliarist senses by "therapeutic" treatment involving drugs. Pharmacology as the handmaiden of clerical regularity!
Given the numerical and functional insignificance of the Traditionalist camp in the Roman Catholic organization, why even speak about this camp as being of equal import with the numerically preponderant and politically more powerful Conciliarist camp? How can you even think of the Traditionalist camp splitting the Roman Catholic body?

The quasi-ferocity and absolute intolerance of the Conciliarist camp for any and all of the Traditionalist works and any appearance of the Traditionalist camp within the publicly functioning Church organization is a telltale fact, and points to an answer for the questions just posed. Those with the thoroughgoing Conciliarist mentality have an almost irrational fear of the Traditionalist camp, and a very obvious desire to do away with any trace of Traditionalist ceremony or any Traditionalist formulations of religious belief. "What are we to do with all these Traditionalists", was the exasperated cry of His Eminence, Cardinal Arinze speaking more or less in the mood of a Jew-hating Hitler seeking a definitive solution for his problem.

Throughout the Conciliarist camp, there is no objection to holding a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Lutheran, or a Jewish ceremony in local churches, or even in cathedrals, basilicas and St. Peter's itself. Heretics and schismatic can preach in all those sacred places with the blessing of Pope John Paul, of his Cardinals and his Bishops. But, in the practical order of things, it is impossible to put on a Traditionalist ceremony or speaker, except in designated places at designated hours by designated persons. No Communist or Fascist or Nazi Commissars were ever more stringent in their control than the official Roman Catholic hierarchy in their restrictive control of any public manifestation of Traditionalist Mass and Sacraments. This exclusivist discrimination against the Traditionalist camp by the Conciliarists is endemic to the Concilarist mind, and it betokens a very deep fear.

Any attempt to break down that Conciliarist discrimination is met with strong reactions. If Traditionalists prove to be obdurate in their efforts, the Conciliarist authorities will not hesitate to employ the force of civic authorities--legal recourse, arrest, even the use of local police brawn.

The brute fact is that the Conciliarist camp was and today remains severely frightened by the revolt organized by Archbishop Lefebvre. What frightened them was not the Traditionalist ceremonies and doctrinal formulations--these are treated with contempt. But the very obvious fact that given the free uninhibited choice between the Conciliarist and Traditionalist camps, the Conciliarists feared and still fear there would be a vast movement of Roman Catholics back into the Traditionalist camp. Now, as the arch-heretic of the Protestant Reformation once said, "at stake here is more than holy incense and Romish medals".

The prospect of a wholesale or even extensive support for the Traditionalist viewpoint was nightmarish because it spelled mortal danger for a whole network of jobs and appointments, a whole bureaucracy--lay and clerical, male and female. It spelled danger for a whole raft of non-Catholic interpretations of Scripture, of moral laws, of history, and for a whole tribe of new pieties--all of which were engendered and born in the aftermath of Vatican Two. By the mid nineteen-nineties, there were very extensive vested interest involving careers, funding and ecclesiastical power at stake in the Conciliarist versus Traditionalist struggle.

As could have been foreseen, there is now a thriving "underground" Church of Roman Catholics in the U.S.A. and Canada. It was in its infancy in the late 'eighties'. It is now at an adult state. For now, it can rely on a supply of priests and bishops with their own chapels and schools and theologates--all outside the canonical jurisdiction of the regular hierarchy. One of our principal prayers this Christmas must be for the lacerated soul of Catholicism in North America. The Divine Child must enlighten us all, for the visible and largely human side of His Church seems to be mortally damaged.

- Malachi B. Martin (December 1997)