Sons of the Church  (part II)

in a time of crisis

By the Reverend Fr. Roger-Thomas Calmel, O.P.


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Too many ecclesiastical dignitaries have abandoned themselves to the modernist mental perversion; they have reached the point at which they no longer find monstrous the habit of affirming contradictories in the same statement because they deem the intellect incapable of knowing truth.  They rather suppose that it [that is, truth] exists somewhere, though where one knows not, a sort of religious noumena  [Editor:  (in Kantian philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.]  beyond reach about which the mind fabricates ingenious, infinitely variable systems over the course the evolution of our species, but always impotent to reach what is.  One thing counts: that these [supposed] systems, ideologies, theologies, be placed at the service of humanity’s development.  They will be appreciated for their power to stimulate a grand ascension toward freedom and progress. 

One who consents to such a warped mentality refrains himself from condemning heretics or heresies and does not deem himself bound by any dogma.   He contemplates with detachment and benevolence the most opposed theses, applying himself to bring out in each one the elements that can prepare a better future and that connect more or less with a so-called evangelical spirit, the Gospel being interpreted as a leaven of an ideal future, but not to be received as a definitive rule faithfully guarded by a divinely-assisted Tradition.   When prelates whose minds have been thus denatured occupy the commanding posts in the Church, it is a cause of unutterable distress for all the faithful.

“Unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved, but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened” (Matt. 24:22).

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Some young priests from their very first days in the clergy, pushed by apparently noble motives to aspire keenly to reach the highest ranks in the Church, have offered the devil an easy prey.  The devil has taken them in charge in order to make them succeed, but he has made them pay a heavy price.  In olden times, during the Middle Ages or the early Church, whoever ambitioned the cardinalate, or higher, often had to become an accomplice, at least by his silence, in the sins and prevarications of Christian princes.  Today Christian princes don’t exist anymore; in any case, they have become irrelevant.  Power has passed to the secret societies, Masonic or Communist.  That’s where for the most part the horrible masters of modern times are to be found.  Today, then, a priest who cherishes the ambition to advance in the Church to its highest posts must deal with these princes.  He must become their accomplice.  Could he achieve his goal if he did not consent to become involved, perhaps only by degrees yet genuinely, in a radical perversion of the mind?  For if he refused to allow himself to be gradually won over by the spiritual darkness, he would remain incapable, despite all his efforts, of becoming a useful ally of the occult forces.  Do what he might, he would remain an adversary.  But he has to be an auxiliary; it is for no other reason that the modern Caesar has raised him to a position of command.

It happens that a man or woman, in the throes of passion, opens with a terrifying determination the sacred door of their liberty to the spirit of lust.  The devil becomes their master.  He is as it were invested with the power to precipitate them into the pit; he has opportunities to almost totally paralyze the will of his victims.  Now, the demon of pride is more fearsome than the one of carnal desires.  How powerful, then, will be his hold over the priest who, avid for power in spiritualibus [in spiritual things], has entrusted himself, even only indirectly, in order to be more sure of gaining his ambition, to these formidable occult organizations of our time over which the devil rules as master.  Into what mental contortions will the devil not induce the ambitious priest?  If he does not succeed in getting a grip on himself in time, his reason will be invincibly falsified by the prince of this world.

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Were the Church’s plight a hundred times worse, a hundred times more cruel, it is still the Lord who is forever Master and King.  It is to Him that all power has been given; it is before Him that every knee must bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, including those in this kind of hell, for the moment painless, which is the modernist sect.  Its harmfulness cannot extend beyond the strict limits set by the Lord, and the Lord only grants it a certain power to obscure, to falsify, and to scandalize in thousands of ways, only for the good of the elect and to augment the gracious splendor of His Church.  We ought not to be fearful, but rather persevere with confidence in the Church of always, the everlasting Church, the Church of all time.

(Prologue to Apologia for the Everlasting Church)

Father Calmel’s Apologia first appeared in the journal Itinéraires, No. 151, March 1971, pp. 104-111.