Abbé Barthe to Mons Vigano:
Your helpful example on Vatican II
Translated from
June 20, 2020
Dear friends and enemies of Stilum Curiae:
Abbé Claude Barthe, author of numerous books, among which we can cite “
Trouvera-t-il encore la foi sur la terre ? Une crise de l’Église, histoire et questions” (Will He still find faith on this earth? A crisis of the Church, history and questions)(François-Xavier de Guibert, 2006, 3rd edition) and
“La Messe de Vatican II. Dossier historique” (The Mass of Vatican II. Historical dossier) (Via Romana, 2018), has read the recent declarations of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on the Second Vatican Council and has sent us this open letter (original in French). Good reading!
A historic event:
Mons Viganò’s critique of Vatican-II
An open letter by
Abbé Claude Barthe
I am taking the liberty of reacting to Your Excellency’s declaration “Excursus on Vatican-II and its consequences” (published in Chiesa e post-concilio, 6/9/20), to underscore that it is of very great interest to the Church. Which you will permit me to summarive in five points:
1 – Vatican II contains texts “in clear opposition to the doctrine that up til then had been expressed in the Magisterium”.
Your attack on the Council takes aim at:
- Those texts in direct disaccord with previous doctrine, as on religious freedom in the declaration Dignitatis humanae, and on the basis for new relations with non-Christian religions in the declaration Nostra aetate (to which one could add the decree on ecumenism, Unitatis redisintegratio, which introduced the novelty of ‘imperfect communion” with Christ and the Church of those who have separated from the Church) (no. 3).
- The ambiguities that could be used as truth or as error, such as the 'subsistit in' found in No. 8 of the Dogmatic Cnstitution Lumen gentium: “The Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church”, rather than: “The Church of Christ is the Catholic Church”.
2- These doctrinal distortions are the source of errors which followed – justified as the ‘spirit of the Council’.
You explained that the deviations, or those elements which are most damaging to the Christian faith, that have marked the post-conciliar period (you cite the Abu Dhabi Declaration, but also the Days in Assisi, the liturgical reform, and the use of collegiality) find their origin in these distortions.
Moreover, it emerges from your text that the very concept of ‘the spirit of the Council’ confirms the innovating specificity of that assembly, because “there never was ‘the spirit of the Nicaean Council’ nor the ‘spirit of the Councilof Ferrara-Florence’, much less ‘the spirit of the Council of Trent’. just as there never was a so-called ‘post-Council after Lateran IV or Vatican I’”.
3- These distortions cannot be corrected.
You say that the attempts to correct the excesses of Vatican-II have been impotent:
- A) Whether one takes the inadequate way of the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’. Because, in effect, this hermeneutic is not a return to the previous Magisterium, but represents the search for a third way between novelty and tradition.
Benedict XVI, in his address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, declared a ‘hermeneutic of renewal in continuity’ against “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture”, but by the latter, he referred as much to ‘traditionalists’ as to ‘progressivists’ who both considered that Vatican-II had produced some ruptures.
- B) Or whether encouraging the Magisterium to ‘correct’ the errors of Vatican II. You rightly show that this attempt, “even with the best intentions, undermine the foundations of the Catholic edifice”. In effect, to oppose the Magisterium today with a Magisterium of tomorrow, which would contradict it, would only end in showing that no magisterial act would never be considered definitive.
Therefore, in a supplementary text on June 15 (in Chiesa e post concilio), you express the opinion that a future pope “could annul Vatican II entirely”.
If I may be allowed to amplify your analysis, I would say that the only solution to contradict by a magisterial act a preceding one is to consider that the latter was not magisterial in the full force of the term. For example, Pastor aeternus, from Vatican-I in 1870, annulled de facto the decree Frequens of the Council of Constance which, in 1417, had institutionalized the superiority of an ecumenical council over the pope. This annulment was possible because the Holy See had never recognized the dogmatic force of Frequens.
Thus, with Vatican-II, we find ourselves in the same situation as Frequens presented, since the organs of Vatican-II itself and all of its subsequent interpretations made assurances that Vatican-II was simply ‘pastoral’ in nature, namely, not ‘dogmatic’.
Indeed, the major way to get out of the present magisterial crisis is to give up what has been called ‘pastoral’ and call it ‘dogmatic’: that this pope and the bishops in union with him are expressing their [Vatican-II-based] Magisterium dogmatically not ‘pastorally’.
4- The present pontificate is a paradoxical clarification.
You write: “What we have understood for years, vaguely and without clear connotations, we now find elaborated as a real manifesto by supporters of the present pontificate.”
And that is what many feel among those who seek to give a pia interpretatio of the controversial texts of Vatican-II: They acknowledge it is not possible to do so, because of the application of those texts in this pontificate, some of which are the outcome of contentious points from Vatican-II, such as the erroneous recognition of the ‘rights of conscience’ in the exhortation Amoris Laetitia, in which No. 301 declares that in some circumstances, adultery is not a sin.
5- Thus, a duty of conscience weighs on those prelates of the Church who recognize the situation.
Speaking for yourself, you write: “Just as I obeyed dubious orders honestly and serenely for 60 years, thinking that they represented the loving voice of the Church, so today, with as much honesty and serenity, I recognize that I allowed myself to be deceived. And to be consistent today by persevering in error, would be an unfortunate choice that would make me an accomplice to the fraud”.
A number of prelates, especially after the most recent synodal assemblies, have been led to go back from current consequences to their causes posed half a century ago. Your example and your encouragement can help them to express, conscientiously, for the good of the Church, their disagreement with these causes: the faulty points of Vatican II.
Born in 1947, Abbé Barthe was ordained a priest in 1979 in the FSSPX by Mons. Lefebvre himself, but without being expelled from the fraternity, he was gradually emarginated and followed his own course. He devoted himself to researching the history of Vatican II, while he wrote at least 20 books on the crisis in the Church, the Roman liturgy and Catholic literature. He taught on these same subjects at the seminaries of the traditionalist Institut du Bon-Pasteur and Institute of Christ the King. He has been the almoner for the annual Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage to Rome every October since 2012, organized to give thanksgiving at St. Peter’s Basilica for Benedict XVI’s motu proprio which authorized the return of the Traditional Mass to the Church.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/06/2020 09:47]