International Campaign for the Total Freedom of the Traditional Liturgy

Being a Catholic in 2024 is no easy endeavor. The West is undergoing a massive de-Christianization, so much so that Catholicism appears to be vanishing from the public sphere. Elsewhere, the number of Christians being persecuted for their faith is on the rise. What’s more, the Church has been struck by an internal crisis that manifests itself in a decline in religious practice, a downswing in priestly and religious vocations, a decrease in sacramental practice, and even a growing dissension between priests, bishops and cardinals which, until very recently, was utterly unthinkable. Yet, among all the things that can contribute to the internal revival of the Church and to the renewal of her missionary zeal, there is, above all, the worthy and reverent celebration of her liturgy, which can be greatly fostered thanks to the example and the presence of the traditional Roman liturgy.

Despite all the attempts that have been made to suppress it, especially during the present pontificate, it lives on, continuing to spread and to sanctify the Christian people who are blessed to be able to benefit from it. It bears abundant fruits of piety, as well as an increase of vocations and of conversions. It attracts young people and is the fount of many flourishing works, especially in schools, and is accompanied by a solid catechesis. No one can deny that it is a vector for the preservation and transmission of the faith and religious practice in the midst of a waning of religious belief and a dwindling number of believers. This Mass, due to its venerable antiquity, can boast of having sanctified countless souls over the centuries. Among other vital forces still active in the Church, this form of liturgical life stands out because of the stability given to it by an uninterrupted lex orandi.

Certainly, some places of worship have been granted, or rather tolerated, where this liturgy can be celebrated, but too often what has been given by one hand is taken back by the other, without, however, ever managing to make it vanish.

Since the massive decline during the period immediately following the Second Vatican Council, every attempt has been made on numerous occasions to revive religious practice, to increase the number of priestly and religious vocations, and to preserve the faith of the Christian people. Everything, except letting the people experience the traditional liturgy, by giving the Tridentine liturgy a fair chance. Today, however, common sense urgently demands that all the vital forces in the Church be allowed to live and prosper, and in particular the one which enjoys a right dating back to over a millennium.

Let there be no mistake: the present appeal is not a petition to obtain a new tolerance as in 1984 and 1988, nor even a restoration of the status granted in 2007 by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which, recognizing in principle a right, has in fact been reduced to a regime of meagerly granted permissions.

As lay people, it is not for us to pass judgment on the Second Vatican Council, its continuity or discontinuity with the previous teaching of the Church, the merits, or not, of the reforms that resulted from it, and so on. On the other hand, it is necessary to defend and transmit the means that Providence has employed to enable a growing number of Catholics to preserve the faith, to grow in it, or to discover it. The traditional liturgy plays an essential role in this process, thanks to its transcendence, its beauty, its timelessness and its doctrinal certainty.

For this reason, we simply ask, for the sake of the true freedom of the children of God in the Church, that the full freedom of the traditional liturgy, with the free use of all its liturgical books, be granted, so that, without hindrance, in the Latin rite, all the faithful may benefit from it and all clerics may celebrate it.

Jean-Pierre Maugendre, Managing Director of Renaissance Catholique, Paris, France (Original article here). Pro Tridentina (Malta) supports this initiative.

This appeal is not a petition to be signed, but a message to be disseminated, possibly to be taken up again in any form that may seem appropriate, and to be brought and explained to the cardinals, bishops and prelates of the universal Church.

A life for Christ the King: Archbishop Lefebvre

 

First published in the October 2011 issue of The Angelus magazine.

Archbishop Lefebvre: A Life for Christ the King

Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais

Archbishop Lefebvre always linked the priesthood to the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ: the one is source of the other; the other spontaneously flows from the first.

I. At the French 
Seminary in Rome

On the Via Santa Chiara, where he trained for the priesthood from 1923 to 1929, Fr. Lefebvre learned from Fr. Henri Le Floch, the Father Superior of the house, not to separate what should be joined: the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and His social reign, a priest’s doctrine and his piety, and also the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the teaching of the popes in their encyclicals.

Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI are the masters, and also Cardinal Pie, Louis Veuillot, and so on. But the Fathers of the seminary were also well-beloved masters to whom they listened.

Fr. Le Floch

According to Archbishop Lefebvre:

Fr. Le Floch made us enter into and live the history of the Church, this fight that the perverse powers take to our Lord. We were mobilized against this dreadful liberalism, against the Revolution and the forces of evil which were trying to overcome the Church, the reign of our Lord, the Catholic States, and the whole of Christianity."[1]

 

This conflict imposed a personal choice on every seminarian: "We had to choose: we had to leave the seminary if we didn’t agree, or else join in the fight." But taking up the fight meant taking it up for one’s whole life: "I think that our whole life as priests—or as bishops—has been marked by this fight against liberalism."[2]

But how does the priesthood fit into this essentially political combat?

At the French Seminary, the seminarians had to read or had read to them the writings of Godefroid Kurth [The Origins of Modern Civilization, 1912] to make them consider how

the mystical Body of Christ transformed the pagan society of imperial Rome and prepared the growing movement that recognized the plans for society of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Priest and King";

 

the seminarians also learned through the writings of Fr. Deschamps [in his book Secret Societies and Society] that

revolutions caused the exclusion of Christ the King from government with the final goal of eliminating the Mass and the supernatural life of Christ the sovereign High Priest."[3]

 

Fr. (and later Cardinal) Billot’s De Ecclesia made them grasp “the sense of the royalty of Christ and the horror of liberalism.” Through the works of Cardinal Pie they learned

the full meaning of ‘thy kingdom come,’ namely, that Our Lord’s kingdom must come not only in individual souls and in heaven, but also on earth by the submission of States and nations to His rule. The dethroning of God on earth is a crime to which we must never resign ourselves" (Fr. Fahey).[4]

 

[Fr. Fahey was a seminarian in Rome 12 years before Marcel Lefebvre. He attended the same seminary, which was also under Fr. Le Floch’s direction.] “Pius IX’s Syllabus and the encyclicals of the last four popes,” said Fahey, “have been the principal object of my meditations on the royalty of Christ and its relation to the priesthood.”[5]

What a surprising meditation subject for a young seminarian: joining the highest spirituality with the submission of the temporal order to Christ. For Marcel Lefebvre’s teachers, there was no divorce between individual life and political action in the broadest sense. So-called “Catholic” liberalism separates what should remain united.

Fr. Voegtli

It was also at the French Seminary in Rome that Fr. Marc Voegtli, C.S.Sp., a professor at Santa Chiara, commented on Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas of December 11, 1925, on the social kingship of Jesus Christ. Before his enthusiastic young audience he set forth the political program of the Catholic Church by the action of the Catholic priest. We’ll explain at the end of this talk the political program in which the priest is engaged.

The testimony of Fr. Voegtli’s students is unanimous: His teaching was simple, he spoke only of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King…. He taught the integrity of the priesthood, the priesthood taken to its logical conclusion: the sacrifice of the priest [Keep that idea in mind] for the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything was judged in that light. 'My dear friends,' the Father would say, 'you must preach Our Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart!'"

 

A collective testimony signed by twelve seminarians declares:

Through him [Fr. Voegtli] we learned to see our Lord Jesus Christ, the King, as the center of everything, the answer to all questions, our food, our thought, our life, everything…. That is what he wanted to impress upon us: that will remain!"[6]

 

And remain it did, as we shall see. Marcel Lefebvre was one of those who had an unforgettable memory of Fr. Voegtli’s conferences. You may be thinking, "Let’s get to his actions during the Council and after!" Yes, but it is essential to understand the mainspring of his action!

The mainspring of Archbishop Lefebvre’s fight for Christ the King: 
a testimony

He essentially gave his own testimony to the fact: 50 years [after the 12 seminarians’ testimony] one of Fr. Voegtli’s rare faithful disciples, Marcel Lefebvre, also bore witness to the indelible impression produced by Fr. Voegtli’s “talks, which were very simple, taking the words of Scripture, showing who Our Lord Jesus Christ was…. That remained with us for life!”[7]

It even became the subject of the seminarian’s meditation:

We shall never have sufficiently meditated on, or sought to understand, what Our Lord Jesus Christ is…. He should rule our thinking, He makes us holy. He is also our Creator since nothing whatsoever was made without the Word, and therefore without Our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Word. So we must only think about and contemplate Our Lord Jesus Christ. And that transforms one’s life!"[8]

 

What a striking remark. For Marcel Lefebvre, belief in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and consequently His right alone to reign meant personally dedicating himself to the fight. This he did, like many of his confreres, at Rome before the Confession of St. Peter. There he made a private vow of doctrinal and militant “Romanity.” The account of the Fr. Berto suggests that making such a vow was normal and went without saying. The seminarian promised “to be constantly on crusade” (Archbishop Lefebvre).[9]

He didn’t know when or where or in what troubled, tragic circumstances of the Church it would be that he would have to enter the arena and himself write a page of that Church history that he was shown under the light of Christ the King, but he knew that he would have to join in the battle.

The Second Vatican Council was to be the providential moment for Archbishop Lefebvre, the moment when he felt himself pushed to intervene in fidelity to the promise he had made as a seminarian at Rome long before.

II. Herald of Christ the King

During the Council, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre became the head of the resistance against false religious freedom in the name of Christ the King. During the presentation of two rival drafts on religious freedom, one by Cardinal Bea and one by Cardinal Ottaviani, at the last meeting of the Central Preparatory Commission in June 1962, he gave his opinion.

About the liberal schema of Cardinal Bea, he said:

On Religious Liberty: non placet… since it is based on false principles solemnly condemned by the sovereign pontiffs, for example Pius IX, who calls this error "delirium" (Denzinger 1690)…. The schema on religious liberty does not preach Christ and therefore seems false…."

 

About the Catholic schema of Cardinal Ottaviani, he said:

‘On the Church’: placet. However, the exposition of the fundamental principles could be done with more reference to Christ the King as in the encyclical Quas Primas…. Our Council could have as its aim to preach Christ to all men, and to state that it belongs to the Catholic Church alone to be the true preacher of Christ who is the salvation and life of individuals, families, professional associations, and of other civil bodies.

 

…The Theological Commission’s schema expounds the authentic doctrine but does so like a thesis; it does not sufficiently show the aim of this doctrine which is nothing other than the reign of Christ…. From the point of view of Christ as source of salvation and life, all the fundamental truths could be expounded as they say “pastorally,” and in this way the errors of secularism, naturalism, and materialism, etc., would be excluded."[10]

 

III. Theological adversary 
of the secular state

The Declaration on Religious Freedom promulgated by the Council on December 7, 1965, Dignitatis Humanae, seems to assert that the State must recognize the Catholic religion as the one true one (DH 1), but at the same time it teaches the “natural” freedom of the adherents of false cults to practice their beliefs publicly (DH 6). This contradiction became more problematic after the Council from the way the Holy See required its application by States that were still officially Catholic: the article in their constitutions professing the Catholic religion as the State religion had to be expunged.

So, while passing through Colombia, South America, soon after the suppression of the “Catholic religion” as “that of the nation,” Archbishop Lefebvre remarked that “the speech of the president of the Republic is more Catholic than the Nuncio’s.” The Archbishop was indignant that Ireland had agreed to replace the expression “the special position of the holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church as guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of its citizens,” with “the homage of public worship” given by the State “to Almighty God.”

In Italy, Article 1 of the Lateran Accords of February 11, 1929, read:

Italy recognizes and reaffirms the principle expressed by Article 1 of the Statute of the Realm of March 4, 1848, by which the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the only religion of the State."[11]

 

In 1984, to the consternation of Archbishop Lefebvre, the new concordat between the Holy See and Italy only recognized that “the principles of Catholicism constitute part of the historical patrimony of the Italian people.” In 1977 [7 years before the 1984 concordat], Cardinal Giovanni Colombo, the Archbishop of Milan, had declared: "o stato non puo essere che laico.—The State can only be secular. He explained:

The Church does not ask for privileges, but for genuine freedom…. In the current historical development of society, a confessional State is not possible: not only a confessional Christian State, but also a confessional Marxist atheistic State or a confessional radical bourgeois State. We are calling for a State that does not embrace any particular ideology, that does not impose the dogmas of any culture, and that does not identify with any party. Otherwise, very many of its citizens, because of their religious or ideological or partisan choices, would be compelled to feel like strangers in their own land."[12]

 

In terms that are insulting to the Church of Christ thus put on a par with ideologies, parties, and cultures, the Cardinal could not better express the current interpretation given to Dignitatis Humanae as propounding the agnostic and indifferentist State. The State’s pledge of allegiance to Jesus Christ, God Incarnate and the one true God, would amount to uncharitableness, contempt for human dignity, and unfair discrimination.

Archbishop Lefebvre spoke out against these liberal platitudes in an interview with the three cardinals who questioned him in 1975. “The goal of the secularization of the State,” he said, “is nothing other than the goal of the devil, who is behind Freemasonry: the destruction of the Catholic Church by affording all the false religions freedom of speech and by forbidding the State to work for the social kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The archbishop explained what he meant: First of all, the recognition of Christ by the State is not a privilege; it is the right of the Man-God and Redeemer of the human race. On the other hand, “How many Catholics are still able to recognize that the work of our Lord’s Redemption must also be accomplished through civil society?” And yet this is so, for “everything was made for our Lord Jesus Christ,” as St. Paul teaches (Col. 1:16).[13]

Man has but one ultimate goal: eternal salvation. The Church works directly toward this goal, but the State should also work towards it, although indirectly, for civil society is also a creature of our Lord Jesus Christ.[14] Consequently, as St. Pius X teaches, the State has as its “ultimate object …man’s eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course.”[15]

This… is founded on the dogmatic reason and on the experience of the conversion of numerous nations subsequent to the conversion of their rulers: for example, Clovis, Ethelbert, and so on. This fact prompted St. Alphonsus Liguori to declare: “If I convert a king, I do more for the Catholic cause than hundreds of missionaries.”

Archbishop Lefebvre also held the supernatural and traditional position of the Church on Christ the King—namely, that the State should be an instrument in the work of Redemption. He is not far from taking as his own the program of his brother in religion and co-alumnus of Santa Chiara, Denis Fahey: since the reign of Christ must be established by the cross (“Regnavit a ligno Deus” we sing in the Vexilla Regis):

In order to favor union with Christ as Priest in Holy Mass, God wants the world organized under Christ as King."[16]

 

From this it follows that:

At Holy Mass all the members of Christ express their determination to work for the integral establishment of the rights of God and of Christ the King over the world."[17]

 

More briefly, Archbishop Lefebvre would often say: “The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the expression of the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

At the French Seminary in Rome, Fr. Marc Voegtli, following the teaching of Fr. Deschamps, taught the young Marcel Lefebvre the liberal, Freemasonic agenda in three points:

1. The banishment of Christ the King from government by the secularization of the State;
2. eliminating the Mass which would result from the persecution of the Church by legal means, and ultimately the secularization of the Church itself, the supreme plot of initiated Masons; in order
3. finally to suppress the grace of Jesus Christ High Priest in souls—the very secularization of Catholic souls. All of this happened after the Second Vatican Council…

What Archbishop Lefebvre did is reverse this satanic program in order to come up with the Catholic program, which is that of the Society of St. Pius X, also in three points:

1. Restore to the faithful the Mass—the true Mass, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—which is the source and expression of the reign of Jesus Christ.
2. By the grace of the Mass, form an elite of faithful Catholics living in the state of grace; and
3. through the work of this elite in public institutions—not just in ecclesiastical organizations, but also in openly Catholic civil organizations—re-crown our Lord Jesus Christ in society: “Omnia instaurare in Christo—Establish all things in Christ,” according to the motto of St. Pius X.

This is the program Archbishop Lefebvre tried to explain to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI, in a meeting they had in Rome on July 14, 1987:

Eminence… you are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them. For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything, He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But You! You are doing the opposite: you have just wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society.

 

For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything!"[18]

 

See also these related books:

• The Relation of Church and State
• Duties of the Catholic State
• Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism
• The Greatest Catholic President: Garcia Moreno of Ecuador
• The Framework of a Christian State

---

Footnotes

1 Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre: The Biography, pp. 36-7.

2 Ibid.

3 Fr. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., “Apologia pro Vita Mea,” 1950 (reprinted in Catholic Family News, April & May 1997), quoted in Tissier, Marcel Lefebvre, p. 37.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., pp. 37-8.

6 Tissier, Marcel Lefebvre, pp. 43-4.

7 Ibid., p. 44.

8 Ibid.

9 Archbishop Lefebvre, The Little Story of My Long Life [ref. to French edition], p. 28.

10 Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre, p. 285.

11 A.A.S. 21 (1929), pp. 290 seq.

12 Quoted from L’Osservatore Romano, translated from the Italian and published by “Ya” on July 14, 1977, and reprinted in the bulletin of the CICES, No. 210, March 15, 1977, under the byline of Andre Laforge.

13 Spiritual Conference, Econe, September 23, 1977, relating the conference of Archbishop Lefebvre at Rome at Princess Palaviccini’s in June 1977. Cf. They Have Uncrowned Him, p. 101 [ref. to French edition].

14 It is a creature of God because the social nature of man is God’s creation.

15 St. Pius X, encyclical Vehementer Nos condemning the Law of Separation of Church and State in France, February 11, 1906.

16 Rev. Fr. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganization of Society, pp. 114-5.

17 Ibid.

18 Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre, p. 548.

The end of Tridentine Mass in Malta? (Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi)

An urgent meeting of the newly-elected Committee of Pro Tridentina (Malta) discussed the latest document issued by Pope Francis, namely Desiderio Desideravi. It is our understanding that based upon p. 61 of this document, the Tridentine Mass currently being celebrated at the Jesuit Church in Valletta  / St. Paul Church, Valletta might soon not be allowed anymore. The reason being that it is a Diocesan Mass. Thankfully, the previous Committee of Pro Tridentina (Malta) has ensured that Tridentine Mass can continue to be celebrated by Fr Anthony, outside diocesan restrictions. still, it is painful for us to read such a document, the latest in a series of attacks targeting Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Following is the afore-mentioned p. 61 of Desiderio Desideravi:

61. In this letter I have wanted simply to share some reflections which most certainly do not exhaust the immense treasure of the celebration of the holy mysteries. I ask all the bishops, priests, and deacons, the formators in seminaries, the instructors in theological faculties and schools of theology, and all catechists to help the holy people of God to draw from what is the first wellspring of Christian spirituality. We are called continually to rediscover the richness of the general principles exposed in the first numbers of Sacrosanctum Concilium, grasping the intimate bond between this first of the Council’s constitutions and all the others.  For this reason we cannot go back to that ritual form which the Council fathers, cum Petro et sub Petro, felt the need to reform, approving, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and following their conscience as pastors, the principles from which was born the reform. The holy pontiffs St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II, approving the reformed liturgical books ex decreto Sacrosancti OEcumenici Concilii Vaticani II, have guaranteed the fidelity of the reform of the Council.  For this reason I wrote Traditionis custodes, so that the Church may lift up, in the variety of so many languages, one and the same prayer capable of expressing her unity.[23 Cf. Paulus VI, Constitutio apostolica Missale Romanum (3 Aprilis 1969) in AAS 61 (1969) 222.] 

FIUV Heroes (1): Elisabeth de Saventhem

 

We intend to start a series of laypeople who contributed a lot to the aims of the Traditional Latin Mass. We start with an article about Elisabeth de Saventhem who died 22 years ago this month. She was the wife of the first President of FIUV. The article was written some time after her death by the second President of FIUV, the late Michael Davies.

(We are most grateful to all those who contributed to the completion and translation of this text)

Elisabeth de Saventhem was born in Bremen in 1911 as the eldest of seven children, five daughters and two sons, to Walther Clemens, Reichsgraf von Plettenberg-Lenhausen and his wife, Carmen Guillermina.  Her spiritual formation was strongly influenced by an aunt, and her father's cousin was Blessèd Maria Droste zu Vischering of the Divine Heart, who had entered the Order of the Good Shepherd in Munster in 1885.

 

The economic crisis in Germany forced Elisabeth to give up her language studies (French and Russian) in Leipzig and she found work in an office in Berlin, quickly being promoted to senior secretary and purchasing manager (the company produced silk for parachutes).

 

The publication, in March 1937, of Pius XI's Encyclica Mit brennender Sorge saw the first public confrontations between the National-socialist regime and the Catholic Church.  Contrary to the concordat which had been signed four years before, the government forbade any distribution of the Pope's text.  Nevertheless it was copied and circulated by the Plettenberg family and Elisabeth's parents were arrested and imprisoned in Bremen, accused of "malicious gossip endangering the State".  Elisabeth, as eldest child, undertook successfully the defence of her parents before the minions of the Gestapo, so that they were released three weeks later.  The Gestapo in Berlin continued to keep an eye on this courageous daughter and shortly afterwards, following a series of anonymous letters accusing Elisabeth herself of spying, they tried to incriminate her - after more than 20 cross-examinations.  The efforts came to nothing of course, for the whole scandal had come from the unfounded, sickly jealousy of the wife of Elisabeth's employer.  The affair reached the highest levels of the Gestapo and came to a conclusion only in December 1938 with Elisabeth's brilliant rehabilitation by the regular courts.

 

During these years Elisabeth was much sought after in Berlin society.  She impressed those who met her not only by her beauty, her great intelligence, her natural charm and her "Catholic at its best" humour, but also because of her extraordinary ability to listen.  She understood especially how to recognise the problems lying deeper than the questions actually raised, and would then reply with great conceptual precision.  Behind this unusual ability lay a faith matured by interior struggles, paired with the fruit of superb religious teaching which Elisabeth had received at school from a gifted priest, Pastor Franz Moschner.  Later, at his request, she translated Moschner's most important book "Christliches Gebetsleben" into English.  The MS was published in 1962 as "Christian Prayer" by Herder Book Co in the USA.

 

Elisabeth's knowledge of doctrine and theology was so extensive and sound that her bishop authorised her to instruct and prepare converts for reception.  The time that she devoted to this instruction, and she had many pupils, was never less than a year.    She once remarked that although God had not blessed her with children of her own, she considered these converts to be her children.

 

The fact that Elisabeth  believed in God  as the "iustus iudex"  (the « just judge ») , to whom,  throughout her life, she would address the question of the meaning or unavoidability of suffering and death, lent to her own witness that convincing, many-layered depth which rendered silent every sceptic.

 

It was during the Berlin years that the momentous meeting with Isa Vermehren and her younger brother Eric took place, as they sought the Truth, which led to their conversions in 1938 and 1939 respectively.  Early in 1939 Elisabeth returned to Bremen to help look after her youngest brother and sister, and in March 1941 she became engaged to Eric Vermehren.  A few weeks later, Elisabeth's eldest brother was killed in Russia whilst carrying a badly-injured soldier from his company back to their trenches.  Elisabeth's parents persuaded the young couple not to wait until the year of mourning was over and so, in October 1941, they were married quietly in the presence of the closest family members, at Schloss Hovestadt, the Plettenberg family seat.

 

Because of a childhood injury, Eric was exempt from frontline service and served at first as a "Welfare Officer" in several camps for English and French prisoners of war.  In 1942 he was transferred to the Intelligence Service and sent to Istanbul as aide to the German military attaché there.  In this position he became aware, through freely available neutral reports, of the true extent of the dreadful deeds being done, especially in the occupied areas about which scarcely anything was known back in Germany.  This knowledge made him realise that, even as a subordinate,  his conscience would not allow him to serve the régime any longer.  During his first home leave in December 1943, Eric informed Elisabeth of his decision,  She was immediately ready to follow him into foreign exile.  In January 1944 they were "kidnapped" by the English Secret Services, in an action organised in the hope of protecting their families back in Germany.  English officers accompanied them via Izmir and Aleppo to Cairo and thence, via Gibraltar, to England.

 

The British Foreign Office had at that time adopted the Morgenthau-Plan.  Eric and Elisabeth tried, in many letters and interviews, to impress on the Foreign Office the advisability of allowing leading members of the inner German Opposition to help with the rebuilding of their ruined country, but to no avail.  They then asked that their status as "Guests of the Foreign Office" be annulled and they began to earn an independent living as assistant teachers in Worth Priory, a Benedictine preparatory school.  Elisabeth straightaway won the hearts of her pupils, despite, or perhaps precisely because of her original strictness in questions of discipline.   Among the anecdotes that she would relate of her time at Worth was that of finding one of her eight year old pupils crying bitterly one day.  She asked him the reason and he explained that it was because he liked her very much, so much in fact that he felt that she deserved to be English, and it was unfair that she was not.

For an "ex-enemy alien" it was well-nigh impossible to find a decent job in post-war England.  Eric founded a small export company  and Elisabeth helped in this effort despite her delicate health.  The early (unfortunately not long-lasting) success  of the company allowed them to leave Worth and move to the shadow of Brompton Oratory and a flat which was furnished with articles donated by friends.  Some five years passed before Eric found regular employment with a firm of Lloyds brokers.  He had by then adopted the surname Vermeeren de Saventhem, mainly for genealogical reasons.  In 1964 Eric became Director for Europe of the London firm.  The couple spent two years in Paris and in 1966 moved back to Switzerland, to settle in Clarens by Montreux.

 

From the moment that  Pope John XXIII's announced that he was con]vening a General Council of the Church,  all eyes were fixed upon that spectacular event - those of the de Saventhems with growing concern.  Elisabeth's religious life had always had its focus in Holy Mass which she attended daily with her husband.  In the accomplishment of the Sacrifice of the Mass she saw the definitive identity of the true Church of Christ and at the same time the reason for and the justification of the Catholic priesthood.  She knew - with all the Tradition of the Church - of the essential connexion between the Faith of the Church and its prayers:  as the Church prays, so it believes.  Thus it seemed to her presumptuous, nay dangerous, to question, even in Council, those forms of liturgy which have grown and proved themselves over the centuries.  The maintenance of the Mass as codified by St Pius V "with equal rights and equal honour" alongside any new forms became the main theme of her prayer, her thought and her actions, in close co-operation  with her husband, long-time President of the international Una Voce movement.

 

A first meeting with Monseigneur Lefebvre in Rome in 1962 sowed the seeds for over 25 years of cooperation, particularly vis-à-vis the Holy See.  This became intensified after the foundation of the Archbishop’s  International Seminary in Ecône, an hour's drive away from Clarens.  The Archbishop appreciated more than anything Elisabeth's ever acute sensus fidei et ecclesiae and her moral courage.  For over ten years the de Saventhems daily made the long drive from Clarens to Ecône to attend early Mass.  Later they were able to continue daily Mass attendance at a chapel in Lausanne and at the tiny Carmel of Marie Reine des Anges,  both served by priests from Ecône priests. The latter was situated on the slopes of the aptly-named Mont-Pèlerin just a short drive from home.

 

Elisabeth's life was filled with conscious and radiant gratitude towards the Church for the gift of faith.  It was however permanently overshadowed by a never-ending chain of physical suffering.  She accepted this with admirable discipline from her iron will which seemed to gain new strength at Mass each morning.

 

The end was not easy.  As the petals begin to curl inwards when a precious flower fades, so Elisabeth's mental elasticity, which had always been admired by all who met her, slowly diminished.  The interest was there, but ever more frequently the helpful replies did not  come.  Her physical frailty increased visibly, and for her  last journey from Switzerland to Bonn (the newly-chosen home, to be near the family again) a flying ambulance was necessary.  Elisabeth died a few weeks later in Cologne, in her sister's house, surrounded and comforted by the deep love of her husband and the devoted care of her sister and family. R.I.P.

Vatican Council II Documents: a compass to guide the ship of the Church

We are reproducing parts of the speech by then Pope Benedict XVI, during a general audience dated 10 October 2012. This is important in the context of the current quarrels between different traditional Catholics in Malta. They range from Novus Ordo conservatives, to SSPX symphatisers to sedevacantists and even outright Conclavists. The latter, in particular, are known to be very active lately.

 "We have reached the eve of the day on which we will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican Council II and the beginning of the Year of Faith. And it is about the great ecclesial event of the Council that I wish to speak.

 

The documents of Vatican Council II are, even in our own time, a compass guiding the ship of the Church as she sails on the open seas, amidst tempests or peaceful waves, to reach her destination. ... I was able to witness the living Church ... which places herself at the school of the Holy Spirit, the true driving force behind the Council. Rarely in history has it been possible, as it was then, to touch almost physically the universality of the Church at a moment of peak fulfilment of her mission to carry the Gospel into all ages and unto the ends of the earth.

 

In Church history Vatican II was preceded by many other Councils such as Nicea, Ephesus, Chalcedon and Trent. In general though, they met to define fundamental elements of the faith, and particularly to the correct errors endangering that faith. This was not the case with Vatican Council II, because at that time there were no particular errors of the faith to correct and condemn, nor were there specific questions of doctrine and discipline to be clarified. ... The first question that arose during the preparation of this great event was how to begin, what task to give it. Blessed John XXIII in his opening address of 11 October fifty years ago gave some general guidelines: the faith had to speak with a 'renewed' and more incisive voice, because the world was changing rapidly, but it had to maintain its perennial message intact, without giving way or compromising.

 

The Pope wanted the Church to reflect upon her faith and upon the truths that guide her. But that serious and profound reflection ... had to be the starting point for a new relationship between the Church and the modern age, between Christianity and certain essential elements of modern thought, not in order to seek conformity, but to show our world, which tends to distance itself from God, the requirements of the Gospel in all its greatness and purity.

 

The age in which we live continues to be marked by forgetfulness and deafness towards God. I believe, then, that we must learn the simplest and most fundamental lesson of the Council: that the essence of Christianity consists in faith in God, ... and in the individual and community encounter with Christ Who guides our lives. ... The important thing today, as was the desire of the Council Fathers, is for us to see - clearly and anew - that God is present, that He concerns us and responds to us. And when faith in God is lacking our essential foundations give way because man loses his dignity. ... The Council reminds us that the Church ... has the mandate to transmit God's salvific word of love, so that the divine call which contains our eternal beatitude may be heard and accepted.

 

The four cardinal points of our guiding compass: Sacrosanctum Concilium on the sacred liturgy, which speaks of the centrality of the mystery of Christ's presence in the Church; Lumen Gentium which highlights the Church's fundamental duty to glorify God; Dei Verbum on divine Revelation, which speaks of the living Word of God that unites and animates the Church throughout history, and finally Gaudium et Spes which deals with the way the Church transmits to the world the light it received from God.

 

Vatican Council II is a powerful appeal to us to make a daily rediscovery of the beauty of our faith, to understand it deeply through a more intense relationship with the Lord, and to live out our Christian vocation to the full".