As much as we may dislike Paul VI and his disastrous legacy, he was the defender of priestly celibacy against those “freemasons without aprons,” as Jaques Mitterand called them. As a former Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France, Mitterand had good reason to applaud both Paul VI and those who opposed him on the issue of priestly celibacy: Paul VI ushered in the changes that paved the way for Francis, who now openly promotes the Freemasonic objectives which once seemed like impossibly demonic dreams.
It is worth examining the various ways in which the “Spirit of Vatican II” has contributed to the crisis for which Francis and others suggest that married priests could be the solution.
In his 1974 Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, Bishop Rudolf Graber devoted several pages of his chapter on “Secret Societies” to the ex-canon Roca (1830-1893), an excommunicated priest who “was very well-versed in the occult sciences.” One of the more frequently quoted “prophesies” from Roca referred to an “ecumenical council” that would transform the Church in much the same way we have seen from Vatican II:
“[T]he divine cult in the form directed by the liturgy, ceremonial, ritual and regulations of the Roman Church will shortly undergo a transformation at an ecumenical council, which will restore to it the venerable simplicity of the golden age of the Apostles in accordance with the dictates of conscience and modern civilization.” (p. 35)
If this is all we knew about Roca, we might dismiss it as mere coincidence that he appears to have accurately forecast the transformative Vatican II. But, as Bishop Graber described, Roca’s broader vision for the Church gives us much more reason to pay attention to his insights:
“From all the quotations [of Roca], which could be expanded into books, it is not difficult to discover already the tactics being employed: to deprive the Church of its supernatural character, to amalgamate it with the world, to interweave the denominations ecumenically instead of letting them run side by side as separate confessions, and thus to pave the way for a standard world religion in the centralized world state.” (p. 37)
When Bishop Graber wrote his book in 1973, he saw early indications that Roca’s forecasts were becoming reality — what would he say today, when we have apparently arrived at the doorstep of the “standard world religion in the centralized world state”? Tragically, Roca’s words from the late 1800’s provide a much clearer picture of the Church today than we could hope to get from all but a few bishops.
We see this process of “desacralization” everywhere within the Novus Ordo structure, such that we are genuinely surprised to find those within it who retain a proper sense of the sacred.
And so we have good reason to consider what Roca had to say about priestly celibacy:
“‘We are offering the Church another chance, let it fall into line with the other religions.’ This naturally demands a ‘déprêtrisé’ of the Church, a de-priesting in favour of a lay-church, and as a transitional form — again according to Roca — celibate and married priests side by side.” (p. 38)
Roca viewed the co-existence of celibate and married priests as a transitional form on the way to a “lay-church.” It fit into his overall vision of the Church giving way to a “standard world religion.” He wanted to destroy the Church and saw a married clergy as an important step.
With all of this in mind, it is worth examining the various ways in which the “Spirit of Vatican II” has contributed to the crisis for which Francis and others suggest that married priests could be the solution:
Desacralization of the Priestly Ministry. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre wrote of the “desacralized view” of the priesthood in his Open Letter to Confused Catholics:
“This desacralized view of the priestly ministry leads quite naturally to querying priestly celibacy. There are noisy pressure groups calling for its abolition in spite of the repeated warnings of the Roman Magisterium. We have seen in Holland, seminarians go on strike against ordinations to obtain ‘guarantees’ in this matter.” (p. 55)
God gives priests the graces necessary to fulfill the law of celibacy, but Archbishop Lefebvre saw the diminution of the sacred aspect of priestly life as a natural invitation to question why a priest should remain celibate. We see this process of “desacralization” everywhere within the Novus Ordo structure, such that we are genuinely surprised to find those within it who retain a proper sense of the sacred.
Like a soldier in uniform, the priest in cassock has a constant reminder of his identity, as do those who see him. This does not, of course, guarantee that the priest will resist temptations, but it reinforces the reality that he has accepted a divine calling.
As Archbishop Lefebvre wrote, the solution is not abandoning the law of celibacy but restoring the sacred understanding of the Mass and the priesthood:
“The subject would not even arise if the clergy had kept the right understanding of the Mass and of the priesthood. For the true reason appears of itself when we fully understand these two realities. It is the same reason for which Our Blessed Lady remained a virgin: having borne Our Lord within her womb it was perfectly right and fitting that she should remain so. Likewise, the priest by the words he pronounces at the Consecration, brings down God upon earth. He has such a closeness with God, a spiritual being, spirit above all, that it is right, just and eminently fitting that he also should be a virgin and remain celibate.” (pp. 55-56)
Purposeful Infiltration of the Seminaries. In his Phoenix from the Ashes, Henry Sire summarized the way in which seminaries have contributed to the crisis that leads Catholics to question priestly celibacy. He began with a description of traditional seminaries:
“In the past, the life of the seminaries was carefully directed to training devout and virtuous ministers. We need not disbelieve that men of ill-governed sexuality entered them, but they came under a training that was either a deterrent or a remedy. It set out to teach habits of self-discipline and piety, stressed the importance of the vocation of celibacy and the virtue of chastity, and instilled a reverence for the sanctity of the sacraments, the Mass and the priesthood itself. These lessons were enforced by an ascetical and separated life. Seminarians lived in the house of study, whose discipline was that of a religious house; they left it only with permission, in groups of at least three, as the usual custom was, and of course wearing clerical dress. Confession was an exacting requirement. Under that regime, men strongly tempted against chastity either found the life too hard and gave up their career, or learnt the discipline of virtue and of sacred things.” (pp. 325-326)
Thanks be to God, this generally describes Traditional Catholic seminaries today. Such a formation does not guarantee that the priest will be able to fulfill the law of celibacy, but it gives him the right formation to be able to cooperate with God’s grace to do so.
Sire then described “modern seminaries”:
“Of all this the modern seminary training is the opposite. It begins with a selection designed to shut out applicants of piety and orthodoxy. Since the Second Vatican Council selection boards have been set up to interrogate candidates for admission; to each of these boards it has been de rigueur to appoint one or two obsessive feminists, usually discontented nuns, who have done more than anything else to push for the emasculated priesthood we have today. Next, the examiners’ aim has been to weed out any applicant who shows an attachment to traditional doctrine or devotions; the Modernist programme of the seminary is to be fed to predisposed hearers. With its intake thus sifted, the seminary rejects the ways of the past. The intending priest is not expected to submit himself to a life of obedience and discipline; a vague pastoral conscience takes the place of piety; celibacy is treated not as a hard vocation for which careful preparation is needed but as an old rule soon to be discarded; chastity is disparaged as a relic of inhibition, self-indulgence is soothed with weasel words about the priest’s ‘acknowledging his sexuality’; the unique, sacramental character of the priesthood is not taught; especially, the reverence and devotion to the Mass that used to sustain priests in their vocations is lost in a theology that makes the Mass a parish meeting, a time for jumping about and making a noise.” (p. 326)
If even half of this is the case in a given seminary, what chance does a priest stand of emerging with the proper training to faithfully fulfill his vocation? We can see what a tremendous blessing it is when a seminarian can persevere in this environment and retain the Faith!
Those priests who abandon the cassock, and take other steps to obscure their priestly identity, not only increase the likelihood that they will lose sight of their sublime vocation, but they also present a flawed picture of the priesthood to young men considering a vocation.
Attack on Priestly Identity. In his Open Letter to Confused Catholics, Archbishop Lefebvre wrote of the way in which the cassock reinforces the priestly identity:
“It should be added that the soutane keeps the priest out of trouble for it imposes an attitude on him, it reminds him at every minute of his mission on earth. It protects him from temptations. A priest in a cassock has no identity crisis. As for the faithful, they know what they are dealing with; the cassock is a guarantee of the authenticity of the priesthood.”
Like a soldier in uniform, the priest in cassock has a constant reminder of his identity, as do those who see him. This does not, of course, guarantee that the priest will resist temptations, but it reinforces the reality that he has accepted a divine calling to “dedicate himself entirely to the divine service” as Pius XII wrote in Menti Nostrae.
Those priests who abandon the cassock, and take other steps to obscure their priestly identity, not only increase the likelihood that they will lose sight of their sublime vocation, but they also present a flawed picture of the priesthood to young men considering a vocation. Those who might otherwise follow the noble calling are thus more likely to consider it unworthy of pursuit; at the same time, those who would be turned away if they knew the true demands of the vocation develop the mistaken belief that they do not need real virtue to become priests. All of this contributes to the crisis in the priesthood and throughout the Church.
Elevation of the Laity. One of the most significant initiatives of Vatican II was the increased role of the laity in the Church’s functions. Fr. Matthias Gaudron summarized the consequences of this in his The Catechism of the Crisis in the Church:
“The exaggerated insistence upon ‘the priesthood of the faithful’ obviously promotes a penury of priests. What young man would embrace such a demanding vocation had he not a glimpse of its greatness?” (pp. 169-170)
Those who have spent considerable time around Traditional Catholic priests generally see in them the heroic qualities that young men would want to emulate: they make tremendous sacrifices to bring us the graces we need at a time in which the apparent hierarchy does all it can to lead souls astray. Conversely, as holy and dedicated as Novus Ordo priests may be, they often operate in a structure designed to put them on the same level as the laity. This contributes to the overall attack on priestly dignity and leads priests and laity alike to ask why the priest must remain celibate if he is little more than the token leader of the parish.
Scandals Encouraged by Destroyers. All of this would be bad enough, but we know that the anti-Catholic infiltrators have encouraged so many of the scandals that now prompt some Catholics to believe that the Church ought to consider married priests. The destroyers have apparently adopted the diabolical designs from the 1838 letter from one Freemason (Vindex) to another (Nubius) quoted in Monsignor George Dillon’s Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked:
“Make vicious hearts, and you will have no more Catholics. Keep the priest away from labor, from the altar, from virtue. . . . It is corruption en masse that we have undertaken: the corruption of the people by the clergy, and the corruption of the clergy by ourselves; the corruption ought one day to enable us to put the Church in her tomb.” (pp. 103-104)
When we have Francis actively promoting the interests of homosexual priests and bishops (e.g., his endorsements of Fr. James Martin and making McElroy a Cardinal), it is clear that the Freemasonic goal of corrupting the clergy has been achieved. Aside from offending God and delighting Satan, this spectacle of filthy corruption signals to the world that the Church cannot possibly be serious about purity, let alone priestly celibacy.
Thanks to Francis’s ten years of openly carrying out the Freemasonic dreams, we can have no doubt about this: Either Traditional Catholicism is the exclusive path of restoration or the entire religion is a farce.
All of these initiatives of the Vatican II innovators further the destruction of the Church forecast by Roca decades before the Council — they have intentionally created the crisis in the Church. Roca and other enemies of the Church knew that they would not live to see the realization of their unholy dreams, but we are seeing it today.
So it should not be surprising that Francis once again raised the issue of married priests in a recent interview:
“There is no contradiction for a priest to marry. Celibacy in the Western Church is a temporary prescription: I do not know if it is settled in one way or another, but it is temporary in this sense.”
Shameless apologists for Francis may argue that he is not trying to call priestly celibacy into question, but we must recall that this is one of the objectives not only of the Freemasons but also the St. Gallen Mafia which had him elected. Julia Meloni illustrated this in her The St. Gallen Mafia: Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church:
“When Benedict abdicated in 2013, [Cardinal] Murphy-O’Connor sat for a press conference about electing a new pope. Dressed in black while cameras flashed incessantly, Murphy-O’Connor answered a question about celibacy. ‘I think that at the moment, celibacy is mandatory,’ said Murphy-O’Connor, looking down, searching for his qualifiers. ‘Whether there should be any development with regard to the ordination of married men . . . I think that will be a matter that may well come up sometime or other,’ he continued, looking up. The trick was the let the leash out gently.” (pp. 150-151)
Abandoning priestly celibacy is just another step in bringing about the “standard world religion in the centralized world state” described by Roca. They planned all of this long before Francis was even ordained a priest. The key to their success, as Julia Meloni observed, has been to “let the leash out gently.” Those who think we can solve the crisis in the Church by completely cutting that leash and letting the enemies have free rein are, at best, insane.
The only remedy at this point is a complete return to the unadulterated traditions of the Catholic Church. Thanks to Francis’s ten years of openly carrying out the Freemasonic dreams, we can have no doubt about this: Either Traditional Catholicism is the exclusive path of restoration or the entire religion is a farce — there is no middle ground. May St. Joseph, Protector of Holy Church, guide priests and bishops back to the Faith that led the Saints to Heaven. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!