Editorial: Radicati nella fede, April 2014
Newsletter of the Catholic community of
Domodossola and Vocogno, Diocese of Novara, Italy
When you say you want to return to the Tradition of the Church or to promote the traditional liturgy to get out of the present terrible crisis in Christian practice, in order that souls can find once again the heart of prayer; when you work for the diffusion of perennial Christian Doctrine against the present immoral decline, you will always find many inside the Church who fight you fiercely in the name of “the prophetic church”: “Stop dreaming about the past – they tell us - you are pathetic, the Church must look to the future, must envisage the future and must be prophetic!”
But what is this prophetic church? What is this prophetic church made of?
Now regarding this prophetic church, you normally hear that it is a church projected entirely into an indefinite future, where everything that was certain in the past may be changed. A church which, while embracing all of man’s expectations, is reprogrammed into a gigantic effort to welcome everything and everyone, condemning no-one – except, of course, the notorious “traditionalists”!
They tell you: before, the Church condemned – now She welcomes. Before, She taught from “on high”, now She accompanies man along with great humility in his ‘search’. Before, She was concerned that everyone be baptized and receive the grace of the sacraments, now She recognizes that God acts also outside of the sacraments. Before, She wanted all men to return to the fold, now She realizes that salvation also exists outside Christianity.
This prophetic Church is made up of prophetic priests and surrounded by a prophetic laity: all of whom are occupied on the latest front line of social-work, concerned about the poor, while also being fixtures of radical and fashionable circles. Obviously, since the rich and the snobs like this prophetic Church quite a lot. That is to say, those who are weary of their wealth and are concerned that the Church be concerned with the poor.
Over the past years at a national and local level, television has welcomed only priests like these – prophetic priests, of the [late] Don Gallo variety to be precise, the ones always on the borderlines of obedience to the Church, the innovative and revolutionary ones, since according to them, this is being prophetic. The television has given programmes to these priests and they, in turn, inserted into the latest revolution of the future, have bombarded spectators with false doctrines, so much so that spectators now believe that the Church is actually this permanent revolution.
Furthermore, over the years the majority of bishops have feigned “keeping a eye” on the advance of these priests and their lay-followers; they have feigned it because deep down they have always supported them, have given them everything and practically beatified them at their deaths. Officially they have warned them to be prudent, but have basically always allowed them to go about their work, that is widespread and destructive for the presence of Christianity in society, to the point now that it appears impossible to stem it. They are allowed to do it, primarily not because they are concerned about the poor, but rather because they are filled with the illusion of recuperating a place of honour in a modern world which is now pagan – and it is so precisely because of these prophetic priests: this is a true and real cultural subjection to modernity. Behaving so, they have deceived souls, by spreading moral destruction and weakening the Faith.
This prophetic church, these prophetic priests and these prophetic laymen have nothing at all to do with true prophecy!
True prophets, the ones in the Bible, spoke in the name of God to the people, the kings and priests, reminding them, at times fiercely, of the consequences of sin. In the prophets there is always an accusation of sin, an admonishment to penance and a return to God; you have abandoned God, for this a chastisement has fallen upon you; return to God and He will liberate you.
Have you ever heard this admonishment from the so-called prophetic church? No. This church lives on in the revolutionary schema: it accuses the Church of the past of being myopic and old-fashioned, so that it may program a new church which will finally respond to the needs of men. We have arrived at unadulterated heresy! It is even a dim-witted heresy because it has been picked up from the radical and fashionable circles!
This is a bourgeois church, not a Church of the people. The people, as a result of the hammering of the mass-media these past years, had to succumb to this prophetic church, for fear of being left with nothing. It is in truth the bourgeois church which, being satiated, has to be distracted by feeling useful to others. The poor have no time for this; the poor know the fatigue of life and look toward Heaven.
So this bourgeois church must hinder the places that are springing up where the Church’s Tradition is being revived; they must hinder it, otherwise the people - i.e. the ones who still have a scrap of sensus fidei - will recognize these places of Grace. As a result, when these places of Grace in the Traditional Church exist, they are subjected to calumny by the bourgeois church which says: be careful, they are traditionalists… they are not the true church - [the true church] is the one we have planned for the future!
True novelty instead is not in the future, but in the past, because it is Christ and His Grace. Moreover, the real poor are not those of the television talk-shows and of fund-raising events, but are those who humbly seek God.
[Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana]
