Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
October 21, 2019
The secret
testament of the Second Vatican Council has [now] become public and official. On
October 20, 2019. in the Catacombs of the Domitilla ”The Pact for a poor servant
Church”, was solemnly renewed as stipulated
on November 16, 1965 in the same place, by forty-two Council Fathers, some
weeks before the conclusion of the Council Assembly.
Monsignor Luigi
Bettazzi, Emeritus Bishop of Ivrea, the only living signatory of the Pact of
the Catacombs, revealed that the 1965 text
had been written by Monsignor Hélder Câmara (1909 -1999), Archbishop of Olinda e
Recife, who, however, that November 16, did not sign it as he was busy at a
meeting for the final drafting of Gaudium et Spes, perhaps the most significant document of the Second Vatican Council.
From the very start of the
Council, Monsignor Câmara had established an ironclad friendship with Cardinal
Suenens, who, in his correspondence, is referred to by the code name “Padre Miguel”.
From then on, the Câmara-Suenens tandem constituted one of the “hidden” motors behind
the Council gathering. At the beginning of the second session, Helder Câmara defined
Suenens “the key man of the Council, certain of the direct and personal trust
of the Holy Father”. Highlighting the
path taken by the first session, he writes that not without reason the Belgian
Cardinal was designated as “the world head of progressivism”. “He is my leader
at the Council” wrote the Brazilian Bishop in a circular to his faithful.
The two met every day, sharing the parts, Suenens in the Conciliar Hall, Câmara in the extra-conciliar corridors. “Throughout the four sessions of the Council – his biographers recall - Dom Hélder would not make any interventions in the plenary assembly, but would carry out real “éminence grise” work in the architecting of what he himself called a “holy conspiracy” to introduce into the agenda of the conciliar works the problem of the misery of the world in underdeveloped countries, and to stimulate a process of reform inside the Catholic Church.”
Paul VI protected Monsignor Câmara
by appointing him Archbishop of Olinda e
Recife. After his appointment, he assured him with these words: “Don’t worry.
It is evident that the hand of God is upon your leader. “Providence has made
itself tangible.” For his part, Monsignor
Câmara affirmed in the concluding days of Vatican II “It is not up to the
Council to say everything.” “There are implicit affirmations that it is up to
us to explain” (all of the citations are from my book “The Second Vatican
Council. An Unwritten Story” Lindau, Torino 2011, with reference to the
sources).
After the end of the Council,
a Belgian industrialist, and friend of Suenens, Jacques Lannoye (1915-1999), on
behalf of a group of friends, offered Cardinal Suenens and Monsignor Helder Câmara
financial support to nurture the “holy flame” of the Council after it ended. These
are the origins of Liberation Theology in Latin America
Among those supporting
the Pact of the Catacombs, were Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro (1891-1976) Archbishop
of Bologna. His name is not found among the signatories, but he had Monsignor
Betazzi, his Auxiliary Bishop, represent him. Cardinal Lercaro’s theological
advisor was Don Giuseppe Dossetti (1913-1996). Their relationship is similar to
that tying Câmara to Suenens. Both were militant progressives.
Dosseti, a skilled intellectual organizer, was the father of “The School of
Bologna”, the intellectual laboratory of European ultra-progressivism. Câmara,
who was a political activist, is the father of Liberation Theology, from which the
promoters of the new, October 20, Pact of the Catacombs descend: Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, Monsignor. Erwin Kräutler
and Father Oscar Beozzo, historian and biographer of the same Câmara. The 1965 ceremony was
presided over by Monsignor Charles-Marie Himmer (1902-1994),Bishop of Tournai,
Belgium; the 2019 one by Cardinal Hummes, appointed principal rapporteur of the
Amazon Synod by Pope Francis. Celebrating “The Eucharist of the Pact” in the Catacombs
of Domitilla, defined by the participants as “an act of cosmic love”, Cardinal
Hummes displayed the stole of Monsignor Câmara, to whom he was extremely
devoted.
The document
signed in the subterranean cemetery of Via Ardeatina by bishops and lay-people
(among whom were the organizers of the blasphemous exhibition “The Amazon, Our Common
Home” in the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina) is a text of fifteen points entitled:
“Pact of the Catacombs for the Common Home. For a Church with an Amazonian Face,
Poor and Servant, Prophetic and Samaritan.” The socio-political pact of the ‘60s
has become the socio-economic pact of Greta Thunberg.
The signatories proclaim their
commitment to fight “for integral ecology, in which everything is connected,
the human race and all of creation, given that, all beings are sons and
daughters of the earth and upon them the Spirit of God hovers (Gen. 1, 2)
(n.2), to “renew the preferential option for the poor in our churches, in
particular for the indigenous peoples, and along with them to guarantee the
right to be protagonists in society and in the Church” (n.4) and to “abandon,
as a consequence, every type of colonialist mentality and position in our
parishes, dioceses and groups, by welcoming and valorizing cultural, ethnic and
linguistic diversity in respectful dialogue with all spiritual traditions.”
(n.5).
This then is not a purely commemorative
event, but the final act of a process that began with the Second Vatican
Council, culminating with the rise of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the Papal
Throne. On March 21, 2013, a week after his election, Pope Francis received a
copy of the Pact of the Catacombs from the hands of Argentinean activist, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, supporter of the Marxist dictators Fidel
Castro, Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chaves. On July 8, 2014, Leonardo Boff published an
article with the title, El pacto de las
catacumbas vivido por el Papa Francisco,
wherein, after transcribing the 1965 Pact of the Catacombs, he concludes with
the following words: “Are not these precisely the ideals presented by pope
Francis?”*
On November 14, 2015, The Pact
of the Catacombs was recalled in the Aula Magna of the Pontifical Urban University,
at a conference in which Cardinal João Braz de
Aviz, Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and the
historian, Alberto Melloni, leader of the “School of Bologna” took part, but
also the Liberation Theology theologian Jon Sobrino was there, condemned in
2017 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and received by Pope
Francis on November 13, 2015. **
The Amazon
Synod is therefore the symbolic fulfillment of the Second Vatican Council, the
realization of that “preferential option for the poor” for which Monsignor Helder Câmara, Don
Giuseppe Dossetti, Cardinal Suenens and Cardinal Lercaro fought so hard for. The
Amazonian Party which represents the Jacobean Wing of the Conciliar Revolution,
by lining up its troops in the Catacombs of Domitilla, is sending the Church this message: “There is
no going back.”. “And [it’s]only the beginning, for another 50 years” as Maurício López, Executive Secretary of REPAM, stated,
during the signing of the new Pact of the Catacombs.
The Revolution is advancing,
but like every Revolution it is destined to devour its own children. For now, its
victims have been the Girondins, who deluded themselves into thinking they
could distinguish between Vatican II and its bad interpreters. Whose turn will it be tomorrow? The hermeneutic
of continuity was tried by the liberals during the French Revolution in order
to fight 1793 in the name of 1789, but the result was The Terror. And faced with The Terror that is advancing,
only the Counter-revolution is possible. “But the Counter-Revolution – as
Count Joseph de Maistre said – is not a Revolution in the opposite sense, it is
the opposite of the Revolution.”. (Considérations
sur la France, in Oeuvres Complètes, Vitte, Lione-Parigi 1924,
t. I, pag. 157)
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
