By His Excellency Bishop Thomas Aquinas, O.S.B.
9th March 2024
+
PAX
The invisible and silent persecution
In his book The Century of Hell (page 402), in the chapter entitled "The French Disaster", Corção speaks of an invisible and silent religious persecution in France which, he says, was the main cause of what Paul VI later called "the self-destruction of the Church". This shows the importance that Corção gave to what was happening in France, a country where we find the best and the worst in the world, he said.
Even before the Council, the architects of error were directing their batteries against Christian civilisation and preparing minds for a general apostasy. Not all of them necessarily knew what they were doing, but these hallucinated people were doing the work of destruction whose fruits are before us.
The war itself, the Second World War, served the purposes of the enemies of the Church. France was devastated physically and spiritually.
A succession of tenebrous affairs - Dreyfus, the French Revolution, the Resistance, the Épuration [The Purge], Algeria - has been exploited by the enemies of the Church to consolidate their reign. Alongside this, the invisible and silent persecution in seminaries, among priests, religious, etc.
This persecution was clearly felt in the Lefebvre affair, the darkest affair of all. Before the Council, the Archbishop had already experienced the effects of this invisible and silent persecution. The French bishops did not forgive him for the public support he had given to the Cité Catholique [Catholic City] and waited for the time to take their revenge.
After the death of Pius XII, Archbishop Lefebvre's star seemed to be slowly waning. John XXIII took the Apostolic Delegate and Archbishop of Dakar.This persecution of the Catholic faith showed its face at the Council, the greatest of all disasters since the foundation of the Church, as Archbishop Lefebvre said.
This administrative persecution is no less devastating than the bloody persecutions. The list of those persecuted is long. Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer experienced the fury of those who excommunicated them (an excommunication that was invalid in every respect). It is the Anti-Church that is trying to kill the true Church, just as Cain sought out and killed Abel. But the Church has the promises of eternal life and life in this world, because the gates of Hell will not prevail against her.
+ Thomas Aquinas, O.S.B.
U.O.G.D.