In or Out of the Sea? / Dans, ou Bien Hors de la Mer? --- by Fr. Patrick Girouard /

In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. So we have this Gospel of today, a Gospel that reminds us, that tells us, of that time when St. Peter had this miraculous catch of fishes, so much so that he was afraid, and everybody else with him were afraid. They saw it was a miracle, a miracle from Our Lord, and they were afraid to be in the same boat than Our Lord, Almighty God. And this is a normal reaction of the creature when faced with its Creator. When you read the bible, you realize that every time God sends an angel on earth to interact, to send a message to human beings, like to Abraham, Moses and all that, their reaction was fear. St. John, when he recalls the Apocalypse, when he had that apparition of an angel, the angel was so above the human nature that our human nature fears, almost as if the angel was God, and the angel says "Don't fear, I am myself a servant of God, like you, a creature". So imagine what it is to be in front of God himself! And this is why St. Peter and his companions, when they realized that miracle, they feared. All of them. And Our Lord calmed them down and said to St. Simon "Do not fear. Hence forward you will become a fisher of men." And the relation was between that miraculous catch of normal fishes, and the miraculous catch of fellow human beings. In both cases it is miraculous. To be able to preach and to be able to have somebody convert and come to Christ, and to be brought into the boat that is the Church - the Church is like a big fishing boat - is miraculous. It is not by human means that we can achieve this. It is through supernatural means of the sacraments, of prayer, of sacrifices. Those are giving men some graces, actual graces that will bring them to the brink of conversion. The predication, the preaching is necessary. St. Paul says that faith comes from hearing, "fides ex auditu". So there has to be somebody to preach, but it is not the preacher himself who brings about the conversion of men. Even if he was to prepare his sermon very diligently, with contemplation, with prayer, with study, and he would write up the most beautiful sermon, it is not the sermon itself that will bring about a conversion. It is the grace of Almighty God. The preacher will sow the seeds in the souls, but what will make the seed grow and develop into fruition, conversion, that is the grace of Almighty God. In other words: the Church, in her mission and in her means, is supernatural. By our sacrifices, by our prayers, we pray to God to give grace to the people for their conversion. We have to use all the other means, yes, but conversion is something supernatural. And, therefore, for the Church it would be a mistake, a grave mistake, a grave misunderstanding of her mission, to think she can bring about a conversion of people by human means. The other point is that this big fishing boat that is the Church is on the sea, like the sea on which St. Simon, Peter, was. The Fathers of the Church say that the sea is an image of the world. The sea is always moving, like the world is always changing. There is no stability in the world. There is stability only in God. God does not change. The truth does not change. The means of salvation do not change. But the world does. The sea has waves, and waves are dangerous, they can engulf you, they can make a shipwreck out of your ship. They can drown you. The sea is dangerous, the sea is full of creatures that are inimical to you. So therefore the Fathers of the Church compare the world to the sea. The world is dangerous. The world is treacherous. The world is not stable, it is changing. The world has many people working for the devil, knowingly or unknowingly. People who set up temptations for us. And the role of the Church is to take the human beings, to take men, out of the sea, like when you catch fishes, you put them out of the sea, you put them in your boat. The role of the Church is to take men out of the dangers of this world, out of the snares of this world, out of that change in the world, and to put them in the boat of the Church. In the boat where you can find God with His stability, with His truth. And in that boat, in that Church, we are being led to salvation. This is the role of the Church. This is the mission Our Lord gave to St. Peter. "You will be a fisherman of men". Unfortunately, at the Second Vatican Council, churchmen... Here we have to make a distinction: not the Church herself, but churchmen, clergymen. Not the Church! The Church does not change! The Church does not forget her mission! But a lot of clergymen did. A lot of clergymen did, unfortunately. They had been condemned before, all those clergymen. They have been condemned almost a century-plus before, one hundred and thirty years or so before the Council. In 1832, by Gregory the Sixteenth who, in his encyclical Mirari Vos, condemned Felicité de Lammenais and other liberal Catholics who wanted the Church to adapt to the world, to open herself to the values of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. To become one church among many, one religion among many. And they thought that if we accept the principle of religious liberty for all religions, the Church would be respected. The Church would be approved, even by secular people, even by people who are, who were, against the Church. They thought that maybe we could bring them to accept the Church. To see in the Church the beacon of Freedom. That was their temptation. To adapt to the values of the world. Instead of taking these people out of these values, out of the world, like you take fish out of the sea, the Second Vatican Council accepted doctrines condemned before, and it basically said, "Well, if we want to have a greater catch, we will have a very brilliant idea! Instead of taking the fish out, and putting them into the boat, we, the fishermen, are going to go out of the boat, and to plunge into the sea! We will go swim along with everybody! So they will see we are not different, they will see we are good people!" They didn't see the world as dangerous anymore. Like John the Twenty-third said, at the opening of the Council: "We do not believe in the prophets of doom. The world is not that bad. We have to understand it better. We have to do an aggiornamento, an updating of the Church. The Church looks too old". The Church, like Paul VI said, "If we continue to condemn the errors, we will look too bad, like a bitter woman, a 'marâtre' in French, like a woman who is basically too harsh always on her children". So we have to be nice, we have to smile, we have to accept. If we accept the world, the world will accept us. And there were a few people, fortunately, for the Church has the promise of indefectibility, that the gates of hell will not prevail against her, there has been a few clerics who refused this nonsense: Archbishop Lefebvre, Bishop de Castro Mayer and a lot of... Well, "a lot of", considering the difficulty of the times, of good old priests. We have to remember that Tradition did not, the movement of Tradition, did not start with Archbishop Lefebvre! The old timers will remember: it started with good, solid, older priests who refused the nonsense. You have many examples in Canada and the United States as well, and in France. I have met quite a few people in France, of these old priests, Father Moulin and others; and here we have Father Normandin. We have Father Greuter. In the United States: Father Heidt, Father Snyder and others. I cannot remember all the names, or I do not know all of them, but in every country you had a few of these priests, who refused the nonsense and were persecuted by their Bishops, and were kicked out of their dioceses, and became what we call "independent" priests. And Archbishop Lefebvre, before he could ordain his first priests, it took many years. He ordained one in 1971, I think, Father Aulagnier, and after that it was 1975, 1976, the great ordination in 1976 that was forbidden by Rome etc. etc. But it took a while before the Society could provide priests for the world, all the world, and in the meantime we had these older priests who founded their own independent chapels, and many vocations came from there. You have Father Nelson in Powers Lake, and so forth and so on. And therefore God had suscitated in her Church a clergy who would refuse that nonsense, and suscitated Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society. And we have done our work all those years, to train good priests and to help the faithful, and these priests wrote books, very good books, and the Archbishop wrote books as well, and Bishop Castro de Mayer, and so there was something to sustain our spiritual life and our Faith, against the modern errors. Unfortunately, what happened in the modern Church is now happening in the Society. Instead of continuing to fight, strongly, the errors of the Conciliar Church, now a group of people - unfortunately it just happens that this group of people is at the command posts of the Society - now they want to go back. They say they want to be "recognized". They say they want to be accepted by that New Church. You see: the New Church accepts the world, because the New Church wants to be accepted by the world. Now the New Society accepts the New Church, because it wants to be accepted by the New Church. It is the same process! And the same arguments are being brought against the faithful priests in the same manner! In the same way that, in the 1960's, the Conciliar Church, the Conciliar clergy, said: "Oh! You cannot be on your own like that, you don't have jurisdiction, your sacraments are not valid!" And you can hear that even nowadays. Sometimes, we hear the Fraternity of St. Peter use these arguments against the Society. We had Father (so-and-so) there, in Coquitlam, saying two or three years ago to a couple that we were preparing to marry: "Oh! He is fearing for their souls, because that marriage would be invalid, because the Society is not recognized". So the Conciliar churchmen use this argument against the Society, and now, what do I hear? And what do I read? A letter that was sent to the faithful of Rocky Mountain House (Alberta) against those "rebels". They don't name who it is, but they talk about Bishop Williamson. That Bishop Williamson, (that is in a letter from Father Ockerse), Bishop Willamson is Don Quixote! (Don Quichote in French). And that all the priests that follow him are little Sancho Panças! Ah! Ah! Ah! Okay? And then he says there is not a shred of evidence that there is a change in the Society. So I think he needs to get new glasses, because we have more than shreds. We have beams of evidence! They are just there, you just need to read them, but they don't want to read, that is a big problem. So, for example, we have the General Chapter, that's the new law of the Society, and that is a big change. That's a major change. That, in fact, that is why you are here! That's why I am here too! The General Chapter now accepts the principle of an agreement with Rome, without asking for the conversion of Rome, without any more asking from Rome to correct her mistakes and her errors. They want so much to be accepted by the New Rome, that they are ready to accept it as it is. They want some protection, some conditions... It is a complete illusion! They are not going to fare better than any other of the nine communities who went there! And now, those communities, they try to hide everything bad that is happening in Rome, because they want to justify themselves, they don't want to feel guilty. They don't want us to tell them: "Oh! You see what happens in Rome! You see what happens in Rome?" They emphasize any little positive thing that comes from Rome, and they downsize and play down, and even keep silent, on the big problems, and this is how the Society, unfortunately, is already doing as well. They are using the arguments of the modernist clergy against us, those independent priests and Bishop Williamson, how we are not in the Society anymore, how we don't have jurisdiction and our sacraments are invalid. Somebody who still goes to Christ the King Church in Langley, told me that last week, that Father Gerspacher "implied" as much in his last sermon. He was talking about the fact that Bishop Fellay says he does not have jurisdiction as a Bishop, but he has jurisdiction as the Superior General of the Society and, therefore, if we leave the Society, we are not receiving that participation, that jurisdiction from Bishop Fellay anymore. This is a completely new argument we have never heard before! See, the change in the Society, already! And a friend of mine, I was talking about it to a friend of mine, and he told me that actually there has been a study, an article, a little booklet, made by Father Patrick De la Rocque in 2008, that was explaining that theory and approving that theory. That, basically, Bishop Fellay would have jurisdiction over the members of the Society because he is the Superior General, and the Society has been recognized in 1970, and the suppression of the Society was unlawful and, therefore, we still have that jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, and if we leave, then we don't have jurisdiction. So that is the new argument. But, up until now, I have never heard such argument, because we always talked about "supplied" jurisdiction! For 45 years, basically, the whole argument of the Society, to answer the objection from the Conciliar Church, was that we have supplied jurisdiction. It is to say, in the case of necessity, the faithful comes to us and needs the sacraments from us, because he cannot find any more in the Conciliar Church what he is looking for, then we receive supplied jurisdiction from the Church. That always was our argument to answer the objections from the modernist clergy and, now, I have to, and the other independent priests, now we have to use the same argument to answer the Society! Isn't that something? Isn't that something unbelievable? That I have to do, towards the Society, what the Society used to do towards modernist Rome! Another thing, another example of a change in the Society: A friend of mine, somebody I know, sent me from down East a link to the Polish website of the Society. That person is Polish, that person is able to understand Polish, and that person told me, "Father, look at this link". She sent me this on Monday or Tuesday, at the beginning of the week, and they advertised, in the website of the Society in Poland, all the ordinations that will take place in the Society around the world and, also, all the ordinations that will take place for the Ecclesia Dei communities around the world! In the same article, on the same page, on the website of the Society of St. Pius X, in Poland, you have, you have this big title: "Ordinations of the Society of St. Pius X and of the Ecclesia Dei Communities"! Fraternity of St. Peter, Institute of Christ the King, and so forth and so on. In the same article! As if we were all one big happy family now! We are going to do the same thing than those Ecclesia Dei communities. Then we will become an Ecclesia Dei community. Now, that article was translated in French, and was translated in English the next day. And it appeared on all the Resistance websites in France and in the United States. Yesterday, I got another e-mail from that same person telling me: "Father, go back to the same link, and you will not see anymore that article! They have modified that article, they have taken away the mention of the Ecclesia Dei communities' ordinations!" Well, that's good! I'm glad they took it away! But it doesn't change the fact that they had put it there in the first place! But it shows that the Resistance, when we resist publicly and strongly, sometimes we get results. When the Society saw all the uproar all over the world, the next day after this thing appeared on the Internet, they told Father Stehlin to remove it. And he did. So this is why it is another example that we do have to make a stand. The best way for us to try to stop, or to slow down, that betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre that is happening in the Society, is to stand up and to say "No". To take our end of the rope, and to put our feet solidly in the ground, and to say "We will not go along with this! We are going to stand up and fight!" We are only a small number, but already it is significant. Already it encourages other people to do the same. London has been opening its own chapel, and they are going to have mass every Sunday. They are renting a hall like we do. And so we are giving hope to other people: That it is possible to fight and to have an impact, maybe. And so, let us remember, my dear friends, that it is not by adapting oneself to the world that we can convert the world. It is by doing all we can to retire people out of the sea of this world, out of worldliness, to give them the means to elevate their souls, in their daily life, to elevate their souls out of this world. To work on their sanctification, to work on their salvation. It is not by adapting! And it is the same thing with the Society. It is not by adapting oneself to the Conciliar Church that we will convert the Conciliar Church. It is a complete illusion! What will happen is that the Conciliar Church will change us, like the world has changed the Conciliar Church into a worldly business! The same thing will happen to the Society, so we have to stand strong, and we have to understand that what we are doing is the mission of the Church: To save souls! In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.