Requiescat in pace: Fr. Basilio Méramo

[Stone]

Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.


In your charity, please pray for the soul of Fr. Basilio Méramo who passed away today, March 5, 2024. 

Fr. Méramo was a priest of the SSPX for nearly 30 years. 

It is my understanding that he served many of those years as the Prior of Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico.  

He was expelled by Bishop Fellay in 2009 for opposing Bp. Fellay's new direction with regards to modernist Rome.
His reply to this expulsion is powerful and will follow below. 

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.  Amen.


✠ ✠ ✠


The De Profundis  - Psalm 129

Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice.
Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.
If Thou, O Lord, shalt mark our iniquities: O Lord, who can abide it?
For with Thee there is mercy: and by reason of Thy law I have waited on Thee, O Lord.
My soul hath waited on His word: my soul hath hoped in the Lord.
From the morning watch even unto night: let Israel hope in the Lord.
For with the Lord there is mercy: and with Him is plenteous redemption.
And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord And let perpetual light shine upon him.

[Stone]

Fr. Méramo: Bishop Fellay Accepted 95% of Vatican II

TIA | April 22, 2009


As TIA has promised its readers, today it posts Fr. Basilio Méramo’s reply to his expulsion by Bishop Bernard Fellay. Many accusations were made against him, and he presents a strong defense, appealing the sentence to Eternal Rome. It is a manly defense, elevated and very worthy of reading.

The principal point of his letter and the best thrust in his defense/counter-attack is the revelation of the 2001 statement of Bishop Fellay affirming that already at that time he accepted 95% of Vatican Council II. Since it is well known that the SSPX superior has often said the opposite, it becomes evident that the Bishop is duplicitous – a fact Fr. Méramo does not hesitate to stress.

In this counter-charge he includes all four SSPX Bishops. With the supposition that Fellays’s declaration that 95% of Vatican II would be accepted by the directors, he analyzes the consequences in order to demonstrate that his expulsion is unjust.

This sentence of expulsion is a good example of how the SSPX heads are “cleaning” its ranks, sweeping out any priest who takes a true position of resistance. It seems the house is being prepared to receive new owners - and everything needs to be arranged according to their taste…

I hope Fr. Méramo, as well as Fr. Abrahamowicz - also expelled in February - will not fall into the temptation of sede-vacantism, but will fight as errant knights against Progressivism wherever it shows its face inside the Church. Resistance means non-acceptance of error, as well as the denunciation of and opposition to all teachings of the Conciliar Popes that are contrary to the perennial Magisterium and traditions of the Church. But it is not more than that. We do not have authority to judge the juridical status of a Pope who falls into heresy. I pray Our Lady Seat of Wisdom to help him continue holding the correct position at this difficult crossroads in his life. I also pray for all those members of the SSPX clergy or laity who are facing similar perplexities.

Below are the main excerpts of Fr. Basilio Méramo’s last letter. TIA translated it from the Spanish. The subtitles are ours. The complete text of the original is here.

- The Editor

Letter to Bishop Fellay Replying to My Expulsion from the SSPX
by Fr. Basilio Méramo

On April 7, I received a hand-delivered notification of my expulsion - a thing to be expected after two canonical admonitions. It is, let me say at once, unjust and invalid both juridically and theologically since the two admonitions were per se inconsistent, and were immediately acknowledged as such by me in my two letters of response.

I appeal to Eternal Rome against the decree of my expulsion, according to Canon Law (can 647 § 2 n. 4), which suspends any decree. Thus, juridically my expulsion would be suspended, lacking juridical effect until the appeal is judged, that is, indefinitely. Indeed, this is because today Eternal Rome has been invaded by unworthy prelates who do not fulfill their duty of confirming the faithful in the Faith.

On the contrary, they corrupt and prostitute the Faith, cult and morals, and violate the truth, whose rule they abhor like antichrists. … Never has a greater abomination and desolation been seen in the holy place. They promote adoration of themselves as God, invoking the divine power, which they pervert and invert. For this reason Msgr. Lefebvre said that “Rome is occupied by antichrists” in his June 30, 1988 declaration. Ironically, the topic [of my expulsion] remains suspended until the parousia of Christ.

Open arms to those who accept Vatican II

Notwithstanding, it falls to me to bear with patience and integrity this injury, remaining firm as a Catholic priest in the front lines against Modernism in the Antichrist-Rome. This is what Msgr. Lefebvre in that same document called the modernist and liberal Rome that persecutes the holy and infallible Catholic Tradition. It is to this Rome that you, along with the direction of SSPX and the three Bishops, cowardly deliver us under the appearance of a making a good action - [throwing yourselves] into the arms of Benedict XVI who was able to tempt you into a skillful trap.


Accepting the Council is accepting the French Revolution in the Church

Now, if you permit me, I will go on to refute the most serious of your fulminating but absurd charges in their theological-doctrinal context.

I was charged with making false and grave accusations against the general superior of the SSPX, of causing serious damage by opposing him, of being obstinate, rebelling against authority, causing scandal, etc.

I would like to know, Most Reverend Bishop, what exactly are these false accusations you said I have made. My accusations are grave, I agree, but not false. If falseness exists, it cannot be justly said to be on my part, but rather - forgive me - on yours, since you have been using a double language for a long time. Not because you are bilingual, but because of your great dilemma: How to enter into an accord without allowing the treason to be noticed, covering it under a false appearance of good?

How is it possible to accept what you stated eight years ago (in an interview to the daily La Liberté on May 11, 2001, published by DICI n. 6, on May 18, 2001), that is, that “we go along with about 95% of the Second Vatican Council,” without being a liberal and modernist? The liberals and modernists themselves acknowledge that Council Vatican II was “the 1789 in the Church,” according to Card. Suenens, that is, the French Revolution of 1789 inside the Church.

Or as then Card. Ratzinger (today Benedict XVI) said: “The problem of the Council was to assimilate the values of centuries of liberal culture” (Marcel Lefebvre, They Have Dethroned Him, introduction). Thus, it is clear that whoever accepts 95% of Vatican Council II, accepts 95% of the French Revolution inside de Church, and also assimilates centuries of liberal culture in the Church. And 95% is a very high percentage.

Then comes the great question: What are you saying when you affirm that you are going to dialogue with Rome on doctrinal issues? What are you going to discuss? The remaining 5%? This alone bluntly demonstrates the parody, deception, lie and falsity [of your position], all executed with the great appearance of seriousness while in fact everything was becoming increasingly rotten.

No longer a resistance, but a pact with Masonry and Ecumenism

What, then, remains of the SSPX, of resistance against Modernism, when one accepts, goes along with or sustains 95% of that nefarious and atypical Council Vatican II? Indeed, its pretense to not be dogmatic is as absurd as imagining a square circle … [as theologian Marin Sola and Msgr. Lefebvre have proved].

Msgr. Lefebvre denounced the pact of non-aggression between the Church and Masonry veiled under the names of aggiornamento and openness to the world (cf. Un Évèque Parle, p. 97). You, however, are willing to enter into that pact. Regarding such pact he adds: “Further, the Church no longer accepts being the one true religion, the only road of eternal salvation” (ibid. p. 97).

Card. Ratzinger (today Benedict XVI) recognizes the false religions as extraordinary roads of salvation, as one can note in this text that, despite its conservative bent, is deeply heretical: “The values of the non-Christian religions have been excessively emphasized to the point that some theologians present them as ordinary roads of salvation, instead of extraordinary” (Informe sobre la Fé, BAC Popular, Madrid, p. 220).


Acceptance of a schismatic Conciliar Church

Further, Msgr. Lefebvre stressed that “in the eyes of the Roman authorities as well as our own, this Council represents a new Church that they call the ‘Conciliar Church’” (ibid., p. 97). He also affirmed that this Council was schismatic. Notwithstanding, you can uphold 95% of it. Doing so, you become 95% schismatic.

Here are his words: “In view of an external and internal analysis of Vatican II, that is, analyzing its texts and the details of this Council, we believe that we can affirm it is a schismatic council because it rejects Tradition and breaks with the Church of the past. It is by the fruits that one judges the tree” (ibid. p. 97).

Thus, we have the paradoxical and absurd situation of you accepting 95% of the schismatic and apostate post-conciliar New Church. Hence you would be 95% schismatic and apostate – not an insignificant percentage! And you still pretend to be a faithful and worthy successor of Msgr. Lefebvre. If this is not falseness and treason, then I don’t know what it is.


Nefarious consequences of an accord

Msgr. Lefebvre considers that “all those who cooperate in the application of this inversion of values, accepting and adhering to the new ‘conciliar Church’ … enter into schism” (ibid. p. 98). Yet today you intend to reach an accord with this schismatic new conciliar Church.

Ecumenism represents the universal apostasy

Further, you want the SSPX to be recognized and regularized by modernist Rome, which practices an apostate ecumenism. This is how Msgr. Lefebvre described it: “Those who, motivated by laicism and apostate ecumenism, either minimize or deny these [traditional] riches can only condemn these Bishops [of SSPX]. Doing so, they confirm their schism and their separation from Our Lord and His Reign” (Itinéraire spiritual, p. 9).

Yes, it is an apostate ecumenism - this is the language of Scriptures, which calls it the Great Apostasy, that is, the universal or ecumenical apostasy. Yet you would bring us closer to this ecumenical apostasy. You want, then, to make us adulterous and schismatic, for according to Msgr. Lefebvre’s words: “This apostasy transforms those members into adulterers and schismatics, opposed to tradition and in rupture with the past of the Church, and hence with the Church that remains faithful to the Church of Our Lord. Those who continue to be faithful to the true Church are the object of savage and continuous persecutions” (ibid. pp 70-71).


Duplicity also in the reply to Benedict’s letter

In his letter to the Bishops of March 10, 2009, Benedict XVI, after referring to the “remission of the excommunication” called his invitation to the four Bishops of the SSPX to return as if they were prodigal sons a gesture of goodness and paternal mercy.

A smile that expresses the absence of obstacles

However, he clearly and explicitly reminded them that “they do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church,” given that they lack canonical mission or status. Their suspension a divinis remains in effect as long as they do not accept Vatican Council II.

Benedict XVI spelled it out in clear terms …: “This will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature, and concern primarily the acceptance of the Vatican Council II and the post-conciliar magisterium of the Popes. … The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 - this must be quite clear to the Society.”

With this we see the objective of modernist and apostate Rome. But you and the other three Bishops of SSPX tell us that you are going to Rome to preach the truth and convert it, etc. … On March 12, 2009 - only two days later - in your quick response to Benedict XVI’s letter, you reached the apex [of shame] when you used his words to say: “Far from wanting to stop Tradition in 1962, we wish to consider Vatican Council II and the post-conciliar teaching.” This statement shows - forgive me, Bishop Fellay - your duplicity of language, a modernist and liberal language that manifests your falseness and betrayal.


My expulsion is an abuse of authority that only favors the enemies

Therefore, Bishop Fellay, it is absurd and unjust for you to expel me from SSPX for publicly and openly resisting your sinister politics of merging with [Vatican II], the landmark of the New Conciliar Church and its schismatic and apostate ecumenism. In an abusive exercise of your authority, compromising with the worst and principal enemies of the Church, you dare to falsely and injuriously accuse me of being a rebel, insubordinate, disobedient, obstinate, scandalous, subversive, in need of correction, harmful and dangerous to the common good of the SSPX. I could launch these same accusations against you to your face, but [I will not because] the Divine Judge will do so when He will come to judge the living and the dead. I leave it for then, when I expect to meet you.

However, I pray for you, that God will forgive you because you know not what you do – either with the SSPX or with me, whom you throw into the street like a vile delinquent – the same fate suffered by so many priests who opposed the innovations at the time of the Council. You expel me at the age of 55, after having giving myself with a complete and generous commitment to the service of the SSPX, which I served for 29 years, leaving behind everything, renouncing everything to serve Holy Mother Church in the SSPX, resisting and combating that apostate and heretical Modernism which today you lead us toward – softly and sweetly, but surely.


A New SSPX is being shaped in the likeness of the New Church

Today you expel me for a New Society [SSPX], recycled at the feet of the New Conciliar Church. I have never belonged, and I never want to belong to this New SSPX and New Church. I will continue to be part of the true Church and the true SSPX. You expel me, better said, you excommunicate me from your New SSPX, but I don’t care, just as Msgr. Lefebvre didn’t care when he was excommunicated from the New Church. This punishment, far from being a stigma or affront, is a true mark of decoration and proof of orthodoxy.

He was not like you, the four Bishops, who shamefully asked the excommunication to be lifted before the eyes of the world, refusing to bear the weight of the cross, considering it an ignominy. Christ did nothing of this sort. He did not step down from His Cross (the greatest instrument of shame and suffering). He preferred to die crucified, ridiculed, spat upon, scourged, stripped of His clothes and abandoned by all. This is how He founded His Divine Church, leaving her as inheritance His Blood shed on the Cross.


The apocalyptic significance of accepting the New Mass

This inheritance signed with His Divine Blood, His whole Body immolated, is the Holy Mass. The same Mass that today you do no longer recognize as being the one, exclusive Mass when you accept the spurious, bastard New Mass … considering it the legitimate and principal (ordinary) rite, while the Tridentine Mass becomes an occasional (extraordinary) rite of the New Church, which is – or will be – the see of the Antichrist and the False Prophet, as Our Lady of La Salette predicted: “Rome will lose the faith and become the see of the Antichrist.”

Let him who has eyes see, and let him who has ears listen.

Ironically, today you chop off my head, without remembering that it was thanks to my intervention in the General Chapter of 1994 asking that Fr. Schmidberger not be re-elected that you accepted the position of General Superior. Indeed, for two years he had been arranging everything for his reelection. He was at the very point of achieving his aim when surprisingly, contrary to his plans, you were elected. I stood up to tell you to accept that position as a cross, following the example of St. Pius X …


Association of this punishment with the Passion of the Church

This entire apocalyptical drama the Church is living is prophetically encompassed in the Lenten liturgy in a special and solemn way during Holy Week and in the Sacred Triduum, which shows us the desolate Church, the stripped altar and the empty tabernacle. It is a clear depiction of what happened 2,000 years ago with the Passion and Death of Christ. It is also a symbol of what would happen to the Church, the mystical body of Chirst, during the apocalyptic end times …

I ask God to forgive you, Msgr., along with the Chapter that - like a Sanhedrin - condemned me and expelled me. It reminds me of what the then elect people did to Our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the words of the liturgy: “The impious ones said, let us destroy the just man for he is against our works” (5th antiphony of Lauds of Holy Saturday).

But the words of the Prophet also come to mind: “The Lord God is my helper, therefore I am not confounded: and I have set my face as a hard stone, knowing that I will not be confounded” (Is 50:7).

Thus, since my alternative was either to be silent in a vile silence before what I see or to clearly and firmly speak out at the price of my expulsion, I fulfilled my priestly duty without betraying God or my conscience. Now, my only choice is to wander carrying my head in my hands, as St. Denis did before he fell and died.

I bid you farewell during this tragic and expressive Sacred Tridium of Holy Week, filled with mentions of what would happen to the Church in the last apocalyptic times, which is, nonetheless, the necessary prelude for the future Easter and Resurrection.

Fr. Basilio Méramo
Orizaba, Good Friday, April 9, 2009

[Stone]

Fr. Basilio Méramo's Open Letter to Bishop Fellay
January 26, 2009 [shortly before his expulsion from the SSPX]
Taken from here

After publishing the sermon of Fr. Basilio Méramo of February 2, 2009, we realized that there is no English version of his open letter to Bishop Bernard Fellay of January 26, 2009, as we wrongly indicated at the bottom of the sermon translation. Only a summary of it is available in English, framed by dissenting commentaries and thoughts.

In order to make available to our readers the entire document in English – which has been forbidden to be spoken about in various media milieus of the SSPX – we translated it and are posting it here today.

To facilitate its reading, we added subtitles that are not in the original. Anyone may check our translation with the Spanish text here.

We hope it will help our English-speaking public to know both sides in this controversy.

- The Editor

Open Letter to the General Superior of the Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Bernard Fellay

Fr. Basilio Méramo
Priory of Blessed Raphael Guizar y Valencia
Calle Sur 11 n. 1114
C.P. 94390
Orizaba - Veracruz - Mexico

Dear Monsignor:

Given the events that regard our whole Society (SSPX), both members and the faithful, it is with great sorrow and pain that I find myself obliged to direct this public letter to you. I cannot be silent in face of the lifting of the decree of excommunication by apostate Rome – called as such on more than one occasion by Msgr. Lefebvre – which had been requested by means of a crusade of one million rosaries delivered to Rome for this end. This is to at least implicitly acknowledge, whether we want to or not, that we have been excommunicated, notwithstanding the puerile excuses to prove the opposite.

You recognized this in your sermon at Flavigny (February 2, 2006) when you said: “We have requested the lifting of the decree of excommunication, its annulment; but to say annul is already to say that we acknowledge something.”

Among heretics and schismatics JPII opens the Jubilee 2000. In that year SSPX Bishops also started to merge.

Personally and in conscience, as a perpetual member of the Society, I feel myself obliged to manifest my total disagreement with this act. I speak out clearly and publicly before God and the Catholic Church, the sole Ark of Salvation, the exclusive and sole Spouse of Christ. She is not, as the reigning ecumenism desires, just another religion inside the Pantheon where all false religions dwell, each one with its own altar and rights, living together in a pacific and abominable coexistence similar to the reign of the Anti-Christ.

The bouquet of flowers (one million rosaries) delivered to the modernist and apostate Rome – the great red harlot riding the Beast, i.e., the prostituted, corrupted and adulterated religion, as Fr. Castellani used to call it – was an act of a saccharine, concealed concession.

It was this [apostasy] which astonished the pure and virginal Apostle St. John the Evangelist, the most beloved, because it was the Gordian knot of the mystery of iniquity inside the Holy Place and an abominable desolation in the Temple: the falsified religion cohabitating with the worldly powers and fornicating with the kings of earth.


To ask for the lifting the excommunication implies recognizing its validity

To lift or to annul the decree of excommunication is not the same thing as declaring its invalidity and nullity from the start. Further, if one can annul and consequently declare the annulment from a decree that was until now valid and legitimate, it only serves to express and ratify that it was up to now valid and legitimate. It is only from this time onward that such excommunication ceases.

In short, while one can annul and considered annulled a just law that lost its reason for being, the same does not occur with an unjust law, such as the sanction of excommunication of Tradition [SSPX Bishops], because it is invalid and null given its lack of legitimacy, veracity, justice and right. An unjust law is per se invalid and null; it was never a law. Only a valid, legitimate and just law can be annulled. These two things may seem alike but they are two different things.

To request the lifting of the decree of excommunication is not the same thing as to ask or demand the acknowledgement of its absolute nullity and total invalidity. These are distinct things, even though similar. Not to recognize this reveals a lack of understanding. Whoever does not accept this distinction is either a naïve fool or a malevolent man. No one can confuse nullity with the annulment of a decree.

It is clear that for modernist Rome this act means the remission of a punishment - the censure of excommunication – since the corrective penalties, as is the case of the censures, are lifted as set out in the Canon Law for the remission of a penalty. Therefore, it is very clear that the one who accepts this lifting of a penalty does so because he considers himself guilty of it in juridical terms. And it is logical that the one censured should rejoice that, with the remission of the sanction, he is pardoned.

When a Bishop, son of Msgr. Lefebvre, requests this, he denies his father in the Episcopate, because he acknowledges that that act [of excommunication] was a due punishment. There is no other alternative in juridical terms. Yes is yes, and no is no. And as the saying goes: He who proves too much, proves nothing.


Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop Mayer continue to be excommunicated

If one analyzes it well, the excommunication that fell over the two consecrating Bishops - Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop Castro Mayer - was not lifted. The only excommunication lifted was that which fell on the consecrated Bishops - Bishops Tissier de Mallerais, Williamson, Fellay and de Galarreta. It is very clear that the excommunication was lifted only for those who requested it as a show of filial good will with the aim of moving the paternal feelings of Benedict XVI. There was absolutely no retraction on the part of Rome, which showed simply a paternal indulgence toward the four Bishops who filially asked the lifting of the excommunication from the magnanimous Benedict XVI.

Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop Castro Mayer continue to be entirely excommunicated, unless they rise from their graves and also filially request - as a show of good will - the lifting of their excommunications, which Rome obviously considers just and legitimate. This is crystal clear.


Rome is deactivating the SSPX resistance

Actually, all the reasons alleged for this action have no weight and are superfluous. The basic question is the Faith. Protestantized and modernist Rome has managed to deactivate the resistance centered on the Society and Msgr. Lefebvre, 18 years after his death. Now the process of handing over [the SSPX] that started to manifest itself publicly in the Jubilee of 2000 reaches its end.

The 'paternal benignity' of Benedict XVI was to deactivate the SSPX resistance

I am in disagreement with this and always will be. I cannot prostitute myself intellectually and religiously to the power of evil that entered the Church and wants to pervert and invert everything. This is to be spiritually and religiously sodomized. This is the attitude of the Pharisees - a special corruption of religion - which governs today with all the prestige that comes from power to the detriment of the Truth. Let us not forget that the greatest victory of the Anti-Christian World Revolution is to transform men into “intellectual prostitutes.”

A bomb cannot be deactivated with blows of a hammer or axe, but requires a subtle maneuver to undo its internal mechanism. This is what is happening now with the Society of St. Pius X in order to neutralize it in its combat and heroic resistance against the errors of modernist and apostate Rome, as Msgr. Lefebvre called it in his time. Under a false mask and a false paternal benignity, the resistance and the combat against the ecumenical new Church - which cohabitates with world globalism subject to the empire of the prince of this world, Satan and his followers - has been de-activated.

It is inexplicable that the other three Bishops have said nothing and thus consent with their silence. For he who is silent, sanctions, and he who sanctions, accepts error, the deception and the lie contained in all this.


Our obligation to remain faithful to the Catholic Faith

These are difficult times. Even more, these are apocalyptic times, where each one of the faithful must be a soldier of Christ to heroically and valiantly defend his Faith, as the martyrs of the early Church did without any human help, facing their torturers alone with God.

Our sole duty is to remain firm in the Faith, faithful to Christ and to His divine Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is eclipsed today (De Labore Solis, as St. Malachi refers to the previous pontificate). As an apex of the evil we are witnessing, according to the Biblical language, the abomination of desolation established in the Holy Place, the destruction of everything that is sacred and invading the Temple, which is under the iron dominion of the Synagogue of Satan (De Gloria Olivae refers to this pontificate). Thus, we have the fulfillment of the prophecy of Our Lady of La Salette: “Rome will lose the Faith and will become the see of the Anti-Christ.” Today this is a fact, but to acknowledge it demands fortitude and a solid, erudite faith, which is rare in today’s world filled with darkness and apostasy.

We are not discouraged for we know with certainty that “the gates of Hell will not prevail,” that is, “They will wage war against you but they will not win,” as St. Thomas explains in his commentary of the Creed. He also knows by Faith that the one true Church, the virginal spouse of Christ, will remain, even though she be reduced to a small flock (pusillus grex, Lk 12:32), dispersed around the world. As St. Augustine says and the Council of Trent (Art. 9) confirms, “It is the faithful people dispersed throughout the world” awaiting their ransom and sustained by the blessed hope - of which St. Peter (2 Pet 3:12) and St. Paul (Tit 2:13) speak - who will see the return of Christ the King in glory and majesty.

We must be “firm in the Faith” as St. Peter exhorts us, since, as St. Paul says, “everything that does not proceed from the Faith is sin” (Rom 14:23), and “the just will live from the Faith” (Heb 10:38), and “we were saved gratuitously through the Faith” (Eph 2:8). This is what we have to do, remain brave and firm soldiers confirmed in the Faith by Baptism so that those words of St. Paul will be fulfilled in us: “Placed on trial for the testimony of the Faith, they were found faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ” (Heb 12:39).


False pretexts to merge: to remedy the crisis and to give rights to Tradition

It is inconceivable that someone should say that the Society (SSPX) wishes to help the Pope to remedy the crisis since the modernist Popes are the first who are responsible and culpable for this unprecedented crisis - never before seen in History.

And, worst of all evils, Joseph Ratzinger throughout his whole life - either as an expert theologian in Vatican II or as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during the nefarious pontificate of John Paul II, and now as Benedict XVI – has consciously sustained those same errors [that have caused the crisis] instead of condemning them.

Great diseases cannot be cured with half-measures. To speak of a crisis without pointing to its cause - the crisis in the Faith – does not lead anywhere. To point out the crises in vocations, religious practice, catechism, frequency of the Sacraments is just to point out effects. If one does not give their cause, one inverts and confuses the cause and the effects.

It is also wrong to speak of the rights of Tradition as if they were any other rights. If we are going to speak of rights, then we must say that only the Church, her Tradition and her Truth have exclusive rights. The rights of the human person, liberty of conscience and religious liberty - which includes liberty for Buddhists, animists, Muslims, Jews, Protestants etc - constitute a liberal and modernist conception of rights. They are false rights of man in consonance with the Anti- Christian Revolution.

The words of Msgr. Lefebvre confirm this position.

Let us not forget that speaking about the invalid, null and Pharisaic excommunication, Msgr. Lefebvre said:

* “All the modernists were excommunicated by St. Pius X. Those imbued with the modernist principles are the ones who excommunicated us, while they were the ones who were excommunicated by St. Pius X. Why do they excommunicate us? It is because we want to remain Catholic, because we do not want to follow them in this spirit of destruction of the Church. ‘Since you don’t want to come with us, we excommunicate you.’ ‘Very well, thank you. We prefer to be excommunicated. We do not want to participate in this shocking work in the Church that has been carried out in the last 20 years” (Sermon in the Mass of July 10, 1988 - cf. Fideliter n. 65, 1988).

* “We never desired to belong to this system that calls itself the conciliar Church. … We have no place in the Pantheon of religions. Our excommunication by a decree of Your Eminence would only be an irrefutable proof of this. We ask nothing except to be declared ex-communicated from the adult spirit that has inspired the Church for the last 25 years; to be excluded from an unfaithful and impious communion (Letter to Cardinal Gantin, July 6, 1988 - cf. Fideliter n. 64, 1988).

* In Ecône Msgr. Lefebvre said this to a journalist who asked him about the excommunications: “If anyone is excommunicated it is not I, but the excommunicators.”

All these texts of Msgr. Lefebvre appear to have been treated the same way as the preparatory schemes of Vatican II, which ended in the wastebasket, so that everything would be done in a different way.

* Further, referring to Msgr. Castro Mayer and to himself, Msgr. Lefebvre affirmed: “Those who consider it a duty to diminish and even deny these riches [of Tradition] can do nothing else but condemn these two Bishops. Doing so, they confirm themselves in their schism with Our Lord and His Kingdom, because of their laicism and apostate ecumenism (Itinéraire Spirituel, p. 9). And he confirmed this further on: “This apostasy transforms the members [of the Church] into adulterers and schismatics opposed to all Tradition, breaking with the Church of the past (Itinéraire Spirituel, p. 70).


Vatican II is filled with errors and heresies

Finally, it is necessary to stress that regarding Vatican Council II, there is much more than the “reservations” that you affirmed. Because this atypical Council, which pretends not to be infallible, is as contradictory as a square circle, and for this reason pregnant with error and heresies (time bombs) to the point that Msgr. Lefebvre considered it an apostate Council for its ecumenism (text quoted above), and also schismatic. In fact he said: “This Council represents – to the eyes of the Roman authorities as well as ours - a new Church, called the conciliar Church.”

Analyzing the texts of this Council and its details in a critique - either internal or external - we believe we can affirm that it is a schismatic Council for it denied Tradition of the Church and broke with her past. The tree is judged by its fruits.

“All those who cooperate in the application of this metamorphosis accept and adhere to the new conciliar Church, as it was designated by His Excellence Msgr. Benelli in the letter he addressed to me in name of the Holy Father last July 25. They enter into schism … How could we, moved by a servile and blind obedience, play into the hands of these schismatics who ask us to cooperate in their task of destroying the Church?” (Un Évèque Parle, pp. 97-99)

In face of all this, we can only say: non possumus.

In Christo et Maria Virgine
Basilio Méramo, perpetual member of the SSPX and Prior de Orizaba
Monday, January 26, 2009