Transcript:
Thank you very much, dear Claudia, for inviting me this evening. I thank you very much for your presence. Especially, I am happy to see Reverend Father Presley, whose parish I visited several years ago, and I am happy to see all of you here.
First, I will explain a little bit about the project that Claudia mentioned in Belarus. It is a country of the former Soviet Union. In Belarus, the Catholics are in a minority, maybe 10%. The majority are Orthodox, and Piotr Novikov is a good, committed Catholic man, father, and family. He has five children. He is the leader of the pro-life movement in Venice, a kind of Human Life International session, and he is doing good work there.
Now his plan is to have a center for Catholic families so that Catholic families can come for information, and also to have a chapel for the traditional Latin Mass. It will be the first in the Eastern part of Belarus. There has been Minsk in the capital city, the Society of Christ there, and there were cases in the East, in Mogilev. There is one sermon there.
But recently I met the president of the Bishops’ Conference of Belarus. He is a very good bishop. He changed to Kazakhstan on the occasion of the visit of the Pope. Recently, you know, Francis visited Kazakhstan, and so two bishops of Belarus came, the president of the Bishops’ Conference, and he is very friendly to the traditional mass, also in contrast to the bishops in Russia, the Latin Catholic bishops. There are only four with time in Russia, in Moscow, in Saratov, this is the Volga River, and then two in Siberia, Novosibirsk and Eastern Siberia. But unfortunately, these Catholic bishops are not friendly to the traditional Mass. In Russia, there is only in Moscow twice a month, and in St. Petersburg also, not a lot.
And then in Kazakhstan, unfortunately, we also have no traditional mass. Our bishops are not so open to this. So I am celebrating only privately in my Episcopal chapel and sometimes in the seminary where I am teaching, and no more. So you know the situation of the Latin Mass in the East. So it is very poor, I would say. And so this man, Piotr Novikov, is his name, he loves the traditional mass and wants to have a center where to build a chapel for the traditional mass, a house for formation for Catholic families. He has already presented a very detailed project and transmitted this to Claudia. It is not so big because there in the East, it is not as expensive as here in the United States or in Europe to purchase a house and to build a chapel. And so I would like to ask your charity to support this first Catholic traditional center in Belarus.
Now, I would like to share with you several of you asked me already about my a little bit about my background, my life, and about Kazakhstan. Substantially, it is in the book “Christus Vincit” that I forgot the story of my life. I do not need to make a short summary.
I belong to the so-called Black Sea Germans from the Russian Empire. There were two settlements: the Volga Germans in the Volga region and the Black Sea Germans. My parents come from these German settlements there. Originally, they came from Alsace-Lorraine. I know all my ancestors for 200 years; they all came from Alsace-Lorraine. So I am substantially a German from Alsace, close to Strasbourg. I even know the village where they went to the Russian Empire in the 19th century.
They lived there as committed Catholics, my parents and grandparents. During the Second World War, these Germans were evacuated by the German army to Eastern Germany to protect them from the Communist army, which was already coming to the next reform. At the end of the war in 1945, the Soviet Army occupied Eastern Germany, as you know, and they arrested all these Black Sea Germans, 300,000 people, and brought them back to the Soviet Union for forced labor. My parents came to the Ural Mountains, and it was a horrible situation; one-third of the people died of freezing and starvation. It was a miracle that my parents survived there. They said to me always, this was only the Catholic faith that gave them the strength, even the moral and spiritual strength, to survive in these situations. They were praying. Even exhausted, they were praying; this was the last anchor of salvation and strength.
You should see how important it is to practice the Catholic faith solely in childhood, all your life, and when you come into a situation of distress and a horrible situation, then the Catholic faith, which you have practiced and lived since your childhood or youth, will give you the strength, the moral strength to survive. This my parents taught me, and they organized there in the Ural Mountains, helped to organize a clandestine church, an underground church. My parents were so-called activists in the underground church. They were hiding priests, helping to organize prayers, and so on. And after this horrible situation there in the Ural Mountains, they were freed and then they moved to Central Asia, to Kyrgyzstan. It is south of Kazakhstan, where I was born.
There were a lot of Germans, so my parents organized a clandestine church in Kyrgyzstan again, and I grew up in a catacomb church there. I remember the hidden masses very well, during the night, with the door and windows closed, and the Mass was a very low voice because the police could hear. So these were my memories of my childhood, the clandestine holy mass. Of course, it was a traditional Latin Mass. Priests celebrated, and then we moved to Estonia. The Baltic States were still part of the Soviet Union, and there we had a real church. This was tolerated by the regime, and we could go there, but it was also dangerous because the police always watched. But we managed to go there and I received my apostolic communion, and then, after from Estonia at the end of 1973, by a miracle of Our Lady, we could escape the Soviet Union and go to West Germany.
When we came to West Germany, it was a real shock for us. I was almost 30, and there were four children. I am the youngest, but we saw all this moral degradation in the society in the Western world, the immorality. We could not understand this, and worse still was our shock in the church when we went to the Catholic churches. The priests were so worldly. The liturgies were so worldly. The greatest shock for us was the communion in hand, which we saw for the first time. It was horrible. I remember as a child, I could not understand this because these holy priests, the professors and baptists, who I had the privilege to have in my childhood, they imbued us with such a deep reverence and faith for the Holy Sacrament, for the Holy Communion, that I had this reverence. Even I was a boy, I could not understand such a horrible scenario, to receive the Lord in the hand. My mother was only crying. She was weeping. She could not understand this. Therefore, I wrote my first book, which is The Lord’s Romantics, about the dangers of the communion in hand because of this. I remember these moments of tragedy as my mother was thinking about this horrible situation with the communion in hand.
Later, I became a religious man in the Order of the Holy Cross, the Canons Regular in Austria. This links the movement of the Holy Angels’ work. I was then sent to Brazil, to Indonesia. And there, I was studying philosophy and theology with his language in a holy bishop, a really holy bishop. He already passed away, Bishop Manuel, Christophe in Central Brazil, and he renewed the diocese from ruin. He took the diocese when he became bishop, a young bishop in ruins, a spiritual theology of liberation. It was such a Marxist movement within the church. It destroyed complacent analysis, and he took over such a ruin. He asked our congregation to help him, and so I came to Brazil to help him. They took over the seminary and theological faculty, and so I was in the first group who came to help him as a young religious, and he was also my teacher. Bishop Manuel, you are there to be a priest, and for seven years in Brazil, I am so grateful to the providence of God that I had this holy bishop as my teacher, and he ordained me. When I became bishop 16 years ago, he was still alive. He was already retired, and he came from Brazil to Rome, where I was ordained. I was ordained in the Brazilian bishop, and he came to participate in the nation. He gave me his pectoral cross, his own pectoral cross, and I am keeping this pectoral cross only for solemn occasions, for pontifical masses of ordinations, because it is for me a treasure.
Then I was sent to Rome to pursue a doctorate in patristics, the church fathers. I was working in the general office of the order as a counselor. Then someone came from Kazakhstan and presented a request to me, and they asked me to help them, to come to Kazakhstan to teach seminarians. I still know the Russian language. I did not forget that they still use the Russian language today, there. My superior sent me 22 years ago to Kazakhstan, which is basically almost the same place where I was born, so far away.
There I was in the seminary teaching, and I was a spiritual father. I was a spiritual father for five years, and then I was appointed auxiliary bishop 16 years ago by Benedict XVI. He was consecrated bishop in Rome in the city of Saint Peter. It was not my idea to be consecrated in Rome, but the cardinal secretary of state wanted to consecrate me there in Rome, and he found a way to convince them, saying to the nuncio that he would like to do this. So I agreed. I did not choose either the place nor the date, or the bishops.
In Karaganda, in my previous diocese, I started to build a cathedral, the former Lady of Fatima, a new Gothic cathedral, because there was in Kazakhstan one of the greatest gulags. You know, gulag, this is a concentration camp of communism. One of the greatest in the entire world was in Karaganda, in my first diocese, outside. So the soil of Karaganda is really with the tears and the blood of so many victims, innocent victims, and therefore I decided this to be a beautiful church, as a church of liberation, atonement, and also a memorial. When I started this, I said it should be the most beautiful thing that I can do for the Lord, the most sacred and beautiful thing I can do, and I tried to do so. It has a beautiful high altar with wood carved in Tyrol, and so I hoped it would succeed for the glory of the Lord.
This cathedral became a real attraction. So many people have already converted to Catholicism, even from Islam. When they saw the church and entered, they were overwhelmed by the atmosphere of sacredness and beauty. Therefore, I said, when I began to build, that we would evangelize with these stones, and the beauty would evangelize. There was a nice story. Two Muslim ladies were walking on the road, seeing this church, our new Gothic church, and they had their statue of Our Lady of Fatima on the roof outside. These two ladies were observing this church, and one was asking the other, What kind of building is this here? And the other lady answers, This is a Catholic mosque. Then I was transferred to the capital city, Astana, 11 years ago as an auxiliary.
Since then, I have been there. I have tried to speak in the church, not always to speak, but when it is necessary, when there are serious confusions and errors, I have to speak. I cannot be silent, and I have nothing to lose. I know a lady in Washington. I have known her for several years, and once I was in Washington, DC, and she was with me. It was during the Synod on the Family, and I had prepared a statement criticizing this ambiguous language about family, about divorce, and commitment to divorce. I was criticized, and I told her that I would publish such a text. She asked me, “Are you not afraid to do this?” And I answered her, “I have nothing to lose.” And then she answered me, “If you will not do this, you will lose everything.” A beautiful American woman told me, “So everything, and you will not do this.”
As I talked recently, in Kazakhstan, the Pope came. You know, to Kazakhstan last month to an interreligious meeting. Unfortunately, it is not so good that the Pope is participating in interreligious meetings. And he came. And of course, he also visited. He was at a Holy Mass for the Catholics and a meeting with the bishops and priests. I was in charge of the liturgy, so I could compare at least the Holy Mass, Latin, and Pope Francis. I must be surprised, but he did. I was close to him. We were singing “Missa de Angelis” in the golden church. “Angelis,” kneeling and at the time, but he was in good shape. He was in a good mood.
Then the next day, there was a meeting in the cathedral, in our cathedral, without a full mass, but only a meeting with priests, bishops, and sisters, and there were the people of the Mass, and I was in charge of the liturgy. Before the Pope came to the cathedral, the person from the papal staff told me to correct the order of the songs.
I had to go to the choir loft to the organist. This was a sister. She was playing to tell her when she was asked to chant the Salve Regina. I went up and said this to the sister. There were a lot of journalists and so on, 50 journalists there, and two from the United States, Reuters and Crux.
I wanted to go down, and they stopped me, the journalists. I had no intention to give an interview, and they stopped me. “But please, can you give us an interview?” I said, “Okay.” Then Reuters asked me, “Bishop, you are known as a bishop who is criticizing the Pope, and now the Pope is coming here to your position. How do you explain this?” I said to her, and this was published, “We bishops, we are not employees of the Pope. We are brothers, not employees and slaves, and we have to say to the Pope, and I do this when I see something is seriously wrong in the church. In my conscience, I have to say this to the Pope, of course, with due respect, respectfully, with charity.” I said the bishops should not do adoration and incense to the Pope. This is not charity, but to do fraternal correction is a form of collegiality.
Another one asked, “But how do you see the Pope participating in the interreligious meeting?” I said, “I consider this to be harmful for the uniqueness of the Catholic faith because there is only one Catholic faith, one religion. This is the Catholic faith, one true religion, which God wants, and no others. I say this. And when these interreligious meetings occur, the Catholic faith and Jesus Christ become one of the others on the side of the others, and this is undermining the uniqueness of the Catholic faith.” I thought as well. “And these meetings, they leave an impression that we have a kind of supermarket of religions,” I said this and went down, and then I greeted the Pope. It was published. He was nice to me. I accompanied him. After the meeting, I was the only bishop who accompanied him to the car because all the bishops remained in the cathedral, and my archbishop had to go to a car to accompany him for a meeting. So I was the only bishop to accompany the Pope to the door with his bodyguards, and so therefore, I had to accompany him until the car, and he was nice to me, laughing and smiling.
“Yes, because I do this out of love for him, even when I have to criticize him. Of course, I could not speak with him about serious things because we were surrounded by people. But if I have an occasion to be alone with him without others, I will tell him, ‘Holy Father, I am your best friend.’ Really serious, because I never in my life prayed so much for anyone as for you. I never celebrated so many Holy Masses for no one as for Pope Francis.”
So he has to be considering this also. This is strange, and not to do adoration.
So, he published this tragic document, as well-known for the service, when he spoke in Pittsburgh at the Catholic Identity Conference about this. Therefore, I seek out of fidelity and love for Holy Mother Church and for the honor of the apostolic see itself. Bishops, priests, and faithful in Europe, you are obliged to preserve the tradition of the Holy Masses and of the sacraments. It could even go so far that one day we will be forced to celebrate the traditional liturgy underground or in the catacombs, for the time being, in order to pass it on to the younger generations.
Now, in some places, it is already celebrated in private houses or in private chapels in gyms, like in Arlington. I will celebrate there on October 21 a solemn mass in honor of Blessed Karl of Austria at Nottingham Church. But this is also, God blesses these places, you know, the catacombs were very much blessed by God and brought many fruits. And so I think also this is a temporary situation where the traditional mass is banished to gyms and to private houses, and this will bear many fruits, I believe, many things, and because the traditional liturgy is invincible.
For example, I will share with you an example. My former archbishop, of whom I was auxiliary in my former diocese, is retired. When I was his auxiliary, I already started to celebrate the traditional mass, and he knew this, and he respected me, but he himself had no interest in the traditional mass. He was a pious man, but he had respect for me. Okay, and then he retired and went to Poland. He is Polish. And I think three years ago he phoned me. Sometimes he phones me. “Oh, I will tell you some good news. Good news.” “Which good news?” “Today, I celebrated for the first time in my life the traditional mass.” And I said to him, “Congratulations.” And then I asked him, “What were your impressions after you had celebrated for the first time?” And he said to me these words, “It was a difference as between heaven and earth.” Such a condition, “the traditional mass is heaven, the novus ordo is of this earth.” These were his words, my former archbishop, and he never had an interest in the traditional mass. Because a priest approached him and said, “Excellency, do you want? I could teach you to celebrate the traditional mass.” And he said, “Okay, let us try.” And so I know he said he is always celebrating traditional mass. A traditional man.
This year, I was also in Poland with confirmations in the old rite. I was still a good bishop, even a particular high mass. I was in the house with this bishop, and he has a housekeeper, a religious sister, a very pious one, and she never in her life assisted the traditional mass, never. So I was with a priest, and he was in the morning celebrating in the private chapel of the bishop, his own traditional mass. And he invited the sister, “Sister, do you want to assist my private mass?” And she said, “Okay,” and she, for the first time in her life, assisted a simple, private low mass of a priest.
At breakfast, the priest asked her, “Sister, what were your impressions after you assisted at the traditional mass for the first time?” And she said these three words, “sacredness, beauty, and silence.” She said she had never in her life experienced such sacredness, beauty, and silence. You see, this is the power of the traditional mass. It is the power of the prayer of the Holy Mother Church since ever since the ages, and such a great liturgical treasure of the church, the traditional mass, cannot simply be destroyed.
As I taught in Pittsburgh, let us say, hypothetically, a pope will come and say, “You are not to pray the Apostles’ Creed, I will give you a new formula of the creed, and you will not be allowed to pray the old formula of the creed. I will give you a new one, even if it will be orthodox and correct.” Imagine what God will be saying, “Hope is forbidding us to pray an apostolic creed which was prayed for at least a millennium,” and the same is the traditional mass. It is a formula of prayer which has been prayed for a millennium, and now it is almost forbidden or so persecuted, and this is for me the same or worse, because the traditional mass is not a redemptive mass in a new way. There were already their missals and texts 100 years before; the Council of Trent is the same organism identity. Where was the reform? The reform was by the fifth, so they did the missal, not the rest. It is a distinction, and we have a. Already in the 12th century, a beautiful, precise commentary on every detail of the holy mass of Pope Innocent III, at the end of the 12th century. So it is not a mass of 500 years, as some would say from the Council of Trent. No, this already gave texts from the 12th century. The same prayers to be explained, the same questions the Pope explains. It is the Pope of the time of St. Francis of Assisi, Innocent III, and so on. We have to know these historical facts. But this is a mass of almost one millennium. You cannot simply say this millennium. We substitute this. We said because they say, as Pius V made a reform, so also Paul VI made the reform of the Mass. This is wrong, completely wrong. It’s not historical. It’s a fake simply because Pius V did not reform the Mass, even precisely not. He simply took the traditional, century-old form of the Roman church and imposed this on the entire Western church, because there was chaos in liturgy in those times. And he said this, “Our old, unchanging rite in Rome is the most sure, surest, and you have to take this.” He said, “This exception of those who had more than 200 years.” And so, but in us was a completely new invention on the table of academics. It has never happened in 2000 years. Therefore, we cannot accept this. Of course, we know the mass is valid, of course, if it is celebrated according to the rules, I have to say.
And sometimes it is said, it is doubtful. Sometimes, if the rules of some places change the words for consecration, it could be invalid. But in any case, I think that the presence of the traditional form of the mass is such a power, and it will, over time, grow. And then, the church will come to a time, and must come a time when the Pope himself in Rome will celebrate a solemn, traditional mass in the Basilica of Saint Peter. From logic, this must be because the Holy See, Rome, is the pillar, the rock of the entire Catholic tradition, and it is currently occupied, Rome, by forces who will want to destroy the tradition. Catholicism is occupied.
The occupation will end because the Holy See is in the hands of God, ultimately, not in the hands of Pope Francis or Paul VI. No, it is in the hands of Christ, and it is only a temporary phenomenon. The Holy See is in a kind of exile, because it is occupied by powers of the enemies, not completely, but to a large extent. How can we otherwise say that the discrimination of such a holy, venerable rite and a remaining rite is a work of those who hate really Catholicism or to love? Maybe they have more brothers than this, and they won’t.
Therefore, they should not be discouraged. We have to continue, and therefore, I am so grateful that this exists. This was a mentioned foundation to support those priests and monasteries to maintain the tradition. And now you will extend this even so far into the East.
Because, you know, we Catholics must be really Catholics. What does “Catholic” mean? It is a branching of the entire point. This is Catholic, not only your or our country. Catholicism is in all countries, all nations. This is Catholic, this is the beauty of it. So you know this, what is Catholic, what is always, what was always consistent, what was in all places, in all nations. This is Catholic, ubiquitous, and is held and believed by all abominations. This is St. Vincent of Lérins. This is why we have to widen our horizon in the love and promotion of the traditional mass also.
So our support for the Latin Mass is not an act of disobedience to the Pope, even if some priests are forbidden today by their bishops, unfortunately, to celebrate the traditional Mass. They must not obey; they can surely celebrate in a discreet manner, maybe privately, at least the traditional mass. And with this, they will make a great contribution to our Holy Mother Church. It is not disobedience, because the letter of the law, we are not Pharisees. The letter of the law is not the first in the church, in the reign, in the kingdom of God. The truth, it is, is the first and the letter of the law is secondary, because we are not Pharisees, you know. And we need the law always, of course, we are not Protestants, but it is to protect us, but it is subordinated to the faith, to the truth.
And when a command of the Pope of the vision, which is law, the letter, is heavily attacking the integrity of the faith and the liturgy, then we cannot do. Then we have to set out the precedence, the faith, and the tradition. And we do this for the sake and union with all the saints, the Popes before, and with the Popes who will come. The Catholic strong Popes will come again, and we do now the work, and later they will say to us, to you all, “Thank you that you remained faithful in this difficult time. Thank you, even if you were temporarily disobedient to the Holy See formally, but you are obedient to the thoughts of all times of the Catholics.” And so we have also to know that Pius V, in his encyclical, practically canonized this form of prayer because the holy mass is prayer. It is prayer. This form, a solid, venerable form of prayer, is canonized. And he said very boldly, “By the present law, in which of our in virtue of our apostolic authority, we grant and concede in perpetuity, perpetuity, that for the chanting and economics in any church whatsoever, this missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely without any scruple of conscience, without any scruple of conscience.” So please, Francis, scruple of conscience you can celebrate even in informal disobedience to the picture, because Christ V in his bull said, “It is without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, you can celebrate this mass.”
This is love. It is also love for the church of the tradition, and so the priest will do this not with respect, but with love for the Pope and the bishop, even when we are temporarily not obeying the letter, but we are living the spirit of our Holy Mother Church of all times.
Only to quote an example, we have in the fourth century the Arian crisis, you know, there was a huge confusion in the church in the fourth century. The heretics, the Arians, denied the divinity of the Son of God and practically abolished the Holy Trinity, and the majority of the bishops in those times accepted, collaborated as is imagined, and only a few bishops remained faithful. Saint Athanasius first place, St. Basil the Great, and the good Catholics who had been faithful to the tradition. In the first century, they were expelled from the churches. They could not celebrate Christ in the churches because they were only faithful to the tradition. You see, some elements are in our time.
I will quote from a letter of Saint Basil of those times. It is very timely. He wrote, “The doctrines of the true Catholic faith are overthrown. The laws of the church are in confusion. The ambition of a man who has no fear of God rushes into high posts in the church, high posts in the church.” They say, “Bishops and Cardinals and high rank to exalted offices.” And now, “exalted offices in the church hierarchy are now in our day known as the price of a party,” the price of, they receive high offices. This was in the fourth century, but you see, we have the same in our time. And he says, “The result is that the worse a man and the church blasphemes, the fitter one thinks him to be a candidate for a bishop.”
“All hopes of clerical dignity are a thing of the past. There is a complete lack of man shepherd in the Lord’s flock. Ambitious men are constantly throwing away the provision for the poor for their own enjoyment of the distribution of gifts. There is complete immunity in sinning, for when men have been placed in high church offices by the favor of men, they are obliged to return the favor by continually showing indulgence to sins and to offenders. Just judgment is a thing of the past. Wise and sins know no bounds. And now the very indication of the right faith, the orthodoxy, is looked upon in some quarters as an opportunity for attacking purposes when someone is Orthodox. And the unbelievers are laughing at those times, the unbelievers, the pagans, about the situation in the church.”
“Men of weak faith are shaken. Faces uncertain became uncertain. Souls are dressed in ignorance because adulterators of the Word of God imitate the truth. The mouths of the true believers in the church are dumb, while every blasphemous time in the church is free. Holy things are trodden underfoot. Today, the holy commander of our Lord is trampled a lot. Through the Holy through the communion in hand.”
He says, “In the first century, even you must have heard,” he writes this letter to the Pope Damasus, “even you must have heard what is going on in most in our cities, here in the east, so visible from the east, how our people who are faithful to the tradition with wives and children and even our old men, stream out before the walls of the city in open air and offer their prayers in open air, putting up with all the inconvenience of the weather in great patience and waiting and sighing for help from the Lord.” So faithful.
You see, we have some parallels. And so we can say today this conviction to those bishops who will want to restrict or to extinguish the traditional mass, they will not succeed. We could even say to the Pope and to his counselors, “You will not succeed in extinguishing the traditional mass.” And in these dark moments when the traditional Catholics and priests are often humiliated, unjustly labeled as rigid ones, as Neopelagians and so on, we should consider this as an honor, to be unjustly treated only because of our unshakable fidelity and love to the manner our forefathers and the most and the saints have for centuries, for a millennium, celebrated the Holy Mass.
We firmly hope that there will come the time, and hopefully not too far in the future, when the traditional form of the mass, or a very close variant of it, will again shine bright in all Catholic churches in the entire world, and firstly, in the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome. And how could it be otherwise, since the Catholic Church is the pillar and ground of the truth?
So the liturgical exile of our day will end. We are already on the way back from exile, since we are accompanied by a very large number of saints, of popes, of generations of simple and faithful Catholics from so many ages and countries. They can say to those spiritually blinded and arrogant churchmen of our day who disdain the treasure of the traditional rite, we can say to them, “We will not succeed, since we are fighting against the work which the Holy Spirit so carefully and artfully has woven throughout centuries and ages and a millennium.” And so the faithfulness of the simplicity, the humility of the little ones in the church will win. God will make true in our time as well what he spoke to the prophet, “This is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble and contrite in spirit.”
We like to answer to the Lord in the midst of the liturgical exile with its ruins, paraphrasing Psalm 25, “O Lord, I love the beauty of the house, which is the traditional rite of the mass and the glory of that valley which is the Eucharistic valley of Christ in our churches, in our hearts also.” So each time we enter into the celebration of the venerable, millennium-old traditional rite of the Mass, let us speak with the words of the Psalm 21, “I rejoiced at the things that were said to me. We shall go into the house of the Lord.” And this is our joy in the traditional rite of the mass, and this joy in the traditional rite of the mass no one shall take from us.