RU 49/2006 - FRANCE

- FRANCE: On December 3, a noteworthy sermon about the visit of Benedict XVI in the Blue Mosque of Istanbul of November 30th was pronounced in a church of Paris. For your information, and for history, we take the liberty to reproduce large excerpts here:

"Very dear faithful in Christ, here we are on the first day of the Advent, that is on the first day of a new liturgical year... The Old Testament shows us Moïse, on the top of the mount of Horeb; contemplating this marvelous spectacle of a bush that burns without getting consumed by the flames. He decides to approach to contemplate this marvel which he doesn't understand, when the Lord calls him, from the middle of the bush, and orders him not to advance further and to take off his shoes. God condescends to explain to Moises that he must take off his shoes because this place is holy: the stripping of the shoes became thus, by divine Revelation, an especially solemn sacred gesture which expresses all the respect and the dependence of the human creature in front of God. It's this liturgical gesture of stripping the shoes which the Church preserved while reserving it to one of the most moving moments of the liturgical cycle, the worship of the unveiled Cross on Good Friday.

This respect, this reverence, this worship before God is the origin, in the New Testament, of so many acts pushed up until heroism : the Christians of the first centuries in particular gave, by hundred of thousands and even by millions, their blood because they didn't want to bend their heads before the idols. They didn't want to burn a single grain of incense to another God than the only true God...

My very dear brothers, why is Saint Polyeuctus, in the middle of so many others, today venerated on our altars? Is it necessary to recall his gestures which merited him the immortal crown? He spit on the Edit of the Roman emperor Decius who requested to sacrifice to the idols, he tore it into pieces. Then, seeing the people who brought idols in their arms to adore them, he stripped them from their hands, crashed them to the ground and trampled on them. Tortured to death, he has been placed by the Church on the altars for these gestures....

- How, from the top of the Heaven, a few days ago,... did Saint Polyeuctus react seeing Benedict XVI reiterating this gesture, by entering into the Blue Mosque of Istanbul? How did he appreciate the Holy Father's speech which said that the Christians and the Moslem, while following their respective religions, work for peace?

- And Moises, Moises of the bush of Horeb, how did he react while seeing this pope stripping his shoes, not to go up to the summit of Mount Horeb, not to adore the Cross of the Good Friday, but to go into a mosque, a shop of the hell? We know well, my very dear brothers, that his visit in the mosque is not the one of a tourist, that Benedict XVI didn't come to Turkey in order to make tourism there. We know well that the goal of his visit is not a tourist goal, nor a political one, but a religious one, that this gesture, as well as the stripping of the shoes, is incalculable in its effects of relativization of the Truth and in its effects of religious indifference. How much we would prefer to see our Lord, on His Cross, surrounded by two brigands rather than by idols! What other peace can be achieved in the world than the peace of O.L. Jesus Christ, and what reign over the nations other than the one of O.L. Jesus Christ?

Well, my very dear brothers, we don't know if this pope will be the one who will grant and recognize to all priests the right to celebrate the Mass of Saint Pius V. We pray for this intention, and we shall continue to do so, and if the Pope gives this right concerning the Mass, we will be thankful to him. But, if the Pope renders us the Holy Mass, we certainly won't forget at the same time that the one who grants it to us, is however the pope who took off his shoes in a mosque, and that this pope will have contributed to the immense humiliation undergone by the Catholic Church today. And this is the reason why we tell to all those who want to push the Catholics to throw themselves into the pope's arms as if the crisis was finished,... that they do a bad job. We would be lying if we said that this pope is a traditionalist, lying if we said that the doctrinal crisis of the Church is finished.

You know well, my very dear brothers that in no way, the Priests Society Pius X says that this pope without shoes is non-valid. Let's leave those easy escapades to the sedevacantists; but the Priests Society refuses to make believe that this pope came back to the Tradition of the Church and that we can henceforth give our confidence to him. The facts are there, showing us the opposite, and we would be blind if, in front of the dramatic gestures like the ones which just occurred, we wouldn't see, we wouldn't understand.

Thus, during this liturgical year, faithful to that reverence that God recalls to us by the first commandment, we will thankfully continue to remain Catholics and we will implore the Heaven that the Catholics be not led astray by misleading speeches and gestures confusing the minds....

We turn our eyes towards the Very Holy Virgin Mary who crushes with her bare foot the head of the demon. We humbly kiss her feet and we ask through her God's grace that with the same strength the pope may have the courage - it needs a lot of courage - to announce the Truth and the singleness of the Catholic religion, of the mediation of O.L. Jesus Christ, while saying that the other religions are not religions wanted by God and that they are there to fool men and to stop them from going to God; that they are false religions, religions which are coming from hell. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen." - End of quotation.

This preach was made, of course, by Rev. Fr. Regis de Cacqueray, Superior of the French District of the SSPX, and the church where this sermon was pronounced, was the large church Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet, in the very center of Paris. - (ru; cf. LPL Dec. 3)