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Dear Friends and Benefactors:
In a recent issue of the Latin Mass magazine, there was an article by Joan Zola, Catholic Traditionalism and the Protestant Temptation. There is not space in this letter to provide a full analysis of this article, but its main theme was that traditional Catholics, rather than fight against the spread of modernism within the Church, should obey and be silent. Joan Zola writes, “Like Cordelia in King Lear, and like their counterparts in all the crises of Church history, they (the faithful) will love and be silent.”
The errors of this viewpoint are many. First, it is false. From your standard catechism, the term “Church militant,” which defines the members of the Church on earth, implies that Catholics have a duty to fight for the Faith. Sometimes, the enemies of the Faith are within the Church. Pope Pius IX stated, “Liberal Catholics are the worst enemies of the Church.” Since today liberal Catholics in general hold the levers of power in the Church, it is inevitable that sometimes it is necessary to resist those holding positions of authority. St. Thomas Aquinas stated, “Where there is a proximate danger to the Faith, prelates must be rebuked, even publicly, by subjects.”
A second error of this viewpoint is that it defies commonsense. If the faithful do not fight for the Faith, it means that the modernist revolutionaries can proceed with the destruction of the Church unimpeded. It is commonsense that a gardener must pick the weeds out of the garden if the vegetable plants are to flourish.
Thirdly, the fruits of the advocates of silence are bad. Evil can then flourish without any opposition. St. Catherine of Siena, doctor of the Church, stated, “We’ve had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence.” What St. Catherine said then is just as relevant today. To remain silent in the face of the great harm that the modernists are doing is to acquiesce in the destruction of the Church. The advocates of silence do great damage to the Church by weakening the traditionalist resistance to today’s destruction of the Church. They paralyze and neutralize good men and women who are fighting to maintain the traditions of the Church being eviscerated by the modernist juggernaut.
St. Padre Pio once told traditional author Anne McGinn Cillis, “You must defend what is yours!” This must become a rallying cry for traditional Catholics. We can’t just sit around and let the enemies of the Faith within the Church destroy what is left of our Catholic heritage. We can’t just cower before modernist authorities who use their authority to implement a revolution in Catholic belief and practice. As the great philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote, “All disciplinary authority, all obedience to a bishop presupposes the pure teaching of the Holy Church. As soon as the ecclesiastical authority yields to pluralism in questions of faith, it has lost the right to claim obedience to its disciplinary ordinances.”
Should Catholics be silent in the face of the modernist assault on our faith? No, we must rise to this occasion and fight to defend the Faith from its enemies, both from within and without. We must work tirelessly to defend the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. The Church can only flourish if good men and women are willing to take a stand. Rather than listen to the likes of Joan Zola and other advocates of silence, we must follow the Blessed Virgin Mary, who at La Salette said, “May your zeal make you famished for the glory and the honour of Jesus Christ. Fight, children of light, you, the few who can see.”
Triumph Communications will not be silent. Instead, we are continuing to publish books, CDs, and cassette tapes from a wide range of authors who promote traditional Catholicism. We have just published The Kingdom of Darkness, the third book in our series of books by Malachi Martin. We believe that The Kingdom of Darkness is the defining work on possession, exorcism, and the activity of the devil in the modern world. The book version of The Kingdom of Darkness includes material that is not in the CD and cassette tape versions. We have produced two series of recordings with Anne McGinn Cillis, a living spiritual daughter of St. Padre Pio. The first series, Padre Pio: A Sign of Contradiction, discusses the miracles of Padre Pio and his views on the direction that the Church took after Vatican II. Because Padre Pio is a canonized saint and had the gift of prophecy, his views must be taken seriously. The second series, Encounter with History, is an interview about her two-volume book set, Arrivederci, Padre Pio: A Spiritual Daughter Remembers. This set of interviews discusses her experiences during the tumultuous aftermath of the Second Vatican Council.
As dark as the situation often appears in these times of the twilight of Christian civilization, it is an error to be too pessimistic. With zeal, determination, and confidence in divine providence, much can be accomplished. Divine providence usually works through a human instrument. What Fr. Karl Stehlin, a traditional priest currently stationed in Poland, has accomplished in eastern Europe is inspiring. In the series of recordings, Incredible Developments in Eastern Europe!, Fr. Karl Stehlin discusses his work in the lands so crucial to the message of Our Lady of Fatima and the relevance of St. Maximilian Kolbe for our times.
Triumph Communications is determined to do what it can to defend and promote the traditional Catholic faith. We urge you to support our work of publishing traditional Catholic books, CDs, and cassette tapes. We invite you to send us any names and addresses of anyone that you think would be interested in our work and ask you to pray for the success of our endeavors. May all be for the greater glory of God.
God Bless,
Bernard Janzen
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