Open letter to Fr. Zendejas

Catholic Candle note:

The following open letter to Fr. Gerardo Zendejas is written by the Catholics at FatherThemannAnswered@gmail.com.

Previously, these Catholics have written five open letters to liberal leaders of the new-SSPX (the first letter was to Fr. Themann). Because those SSPX leaders were so plainly committed to the conciliar path, the authors did not first write those liberal leaders privately, because it would have been futile.

However, because Fr. Zendejas is in some way considered part of the Resistance to liberalism, one of the authors of this present open letter wrote him a letter privately and individually, three weeks ago, containing the same substance as the letter below.

This private letter pointed out Fr. Zendejas’ liberal statements and expressed the hope that there was somehow just a misunderstanding. This letter to Fr. Zendejas was courteous, was sent to him as a courtesy and requested a response. He did not give the courtesy of any reply, even after receiving a follow-up call and voicemail.

It is our goal to inform those in the Resistance so they better understand Fr. Zendejas and avoid being influenced by his liberalism.

We are writing a letter whose contents we have long been turning over in our minds.

There is a great problem among the faithful because of the ambiguity and liberalism in your stance on the problems in the SSPX and regarding the principal errors of our time.

Perhaps you think you are being clear and uncompromisingly traditional. You are not.

We are writing to share with you a few representative examples (among countless others) of the ambiguity and liberalism with which you are roiling the faithful and the Resistance movement. We are writing in a constructive effort to help you see objectively what you are saying, with the constructive hope that you will publicly correct your liberal statements and will speak and write differently in the future.

Don’t you see how wrong that first clause is? It is structured as a supposition contrary to fact! You are saying that there is no salvation outside the conciliar church!

In fact, the truth is not only that there “could be” salvation outside the conciliar church but that it is our duty to stay outside the conciliar church. As Archbishop Lefebvre declared:

We have no clue what you mean. Are you asking whether persons in the Resistance who are not part of a group, can save their souls? This meaning is suggested by your own comments that: When you jump out of the [SSPX] boat, you swim by yourself. You did it. What are you doing? You’re surviving! Hear your words during your Oct. 26, 2014 YouTube conference.

If that is what you mean (in the Blue Paper #300 quote above), it is false and misleads the faithful by indicating that their salvation is more certain in the SSPX than “swimming” in the Resistance.

Or your unclear statement might be asking whether people in the conciliar church—i.e., who are not in a traditionalist group—can save their souls. It is hard to say what you mean.

You make scandalous statements where you suggest that the problem with Vatican II is merely one of ambiguity. For example, you say:

You are saying that Vatican II’s conflict with the truth is only an apparent conflict because of ambiguity. You talk here just like Cardinals Burke and Mueller who are conciliar revolutionaries! They lament the misunderstandings and lack of unity because of differences in understanding the council! Although there is much ambiguity in the documents of Vatican II, why don’t you mention the very many plain errors that so pervade these documents? One of many examples of plain conciliar errors is the error of religious liberty.

Here you use a classic tactic of the enemies of Catholic Tradition, viz., to suggest there can ever be a contradiction between Truth and obedience.

Someone could wrongly suppose that your quotation marks around the word “obedience” show you mean false obedience. But that supposition is inconsistent with your usage in the same blue paper where you say that the conciliar hierarchy demands obedience (without quote marks) to Vatican II, and also where you say that:

If your quotation marks (around the word obedience immediately above) really indicated false obedience, then in this statement you would be wrongly saying that there is no real conflict between false obedience and the truth. In fact, truth and real obedience are always on the same side—against error and false obedience on the other side.

Because truth and real obedience are on the same side, as misleading as your statement is, you make it worse by saying that Catholics always must choose between truth and obedience! You are saying there is no occasion—at any time or in any situation—when truth and obedience go together!

1. Archbishop Lefebvre did not seek any “union” as soon as possible.

The only thing the Archbishop sought was that the hierarchy regained the Faith as soon as possible. His statement from Spiritual Journey (quoted above) proves this. Also, Archbishop Lefebvre was waiting for the conciliar churchmen to acknowledge Christ as King of all, by which those churchmen would join the True Church:

2. Archbishop Lefebvre correctly held that there was no true problem nor lack of real union with the pope and the Catholic Church, but only disunion with the conciliar church.

Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, by Michael Davies, vol. 1, p.151, quoting the 9-3-75 Letter to friends and benefactors #9.¹

So, as Archbishop Lefebvre correctly reasoned, he and his Society were not deprived of their true union with the pope because law and jurisdiction cannot be used to harm the Faith and the Society which was (supposedly) “suppressed” entirely because it stood almost alone defending the Faith.

Reverend Dr. Boyd A. Cathey, a canon lawyer, made this same point when he analyzed the SSPX’s canonical case and publicly defended Archbishop Lefebvre at the time. Father Cathey concluded his analysis as follows:

Real union with the pope was always present—truly and essentially—because a modernist pope cannot destroy any faithful Catholic’s essential unity with the Church and Her vicar. Archbishop Lefebvre lacked unity with the conciliar church and never wanted that unity.² Therefore, there was no unity that Archbishop Lefebvre wanted to re-establish.

Lastly, regarding your errors in this fifth example, you say that Archbishop Lefebvre desired union without compromise. But as Archbishop Lefebvre correctly declares (above), there can never be any union with the conciliar church without compromise. This is another reason that what you claim in the quote about Archbishop Lefebvre is utterly false.

Father, you scandalize the faithful also by what you objectively say about the SSPX. For example, you only refer to the problems with the April 15, 2012 doctrinal declaration as being omission, although that document contains glaring affirmative errors as well. You say:

This false suggestion (that the problem with Bishop Fellay’s declaration is mere omission) fits your very weak criticism of that doctrinal declaration as not of Archbishop’s standards. Here are your words:

The 4-15-12 doctrinal declaration was not merely lower than the Archbishop’s standards but was truly worthy of condemnation! Do you see the difference? Here is an example to illustrate this difference:

So your very weak statement about Bishop Fellay’s doctrinal declaration merely says that Archbishop Lefebvre could have done a better job on that declaration than Bishop Fellay did. Do you see the weakness and grave omission in your statement?

Father, there are countless other things you say in your blue papers and elsewhere, that are frankly incoherent, plainly wrong and leave the reader shaking his head. You leave the reader with the distinct impression that you do not mean what you actually say (since he assumes you mean to teach the Catholic Faith). We take only one more example: you say God instituted two societies: the family and civil society. Here are your words:

You know Christ instituted the Catholic Church. Whatever you mean in the quote (above), it “didn’t come out right” objectively. In other words, what you said is false, viz., that God instituted two societies—when God also instituted the Church.

This is like if you were to say that Divine Providence granted that there would be one bishop faithful to Catholic Tradition: Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer. Such a statement is false and is a calumny to Archbishop Lefebvre, because he is a second bishop faithful to Catholic Tradition.

Fr. Zendejas, the Catholic Church needs uncompromising priests to guide and sanctify the faithful. In the past you have done much good and you could again do good. We pray that you return from liberalism and incoherence (such as quoted above) and that you assist in this work for Christ the King!

St. Thomas says the same thing in the context of what is true about all law, including all Church law. Summa, Ia IIae, Q. 90.↑
Archbishop Lefebvre declared:

To stay inside the Church, or to put oneself inside the Church—what does that mean? Firstly, what Church are we talking about? If you mean the Conciliar Church, then we who have struggled against the Council for twenty years because we want the Catholic Church, we would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order, supposedly, to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion. It is not the subjects that make the superiors, but the superiors who make the subjects.

Fideliter #70, July-August 1989.

Back before the SSPX’s liberalism, all of its superiors wrote to Rome on July 6, 1988, asking to be formally excommunicated from the conciliar church:

We ask for nothing better than to be declared out of communion with this adulterous spirit which has been blowing in the Church for the last 25 years; we ask for nothing better than to be declared outside of this impious communion of the ungodly....To be publicly associated with this sanction which is inflicted upon the six Catholic Bishops, Defenders of the Faith in its integrity and wholeness, would be for us a mark of honor and a sign of orthodoxy before the faithful. They have indeed a strict right to know that the priests who serve them are not in communion with a counterfeit church ....
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1. Archbishop Lefebvre did not seek any “union” as soon as possible.

2. Archbishop Lefebvre correctly held that there was no true problem nor lack of real union with the pope and the Catholic Church, but only disunion with the conciliar church.