It is with a sense of awesomeness that I, a layman, address these thoughts to the Roman Pontiff. The reason for this letter is that many of my friends and I have concluded that the direction of your Pontificate thus far is unclear. Mankind cannot live in peace without truth. Forgive us, Holy Father, if we seem presumptuous, but our anguish is great. We find ourselves confused by recent events. We turn with confidence to you for answers to the riddles, the solutions of which are so necessary for the salvation of souls.

The fruits of the so-called "age of enlightenment" are apparent today. The Illuminati and their descendants in thought have wrought the destruction of society which they aimed for. For over two hundred years their watchword has been "Novus Ordo Saeculorum". They have succeeded in destroying the fabric of moral life by the introduction of chaos. They have appealed to the baser instincts of mankind to polarize, or at least to neutralize him from the true Faith of Jesus Christ. They have made it clear that their quest for world control would not be complete until they destroyed the power of the papacy. To do this, they have boldly declared that a council of the Church would be convened which would serve the aims of men—not those of God—and that eventually they would gain their convert in the highest office of the Vatican.

Twenty years ago, such statements seemed, to the majority of us, to be the figments of over-zealous imaginations. Not so today. Witness the wholesale turning of Catholic governments into purely secular states where divorce, contraception, and abortion are taken for granted. Witness the complete destruction of sound teaching in our once Catholic schools, universities, and seminaries. Are you aware, Holy Father, that at the Redemptorist Institute in Rome, as well as at many others in the Eternal City, "theologians" are permitted to teach such doctrines as that "perhaps St. Joseph is the biological father of Jesus Christ," or, that "Christ never really understood His mission in this world until very late in His earthly life"?

Holy Father, if Truth were an unimportant commodity, such discussion would be pointless. But Our Lord Jesus Christ made it very clear that we are made for Truth. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," He said. We must know the Truth and live by the Truth in this world so that we may embrace It for all eternity. One thing is apparent: Truth cannot contradict itself. In the past twenty years we have seen such men as Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Raymond Brown "accommodate" truth to the times. This is impossible. Men are either saved or lost for all eternity, depending upon their acceptance or rejection of the entire truth.

The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church has been the vehicle in time of the total deposit of truth by which men are to be saved. In spite of those who would try to pervert Her teachings, She has withstood, as a bastion, and will do so until the consummation of the world. The traditions of our Faith have been proclaimed by one pontiff after another, from age to age, until the reign of your predecessor, Pope Paul VI. Here we see this "accommodation to truth the proclaiming of the traditional Faith, for example, in Mysterium Fidei, and the acting against it in the encouragement of and promulgation of documents such as Gaudium et Spes, which have eroded the absolute power of the papacy through an excessive concept of collegiality, and have promoted a false ecumenism; the toleration of error in Catholic schools throughout the world; and especially by the reformulation of our Holy Mass—the central act of worship, by which all grace is dispensed—into an act acceptable to Protestants. We see the toleration of abuses in worship in our churches which, in some cases, can only be called diabolic. We see how the Pope approved the elimination of the exorcism in the new rite of baptism and later publicly regretted having done so (15 November 1972). We have read public quotations such as: "In spite of the immense light of our Catholic religion, the search and expectation of further revelation are not complete: on the contrary they are still at the beginning. Faith is not complete knowledge, it is the source of hope . . . Study, research, let us say the word that compromises the whole human-religious process, love remains active and dynamic" (Allocution of Pope Paul VI reported in The Wanderer, 15 February 1973). A student of St. Pius X's Encyclical Pascendi will see serious problems with this statement of Pope Paul. It is, at the very least, ambiguous and typical of Modernism.

Holy Father, Our Lord Jesus Christ was never ambiguous. The Church has never been ambiguous in its official presentation of defined truths. The Church has been commissioned by Christ Himself to preach the truth to all men. How, then, can we preach the truth and, at the same time, not preach the truth? This is the hallmark of a Modernist. Until the reforms of Vatican II every priest and professor of philosophy and theology had been required to take the oath against Modernism. The infallibly dogmatic canons of the Council of Trent clarified the truth for millions of souls lost in the quagmire of Protestant error. You, yourself, must have taken the profession of the Tridentine Faith before your ordination to the Holy Priesthood. When you were consecrated a Bishop, you promised to call truth truth and error error.

Holy Father, we are most grateful for your courage in defending the Faith against the attacks made upon it by men like Father Hans Küng. We ask that you follow up on this and exercise your full authority in seeing that all those who continue to teach false ideologies in our schools and seminaries be expelled from positions of responsibility. You, as the Vicar of Christ, have not only the authority, but the duty to do so. To act in any other way would be to lose souls.

We ask you to study carefully the Novus Ordo Missae and its accompanying promulgation. Do you not agree with Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, that the direction of the New Mass is a striking departure from the Faith as dogmatically defined at the Council of Trent? His Eminence, Cardinal Ottaviani, said: "The innovations in the Novus Ordo could well turn into a certainty the suspicion that truths which have always been believed by the Christian people, can be changed or ignored without infidelity to that sacred deposit of doctrine to which the Catholic Faith is bound forever." On April 10, 1970, Pope Paul VI thanked the six Protestant ministers who helped to change the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for: ". . . imparting an authentic simplicity . . . adjusting the ancient texts to our way of thinking . . . elevating divine worship . . . correcting the old texts . . . bringing them into a greater theological richness." (Reported in the 17 April 1970 edition of L'Osservatore Romano.) Holy Father, we ask, does this agree with the explanation of the duty of the Roman Pontiff made by the Fathers of Vatican Council I, when they said: "This gift, then, of truth and never-failing faith was conferred by Heaven upon Peter and his successors in this Chair, that they might perform their high office for the salvation of all; that the whole flock of Christ, kept away by them from the poisonous food of error, might be nourished with the pasture of heavenly doctrine; that, the occasion of schism being removed, the whole Church might be kept one, and resting in its foundation, might stand firm against the gates of hell"?

The Novus Ordo is not totally Catholic. If it is not completely Catholic, it is un-Catholic, therefore, anti-Catholic. Christ said, "He who is not with Me is against Me." Holy Father, the center of our Faith is the renewal of Calvary. If this Sacrifice is in any way neutralized or Protestantized, it becomes offensive to Almighty God. The Divine Law forbids us to participate in what we know to be false worship. To do so would be an insult to Almighty God and destructive to our salvation.

We have been encouraged by the statements made by you in Poland, Ireland, and in the United States. At the same time, we are puzzled by news of your participation on two recent occasions in public worship with non-Catholics. We are puzzled by your statement to the Fathers of Vatican II, as Archbishop of Cracow, that "it is not the Church's place to teach unbelievers. She must seek in common with the rest of the world." We are puzzled by your statement on 2 October 1979, to the youth of Boston: "I sincerely hope that my whole visit to the United States will be seen in the light of the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on 'The Church in the Modern World'." Holy Father, in that same allocution you advised the young people: "Do not be afraid of truth. With Christ's help and through prayer, you can answer His call, resisting temptations and fads, and every form of mass manipulation." Respectfully we ask—and may we use the words of St. Catherine of Siena to her beloved Pontiff—"Holy Father, be our Pope!"

We hunger to hear the highest authority in the Church exercise that authority by restoring Truth to our institutions of learning.

We hunger to hear the Vicar of Christ proclaim the rights of the Sacred Heart of Jesus over the hearts of all men.

We hunger to see the Pope restore the certainly Catholic form of worship to its full use in the Latin Rite of the Catholic world, as mandated by your predecessor, Pope Saint Pius V.

We hunger to see all the Sacraments restored to their traditional forms, so that ambiguity will be removed and certainty restored.

We hunger to see the prayer of Christ, "that all may be one" a reality, but through loving encouragement of our separated brethren to embrace the Truth, rather than through our embracing their errors.

Your Holiness, we beg you to accept this letter as a proof of our loving attachment to the See of Peter and to the Papacy. Be assured of our continued prayers to Jesus, Mary and Joseph that Your Holiness will follow faithfully the admonition of Christ, "Simon, lovest thou Me? Feed My lambs, feed My sheep."

Donald R. Fantz
1243 Alpine Road
Walnut Creek, CA. 94596