Dear Francis,

We write to you as fellow sinners, in great need of God’s mercy. In various ways — especially through your Synod on Synodality and persistent opposition to proselytism — you have asked Catholics to have respect for all baptized Christians and their particular religious beliefs. This openness to the religious beliefs of others encourages us to explain our religion to you.

We are Catholics who believe the same truths, and retain the same religious devotions, that all Catholics enjoyed prior to Vatican II. We often call ourselves Traditional Catholics, while others refer to us as rigid and backward.

“For whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth; and He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. Persevere under discipline. God dealeth with you as with His sons; for what son is there, whom the father doth not correct?” (Hebrews 12:6-7)

“Living Tradition bobs along like a cork through the stream of evolving dogma. What a pleasant euphemism for the old heresy of dogmatic historicism.” (Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, One Hundred Years of Modernism)

Pius XII’s Humani Generis from 1950 was the last major encyclical warning Catholics about the dangers facing the Church prior to Vatican II. In it, he denounced what he termed the “imprudent zeal for souls” that led some Catholics to question the necessity of belonging to the Catholic Church:

“Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. Others finally belittle the reasonable character of the credibility of Christian faith. These and like errors, it is clear, have crept in among certain of Our sons who are deceived by imprudent zeal for souls or by false science.”

At this point in Francis’s Synod on Synodality, most rational Catholics who have paid attention have seen enough to know that it is a deliberate attack from hell on the Catholic Church. In hindsight, this ought to have been clear from Francis’s opening address of the Synod over two years ago, when he announced his intention to create a different church:

“Father Congar, of blessed memory, once said: ‘There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church’ (True and False Reform in the Church). That is the challenge. For a ‘different Church,’ a Church open to the newness that God wants to suggest, let us with greater fervour and frequency invoke the Holy Spirit and humbly listen to him, journeying together as he, the source of communion and mission, desires: with docility and courage.”

“Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith! We will be true to thee till death.” (Faith of Our Fathers, Fr. Frederick William Faber)

In his February 25, 2019 address on the fiftieth anniversary of Cardinal Augustin Bea’s death, Francis praised Bea’s ability to foster unity among all people as well as his immense influence at Vatican II: 

“[The Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies], in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Center for the Study of Christianity in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is commemorating Cardinal Augustin Bea by a series of scholarly lectures marking the fiftieth anniversary of his death. You thus have an opportunity to reconsider this outstanding figure and his decisive influence on several important documents of the Second Vatican Council. The issues of the Church’s relationship with Judaism, Christian unity, and freedom of conscience and religion, remain significant and extremely timely.”

For several decades, many of the most ardent and capable defenders of Catholic tradition have debated the question of how to respond to a heretical pope. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, for instance, had this to say about the reign of Paul VI:

“Perhaps one day, in thirty or forty years, a meeting of cardinals gathered together by a future Pope will study and judge the reign of Paul VI, perhaps they will say that there were things that ought to have been clearly obvious to people at the time, statements of the Pope that were totally against Tradition. At the moment, I prefer to consider the man on the chair of Peter as the Pope; and if one day we discover for certain that the Pope was not the Pope, at least I will have done my duty.”

“But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil.” (Matthew 5:37)

Almost two years ago, Francis opened his Synod on Synodality by telling the world that he intended to “create a different church”:

“The Holy Spirit guides us where God wants us to be, not to where our own ideas and personal tastes would lead us.  Father Congar, of blessed memory, once said: ‘There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church’ (True and False Reform in the Church).  That is the challenge.  For a ‘different Church,’ a Church open to the newness that God wants to suggest, let us with greater fervour and frequency invoke the Holy Spirit and humbly listen to him, journeying together as he, the source of communion and mission, desires: with docility and courage.”

As The Remnant hosts the 2023 Catholic Identity Conference in Pittsburgh from September 29th to October 1st, Francis will host his ecumenical prayer vigil in Rome, Together — Gathering the People of God, as part of the Synod on Synodality:

“On 30 September 2023, an ecumenical prayer vigil will take place in Rome in the presence of Pope Francis and representatives of different Churches, to unite us in praise and silence, in listening to the Word. Young people aged between 18 and 35 from across Europe, from all Church backgrounds, are invited from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon and will be welcomed for a weekend of sharing, to journey together as the people of God.”