Even before this, however, another meaningful occurrence which might be very useful for the research I have suggested, should be mentioned. I quote from the Spanish What's Up (Que Pasa?) magazine, Vol. VII, No. 363, of
December 12, 1970:
The famous and “regretfully” octogenarian Cardinal Ottaviani does not conceal his bitterness.
In its issue of Thursday, November 26, in three columns on the first and second pages, The Messenger (It Messagero) from Rome, published a sensational interview with His Eminence Alfred Cardinal Ottaviani. The report is accompanied by a large photograph of this venerable prince of the Church. . . .
According to the Pope’s November 24 Motu Proprio, beginning next January no eighty -year-old cardinal will be able to participate in the election of the Pontiff. Presently, these persons amount to twenty-five. Among them is
saintly Cardinal Ottaviani, who celebrated his eightieth birthday on October 29, 1970.
Question: What does His Eminence think about this decision of Paul VI?
Answer: More important than my personal opinion, which could be deemed biased because of my age, I should like to convey the feelings of
canons, prelates, and even renowned hierarchs who are unaware of the current problems of the Church. Undoubtedly they all are impressed by
this unusual and expeditious way of enacting this grave disruption in the high
ecclesiastical hierarchy. This radical change was implemented without previous consultation with experts and specialists, at least to observe the formalities to a certain extent.
Question: Why did Your Eminence say "unusual?” Perhaps because no one expected such a big upsetting decision?
Answer: It is unusual that, through a Motu Proprio, without previous advice, the pages of the constitution Vacante Sede Apostolica and those of the Code of Canonical Law, which regulated the position of the cardinals, both as to the cooperation they owe the Pontiff for the rule of the world Church, and as to their most important ministry as top electors of the Head
of the Universal Church, are suppressed. This Motu Proprio then, is an act of abolition of a multicentennial tradition. It rejects the practice followed by all ecumenical councils. Regarding the age limit [the Most Eminent Cardinal spoke calmly and composedly, without any sign of uneasiness], should old age be respected, we would be able to sow the seed whose fruits
you yourselves would harvest. But here respect was laid aside. ... It is precisely the motivation of age which the Motu Proprio invokes to justify such a grave regulation. In fact, along the centuries, a principle was always
deemed immutable, namely, that old people are a firm safeguard of the Church and its best advisors, for they are rich in experience, wisdom, and doctrine. If, in a given case, these gifts were not present, it sufficed to examine the circumstances concerning this particular person to determine whether disease or mental disturbance made him inept, this check
belonging to skillful experts. In Holy Writ,” [the Most Eminent Cardinal was astonishingly bright], "the value of age and the aged are often mentioned. This shows how constructive are the cooperation and guarantee of advanced age in the administration of holy things and in right and efficient pastoral administration. In addition, let us not forget the glory of Pontiffs, who, in their old age, enlightened the Church with their wisdom and sanctity. Finally, when we cardinals are in our eighties, to our
credit is a curriculum vitae full of merits, experience, and doctrines at the service of the Church. The Church cannot afford to lose these advantages by accepting only the cooperation of younger and less-experienced people.
Question : Eminence, could not this discrimination of octogenarian cardinals by chance affect the Pontiff himself someday?
Answer: Certainly, for the same criterion must be analogically applied to the case of the sovereign Pontiff, be he an octogenarian or be his acts questioned due to age.
Question : Finally, Eminence: What was your impression about this decision of the Pope?
Answer: You will see. I felt flattered each time Paul VI, verbally or in writing, called me u il mio maestro ” (“my master”), but now this act of laying me aside completely is openly contradictory with his autographed letter of October 29. In that, he congratulated me for my eightieth birthday, using affectionate phrases and flattering felicitations for my long,
faithful, everyday services to the Church.
STATEMENTS BY CARDINAL TISSERANT
According to the November 27, 1970 issue of La Croix , 86-year-old Cardinal Tisserant, who enjoys full mental clarity and excellent physical health, answered questions on Italian Television (First Network). I quote La Croix:
Rarely had an interview attained such importance and contained such interesting information. In just three minutes, the audience was informed about the Pope’s critical health condition (“he had to be held up on the way out of his
Wednesday audience”), about the Cardinal’s excellent state of health, about Christ having founded His Church under the form of a monarchic state , and about the collegiality of the bishopric about which we have heard so much (“The
more it is mentioned, the less it is exercised”).
Apropos of Paul Vi’s decision to keep the election of the Pope in the hands of less-than-80-year-old cardinals, Cardinal Tisserant said he did not know the grounds thereof (though the Pontifical document stated them clearly), and that, undoubtedly, the Pope wanted to please young people , since “now, everybody
wants old people to disappear
Wednesday afternoon. Professor Alessandrini categorically denied the Cardinal’s words regarding the Pope’s health condition.
SOME COMMENTS BY FATHER RAYMOND DULAC
When Fr. Raymond Dulac was asked his opinion of Paul Vi’s decision to take away the right of voting in papal elections from cardinals 80 years and older, he made these statements:
This decision taking away the right of voting in the papal election from a whole category of cardinals, is an enormous decision. Until now, the most important part of their function was this right. It commands and effects their
beheading in the most accurate sense of this word; they keep their hats, but their heads are chopped off. This is what the ancient Romans called diminutio capitis, a lessening or amputation of their civil rights and, of course, of their personality.
Let us not forget that the statute creating the cardinals’ right to elect the Pope dates back to the year 1059; that during the arduous course of this thousand-year period of history this rule was never questioned; that the
“impediment” of advanced age has never prevented the creation of a cardinal or the continuing of a Pope once he became 80 years old, that it is contrary to the Catholic spirit and the Roman Tradition to suspend a law supported by such a time-honored custom without most grave reasons; and that this type of change,
affected by the Pope in 1970 in such a sudden, personal, and suspicious way, will
increase most people’s feelings of insecurity, instability, and the alienation which
has contributed to de-sacralizing the Church and loosening its customs.
Let us forget the inhuman, vain, vile aspects of this decision concerning the age of men whose sacerdotal ordination had separated them from mortal mankind as far as powers and dignities are concerned.
After this blow and all the others of the past five years designed to naturalize and laicize the clergy, how could one have the heart to keep on telling the ordained young priests: ”7u es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem
Melchisedech ?" Priest for all eternity? Of what order? Not of the carnal Levitical
tribe, but of the order of that astonishing, unique, ageless personage, Melchisedech, whose mystery is revealed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, verse 3 of Chapter 7: “Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having
neither beginning of days nor end of life, but likened unto the Son of God, continueth a priest forever.”
This all being over, today’s priest is just like an official who, in due course, is “retired,” with a life pension, like a Swiss guard.
Since Paul VI, without much of a preamble, has nullified a millenary legislation, it is important to know whether his Motu Proprio was not in fact, a Motu alieno.
This most unusual act is an act of personal might on the part of a Pontiff who, so far as others are concerned, keeps on covering himself with the curtain of collegiality. We are sure this act has not been free. Should it be proven that it was free, there will be no need to nullify this act; as a matter of right, it will be null and void
“For behold ... the Lord of hosts shall take away from Jerusalem, and from Juda . . . the strong man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the cunning . . . and the ancient. The captain over fifty, and the
honourable . , . and the counsellor . . . And I will give children to be their princes,
and , . . the child shall make a tumult against the ancient ; and the base against the
honourable (Is. 3:1-5). He who is able to understand let him understand [italics
added].
This is Paul VI, living contradiction. On the one hand, he affirms; on the other, he denies. Many times, without even preserving appearances, he destroys with facts what he has built with words. Let the reader remember what the
Pontiff wrote in his brief to Cardinal Lercaro when the Cardinal was almost eighty years old, wishing him a long life in the service of the Church. Then let him read the Motu Proprio, whereby he deprives octogenarian cardinals of their legitimate rights on grounds of age, not because of incapacity. Paul’s dialectics
are incomprehensible and plainly destructive.
Applying these dialectics, regulating our criteria by the principles of this Motu Proprio , we must conclude that the octogenarian Pontiff, John XXIII, was an inept pope, and his council was no real council, because, according to
Pope Montini, one’s reason quits functioning when one is eighty years old, and one is no longer able to receive the light of the Holy Ghost.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF GENOA , CARDINAL SIRI t SPEAKS
In order to decipher the enigma of the current Pontiff, I believe it to be extremely important to quote the courageous statements of Cardinal Siri, Archbishop of Genoa. He did not speak directly about Paul VI, but I believe
that what he said can be applied to Pope Montini:
1. Opinions Replace Truth .
In this world the first and fundamental doctrine of power consists of an affirmation that there is no truth. Saint Augustine said that the difference between the city of this world and the city of God consists of the former having a thousand opinions, while the latter has only one truth. The basic difference between both cities, therefore, is not based on the content, but on the very existence of truth. It suffices to remember the dramatic dialogue between Jesus and Pilate.
What is most grave is that there is a technique to replace truth by opinions.
This technique exists and is very useful. It suffices to look at present religious,
literary, and philosophical productions. Opinions can be so cautiously expressed that it is impossible to get to know what the author’s thesis is, or even more paradoxical, doctrines that are mutually contradictory are juxtaposed as if they were consistent.
Let us look at the words, “God is dead.’ 1 If the slogan were denial , everybody would be able to understand. However, here we have a subtly sophisticated idea through which “theologians” want to convey the deceitful
impression they are preserving the most assayed and chemically pure idea of
God . . . through its “identification” with the most profound reality of man.
Even the ambiguous terms “conservative” and “progressive” conceal the relativistic technique, which leads every doctrinal issue in the direction of right wing and left wing. Thus everything becomes relative; everything becomes a
matter of opinions and an instrument of power. Relativity of truth and doctrine is the actual goal of these arbitrary developments of the Church’s present problems.
Is not this measure, proclaimed even by bishops and cardinals among us, absurd and most unjust, as if it were an ideal to place us halfway between truth and error?
2. Is Gnosis Reappearing?
[To name the current errors in the Church, one speaks about a new Modernism and also the Protestantization of the Church, but the Archbishop of Genoa prefers to use the term Gnosis.]
Let it be remembered that Gnosis, with its appeal to science and higher speculation, with its eagerness to understand mystery and to naturalize the Faith, was, during the second century, perhaps the worst danger in all the history of the Church. I believe that the complex of errors circulating today can be called
Gnosis , systematically speaking. But ... do any people know what they are
talking about? This is terrible, but they do not!
One does not act on rational grounds, but on one’s excessive desire to adapt oneself to the world. Worldly power, however, has its own philosophy, and fashionable theologians translate fashionable opinions into theological language, not because they accept a doctrine as such, but because they accept these doctrines that flatter the powers of this world.
The present times are grave, not because it is no longer a question of opposition or contrast between truth and error, but between truth and non-truth, between the order of truth and the dictatorship of public opinion. People believe
they are free because this appears in juridical texts; as a matter of fact, this deceiving belief is evidence of their servitude.
Is the Church also under the despotism of public opinion? Perhaps not the Church, but certainly many people within the Church are. The Church could not be deprived of its freedom without the Holy Spirit’s provoking powerful
reactions. . . .
The altercation around the Council was not intended by John XXIII, who suffered profoundly as a result of it; of this I am a personal witness. The real Christian greatness of John XXIII consisted of the serene Christian manner by
which he humbly accepted his cross up until his death, fully realizing the tremendous gravity of the problems.
3. What is Most Urgent?
The most urgent work is to restore the distinction between truth and error in the Church. We have reached a point where any exercise of ecclesiastical authority is considered an abuse of freedom, as if authority were a denial of
freedom! A thousand illegitimate powers severely and systematically curtail the conscience and liberty of people at a superficial level, while at the deepest level they detach them from the truth contained in the sources of revelation and Magisterium, I hope that just and authorized distinctions will be forthcoming.
Pastoral authority is no art of compromise and concession, but the art of saving souls through the truth.
This truth is many times obscured by abusive liturgical deformations. Today dangerous losses are discovered in the essential. Not only is the rite sacred, but also the presence in the rite of the meaningful reality. Once the rite is mythologized the meaning of its contents is lost. No wonder that the Eucharist
becomes for some a mere feast of human unity where God is just a spectator. This is no longer heresy, but apostasy.
Right. The present situation in the Church is one of the most grave in its history, for this time the challenge does not come from outer persecution, but from inner perversion. This is very grave. But the gates of Hell will not prevail.