June 3, 2001
Feast of Pentecost
His Holiness John Paul II
Office of the Sovereign Pontiff of Rome
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City State, Europe
Your Holiness,
Dear Holy Father, Vicar of Christ, visible head of the Roman Catholic Church on earth, I come before you as a loyal and faithful daughter of the Church since my baptism in infancy to this present day. I come with humility, with tears in my eyes, to implore you, Your Holiness, to answer several questions that weigh so heavily upon my heart that I must ask them of you.
Dear Holy Father, where have they taken Him Whom I love with my whole being? Where is my Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord, God and Savior? Where have they hidden Him? Tell me, Most Holy Father, so that I may find Him, my Crucified Savior. I must find Him so that once again I can kneel before Him and beg of Him His Mercy, but also to thank Him, to prostrate myself before Him, to be crucified with Him for the salvation of my soul and the souls of many others as He Wills.
Dear Holy Father in my diocese and especially in the "new" churches that are being built, I cannot find Him. There is no crucifix that says I am in a Catholic Church. There is nothing anymore that even resembles a Catholic Church.
Why, Holy Father, have they taken My Lord away from His rightful place in the Sanctuary of the Church? Why has Jesus been hidden in a corner where few even know He is there in the Tabernacle? Why has the "presider's chair" replaced Jesus, and why must I hunt for the Tabernacle when I enter a Church?
Dear Holy Father, why has the altar become a mere table, around which the faithful are called to gather, not to offer to the Father the eternal Sacrifice of Calvary, the unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass, but rather a "eucharistic banquet" around which table the faithful are comfortably arranged as if one were attending a theater performance rather than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?
Holy Father, Christ's Vicar on Earth, I have struggled but remained faithful to the Novus Ordo Mass since its inception in the 60's after Vatican II closed. Why, Holy Father have the Bishops not clearly understood that Latin was never taken away, never abrogated, never forbidden? Why, Holy Father, do the Bishops continue to allow anything to take place at the Most August Sacrifice of the Mass, and have taught nothing of the true tenets of our One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith for over three decades? Why has the awesome and august Sacrament of Holy Communion been reduced to such irreverence that in the United States an alarming number of Catholics do not believe in the Divine Presence, and, furthermore, many priests say that it is only symbolic?
Holy Father, on bended knee, I ask you yet another question.
From my youth God has blessed me with a deep personal devotion to Him, to Jesus, and to His Most Holy Mother. You have as your motto "Totus Tuus" and every Catholic around the world knows your devotion to the Blessed Mother. Why, Holy Father, have they taken away the statues of Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, and any of the saints and angels that always spoke to us, the faithful, of the journey home to Heaven, that spurred us on in this earthly valley of tears to strive for holiness, and to ask it of God at every Sacrifice of the Mass. Those were our Heavenly role models. Why did they get rid of them?
Your Holiness, I am confused about some of the things you have written and said. I cannot comprehend why you would say such things and do such things that fly in the face of all I was taught as a child, and which I learned to love and to grow in that love of Our Lord for His Sake alone, loving Him because He is Perfect Love. Why was I confirmed to be a soldier of Christ, and to seek for all the years of my life, to imitate Him, to take my example from the lives of the saints, willing to suffer and to die for Him, for the One, True Faith that He gave to us through Peter, His rock, upon whom Christ built His Church?
Holy Father, I have always been taught and I believe with my whole being that the Roman Catholic Church is the One True Church, and all other faiths are in error and must therefore be brought to the light of the full truth, which only the Roman Catholic Church contains. This is so much a part of my soul that I cannot even fathom your recent comments when in Greece that any proselytizing should be condemned, when missionaries for ages past gave their lives that the True Faith may be made known to all other nations, to all people of other faiths?
Now you say in your address to the Greek Orthodox that proselytizing is wrong, and that in your encyclical Ut Unum Sint you have "consigned to oblivion the excommunications of the past". Help Me, Holy Father, to understand why you would say these things when so many of the Doctors of the Church, the Fathers of the Church, and your predecessors as successors of Peter stood strongly for, condemning the heresies and apostasy that battered at the Church, standing strong upon the Sacred Deposit of Faith, on the knowledge that only to the Successor of Peter is given the full and complete authority to govern and to teach, and to do so infallibly on matters of faith and morals when spoken ex cathedra.
When you "consign to oblivion the excommunications of the past" you have to include Martin Luther and others who professed heresy and apostasy, and who led others into schism from the One True Faith. Is this not so? Tell me, for I kneel before you, the Vicar of Christ, the Supreme Pontiff, to ask if in "consigning to oblivion the excommunications of the past" your intention includes the more recent excommunications of one of Holy Mother Church's true sons, Msgr. Marcel LeFebvre. In reading Ut Unum Sint there can be no other logical conclusion that anyone could make from your statements, for his excommunication is also consigned to oblivion, for it is of the past.
Holy Father, you ordered that the Latin Mass should be made available generously in every diocese where the faithful asked for the Mass of All Times and Places to be said. Vatican Council II never abrogated the Latin Rite, yet it appears to me, Holy Father that the very Magisterium that comprises the Curia and you, are doing all in their power to do away with anyone who prefers the Latin Rite because in it they see, as I do, the fullness of the Sacred Deposit of Faith. And at the very same time you appear in your statements to the Greek Orthodox to beg their pardon for upholding the Truth, when they were and remain in schism and heresy for they do not believe in the Petrine Succession, nor do they believe in the dogma of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son (Filioque
Your Holiness, why do you put aside the excommunications of the past in an effort to further ecumenism, whereby you seem to be leading Holy Mother Church into a position where she will be just one church among so many other churches. Will you, Holy Father, also change or alter in any way the Petrine Primacy? I cannot understand, Your Holiness, why you would call a Consistory of the College of Cardinals to discuss the "Role of the Papacy", and in the discussions of the Cardinals, there were more than a few who spoke openly about a broad "collegiality", which has been described and therefore understood by many of the faithful as a "democratization" of the Papacy. An openness in expression of "opinions" is what many of the Cardinals asked for, nay, demanded, of you, and you said you would take all of the recommendations of the Cardinals under consideration?
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