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Your Holiness,
Pope Francis,

as Roman Catholics, we welcomed the news of the historic visit to our homeland by the Supreme Pontiff of Rome himself, who is visibly at the head of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church, once so dear to our Slovak nation. Your Holiness' visit has been scheduled for September 12-15 of this year (2021). At the same time, we have received with concern reports of Your Holiness' failing health, and reports that, as a result, Your Holiness' visit to Slovakia may not take place either as planned or at all. However, the facts which we wish to bring to Your attention in this report can no longer be delayed.

No matter of this, many Slovak priests in Rome have perhaps already managed to inform Your Holiness with our ancient Slavic custom of welcoming guests with bread and salt. It is not unusual to welcome with bread, which we ask daily from our Father God in the Our Father prayer — but why do we also welcome with salt?

Our common folklore^[1], forwarded from generation to generation, has preserved the belief of our ancestors from pre-Christian times that “salt is over gold”; that is under certain circumstances salt can be more valuable materially than all the gold and precious stones of this world. Our Lord Jesus Christ, however, in the consciousness of our nation, raised the perception of the value of salt from the banal material to the higher spiritual when He referred to the Apostles as “the salt of the earth” (Mt 5:13) and “the light of the world” (Mt 5:14). Since then, we have believed with the Church that, just as salt keeps from rotting that which is salted with it, so the Apostles, their successors and followers are to keep mankind from spiritual rot and from moral contagion, which is usually rooted in what we believe or what we are unwilling to believe.

For if the salt loses its taste and becomes stale, like the salt of the Jews^[2], what will they salt it with? If the Apostles, their successors and followers will not protect the nations from moral contagion, then who will?

In this parable, the Savior Himself commands the Apostles not to be shy to come out with the truth out of fear or human considerations, otherwise they wouldn’t be for the benefit of others, and moreover they themselves would lose their faith — and He calls them to do so by saying: So let your light shine before men! (cf. Mt 5:16) In his letter to the German bishops, Pope Benedict XVI adds: “The many bear responsibility for all. The community of the many must be the lamp on the lamp-stand, a city on the hilltop, yeast for all.”^[3]

Therefore, Your Holiness, unlike our brothers who will welcome You as the king from our fairy tale with deceptive gold and precious stones — let us, confused Slovak Catholics — welcome You especially with the bitter salt of the Gospel.

We have salted this report with the confusedness of those who do not belong to that unproblematic part of the Catholic Church which is able to identify itself with the world in all circumstances, to co-operate with it on all terms, and to conform to it in all things.

Our confusedness is not just a product of recent years, when the speed and depth of the Church's adaptation to the world has reached such a high level that the rules which the previous generation considered steadfast are changing right before our eyes. Catholics in our homeland — as well as the entire Catholic world, of which the Slovak nation has been a part for almost 1160 years — have been staggering over the precipice of spiritual destruction for several decades.

One of Your predecessors, Pope John XXIII. (* 1881 — † 1963), refused to listen to the “prophets of doom”. There is no need to listen to the prophets of doom today, nor is there any need to prophesy the doom — the doom is already here. It is not our ears that we have to plug; we would now have to close our eyes to avoid seeing it.

May the salt of Gospel from this report be for spiritual benefit to our neighbors in the nation and to the entire “ecclesia militans”, that is, the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church still struggling in this world for the salvation of all souls.

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I.

But the wicked spirit, answering, said to them:
Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?

(Acts 19:15)

  And the whole city was filled with confusion; and having caught…
Paul's companions, they rushed with one accord into the theatre.
And when Paul would have entered in unto the people, the disciples suffered him not. […] Now some cried one thing, some another. For the assembly was confused, and the greater part knew not for what cause they were come together. […]
…all with one voice,
for the space of about two hours, cried out:
Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

(Acts 19:29 & 30 & 32 & 34)

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1.1
Commotions in the Catholic population in Slovakia

On the rapid outflow of believers and its possible causes

1.1.1 Your Holiness, like the whole world, Slovakia is facing a steady and persistent decline of faithful Catholics. This fact can't be changed by the cleverly interpreted statistics, coming from within the Church, which refuse to see the increase in the world population and speak of an increase in the number of Catholics in the world only in terms of absolute numbers. The context in which it is clear that Europe and its daughter America are steadily losing tens of thousands of Catholics — through apostasy, error or moral decadence — is overlooked and marginalised.

1.1.2 Therefore, Your Holiness, we must first of all inform You that the Slovak nation is no longer a nation whose majority sincerely practises the Catholic faith. In 2011, almost three-quarters^[4] of all Slovak citizens claimed to be faithful as nominal Catholics. However, of these, according to other surveys, less than half attend Holy Mass at least once a week (about 43%). If we take this figure as a guide for determining whether they are practising Catholics, we would find that in in 2011 we could count on no more than one third (31%) of practising Catholics in Slovakia, which represents something around one and a half million souls.^[5]

1.1.3 However, the direction of development of the total number of practicing Catholics in Slovakia over the last decades suggests — and the first reports from the recent population census confirm the significant decline in the number of nominal Catholics — that in an optimistic scenario at least 20% fewer nominal Catholics will see Your Holiness as their Holy Father in Slovakia this time than they did during the last apostolic visit of Pope John Paul II. (* 1920 — † 2005) in 2003.^[6]

1.1.4 Where to look for the cause of this plight? It is not possible to keep on making excuses for secularisation as the main cause of this decline. The Church is holy, but its shepherds are sinful, and therefore a share of the blame must also be sought on their side. If they are the “salt of the earth”, they must take their share of responsibility for the present state of affairs. It is clear, however, that their blame for the advancing secularization in the world does not lie in neglecting to adapt to the world, as has been constantly emphasized to us for the last sixty years. The shepherds have adapted the Church to the world to a degree unprecedented in its history, but the result shows that no “New Pentecost” — promised to us by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council — is coming. Therefore, it is logical, that confused Catholics are starting to look for the causes of the decline in this constant adaptation to the world.

1.1.5 However, if we in addition take into account that Your Holiness is perceived by the faithful in Slovakia mainly through topics such as support for immigration, the introduction of the pagan Inca goddess Pachamama into Catholic churches, the possible reopening of the case of the former suspended Archbishop Róbert Bezák, or uncritical support for vaccination with experimental vaccines, that have been tested, developed, or directly produced using embryonic and foetal cell cultures derived from induced abortions — then it is no wonder that Your Holiness' reputation among us has suffered beyond what could have been considered, until now, a “steady, persistent decline” in the Catholic population.

1.1.6 Let us add to this the slavish servility of our bishops towards the state power, which during the pontificate of Your Holiness was manifested, for example, by the fact that at the time of the epidemic of the new coronavirus we were the second country in Europe with closed churches for the longest time.

1.1.7 Not to mention that the Slovak bishops communicate outwardly that meeting with Your Holiness in Prešov, Košice and Šaštín is conditional on “full vaccination” — thus indirectly forcing those Catholics who have used a conscientious objection to vaccination with morally compromised vaccines, or who have not been vaccinated with an experimental vaccine out of an abundance of caution, to change their decision.

1.1.8 In this light, how should the regular believer perceive the fact that even before the Slovak bishops opened the official registration for the events with Your Holiness on August 13, 2021, another registration — a secret registration for the chosen ones organized by the Parish Office in Bratislava-Vajnory^[7] — was already closed on August 9, 2021? What has begun to be whispered justifies Catholics to ask whether another caste of about five hundred believers who — unlike all the others — do not need to be vaccinated, but will only need a negative PCR test for the presence of the new coronavirus, can meet with Your Holiness at the airport area? Confused Catholics ask: Did the bishops sell ninety-nine sheep to the state to get advantage for a one?

1.1.9 Add to this the request of the Conference of Bishops of Slovakia (hereinafter referred to as “KBS”) addressed to the Holy See for permanent permission to grant the Holy Communion of the Body of Christ in the hand in Slovakia as a whole, and we get a rough sketch of the spiritual boundaries that have divided the already decimated ranks of Catholics in Slovakia outwardly and inwardly by barbed wire, such as perhaps only our fathers from the days of communism remember...

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1.2
Let us work good to all men, but especially to the members of our faith

On non-Christian and non-European immigration to Europe

1.2.1 Your Holiness, the Catholic population in Slovakia is not a “barren Sarah” that would necessarily have to be “fertilized by refugees” from non-Christian and non-European nations.

1.2.2 According to the Demographic Atlas of the Slovak Republic from 2014^[8], the differences between the main demographic indicators — such as fertility, marriage and divorce rates — are not decreasing across the various regions of Slovakia. On the contrary, they remain stable, showing that areas with a high proportion of “less progressive” believers have higher fertility and marriage rates and lower divorce rates compared to more progressive and atheistic regions. In the north-west of Slovakia — in the District of Námestovo — where there is a homogeneous population of “less progressive” Slovak Roman Catholics, the population growth rate between years 2009 and 2013 was more than 11%.

1.2.3 Despite all the adversities Slovakia still has one of the largest populations of indigenous European and Christian people (Slovaks, Moravians, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Ruthenians and Hungarians of Slavic origin) among the European Union countries. Therefore, during the migration crisis in 2014-2015, Your Holiness' statements in support of the New World Order processes that are replacing the indigenous and Christian nations of Europe with new and non-Christian nations have personally touched many Slovak Catholic families.

1.2.4 The fathers of these families often commute to Western European countries for work and struggle every day to provide for the spiritual and living needs of their children. According to recent estimates, up to three hundred thousand of our citizens may be working in Western Europe or the USA. That is why the fathers and mothers of these families find it very difficult to accept the fact that they are made guilty for not being able to take the responsibility also for predominantly Muslim refugees.^[9]

1.2.5 Nevertheless, the words of St. Paul: “Therefore, whilst we have time, let us work good to all men, but especially to those who are of the family of believers”^[10], (Gal 6:10) have often been misused by the media against Slovak Catholic families, while the proponents of the “culture of death” referred precisely to Your Holiness' interpretation of who belongs to the “family of believers”. This interpretation was finally confirmed by Your Holiness later with the publication of the encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” (2020).^[11]

1.2.6 We understand that this encyclical of Yours, the language used in it, and Your Holiness' statements on the subject long before its publication, are in full accord with the Constitution “Nostra Aetate” (1965) of the Second Vatican Council, which calls us to: “…forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values.”^[12]

1.2.7 However, forgetting the past is prevented from us — confused Catholics — by the Holy Scriptures themselves and by Catholic Tradition preserved in the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, where the words of St. Paul the Apostle are clearly translated as “...operemur bonum ad omnes, maxime autem ad domesticos fidei”,^[13] in Slovak translation from 1912 as “...let us work good to all men, but especially to these of our home faith”,^[14] and in the 1945 Slovak translation as “...let us do good to all, but especially to the members of our own faith!”^[15]

1.2.8 Our holy and only true faith, which we inherited from our ancestors, is the Catholic faith, and according to Tradition neither Muslims, nor Jews, nor Buddhists belong to our family of believers. Moreover, Catholic morality knows the teaching of the order of service to one's neighbour, according to which immediate great material need comes first and obliges one to act immediately and effectively. However, when there are many needs and options are limited, it is impossible to equally help everyone in every need. Closest family members come first at that situation. Then the members of our own faith. Great spiritual need takes precedence over lesser material need, and so on.^[16]

1.2.9 However, not only revealed faith but also the light of common sense commands us to keep in mind that the possible destruction of the culture that would be caused by the influx of uncontrolled masses of migrants from foreign ethnicities and non-Christian faiths would ultimately backfire on the migrants themselves. The collapse — both civilisational and economic — that is imminent here will mean that there will be nothing left to help anyone, and conversely, the result of all the reckless encouragement of migration will eventually be an increase in pagan ethnocentrism, which, unrestrained by Christian morals, will lead to bloody conflicts.

1.2.10 Your Holiness' support for these trends has created confusion among Catholics, but it has also caused confusion among non-believers, who also rightly invoke the common sense. In spite of all this, however, we must say that on the question of non-Christian immigration from 2014 to 2015, both believers and non-believers in Slovakia felt that the Slovak clergy stood up for them and for the first and last time seemed to oppose what was coming from Rome.

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1.3
Intercede for us, Mother of Seven Sorrows

On the remedy of Saint Cyril and Methodius for pagan idols such as Pachamama

1.3.1 Your Holiness is scheduled to celebrate Holy Mass on September 15, on the feast of the Virgin Mary, in Šaštín, at the national basilica devoted to the Mother of Sorrows, who is so dear to our nation.

1.3.2 Although the veneration of the Virgin Mary by our nation is evidenced by mentions of devoted churches in our territory from as early as the 13th century, it was not until Pope Pius XI. (* 1857 — † 1939), with his decree “Celebre apud Slovachiae gentem”, i.e. in translation “Glorious in the Slovak nation” on April 22, 1927, allowed us to use the invocation “Ora pro nobis, Virgo Dolorosissima”, i. “Intercede for us, Mother of the Seven Sorrows”, after the Litany of Loreto. Thus, de facto, Pius XI granted us permission to venerate Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows as the patroness of the Slovak nation.

1.3.3 Although our nation has a rich history and knows many pagan goddesses, such as Lada or Vesna — the Slavic goddesses of love, spring, marriage, sowing and ploughing, or the goddess Mokosh — the Slavic goddess of the earth or fertility, we would never think of bringing these false pagan goddesses or their symbols into our temples or praying to them, less so embodying them with the attributes of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of God — the Theotokos.

1.3.4 That is why Slovak Catholics were deeply shaken when we saw Your Holiness praying during the Amazon Synod in October 2019 at the wood-carved statue of a pregnant woman, which is a representation of Pachamama, the Inca pagan goddess of the earth, who is still worshipped today by the peoples who inhabit the Andes Mountains across South America. Even, by Your Holiness' decision, this symbol of paganism was introduced into Roman churches.

1.3.5 So before Your Holiness serves Holy Mass on the feast of our patroness, the Virgin Mary of the Seven Sorrows, in Šaštín, You should know that the co-patrons of Europe and the Slavic heralds Cyril and Methodius, on their arrival on our territory, with great vigour and joy, stamped out the pagan sacred forests^[17] of the ancestral faith and destroyed images and other representations of pagan idols such as Lada, Vesna and Mokosh — the last of which can be compared to Pachamama in terms of its attributes.

1.3.6 Because of this persistent tradition of the destruction of pagan idols in our nation, Your Holiness, we cannot agree with Your words from the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Querida Amazonia” (2020) that: “It is possible to take up an indigenous symbol in some way, without necessarily considering it as idolatry. A myth charged with spiritual meaning can be used to advantage and not always considered a pagan error.”

1.3.7 On the contrary, in his zeal for the faith, we were reminded very much of our Saints Cyril and Methodius by a young man with ancestors from the lower Austrian nobility, Mr. Alexander Tschugguel (* 1993), who together with his companions fearlessly removed the pagan statues of Pachamama from Roman churches and threw them into the Tiber River.

1.3.8 In accordance with Catholic Tradition, we believe that the Virgin Mary is the Destroyer of All Heresies, and therefore anyone who tries to destroy the Catholic faith is first trying either to remove the Virgin Mary from our hearts or to replace her with something else.

1.3.9 However, the Immaculate Heart of Mary always prevailed in the end!^[18]

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1.4
Suspended Archbishop Róbert Bezák Superstar

On the Slovak “Cardinal Schönborn” and homoheresy

1.4.1 Your Holiness, a few months before Your arrival in Slovakia, Mons. Róbert Bezák (* 1960), the suspended Archbishop of Trnava, who was forbidden by the Holy See to speak about his cause to the media, let it be heard that together with Your Holiness he “ate papal ice cream” and “celebrated Holy Mass, which made him feel rehabilitated”.

1.4.2 Let us recall that Mons. Róbert Bezák was appointed Archbishop of the Trnava Archdiocese by Pope Benedict XVI on April 18, 2009 and subsequently received his episcopal ordination in Trnava — Slovak Rome — on June 6, 2009 from the hands of Cardinal Jozef Tomko. From January 22 to February 1, 2012, Mons. Ján Baxant (* 1948), Bishop of Litoměřice, made a visitation in the Archdiocese of Trnava. Based on the documents from this visitation, on July 2, 2012, the Pope dismissed Róbert Bezák from the function of the head of the Archdiocese of Trnava.^[19]

1.4.3 So who is Mons. Róbert Bezák?

1.4.4 In 2014, a book about him was published by the Slovak Jesuit Father Šebastián Labo, SJ (* 1931 — † 2014) under the title “Róbert Bezák: the truth about the suspended Archbishop”^[20] , which, according to the words of Father Labo himself, was to be translated into Italian by the then nuncio of the Holy See in Slovakia, His Excellency Mons. Mario Giordana (* 1942).

1.4.5 The book traces some of the countless letters from priests and faithful on the not even three-year long pontificate of Msgr. Bezák as Archbishop of Trnava.

1.4.6 In a personal letter, which runs through the whole book, Father Labo calls Mons. Bezák as a “hidden Protestant” and gives examples of at least controversial beliefs, which the suspended Archbishop presented in the Slovak media. Mons. Bezák gradually publicly casted doubt on the literal presence of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ in the “wafer”, he claims that it is possible to be in heaven and hell at the same time, or rather, his words implied that hell is supposed to be a physical place in heaven in which we will have to live without deserving it.

1.4.7 Bezák also gave a speech at Slovakia's largest music festival, Pohoda, which, in addition to promoting casual sex, is also the most massive political, cultural and ideological event celebrating liberalism in Slovakia.^[21] Mons. Bezák is also known for his frequent liturgical abuses, when he had been celebrating children's Clown Masses with plush animals or Masses with rock music.^[22]

1.4.8 The pontifical ministry of Mons. Bezák resembled in many excesses and abuses the public ministry of the infamous modernist Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (* 1946). And that is why Róbert Bezák was so attractive to all liberal and anti-Catholic media at home and abroad — since in Slovakia he was the only bishop with such an advanced and openly articulated modernist appearance — although in the West, paradoxically, Mons. Bezák would still be considered a bishop from the group of the “less progressive” ones^[23]...

1.4.9 However, over time, even more serious details began to emerge about the fact that Mons. Bezák allegedly ordained as priests such seminarians who had been rejected by other seminaries because of their unorthodox attitudes or even their opened homosexual inclinations. In his latest book, “The Lavender Mafia. With Popes and Bishops Against Homo-cliques in the Church”,^[24] Dariusz Oko (* 1960) analyses this fact and accuses Mons. Bezák of homoheresy.^[25]

1.4.10 The fact that in 2014 the followers of Róbert Bezák did not hesitate to verbally and physically assault a priest in the Basilica of St. Nicholas in Trnava who to the words of intention of the Holy Mass “for the health and Divine Grace for Archbishop Róbert Bezák on the occasion of his birthday” added “and for his conversion”, only shows the fruit that this Archbishop has sown in the Church.

1.4.11 Finally, because of the frequent media appearances of Mons. Bezák, his popularity among non-Catholics, and because of his modernism, he was labelled “Róbert Bezák Superstar” after a profane rock opera from the 1970's — Jesus Christ Superstar.

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1.5
Vaccine is freedom. War is peace

On closed churches, receiving holy communion in the hand, and on an option in extrema ratio that has become a moral obligation

1.5.1 Your Holiness, in spite of all we have written about so far, there are still three facts that have significantly marked the Church in Slovakia — and these are the closed churches during the epidemic of the new coronavirus, the receiving of the Body of Christ in the hand during Holy Communion, and the denial of conscientious objection to experimental vaccines against the new coronavirus tested or directly produced on embryonic and foetal cell cultures and lines derived from induced abortions.

1.5.2 Slovakia was the second country in Europe with the longest closure of churches during the epidemic of a new coronavirus. Slovak bishops responded too servilely and eagerly to government demands to close churches. The bishops had to be encouraged by the faithful themselves, who petitioned both the state and the bishops to reopen the churches.

1.5.3 Only a handful of priests have found the courage and, despite the threat of draconian punishments from the government or the bishops, did not close the doors to the faithful of Christ during their private Masses. It has also become apparent that communities of the faithful who attend the “Mass of All Time” — until recently known in the Church as the “forma extraordinaria”,e. the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite — have, together with their priests, restored across the country something that our fathers knew from the days of communism — the underground Church, which often met at night, when there was an exception to the curfew for the people.

1.5.4 However, another phenomenon from the communist era has also emerged — namely denunciation. This time, however, it was not the denunciation from the outside by atheists or communists, but denunciation by those who considered themselves Catholics and often sat in the first pews in the churches at the Novus Ordo Masses according to the Missal of Paul VI. There were even priests or nuns among the denunciators... Those who had been brought up by the secular post-conciliar spirit did not hesitate to denounce their brothers and sisters in the faith who attended Mass completely voluntarily where priests were still willing to celebrate it.

1.5.5 But instead of these brave priests, Your Holiness, in a letter dated March 2, 2021, honoured the service of 77 priests from the Archdiocese of Košice who volunteered in hospital wards reserved for patients suffering from the new coronavirus disease. Here, the priests often performed the most menial tasks. Anyone can disinfect floors — but who can replace priests in administering the Sacraments?

1.5.6 Many Catholics across the country have therefore felt spiritually abandoned by their priests — without the prayer of the Church, which is the Holy Mass, without confession, without Holy Communion or even without the last rites if the person was dying of an illness other than the new coronavirus. The world rejoiced that it had at last reduced the Church to a mere earthly charitable organization and to a last maid without the transcendent Sacraments.

1.5.7 Instead of strengthening the administration of the Sacraments for all in times of crisis and fear, and leading young lay people to volunteer for the ministry to the sick, the Church has abandoned its main — salvific — task. The whole life of the Church, in a time of induced crisis, was incomprehensibly reduced to the fear for the body, and thus caught the post-conciliar Church in full nakedness.

1.5.8 Is death really the worst thing that can happen to a person? Or is suffering or pain the worst? Should a Catholic no longer fear eternal damnation of the soul at all? What is happening to our faith? What happened to the faith of our ancestors, expressed in the medieval moral principle known as “Memento mori!”, i.e. “Remember that you [have to] die!” and in the Church's highest law formulated as “Salus animarum suprema lex!”, i.e. "The salvation of souls is the supreme law!"?

1.5.9 This artificially induced and exaggerated fear for the body was instrumentally used to reduce reverence for the Living God — the Body of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament, which later began to be received and in many places in Slovakia is still received exclusively in the hand. Many helpless Catholics, who in the spirit of Tradition felt themselves unworthy to receive Christ in their hands, travelled from one parish to another looking for a brave priest who would not be afraid to administer Holy Communion publicly into their mouths.

1.5.10 Your Holiness, allow us to remind You and our bishops that the Catholic Church has been here for two thousand years, during which time she has survived many other and far more dangerous contagions. During all those centuries, she has cultivated a unique Catholic liturgical tradition that can still be observed at Mass of All Time. This liturgical tradition focuses first and foremost on a dignified thanksgiving to the Holy Trinity in which every symbol and gesture of the priest or minster matters.

1.5.11 The result of such unity of form and matter, the unity of expression and gesture, which has been cultivated for two thousand years, is a certain prudence on the part of both priest and altar boy in the handling of liturgical objects at Mass of All Time, the by-product of which is the observance of a stricter hygiene in comparison with new post-Conciliar Mass, which emerged from the revolutionary change of 1970.^[26]

1.5.12 Precisely because of the Church preserves in her sacred Tradition these acts with which reverence and piety are expressed in the handling of liturgical objects and of the Living God Himself in the Form of Bread, and which at the same time meet high standards of hygiene, we have received with sorrow the news that the Slovak bishops have asked the Holy See for permanent permission to administer Holy Communion in hand throughout the Slovakia. Instead of adhering to a Tradition that has been verified by centuries, our bishops reached for the “new mores” at the first possible opportunity.

1.5.13 Slovak confused Catholics, in addition to the traumatic administration of Holy Communion, were also embarrassingly disillusioned by Catholic authorities when the Bioethics Subcommittee of the Theological Commission of the KBS issued its statement on January 5, 2021, in which it strongly condemned the organization of faithful Slovak pharmacists. The association “Pharmacists for Life — Slovakia” under the leadership of Veronika Cagáňová, who is active in pharmaceutical research, issued its statement on vaccination against the new coronavirus disease. In it, the organisation drew attention to the fact that all the experimental vaccines that Slovakia has contracted through the European Union are, to a greater or lesser extent, “morally compromised”.^[27] This is because they have been tested, developed or directly produced on embryonic and foetal cell cultures and lines derived from violent abortions. The association therefore offered legal protection to pharmacists who wished to claim a conscientious objection to their production or dispensation.^[28]

1.5.14 Is quite common all around the world that such activity is undertaken by professional Catholic associations. After all, it was an American, Debra L. Vinnedge, on whose initiative in June 2005 the Pontifical Academy for Life drew up the document “Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses”. Debra L. Vinnedge is the Executive Director of the American organization “Children of God for Life”. Mrs. Vinnedge was presented with the “Evangelium Vitae Award” by Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke (* 1948) at the 83rd Annual Conference of the Catholic Medical Association of the United States in September 2014 for years of work in the field of Catholic bioethics, drawing attention to the use of the tissues of violently aborted children in the pharmaceutical, food or cosmetic industries.

1.5.15 In our country, the protagonists of similar activities were identified by Mons. Peter Rusnák (b. 1950), chairman of the Subcommission for Bioethics and the Theological Commission of the KBS, as those “who, by questioning the professional medical authorities and the Magisterium of the Church, knowingly endanger the lives and health of the population.” His Excellency Greek Catholic Eparch Rusnák thus preferred the voice of an anonymous group of two or three physicians serving on the Subcommission on Bioethics to the opinion of a conference of Catholic physicians from across the United States with an 83-year history and the sanctification of a Catholic Cardinal...

1.5.16 Moreover, the Bishop of Banská Bystrica, Mons. Chovanec (* 1957) in the diocesan circular “Acta Ordinariatus Neosoliensis” number 223/2021 of February this year, without any proof, falsely accused the association of Catholic pharmacists of being “closely associated with a certain political party and adopting its ideas” and continued: “I beg you, dear brother priests and deacons, let us bear in mind that a person of faith should not accept the ‘morality’ of a political party at the expense of the Magisterium of the Church.”

1.5.17 Moreover, the Slovak Church has made vaccination with experimental vaccines produced or tested on human embryonic and fetal cell cultures or lines derived from violent abortions an a priori moral obligation. Despite the fact that the Pontifical Academy for Life, in the aforementioned 2005 document, merely stated that the use of such morally compromised vaccines — and only in extreme emergency as an “extrema ratio” — is not sinful.^[29]

1.5.18 Moreover, at the time when the Bioethics Subcommission of the Theological Commission strongly condemned the Slovak faithful pharmacists with its statement, it was the first statement issued in six years since its last one. Thus, according to the Slovak bishops, for six-year-long period of time there were no urgent issues in bioethics in Slovakia until the time when it became necessary to condemn the faithful pharmacists for exercising a conscientious objection to the development and dispensation of morally compromised vaccines.

1.5.19 Not to mention the amazement caused by His Excellency Mons. Bernard Bober, Archbishop Metropolitan of Košice, when he provided support for the national vaccination campaign entitled “Vaccine is Freedom”. His Excellency branded his portrait with the slogan “Vaccine is Hope”.

1.5.20 After all, if Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” for every Catholic, (cf. Jn 14:6) why should not the vaccine become for the faithful the longed-for hope that is lacking in the triad of Christ? More and more, however, such slogans began to sound in the ears of confused Catholics like the slogans of a dystopian society: war is peace — freedom is slavery — ignorance is strength — vaccine is hope...

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1.6
Years of pouring out the blood of Christ “for all”

On Slovak unwillingness to correct the Words of Consecration

1.6.1 Your Holiness, it seems to be the fate of confused Catholics around the world to observe with pain in their hearts as post-Conciliar Church authorities either fight on the wrong side or do not fight for the right Catholic cause at all. However, by both such approaches to matters of faith and morals, the Church authorities are robbing the ecclesiastical offices they hold of their respectability, thus deepening the crisis in the Church and directly causing an exodus of the faithful from it.

1.6.2 Back in 2006, the Holy See issued an instruction to revise the national translations of the 2002 Roman Missal intended for the new post-Conciliar Mass. Pope ordered to use in the Words of Consecration over the chalice translation “pro multis”, that is, for many, instead of “pro omnibus”, that is, for all. — For this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.

1.6.3 Since the German bishops resisted this correction, the Holy Father himself, Pope Benedict XVI, wrote to them in 2012, explaining why he wanted all the new national translations of the Words of Consecration over the chalice to read “pro multis” in the new post-Conciliar Mass.^[30]

1.6.4 It was perhaps the first time since the Second Vatican Council a post-Conciliar Pope had so forcefully drawn attention to the fact that the Church's most important prayer — at which the climax of the Mass is supposed to occur — was being interpreted because of the mindless elimination of Latin after the Council instead of its authentic translation into the vernacular languages.

1.6.5 To learn this, every Catholic should look up and ask — why did it not bother any Church authority for over thirty-five years, from the Second Vatican Council until the time of Benedict XVI, that the most important prayer of the Church was used in some languages in an altered, unoriginal form — that is, as Christ never said it at the Last Supper?

1.6.6 And if the Church teaches that the intention of the priest, the prescribed matter and form, i.e. the correctness of the Words of Consecration, are necessary for the validity of the transubstantiation — has been all these Masses valid at all?

1.6.7 Your Holiness, what have the “traditionis custodes”, those guardians of Tradition to whom You refer in Your latest motu proprio, been doing for so many years?

1.6.8 Unfortunately, for the Slovak bishops — same as for the German ones — this urgent request of Pope Benedict XVI meant nothing at all. And if we have seen how promptly one commission of KBS can respond within 18 days to condemn Catholics who wish to exercise a conscientious objection to the development or dispensation of morally compromised vaccines, then it took to another — namely the Slovak liturgical commission — exactly 10 years from Pope Benedict XVI's call, to have a new translation of the Eucharistic Prayers approved, and another four years to issue a revised edition of the Slovak translation of the Missal for the new post-Conciliar Mass.

1.6.9 The Hungarian bishops have proved that where there is a will, there is a way. The Hungarian Primate and Archbishop of Esztergom, Péter Cardinal Erdő (* 1952), ordered already in 2009 that all Hungarian dioceses from Pentecost of that year onwards should relabel the incorrect Words of Consecration “mindenkiért”, i.e., for all, with a kind of self-adhesive errata label with the correct words “sokakért”, i.e., for many, in their Missals.

1.6.10 So what is the practice today — 15 years after the Pope's decree — in Slovakia? In every new post-Conciliar Mass, priests still use the wrong Words of Consecration...

1.6.11 In this context, we are faced with a paradox that currently accompanies the Church both in the world and in Slovakia. The proponents of Tradition in the Church are constantly accused of disobedience and defiance of the orders of the Church hierarchy. In doing so, they only want to adhere to rules that have been affirmed for centuries — such as, for example, the permissibility of the death penalty. On the contrary, those who ostentatiously and publicly ignore those commands which are supposed to help to consolidate Tradition and to truly correct the confusions that have arisen since the Second Vatican Council are left unheeded. What is more, it is them who most often use the charge of disobedience against the defenders of Catholic Tradition.

1.6.12 Is it presumptuous, then, in such circumstances to speak of the confusion and helplessness of many Catholics?

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II.

I am grieved in my exercise;
and am troubled,

At the voice of the enemy,
and at the tribulation of the sinner.

For they have cast iniquities upon me:
and in wrath they were troublesome to me.

My heart is troubled within me:
and the fear of death is fallen upon me.

Fear and trembling are come upon me:
and darkness hath covered me.

And I said: Who will give me wings like a dove,
and I will fly and be at rest?

Lo, I have gone far off flying away;
and I abode in the wilderness.

I waited for him that hath saved me
from pusillanimity of spirit, and a storm.

(Psalms 54 [55]:3-9)

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2.1
Who are the confused Slovak Catholics?

On Catholics who wage an internal struggle to obey an authority that would lead them to commit sins or to deny the faith in its fullness

2.1.1 Certainly, these topics are not the sole objectives of Your Holiness' pontificate, nor the only events in the life of the Church in Slovakia, but these are the topics that most confuse Slovak Catholics with a supernatural “sensus fidei” or “sensus catholicus” — i.e., those, who have received from God the gift of a sense of the Catholic faith — and this supernatural sense of faith, supported by an objective “depositum fidei”, is daily confronted with what comes out of the mouths or actions of today's ecclesiastical authorities adapting themselves to the world, Your Holiness not excluded. Already in 1985, such Catholics were called “confused Catholics”^[31] by Archbishop Mons. Marcel Lefebvre (* 1905 — † 1991).

2.1.2 Today it becomes even more obvious that the confusedness of these Catholics lies in the fact that they confess all the Articles of the Apostles' Creed, believe in all Catholic dogmas, accept without reservation the whole teaching of the Church, as preserved in sacred Tradition, accept both the primacy and the infallibility^[32] of the Pope in accordance with the teaching of the First Vatican Council, and wish to submit themselves to the authority of the bishops. However, they wage an inner struggle for obedience to authority – even to the highest earthly authority — which would lead them to commit sins or to deny the faith in its fullness as revealed to us by our Lord and God. Meanwhile, these confused Catholics daily receive insults and spit in their faces, not only from this world, but also from those whom they have always considered, and still consider, their brothers, their bishops, or their popes.

2.1.3 But just as when St. Peter and the Apostles were brought before the High Priest of the Jews, who wanted them to stop teaching in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the confused Catholics of today, along with the Apostles, respond, “We ought to obey God, rather than men.”^[33] (Acts 5:29)

2.1.4 According to the encyclical of Pope Pius XI “Quas Primas” (1925), only Christ the King concentrates in his sovereign royal power legislative, judicial and executive power at once, which extends to the “universali Redemptoris nostri imperio” — that is, to the universal sovereign Kingship of our Redeemer. “Jesus Christ was given to men not only as a Redeemer, in whom it is a universal duty to believe, but also as a Lawgiver, whom it is a universal duty to obey.”

2.1.5 Thus, according to Pope Pius XI, the lordship and power of our Lord Jesus Christ extends to all the nations of the earth. How much more it applies to the case of the Catholic Church, in which the Popes, bishops, priests and faithful should obey our Lord Jesus Christ in full extent and keep His Law, thus proving their love for Him (cf. Jn 14:15)^[34], so as to abide in His love (cf. Jn 15:10)^[35]?

2.1.6 That is why the confused Slovak Catholic cannot believe what His Excellency Mons. Marián Chovanec, Bishop of Banská Bystrica, wrote in his letter to a faithful of April 13, 2021, namely, that “The Holy Father is the Successor of the Lord Jesus on earth.” The confused Catholic believes — in accordance with the Catholic faith of our fathers — that the Pope is Christ's deputy — that is, Christ's representative — and the successor of St. Peter the Apostle, who does not abound with all the sovereign power of Christ the King. But also the Pope himself is strictly subject to all the attributes of the Kingship of Christ our King, whom His Holiness the Pope himself must obey unconditionally. Christ commands St. Peter, and in him every other Pope, who is “vicarius Christi” — Tend my sheep! (cf. Jn 21:16) Feed my sheep.
(cf. Jn 21:17)^[36]

2.1.7 A part of confused Catholics in Slovakia, who do not regard the obedience to Christ — which precedes the obedience to the Pope, bishops, priests and state authority — as an insult, clung to the motu proprio of Pope Benedict XVI “Summorum Pontificum” (2007), to what has come to be referred to in the Roman Church as the “forma extraordinaria”, the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, or the “usus antiquior”, the more ancient usage of Roman Rite.

2.1.8 The Roman liturgy before the revolutionary change in 1970 after the Second Vatican Council became the centre of the spiritual life of the confused Slovak Catholics. At the same time, this Mass of All Time, with its deafening majesty of thanksgiving to the Holy Trinity and the authenticity of the Sacrifice of Calvary of our Lord Jesus Christ, set in the contemplative architectural space of the traditional church and accompanied by the mystical music of Gregorian chant, opened the gates to Tradition for them. Standing in person with Our Lady on Calvary under the Holy Cross on which Our Lord Jesus Christ offered Himself will forever transform hearts and minds, forcing them to be drawn without delay to the depths (Lk 5:4)^[37]. And only then will the Catholic realize that the Holy Mass, as the summit of the spiritual life, is at the same time the perfect instrument of “de propaganda fide” that attracts souls.

2.1.9 From the Tradition of the liturgy perpetually confirmed by the popes, and from the form of which every single Roman saint or saintess came up, of even the Creed or other Catholic dogmas came from. This is because the early Christians believed that as we pray, so we believe; and as we believe, so we consequently live, in the spirit of the Latin motto “0lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi”. It would therefore be very superficial to label the pre-Conciliar Mass of All Time as merely “an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite”, or as “Tridentine”, or as “the Mass of Pope St. Pius V”, or Pope St. Pius X. The Mass of All Time is older than the Council of Trent (1545—1563) and goes back to the Apostle Peter and the first General Councils of the Church. From late antiquity or the early Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the Baroque and the Modernist crisis of PP. Pius X's time to the pontificate of PP. John XXIII, this was the Mass of Roman Catholics.

2.1.10 But Your Holiness will certainly recognize that today it is no longer necessary to describe the fundamental and impassable differences between the Mass of All Time and the post-conciliar Mass, because they have been described many times^[38] not only by hierarchs, theologians, bishops or priests, but the faithful have had the opportunity to experience them personally, and to recognize them by their own reason over the years.

2.1.11 Confused Catholics in Slovakia have thus had the opportunity to observe, in light of the ancient liturgy, that liturgical experimentation — beginning in 1970 — which turned churches into arenas of arbitrary creativity and was supposed to attract crowds of young people, is now proving unattractive and embarrassing for these age groups. It is also the case that efforts to provide a specific offshoot of popular music for young people in churches have ended in failure. And that the sterility and spiritual emptiness of modern architecture has robbed our churches of their spiritual appeal.

2.1.12 Instead of the “New Pentecost”, alternative Oriental religious cults are spreading across the Slovak nation, whose appeal is enhanced by their internal stability. The benevolent toleration of errors and heterodox attitudes, without proper labelling and sanctioning — by the Church herself — has led to a complete confusion of people's awareness of the true Catholic faith. The existence of Hell and eternal damnation, the indissolubility of Catholic marriage, the Real Presence of the living Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and the uniqueness of the Catholic Church have been questioned or relativized; and a shameless ecumenism has been promoted, arousing contemptuous sneers among other religions and despairing confusedness among Catholics.

2.1.13 Worse still, more and more people are not only leaving the embrace of the Catholic Church or seeking another, albeit erroneous, form of worship of God, but are rejecting organized religion as such and drowning their lives in a mixture of hedonism, selfishness, and an obsession with sexual adventures. Transcendent aimlessness, nihilism and decay are now becoming the common norm of life.

2.1.14 The constant changes in Catholic moral teaching have also played a part in this moral decline. The focus on the so-called “accompaniment” of sinners — but where to? — instead of clearly and fearlessly proclaiming Catholic moral doctrine to them, has led not to the conversion of these desperate and erring children of God, but instead to the conviction among the Catholic masses that the Church no longer regards some moral failings as insurmountably sinful, and that she questions the very principle of grave sin.

2.1.15 These phenomena, which in the form of moral contagion and spiritual rottenness began to be transmitted to us from the centre as early as in the 1960's of the last century, are continuously graduating and their cause, and therefore also the cause of the outflow of believers from the Church in Slovakia, can be summarily named — the loss of the evangelizing mission of the Church. For the primary task of the Church is the salvation of souls, which is accomplished by the conversion of the individual soul to the principles of the true Catholic faith and by remaining in the intactness of the faith until death. However, souls who see negligence in insisting on the principles of the faith directly among their shepherds leave either disappointed or morally corrupt. As long as the shepherds spread relativism, questioning, and often even errors, all wrapped in the superficial banality of secularist platitudes about humanism, brotherhood, and social welfare, then it is no wonder the flock disperses and heads down the path of destruction. Exactly the path that the Church's seer prophets foretold 60 years ago.

2.1.16 It is also a liturgical journey of great error, which, instead of the city of God of which St. Augustine wrote, has gathered together a city of humanism, progress and tolerance, the construction of which even the bloodiest architect of the Great French Revolution would not have been ashamed.

2.1.17 And so two cities were created on the ruins of unity — because where there is no truth, there can be no unity. And while the Mass of All Time has for centuries armed, and still arms, at least the confused Catholics for the struggle to keep the city of God, the post-conciliar Mass accompanies the careless Catholics on a joyful pilgrimage to a city in which life revolves only around them, and in which, therefore, the Reign of Christ has almost no place.

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2.2
Just not to slip into mere theatricality...

About the “guardians of tradition” protecting Tradition from itself

2.2.1 At first, we — confused Slovak Catholics — could not understand why even after five or six years (in 2012 or 2013) since the Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI, the majority of Slovak bishops still managed to prevent the faithful from accessing this original and authentic Catholic rite of the Roman Church.^[39] Their unwillingness to accept in specific cases — at the local level — the Holy Father's decree and wishes, contrasted and contrasts sharply with their frequent accusations of disobedience against the proponents of the Tradition. This paradoxical action, which on the one hand demands blind obedience while ignoring and undermining the decrees of the superiors, multiplied our confusion and helplessness.

2.2.2 In the first half of 2012, a group of the faithful approached Mons. Tomáš Galis (* 1950), Bishop of Žilina, for permission to celebrate this “extraordinary form of the Roman Rite” in their parish. Formally, such permission from the bishop had not been needed for more than 5 years at that time, but the priests celebrating the Mass of the Ages always requested it out of prudence and obedience. A group of the faithful, including the leader of the Gregorian Schola, could only meet with the Vicar of the diocese on the basis of this letter. No consent was granted, and after another letter from the faithful went unanswered, they turned directly to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei in early 2013 to ask for help — as foreseen in the papal motu proprio in force at the time. Nevertheless, in the Diocese of Žilina, even after 9 years since the first request, nothing has moved forward in the matter of celebrating the Mass of All Time with the blessing of the bishop.

2.2.3 Another group of faithful — this time from the Diocese of Spiš — contacted its resident bishop, the now deceased Mons. Štefan Sečka (*1953 — † 2020) in the same matter. Bishop Sečka replied to this group: “It is not clear to me whether [in your parish] there is a proper stable community of the faithful. Of course I mean a community that is being educated, formed and perfected in this extraordinary form of celebrating the Eucharist.... Also, I don't know since when you have existed as a community that seeks to live out the pre-Conciliar liturgical traditions.” The Bishop concludes his letter by stating, “....I must take great care that the correctness and sacredness of the liturgical celebrations are always preserved, and that they do not slip into mere theatricality”^[40].

2.2.4 This declared and certainly commendable effort to preserve the “correctness and sacredness of liturgical celebrations”, however, again contrasts sharply with the practice that we have had and still have the opportunity to observe in parish communities in Slovakia. Various forms of arbitrary creativity and real theatricality — that is, the insertion of non-liturgical theatrical and musical elements into the celebration of the Mass, the self-presentation of various self-centred individuals, eager to make the liturgy a stage for their own popularity — have in practice taken over our churches as well. We are thus confusedly faced with the question: how is it possible that the very people who have always declared and in practice tried to make liturgical practice as incorrupt as possible — Catholics committed to the traditional liturgy — are both warned against theatricality and rejected, while its real actors and promoters among the liturgical innovators enjoy benevolent support and tolerance?

2.2.5 Your Holiness, confused and saddened by this contradiction, we have been forced to admit to ourselves the bitter observation that behind these paradoxes lies not a mere misunderstanding, but a permanent aversion. And only then did we understand that our Slovak bishops were Your now officially confirmed “guardians of Tradition” long before the issuance of Your motu proprio, which is actually named “Traditionis Custodes”. However, this type of guardians defends Tradition against itself. And the liturgy that has accompanied Catholics throughout the history of the Church until the Second Vatican Council they do not hesitate to suspect that it may be inspiring the faithful to “mere theatricality”.

2.2.6 The aversion to Tradition and the rejection of the Mass of All Time has so far had to be hidden by hierarchs, priests and laity at the local or global level, because such an attitude was contrary to the wishes of Pope Benedict XVI. With Your motu proprio, however, Your Holiness has endorsed up such open hostility and, with immediate effect, escorted the masses of confused Catholics from the hitherto reservation created for a wild exotic species of Catholics — in which all the post-Conciliar popes had kept them — to a new zoo with a higher degree of security. And also Your Holiness, with the prohibition of creation of new traditionalist groups, had these confused Catholics administratively sterilized, lest they might accidentally overpopulate in the Church like some harmful and dangerous insect.

2.2.7 According to a report^[41] recently submitted to the Holy See by the global federation of traditionalist communities — Una Voce International, just such an overpopulation was imminent in the future.

2.2.8 Young people with families predominate in the communities that regularly attend Mass of All Time: nearly three-quarters in North America, three-fifths in Central Europe, South America, Asia and Oceania, and one-half in North-Eastern and North-Western Europe.^[42]

2.2.9 This report further demonstrates that in view of the continuing decline in baptisms of new-born babies in the Western civilization, or the high proportion of baptisms of those who later apostatized from the faith, the Mass of All Time has brought many converts and “reverts”, i.e., formerly lost Catholics, into the Church. There are cases of Lutheran converts in Slovakia who have never experienced the new post-Conciliar Mass and, as Catholics, have only recently, a few years ago, been born into the Mass of All Time and have received all the other sacraments exclusively according to the pre-Conciliar rite^[43].

2.2.10 The Mass of All Time brought men back into the churches as fathers of families and strengthened the masculine element in the Church, which had begun to disappear at a blazing speed after the Council. There is abundant evidence from the USA, England and Wales that women outnumber men at the post-Conciliar Mass (Novus Ordo Missae) by roughly 2:1. In the meantime, data from around the world says that male attendance at Mass of All Time averages 55%.

2.2.11 This image of the Mass of All Time as a form of liturgy particularly appealing to young adults and parents of young children is at odds with its usual characterization as something that appeals primarily to the nostalgic part of the older generation. A large number of priestly vocations have already managed to emerge from these young, flourishing communities.

2.2.12 Thus, there was a real threat that within a few decades the empty children's, clown or rock post-conciliar masses, celebrated in profane languages and in sterile spaces resembling the Houses of Culture built by the communist atheist regime, would be considered “theatrical”.

2.2.13 Your Holiness has therefore apparently intervened and with Your motu proprio has destroyed the theological concept of the “hermeneutic of continuity” of Your predecessor Pope Benedict XVI. If the liturgical books issued by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II are to be the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite, then the new post-conciliar Mass could not have grown continuously and organically out of the Mass of All Time, since it is so starkly at odds with the form that preceded it that it is necessary to intervene to ensure that this contrast — perceived also by Your Holiness as fundamental — does not fuel the confused questions of Catholics. For if the Novus Ordo were to grow out of the Mass of All Time, it would never have to compete or even struggle with the Vetus Ordo, nor could it ever lose ground as it has in recent years.

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2.3
Just five words to say in the language of the people

On the Mass and the language brought to the Slovak nation by Sts. Cyril and Methodius

2.3.1 Your Holiness, in the communication of the confused Catholics with the Slovak bishops, it has become clear that Latin is supposed to be the main discrediting feature of the Mass of All Time, which we have been demanding to be celebrated in Slovakia. The bishops appealed to the condition of the intelligibility of the language of the liturgy for the common people, to Sts. Cyril and Methodius, and to the — in their opinion demonstrable fact — that they had won for our nation the use of Slovak as the “lingua vulgaris”, i.e., the language of our people in the liturgy. This was on the basis — as we learn in schools — that they defeated in the papal court the “trilinguists” who recognised only three liturgical languages — namely Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Yet such a doctrine of the “evil heirs of Pilate” was never widespread in the West, and
it was spread mainly by Greek Byzantium as an argument against Latin Rome.

2.3.2 However, as the greatest weapon against us, the confused Slovak and Roman Catholics, the bishops used the verses of St. Cyril from the poem “Proglas”, which the saint wrote in Old Church Slavonic as a preface to the translation of the Holy Gospels, and which is learnt by children in Slovakia by heart: “I would rather say but five words, with simple reason I would say those five words, that the brethren also may understand all, than to say a thousand unintelligible words”.

2.3.3 However, those who argue that these words refer to liturgical language do not distinguish between the need for clarity in the detailed exposition of the faith — that is, the catechesis of the faithful — and the celebration of the liturgy. While the exposition of the faith must be done in the language of the people, since only those who understand and comprehend can believe correctly and truly, it is not necessary to use the language of the people to celebrate the Mass. This is the binding teaching of the Council of Trent^[44] (1545—1563), and whoever denies this is threatened with anathema, that is, damnation, followed by excommunication.

2.3.4 We must necessarily ask, Your Holiness, what mass and in what language did Sts. Cyril and Methodius really bring to our territory? Was it the language of the people?

2.3.5 It is no secret that when the Thessalonian brothers arrived in our territory in 863, they met the Old-Slovak population, which already knew the Western Roman rite. In fact, our nation had already been evangelized by the Scots-Irish missionaries before their arrival. However, it is even more probable that by the end of the ninth century, alongside the then dominant Old-Slovak ethnic group, there were also remnants of Celtic and Germanic tribes living in the Carpathian Basin. And with their presence in our living space, the continuity of the Roman rite, which was first brought here in the lifetime of St. Severinus (ca. 482) and St. Martin (ca. 397), also survived. Both saints came from the territory of Pannonia, and the remains of the church at Devín Castle, which archaeologists date to the period of the waning Roman Empire, admit such an interpretation.

2.3.6 Ecclesiastical Old Church Slavonic was created by St. Cyril as an artificial form of the Macedonian dialect used in the area around Thessaloniki in the 9th century for the purpose of celebrating very firstly Byzantine liturgy in our territory — even before he and his brother Methodius came to us. The brothers of Thessalonica were sent to our territory by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III. This happened after Rome did not comply with the request of our ruler Rastislav to send Christian scholars. But when St. Cyril became acquainted with the new situation — which showed the aforementioned signs of liturgical continuity — he translated the rubrics of the Western Roman Rite into the artificial form of the Old Church Slavonic language and wrote them down in letters revealed to him by God Himself. For Sts. Cyril and Methodius were friends of our people and were aware — unlike the protagonists of the post-conciliar changes — that any alteration of a positively experienced habit would work its effects against the common people and could ultimately jeopardize the salvation of individuals. They were therefore no liturgical innovators, but on the contrary, they cautiously respected the “status quo”, that is, the state of affairs at the time, which they found upon their arrival.

2.3.7 On the one hand, Sts. Cyril and Methodius decided not to start from a “green field” in the area of rite, and on the other hand, they did not undertake the translation of the liturgical rubrics into the vernacular — and all this was in the spirit of the missionary practices of the time. Their efforts were directed — and thus their glory is so great — indeed to the creation of a new, artificial liturgical language. Alongside the Byzantine liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Greek liturgy of St. Peter, which the Thessalonian brothers had known from Constantinople, the Glagolitic Mass thus came into being in our territory as the “Roman liturgy of St. Peter.”

2.3.8 The Old Church Slavonic language used in the Roman Rite in our territory was therefore not the language of the common people. It was partly intelligible to the locals — certainly more so than Latin — and partly it obscured higher meanings in newly coined words that the people did not know before. And so there occurred a sacralisation of the language of our ancestors. For even the Greek in the liturgy of the 3rd century was a literary form of the Greek language and not a “lingua vulgaris”, that is, the language of the people. Similarly, the liturgical Latin of the 4th century — and in the later form in which it also became the literary language of all Western culture — was never the language of the common people of the Roman Empire.

2.3.9 Moreover, this duality of tongues — sacred and profane — existed in the time of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His days the language of the Jewish people was Aramaic, while in the Temple the Jewish priests used Hebrew. And although Christ spoke to His disciples in Aramaic when He offered His Holy Sacrifice on the cross, He prayed the verse of Psalm 21 in Hebrew: “Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46)

2.3.10 Matthew comments that those who heard this sigh of Christ thought that he was calling Elijah. For “Eli” may indeed be an address for Elijah in Aramaic, while in Hebrew it means “my God”. Whether Christ spoke Hebrew — that is, the language of the Temple — at the Last Supper, and not Aramaic — that is, the language of the people, we can only speculate today. What is important is that He concludes the Holy Sacrifice He made on the Cross with a prayer in the language of the Temple and not in the language of the people.

2.3.11 Therefore, the Catholicity of the Roman liturgy in Old Church Slavonic as a higher form of the vernacular language of our ancestors written in Glagolitic could be confirmed by Pope Hadrian II. In 867 he placed the Glagolitic liturgical books for the first time on the altar of the present Basilica of Saint Mary Major (Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore) in Rome. This was followed in 880 by Pope John VII's confirmation of the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic with the bull “Industriae Tuae”, or “Thy Zeal”. Beginning from 884, when Pope Stephen V banned the Old Church Slavonic language in the liturgy, there was a period of roughly two centuries of its stagnation, after which the Glagolitic-Roman Mass survived only in the Croatian territory of the Adriatic coast of Dalmatia.

2.3.12 Since the Nitrian prince Svätopluk — later the Old-Slovak king — preferred the Roman liturgy in Latin, after Methodius' death in 885 he allowed his auxiliary bishop Viching to expel Methodius' disciples from our territory in favour of the Bavarian clergy. For this reason, the Western Roman liturgy in Latin became permanently established in our country, and the Glagolitic Missal in Old Church Slavonic was used more in neighbouring Moravia and in the aforementioned Croatia, where different socio-political conditions prevailed.

2.3.13 Therefore, in 1483, the Glagolitic Missal was published in Venice for the first time in printed form under the Croatian title “Misal po zakonu rimskogo dvora” (The Missal according to the law of Roman court).^[45]

2.3.14 In 1905 the last liturgical book in Old Church Slavonic written exclusively in Croatian Glagolitic was published, compiled by Vatroslav Jagić (* 1838 — † 1923). As the Croatian adaptation contained many “Moravisms”, the proofreading was undertaken by the Czech professor and Catholic priest Jozef Vajs (* 1865 — † 1959). Because new generations of priests no longer excelled in reading the Glagolitic script, Professor Vajs published a transcription of the Glagolitic Missal into Latin in 1927. In this edition, only the Canon of the Mass was published in two columns — one in Glagolitic, the other in Latin.

2.3.15 Finally, the most elaborate translation of the Roman Glagolitic Missal is considered by the Czechs to be preserved in typescript “Roman Missal in Old Church Slavonic language to the needs of the reverend clergy in the Czechoslovak state” from 1963, compiled by the priest and paleoslavist Vojtěch Tkadlčík (* 1915 — † 1997). Interestingly, at the time of the then ongoing Second Vatican Council, Slovak bishops in the common Czecho-Slovak state opposed the request for ecclesiastical approval of this missal. This position of the Slovak bishops can be explained in the light of the historically damaged relations of the Slovak and Czech nation, and we will therefore come back to it in this essay.

2.3.16 Your Holiness, but in the meantime let us remind You that in 2020, Father Jakub Václav Zentner from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) — a Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right, which exclusively celebrates the Mass of All Time, active in the Czech Republic — compiled and published an elaboration of Parčić's Glagolitic Mass Order for the use of the faithful. ^[46] The ecclesiastical-legal situation until the issue of Your motu proprio “Traditionis Custodes” made it possible to use in the Roman liturgy this ancestral treasure, so precious for our — Slavic peoples. Your Holiness thus joined the Popes who forbade the Slavic peoples to follow the motto of St. Paul — “tradidi quod et accepi” — i.e. to transmit to the next generation above all what we have received from those who have lived before and to change nothing about it (cf. 1 Cor 15:3) — Semper idem! Always be the same Catholic!

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2.4
Slovak nation as a friend of the old ways

On a brief philosophy of our nation's history that avoids revolutions

2.4.1 Your Holiness, in order to understand the disposition and motivation of the Slovak Church, with which it participated in and later implemented the changes resulting from the pastoral Second Vatican Council, it is necessary to deal at least briefly with the philosophy of our history.

2.4.2 In our territory, St. Gorazd, the successor of Bishop Methodius, is probably the most venerated from the group of the so-called “seven-fathers”, which consisted of heralds of the faith saints Cyril and Methodius and their five other disciples. Together with Duke Slavomír (“Sclajamarus”), Gorazd is one of the first of our people to be persecuted for their faith. An interesting fact is that the figure of Slavomír, according to available historical sources, may have concentrated in himself the attributes of both priestly and monarchical power. There is thus an opinion that the monarch Slavomír was the historical precursor of the first Slovak president, Mons. Jozef Tiso (* 1887 — † 1947), who was also a Roman Catholic priest.

2.4.3 Furthermore, our nation keeps earnest memory of the 10th century hermit saints, namely Andrew-Svorad and his disciple Benedict of Skalka, who lived a rigorous life of renunciation, prayer and work. From the beginning of the 11th century we honour St. Bystrík (Bestricus Nitriensis), bishop and martyr, propagator of the Old Church Slavonic liturgy and zealous evangelizer of the region of Piliš, which is now part of Hungary. It was St. Bystrik who helped drive the pagan Magyars over the bank of Danube River.

2.4.4 After the demise of Empire of Svätopluk as a state of the Western Slavs in the beginning of the 10th century, the “Regnum Hungariae” was established as a multiethnic state on our territory around the year 1000. In Slovak we call it “Uhorsko”. In the Slovak language, we distinguish between “Maďarsko” (hun. Magyarország, slv. Madžarska, hrv. Mađarska, eng. Hungary) as the modern state of the Magyars (eng. Hungarians) and “Uhorsko” (lat. Hungaria, hrv. Ugarska) as our common state with the Hungarians. The Old-Magyar nomadic tribe of Arpád, who did not take part in the Battle of Lech, and who later became the Royal house of Hungary, was lifted to power with help of numerous Slovak aristocrats. These nomads then adopted the culture and a settled way of life from our ancestors. The division of Empire of Svätopluk thus gave rise to the kingdoms of Uhorsko, Poland and Bohemia — representing the legendary three Slavic wands of Svätopluk.^[47]

2.4.5 In the Kingdom of Uhorsko, Latin was the official language for more than 900 years. German was the official language for only 17 years and Magyar language for about 65 years. And it was this short period of the introduction of Magyar as the official language of a multi-ethnic kingdom — the majority of which was never Magyar — and the forced Magyarisation of the Slovak population in the second half of the 19th century (together with various abuses by the liberal government), which caused our ancestors to resent the idea of a common state with Magyars. Until then, the Slovak Catholics perceived it as their homeland and the Marian Kingdom “Regnum Mariae Patronae Hungariae”.

2.4.6 Therefore, one cannot speak of any “thousand-year long oppression” of the Slovak nation under Magyar rule, because the members of the Slovak nation co-created the social, scientific, political and religious life of Uhorsko for hundreds of years.

2.4.7 The beginnings of the Slovak national revival within Uhorsko can be dated back to the second half of the 18th century, when the first attempts were made to raise the Slovak language. The movement was started by the Camaldolese monks from Zobor near Nitra — which used to be the seat of Svätopluk's Empire. The monks there published the first Latin-Slovak dictionary. Half a century later, Roman Catholic priests and Slovak scholars associated around the priest Anton Bernolák (* 1762 — † 1813) attempted to codify the written Slovak language.

2.4.8 The fact that Roman Catholic priests and monks became the leaders of the national revival of the Slovak nation through the revival of the language had at least three causes.^[48] The most important of these is that for the Slovak Catholics of that time Latin was still the only and unifying liturgical language. The eventual codification of Slovak would in no way have affected the most sensitive part of the Catholic cult, which the liturgy undoubtedly is.

2.4.9 Therefore, the biggest obstacle to the standardisation of the written Slovak language was initially the Slovak Lutherans. For them, it would have implied that they would have had to abandon the Biblical Czech, which they had used until then for their ceremonies, songs and Bible studies. Slovak Catholics at that time, on the contrary, did not face such a problem, and so their efforts to codify written Slovak were not hindered by religious reasons. The Bernolák's scholars even showed their willingness to give way — in the matter of Slovak language codification — to the new generation of Slovak Lutherans — called the “štúrovci” — grouped around the linguist Ľudovít Štúr (* 1815 — † 1856).

2.4.10 For today's written Slovak language, we owe first of all to the Catholicism of our national leaders, which in its universalism was able to easily integrate various national particularities.

2.4.11 It is also a fact that the Slovak revivalists at that time were in their majority — if we leave aside the fringe radicals — real opponents of revolutions and conservatives, they rejected democracy, revolution and socialism, they thought of a constitutional monarchy, they supported the emperor and legitimacy. In 1848-49, the group of “štúrovci” not only sided with Vienna, the emperor and the Catholic monarchy — which could still be interpreted as a pragmatic move — but they welcomed and admired the Russian tsarist army and, they saw in the Russian autocratic tsar Nicholas I. (* 1796 — † 1855) as a saviour.^[49]

2.4.12 After the already mentioned generation of priests from the Bernolák group, which revived our nation linguistically, came the generation of priests from the group of Hlinka, grouped around priest Mons. Andrej Hlinka (* 1864 — † 1938). The group of these priests revived our nation politically.^[50]

2.4.13 After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from which our nation inherited mainly the wounds of the last period of Magyarisation, our political leaders were looking for a state-law solution. Through circumstances and the politics of the possible, we were drawn into a common state with the peoples of the Czech lands, marked by the traditions of Hussitism, free-thinking and socialism.^[51]

2.4.14 However, the colonization of Slovakia by Czech liberal teachers, the political attacks of the central government on Slovak Church schools and on the pro-national press, the impossibility for members of the Slovak nation to find employment in the state administration or in the army, and the Czech government's contempt for the rural Catholic population of Slovakia became our new nightmare. We had already experienced attacks on our nationality in Uhorsko. What was new in Czechoslovakia, however, was the systematic government attack on our Catholic faith.^[52]

2.4.15 Therefore, the Catholic generation of our politicians at that time had a clear goal: either they would succeed in winning greater autonomy from the central Prague government within Czechoslovakia, or sooner or later they would have to look for a way out of Czechoslovakia.

2.4.16 In 1939, an independent Slovak Republic was created — preceded in 1938 by the betrayal of the Western powers in Munich, which were supposed to guarantee Czechoslovakia's integrity. Slovak Catholic politicians immediately conceded all sovereign power to God in the constitution of the new state, in accordance with the encyclical “Quas Primas”.^[53]

2.4.17 The fact that at the head of our nation and state in these difficult times stood Catholic priest Mons. Jozef Tiso, was a natural culmination of our past.^[54] Throughout our history, it was Catholic priests who for centuries shaped the character of our nation and ennobled its fidelity to the Catholic faith and the Church of Christ — from the time of the 9th century priest and ruler Slavomír to the priest and president Mons. Jozef Tiso of the 20th century.

2.4.18 Yet the Slovak nation has never sought to establish any form of theocracy. On the contrary, all responsible and forward-thinking politicians were aware of the need for political and power continuity, which is best ensured by the heredity of power. The Slovak politician Vojtech Tuka (* 1880 — † 1946) — who in his youth was a protégé of the Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand Coburg (* 1861 — † 1948) and the tutor of his son, the later Tsar Boris III. (* 1894 — † 1943) — therefore became the father of a monarchist idea, although never realised in Slovakia. According to it, the Catholic priest Mons. Tiso after the war would hand over an independent Slovak state to the monarchist crown of a naturalised descendant of the Bulgarian tsar. In this way, Slovakia would return to the old ways — that is, to its existence within the monarchy, this time also as a state.

2.4.19 If there is such a thing as a national character or instinct, then there is one element that repeats itself with incessant regularity in the Slovak nation — the mysterious attraction to prefer preserving or conserving the old ways against change. Thus, the Slovak nation has never been a revolutionary force that had a stake in the dismantling of the Catholic monarchy and the destruction of the “old order”, which today stands even more starkly in opposition to the “New World Order”, the “Novus Ordo Misae” or the “New Age” concept of the global syncretic church. Our ancestors, within the framework of the politics of the possible, always sought to preserve our culture, our language — but above all our Catholic faith and with it as much of the “old ways" as possible. Our ancestors were aware that the revolution begins a metre away from the boundaries of the Catholic Church. The counter-revolution, by contrast, dwells just within her walls.

2.4.20 Your Holiness, therefore, the real rupture in the perception of our own history is the fact that the biggest secular holiday in Slovakia today is August, 29. On this day we commemorate the revolutionary uprising of 1944 by communists, liberals, democrats, Czechoslovakists, partisans and a confused part of the Slovak army against an authoritarian and clerical state led by the Catholic priest Mons. Jozef Tiso. According to its protagonists, the uprising^[55] was supposed to lead to “the establishment of a people's democratic state of the Czechs, Slovaks and Subcarpathian Ukrainians”. However, the first thing the insurgents did in the occupied territories was to remove crosses from schools, restrict minorities' access to religious services and mix together girls' and boys' classes in schools.

2.4.21 There was no such a thing as an uprising of “people's democrats” against “clerofascism” in 1944. The insurrection resembled Jacobinism in its attributes and cruelty. Partisans from the ranks of the People's Democrats and Communists murdered civilians^[56] and Catholic priests^[57] in a cruel manner.

2.4.22 In 2018, Anna Kolesárová (* 1928 — † 1944) was beatified in Košice as a Slovak martyr of chastity.^[58] Three months after the outbreak of the Uprising, she was shot by a Soviet soldier on our territory because she refused to submit to him. It was just the “people's democratic uprising” that opened the way for the Soviet communists to enter into the heart of our homeland without a fight. Just as the uprising was once celebrated by communists, it is celebrated today by liberals and democrats. This is especially so because it was our own, Slovak Great French Revolution, when revolutionary socialist, liberal and democratic forces rose up against an authoritarian regime promoting the flowering of Christian and national life — even with all its imperfections, faults and sins.

2.4.23 The proponents of these revolutionary forces persecuted the Slovak intellectuals, Catholic priests and bishops after the war. Mons. Jozef Tiso was hanged in 1947 less than two weeks after Easter Sunday. His execution was supervised by a special envoy of the Czech president in demission, Edvard Beneš. Czechoslovakia was ruled by the Beneš-Gottwald regime, i.e., a regime of cooperation between the democrats and the communists, who were jointly eradicating the representatives of the counter-revolutionary Slovak Catholic forces. A year later, the Communist Party won the elections in the Czech lands. The rest of the Slovak counter-revolutionary Catholic intellectuals had no choice but to emigrate abroad in the face of the bloodthirsty revolutionary spirit blowing from Prague.^[59]

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2.5
A kiss to the nation — a slap to Tradition

On the Council, which the Slovak exile understood as a victory of national ambitions

2.5.1 Your Holiness, Your predecessor of blessed memory, Pope Pius XII (* 1876 — † 1958), turned again the attention of the Church back to the evangelization of nations with his encyclicals after the Second World War. In the opinion of His Holiness, the nations were now to be evangelized and governed in the spirit of Christ by the shepherds who had descended from those nations directly. For Pius XII was aware that after the Second World War new state formations had arisen in which a variety of nations often found themselves in positions different from those in which they had coexisted for many centuries before the two World Wars. This was also the case of Czechoslovakia, where, after a short period of sovereignty, the Slovak nation found itself once again not only under Czech domination, but also in the grip
of a communist atheist regime.

2.5.2 In 1946, while still in prison, President Tiso, through his personal secretary, issued the last presidential decree establishing the representative body and transferring to it the formal legitimacy of the Slovak state of which he was president. He also entrusted this body with the leadership of the struggle for the recognition of Slovak state independence in exile.

2.5.3 Atheistic Communism is now persecuting the Church in Slovakia from its Prague centre, all the more so because it regards it as traitorous in the cause of the break-up of Czechoslovakia, as fascist in the sense of aiding the regime which preserved the old ways, and as dangerous in the sense that it might assist in the restoration of Slovak state independence. The Communists are forcibly closing down monasteries and seminaries and, in the only one that remains in Slovakia, are restricting and reviewing candidates for the priesthood. In this situation, the Slovak Catholic emigration — organized also by members of the aforementioned representative body — realizes the urgent need to build its own, Slovak seminary in exile. The main aim was to prepare the offspring of Slovak emigrants for future priestly ministry in Slovakia, which — understandably — had to be preceded by their proper education in the Slovak language.

2.5.4 Our priestly exile, therefore, from 1961 began to gather in the newly founded Slovak Institute of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Rome. Its establishment and operation were generously subsidized by the American Slovaks. Even before its foundation, however, the institute had to struggle against the resistance of the Roman Curia. Unfortunately for us, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who from 1926 to 1928 was the rector of the Czech seminary, later the higher Pontifical College Nepomucenum, was working in the Roman Curia at the time. His Eminence Cardinal Ottaviani, from his position as Protector of the Czech seminary Nepomucenum (since 1953), has been putting obstacles in the way of the Slovaks so that they could not establish a Slovak higher seminary. The Czechs managed to convince him that a Slovak seminary would take students away from the Czech one.

2.5.5 The Slovak Institute of Sts. Cyril and Methodius has been approved by the decree of His Eminence Cardinal Tisserant, nevertheless — mainly due to Cardinal Ottaviani — the Institute cannot be erected on the Vatican's grounds. The Slovaks thus feel humiliated by Cardinal Ottaviani, and build their seminary beyond the borders of the Vatican State, where Ottaviani's power does not extend.

2.5.6 Your Holiness, as it is surely well known to You, His Eminence Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani was appointed by Pope John XXIII as Chair of the Doctrinal Commission for the preparation of the Second Vatican Council. He held very conservative positions there, which, however, failed to prevail at the Concil. In 1969, a year after resigning all his offices, this “sharpshooter of the faith” — as he was nicknamed — supported the objections of Msgr. Lefebvre's opposition to the Novus Ordo Misae, that is, the New Mass Order.

2.5.7 However, the experience of Slovak priests and especially their generous donors — American Slovaks — with Cardinal Ottaviani as the “Protector of the Czechs” has already been permanently engraved in their minds.

2.5.8 Having a representation under the name of our own nation at a time when there was no Slovak state independence, when there were no Slovak diplomatic missions, no Slovak scientific and cultural institutions, and when it was therefore impossible to freely present the Slovak identity in the world and in the “eternal city”, was indeed important for our nation, for our Church, and for our exiled political representation. Through the Institute, Slovaks could become members of various international institutions, which presupposed institutional, collective membership.

2.5.9 The Institute of Sts. Cyril and Methodius also became a kind of reference point for the Holy See and the Roman Curia in all matters concerning Slovakia. Therefore, the establishment of the Slovak ecclesiastical province in 1977, which was proclaimed by Pope Paul VI with the constitution “Qui Divino”, was to a large degree the fruit of the effort of the Institute and the priests who lived and worked there.

2.5.10 Cardinal Ottaviani's stance — as a defender of Tradition — against the Slovak seminary thus became the first of two emotionally pivotal moments that became engraved in the mind of the Slovak priests in the Institute, who were later to serve in pastoral ministry in Slovakia and among Slovak communities around the world.

2.5.11 The second emotionally pivotal moment took place during the private audience with Pope Paul VI in Clement Hall in the Apostolic Palace on September 14, 1963. Pope received more than five hundred Slovaks — among them many American Slovaks — led by their spiritual fathers. It was on the eve of the consecration of the chapel in the Institute. In His speech, the Pope emphasized that he knows Slovak history and Slovak spirituality. At the end he bows to the Slovak flag. He blesses it. And in his hands he kisses it... It was a gesture that foreign Slovaks liken to that of Pope John Paul II when, in the spring of 1990, on his first historic visit to Slovakia, he stepped off the plane, knelt down and kissed the Slovak soil. This was also at a time when Slovakia was still part of Czecho-Slovakia...

2.5.12 Your Holiness, these two emotionally powerful moments have played a role in our history. While Tradition, in the person of Ottaviani, gave our nation a slap in the face, the deluge of modernism sanctified by Pope Paul VI, in the person of His Holiness, gave our nation a kiss. A kiss which has since then increasingly turned into a slap in the face of Tradition.

2.5.13 Pope Paul VI also paid the Institute the printing costs of Missals with the new post-Conciliar Mass. The Mass which was already in Slovak and not in Latin. In Slovak, which reminded the Slovaks in the world so much of their home, from which they had to flee after the war. Because of the communists and the central government in Prague. Thus, 25 years after the flight of the Slovak intellectuals, the Mass in Slovak became the fulfilment of the unity of their motto “pro Deo et Patria”, to which they had devoted their whole lives in good faith...

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2.6
Slovak swallows of the spirit of progress

On the revolutionary and nobel idolatry which devours its own children

2.6.1 Your Holiness, as we have shown You, the sons of the Slovak nation in emigration — and subsequently those at home — have combined the age-old aspiration for the uplift of their language and nation with the contemporary enthusiasm for great changes in the Church, and together with others have become excited about the promise of a “New Pentecost”. And while the spirit of progress has been slyly subverting the Truths of the Faith one by one in the name of the “spirit of the Council”, the men in lead of our nation have ridden uncritically the wave of the times — at first sight — in the noble pursuit of service to their people and to the Church.

2.6.2 In spite of all the benefits that the Institute of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Rome has brought to our nation in ecclesiastical and pastoral terms, it is appropriate today to ask whether the disputes with Cardinal Ottaviani over the building of the Slovak seminary were not disagreements on matters of a lower order, as a result of which the priorities of a higher order were forgotten. It is also worth asking whether this wound — although very painful — was not, in the end, too much overestimated by the men in lead of our nation. Including the national struggle for liberation waged against the Prague central government and against the superiority of the Czech element over the Slovak one in the common state.

2.6.3 It is possible that it was national zeal that was behind the rejection of Tkadlíček's elaboration of the Glagolitic Roman Missal in Old Church Slavonic by our bishops. They might have considered the Missal in Old Church Slovak submitted by the Czech bishops as another attack on the Slovak language and Slovak national interests. The Glagolitic Missal — in Old Church Slovak, which was not a vernacular language even in the times of its creation — is the common heritage of all Slavic peoples faithful to the See of Peter.

2.6.4 Along with their national zeal, the best sons of the Slovak nation did not notice the seeds of decay that had crept into their work. And what man is brave enough to look back and acknowledge the mistakes in the things to which he has devoted his whole life? Pride is a severe temptation, especially for people who have achieved a prominent place in the world.

2.6.5 However, it is now undeniable that the supremacy of national self-determination over religious orthodoxy has created that shocking and paradoxical effect which has made Slovak Catholicism unstable and dependent as a direct consequence of its quest for independence. This was due to the fact that it was one of the few in the world — which even in its most politically conservative fractions — did not show any doubt about the direction of the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. And that is why our nation has remained dependent today on ecclesiastical authorities from other nations in the matters of the true faith.

2.6.6 The failure of the Slovak emigration in the West, which considered itself the guardian of the Slovak tradition along national and Catholic lines, is now proving fatal. Our emigration, unlike the population in Czechoslovakia, had detailed information about the scandalous developments in the Church in the 1960's. The emigrants knew about the reprehensible liturgical, doctrinal or moral laxities, or about the deliberate defamation of the Church by intra-Church revolutionary elements, and yet they completely resigned to express any opposition and critical attitude towards these phenomena.

2.6.7 Unfortunately, on the contrary, they took them for their own and allowed themselves to be swayed by the chimerical notion of the beneficial influence of the introduction of the vernacular language into the liturgy, which in their eyes was to be a confirmation of national ambitions and the elevation of a hitherto neglected and ignored language to the “world level”.^[60]

2.6.8 The conservative elites of the Slovak nation overlooked all the gradually arriving signals which indicated that after the external attack of communism and Nazism on the Church there would come a frontal assault on its walls from within.

2.6.9 The Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Petržalka, built between 1931 and 1932 in the functionalist architectural style, was an indication of the change of great extent in sacral architecture that was to follow after the war. The retreat of beauty in favour of pure practicality eventually resulted in the present modernist architecture of churches, which lacks any attribute of sacredness, and which has completely destroyed the meaning and essence of the liturgical space of the presbytery. In the old churches, it separated the altar from the tabernacle of God by erecting a “Communion Table”. In the new churches, it has separated the tabernacle even further from this “Communion Table” so that the centre of the church becomes the priest who “presides” over the Mass as the common supper of the assembly of the faithful.

2.6.10 The illustrations of the impressionist artist Imrich Barta (* 1925 — † 1999) in the “Latin-Slovak Missal” published in 1952^[61] are the author's attempt, in the spirit of impressionism, to capture liturgical life as it appeared at that very moment, twenty years before the Second Vatican Council. This in spite of, or in complete contradiction to, what the Missal of the Mass of All Time still expressed in words in its rubrics at that time. Thus, in the pre-Conciliar Missal, Barta depicted “Communion Tables”, loaves of bread instead of hosts, and even other innovations in post-Conciliar theology, such as the mysterious exchange of gifts between God and the man.^[62]

2.6.11 But that's not all. In this Missal, in the instruction on the sprinkling of holy water at the beginning of the Mass of All Time known as “Asperges”, we read that Christians commonly received the Body of Christ in the hand.^[63]

2.6.12 If modernism and its spirit of progress could run wild like this before the Council, after the Council it stopped at nothing — not even at the 13^th-century hymn in honour of the Body of Christ composed by St. Thomas Aquinas (* 1225 — † 1274). The song “Tantum ergo Sacramentum”^[64], that is, “We venerate this glorious Sacrament” ^[65], became a weapon of propaganda of the “spirit of the Council” in the hands of the progressives. A new Slovak translation of this hymn appeared in III. Volume of the post-Conciliar Liturgy of the Hours, approved in 1989 and published in 1990.^[66] Since then, the “ancient worship” is to be replaced by a “new, sublime” one, and to make matters worse, all this is to be aided by a “faith united with love”.

2.6.14 But how did St. Thomas Aquinas write it? In Latin, “antiquum documentum”, or “old document” is supposed to be replaced by “novo ritui”, or the “new rite”. For in the time of the “angelic teacher” the Church taught a “theology of substitution” according to which Christians are the only continuators of the Jewish religion, and God has replaced all the previous rites of the Jews with the Holy Mass. Thus, Thomas, in a hymn in celebration of the Body of Christ, sings that Christ's sacrifice on the Cross during the Mass, present bloodlessly in the form of bread and wine, should replace all Old Testament practices, for in the Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary the Old Testament was fulfilled. The older, pre-Conciliar Slovak translation strictly respected this sense, merely reversing the order of the meanings for “rite” and “law”, but without changing the overall sense. Thus, before the Council, “the rite of the past” was to give way to “the new law right now”^[67].

2.6.14 In this form, however, the text could not be used explicitly against the old rite of the Mass of All Time — in the sense that the old Mass was to be replaced by a post-Conciliar New Mass order — and therefore had to undergo a change of meaning. As an added bonus, the spirit of progress also added “love” to the text, which was not present in the original, and St. Thomas faith alone is sufficient for him to supply the inadequacy of the senses... ^[68]

2.6.15 Your Holiness, the “Unified Catholic Cantional” (hereafter “JKS”) has been in use in Slovakia since its first edition in 1937 — and is one of the longest-used Catholic cantionals in Europe. Its dogmatically correct texts survived World War II and Communism, but did not survive the plundering of the spirit of the Council. After the Council, it was not only the translated hymns that were changed — as we have shown above — but also the own hymns composed by Nicholas Schneider-Trnavský (* 1881 — † 1958).

2.6.16 One of them, for example, is the Lenten hymn No. 177 — “I've worked enough”, where, until the Council, we sang together with our Lord Jesus Christ, “I'll go, I'll go to Jerusalem, where the Jewish race crucifies me.” After the Council, we sing that Christ is crucified by “this human race” and the Jews have dropped out of the text altogether. Of course, this has to do with the fact that after the Council the Church changed its teaching, captured in theology of substitution, i.e., “replacement theology” and admitted to the Jews the possibility of a kind of parallel way of salvation, which they can attain even without believing in Christ.

2.6.17 Also worth mentioning are the translations of the Holy Scriptures according to the post-Conciliar “Nova Vulgata” of 1979. If we compare the present Slovak translation, which was partly produced in the Roman exile^[69], and the older translations^[70] according to the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate (1592), we find that the changes introduced in 1979 have one thing in common — namely, a high degree of interpretation and the removal of the footnotes where the Catholic interpretation of Holy Scripture was kept. Tradition handed down from generation to generation had to give way to philological, linguistic and religious conjecture and supposition. And so, as we have already seen in the intervention of Pope Benedict XVI in the matter of the incorrect Words of Consecration — this modernist approach cannot be trusted at all.

2.6.18 The tornado did not stop even in front of the Creed Christ no longer descended into hell^[71] — that is, in Latin, “descendit ad inferos” — but descended only to the “departed”. Didn't this change contribute to relativizing the existence of hell and fallen angels? And to diminish Christ's victory over the devil?

2.6.19 Your Holiness, and we could go on and on like this.

2.6.20 And that is why the enthusiasm for such a development after the Second Vatican Council, which dominated the Slovak conservative emigration in the West — and which at times took on an almost prophetic form of heralding a “New Pentecost” — has no parallel in the counter-revolutionary and conservative circles in Europe and America. Here, contrary to any internal logic of conservative thought, a revolution in the Church — the fruits of which we have seen above — was being celebrated, and from which the “Slovak guardians of tradition” sought to extract insignificant national bonuses.

2.6.21 Your Holiness, however, the cutting of the roots of the Church inevitably had to entail the cutting of its spiritual children — Christian Europe and its Christian nations. In the flood of multi-ethnic anarchy and the importation of oriental ideas and ethnicities, the idea of an independent Slovak nation — which arose precisely from centuries of European Catholicism — finally loses its real basis.

2.6.22 The Slovak exiles in the West, who exchanged Catholic orthodoxy for gifts — and today we can say beware of Greeks bearing gifts — in the form of the Institute of St. Cyril and Methodius and an independent Slovak ecclesiastical province, saw the work of their labour turned against themselves — just as it happens in the case of revolutions. In a set of prayers published in 2015 under the title “Prayers for the 70th Anniversary of Liberation”^[72], the Slovak bishops give thanks for “the victory of freedom over the dictatorship of Nazism”.

2.6.23 Yet it was the post-war years 1944—1948 for which Slovak bishops today give thanks, and which drove the best sons of our nation into permanent emigration. It is this period that represents in our history one of the cruellest stages of the post-war people's democratic persecution of Slovak Catholics, which only smoothly passed into the communist terror that lasted for over forty years after the war. The loop was thus closed. To pray and give thanks for this period of the “victory of freedom” in the light of the recent canonization of Anna Kolesárová — the martyr of chastity murdered by the Soviet “liberators” of Czechoslovakia — is the true revolutionary and noble idolatry set in Slovak, which eventually devours even its own children. And despite the fact that it all takes place in Slovak, the people still don't understand it...

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III.

Your Holiness,

the burden of confusion and helplessness that Catholics in Slovakia — and throughout the world — have to bear is becoming heavier and heavier. The constant chaotic shifting of centuries-old boundaries in rules of faith, church-law or morals is becoming more unbearable by the day. The causes and problems we have presented to You are not the sum total of our confusion, but only the tip of the iceberg that has been collecting upon the Body of the Church over the years.

We would not allow ourselves to bother You unless we knew — as true sons and daughters of the Church should know — that the key to solving these problems is in Your hands. It is the key — or keys — that were entrusted to Your predecessor in office — Pope Peter — by the Saviour Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks to this power of the keys, it is You who can put an end to all confusion and helplessness.

Surely — having presented You with the above causes of our confusion — it is not necessary to advise You on what should be the remedy for the current chaos. It is surely a return to the certainty of Tradition, without adapting to a contemporary world that is reeling in spiritual, cultural and moral anarchy. It is a return to that Tradition which You had the joy of knowing as a child and a young man; a Tradition which formed You and, we firmly believe, led You to the blessed vocation to the priesthood.

Are we too presumptuous if we want to know the redemptive beauty and effects of this unbroken Tradition on ourselves and our children? Is it not our duty — but also our right — to invoke and claim this Tradition? Are today's princes of the Church able, like the king in the fairy tale “Salt over Gold” to finally admit that they have unjustly banished sons and daughters who measured the greatness of their love for the Church in salt? Salt which, although it had been slumbering in the rock — in the Church — for many years, had not lost its taste...

We appeal to You, Your Holiness, to grant us the spiritual gift of firm guidance, infallible doctrine and unshaken morals, which have also been granted to You. We ask for nothing more than what Your Holiness Himself has been given.

This is the salt with which to season the smouldering body of the Church, from which limb after limb is gradually falling off, spreading the shocking stench of decay and subversion, and what is more — for the Catholic Church is the soul of the world — striking decay in the Church and in the whole world, and throwing it back into the pagan past, whose reign only a hundred years ago seemed to have been overpowered.

Just as we will welcome You with material salt, do not drive us away, but welcome us also with spiritual salt — a return to the unchanging Tradition of the one, apostolic, holy, Catholic Church proved by the course of two thousands of years.

In unity with the See of St. Peter and eternal Rome,

in Decollatione S. Joannis Baptistæ,

in Christ Yours, and devoted to Your holy office,

Igor Cagáň, Branislav Michalka, Milan Žiak, Radovan Novotný,
the presenters.

---

Footnotes

^[1] See the fairy tale “Salt over Gold” recorded by the Slovak storyteller Pavol Dobšinský or by the Czech fairy tale writer Božena Němcová, to whom the story was told by a maid from the Sliač Spa in Slovakia.

^[2] The Jews in the time of Christ obtained salt from pitch, or bitumen (as a liquid mixture of hydrocarbons), which easily lost its saltiness (to become weathered). With our salt it is not so noticeable.

^[3] Letter of the Holy Father, Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict XVI to the German Bishops' Conference, addressed to its President, Msgr. Robert Zollitsch, in which His Holiness addresses the form of the appropriate translation of the words of consecration over the chalice, April 14, 2012.

^[4] 68.9% Roman Catholics and 4.1% Greek Catholics;

^[5] In our country, the representation of practicing believers is increasing mainly northwards towards the Polish and eastwards towards the Ukrainian borders, and, on the contrary, decreasing southwards towards the “Calvinist” Hungarian and westwards towards the “modernist” Austrian borders and the borders with the “Hussite” Czech Republic, which often becomes a “missionary territory” for our priests.

^[6] Given the fact that in Slovakia the obligation of full inoculation has been enforced for those who would like to meet Your Holiness, the number of Catholics who will actually come to physically welcome You will be drastically lower than during the apostolic visit of Pope John Paul II.

^[7] The administrator of the Parish is Father Jozef Kováčik, who served until 2014 as a spokesman for the Slovak Bishops' Conference (“KBS”) and is currently the programme director of TV Lux, which is majority owned by the KBS.

^[8] Bleha, B. — Vaňo, B. et al.: Demografický atlas Slovenskej republiky. Bratislava: Geo-grafika: Prírodovedecká fakulta Univerzity Komenského, Katedra humánnej geografie a demografie: Výskumné demografické centrum: INFOSTAT, Inštitút informatiky a štatistiky, 2014, 978-80-89317-28-8.

^[9] Moreover, Slovakia has no share in historical slavery and also has no colonial past — apart from some of the recent NATO colonial wars in which, unfortunately, we have participated as a country. In doing so, the current fiasco of Euro-Atlantic civilisation in Afghanistan only underlines the failure of the aggressive neoconservative, non-Catholic ideology that was behind this invasion. This is what the “Christian Democrats” at home and around the world have chosen as their own, and instead of twenty years of preaching the Holy Gospel and converting Muslims, they have created the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our time, which the average Slovak Catholic family cannot even begin
to mitigate.

^[10] Heriban, J. [preklad]: Biblia: Sväté písmo Starého a Nového zákona. 12. vyd.. Trnava: Spolok svätého Vojtecha, 2013. ISBN 978-80-7162-996-2. Imprimatur: Joannes Sokol, Archiepiscopus — Metropolita, Tyrnaviae, die 6. Maii, 2003.

^[11] It uses the word “people” 152 times, the word “others” 135 times, the word “love” 96 times, the word “brother” or “brotherhood” 82 times, words like “openness” or “open” 76 times, the word “dialogue” 40 times, but the name “Jesus” only 27 times, and the adjective “Christ” only 11 times.

^[12] Nostra Aetate, 1965, para. 3.

^[13] Biblia sacra vulgatae editionis, Romae 1598, p. 1087.

^[14] Donoval, J. [preklad]: Písmo sväté. Nový zákon Pána Nášho Ježiša Krista. Časť II.: Listy Apoštolské a Zjavenia sv. Jána Apoštola. Trnava-Nagyszombat: Spolok svätého Adalberta (Vojtecha), 1914. 200 s. Nihil obstat: Richardus Osvald (1283/1912). Imprimatur: Ludovicus Rajner, Episcopus, Vicarius Generalis Archeppalis, Strigonii, die 29. Februarii 1912.

^[15] Zlatoš, Š. – Šurjanský, A. [preklad]: Písmo sväté Nového zákona. 3. vyd.. Trnava: Spolok sv. Vojtecha, 1949. Imprimatur: Paulus Jantausch, Episcopus, Administrator Apostolicus, Tyrnaviae, die 28 Novembris 1945.

^[16] Your Holiness, forgive us for the suspicion with which we observe even some Christian refugees. Both the fathers of families working in Western Europe and our priests serving there bear witness to us that male or female religious orders, or the priesthood as such, are increasingly becoming for some non-European immigrants a mere ticket to Europe. Nuns and priests marry, and it is not uncommon for them to remain practicing their pagan rites and customs right in our Catholic churches and cathedrals once they arrive in Europe.

^[17] In Slavic mythology, the “svätoháj”, “holy forest” was a sacred forest or forest, where it was forbidden to cut down trees or even to remove dead wood from them, because the Slavs considered it sacred ground.

^[18] Your Holiness, in the spirit of Your encyclical “Laudato Si” (2015), however, in July 2021 in the Church of St. Stephen in Bratislava, Slovakia the liturgical space was disturbed. The Capuchins, who manage the church, covered the two side altars, as well as the main altar, with collages of photographs of birds to “recall the harmony between the Creator and the whole of creation”. Instead, they were more reminiscent of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris of 1793, which the French revolutionaries transformed into the “Temple de la Raison”, or “Temple of Reason”. On the high altar, instead of the true God, they placed an opera singer who represented the “déesse de la Raison”, the “Goddess of Reason”. In both cases, God's sovereign place in the church was occupied by His creatures... “By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (cf. Mt 7:16)

^[19] Mons. Baxant is the first Czech bishop to celebrate a pontifical “pre-Conciliar” Mass in the Czech Republic according to the Missal of John XXIII in forty years since the Second Vatican Council.

^[20] Labo, Š.: Róbert Bezák: pravda o odvolanom arcibiskupovi. Praha: Ottovo nakladatelství, 2014, 176 s., 978-80-7451-403-6.

^[21] At this festival Mons. Bezák declared that “the Lord God is the greatest ‘Relaxed Lad’, who is where the people are having fun” and that “prayers of Our Father and kneeling will not help us anymore, it belongs to the Stone Age”.

^[22] During the event “Night of the Churches” in 2011, Mons. Bezák allowed Zuzana Smatanová (* 1984) to sing a rock rendition of the slightly erotic song “Cherries” by Hana Hegerová (* 1931 — † 2021) in his seat church, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Trnava. The song metaphorically intertwines the image of cherries with young female breasts, and the lyrics culminate with the words, “When the lad smiles at you from under his beard, quickly take the cherries out from under your blouse.”

^[23] However, while Mons. Bezák showed his angelic face before the media, the statements of some priests and diocesan office workers testify to his averted face. The latter was finally manifested in its fullness, especially in his relationship with Mons. Ján Sokol, Archbishop Emeritus, whom Mons. Bezák succeeded in office. Mons. Bezák bullied his predecessor, did not allow him to celebrate Holy Mass in Trnava and conducted a discrediting campaign against him in the media.

^[24] Oko, D.: Levanduľová mafia. S pápežmi a biskupmi proti homo-klikám v Cirkvi. Nadácia Slovakia Christiana: Bratislava, 2021.

^[25] At the same time, Páter Oko does not see the case of Róbert Bezák in isolation, but notes that close to the removal of Archbishop Bezák — on June 2, 2012 — another bishop of Bezák's years resigned in Lithuania. Specifically, is was the Dominican Bishop Vilhelms Lapelis (* 1961) of Lipawa. The Holy See has given Mons. Bezák also the opportunity to resign from the office of bishop until approximately the end of June 2012, in order to avoid scandal. Mons. Bezák refused this option and — unlike Lapelis — publicized his case himself. According to Fr. Oko, the homolobby within the Church takes the form of homoheresy, which he defines as the denial of the Church's teaching on homosexuality and the practice of the homosexual act. The author points out that more than 80% of the cases of abuse of minors by Catholic clergy are cases where the victims were male, that is, the perpetrators were sexually inclined to the same sex. In addition, the age of the victims in about four-fifths of the cases was over 11 years of age, i.e., just before puberty or at puberty. Such sexual proclivity is referred to as ephebophilia, which is a subset of homosexual tendencies. The solution to sexual scandals, the author reminds us, is strict adherence to Church practice according to which homosexuality is a serious impediment to the ordination of a candidate to the priesthood. The author therefore welcomes the Holy See's intervention in the cases of bishops who have tended to ordain homosexuals as priests — which could reportedly be the Bezák's case.

^[26] In the Mass of All Time, according to Catholic Tradition, no one is allowed to touch the sacred vessels (chalice and ciborium) except the priest who has washed his hands before. Also, only the priest, with washed hands, prepares the great, priestly host and the smaller hosts for the faithful. The sacred books are touched only by the priest himself and he reads from them. Only the priest reads from the Missal. When the altar boy carries the missal, he does not touch the book itself, but only the holder underneath it. There is no procession with the offertory (except, for example, in the Dominican rite). The altar boy holds the pots by the bottom, while the priest grasps them by the ears. In the case the priest sneeze, the hosts for the faithful are placed in a small ciborium covered with a lid. The priest is not allowed to touch anything else with those fingers which he uses to touch the already consecrated Holy Hosts. The rubrics forbid him to do so under grave sin, and therefore the priest keeps his fingers “bound” since the transubstantiation. The sign of peace is not given by the faithful at all at the Mass of All Time. Only at an assisted Mass does the priest greet the deacon and subdeacon. They grasp his elbows with the palms of their hands from below, and the priest places his hands on their forearms, of course so that he does not touch anything with his “bound fingers”. The faithful at Holy Communion kneel and say nothing in response to the priest's words. Communion is distributed only by the priest, and only into the mouth, by the faithful kneeling and slightly bowing his head, and the priest, with purified fingers, places the host in the mouth of the faithful. In doing so, he is careful not to touch the communicant and the host itself falls on the tongue due to the tilt of the head. The priest does not normally make the sign of the cross on the forehead of children. However, where children are accustomed to this gesture, the priest makes the sign of the cross over their heads without touching them.

^[27] Lekárnici za život – Slovensko: Stanovisko k problematike očkovania proti ochoreniu COVID-19, 18. 12. 2020. Available on-line.

^[28] And the organisation has also published an educational material of more than 100 pages, in which the authors describe how the present pharmaceutical industry uses tissues from violently aborted babies. See Cagáňová, V.: Embryonálne a fetálne bunkové kultúry a línie a vakcíny v tieni epidémie nového koronavírusu. Čo môže veriaci lekárnik a pacient poznať, v čo môže veriť a čo smie robiť v konflikte so svojím svedomím? Available on-line.

^[29] The Slovak bishops, unlike the American ones, devoted almost no space in their statement on vaccination to a strong condemnation of the continuous pharmaceutical practice of using embryonic and foetal cell cultures and lines derived from violently aborted babies to produce vaccines.

^[30] In a letter to the German bishops, Pope Benedict XVI explains that: “In the 1960's, when the Roman Missal had to be translated into German, under the responsibility of the bishops, there was a consensus among exegetes to the effect that the word ‘many’ in Is 53:11 f. is a Hebrew expression referring to the totality, ‘all’. It would follow that the use of the word ‘many’ in the institution narratives of Matthew and Mark is a Semitism and should be translated ‘all’.”

^[31] Lefébvre, M.: Lettre ouverte aux catholiques perplexes, Paris, Albin Michel, coll. “Lettre ouverte”, 1985.

^[32] The current (2019) Code of Canon Law regulates papal infallibility in Canon 749, § 1, which states, “By virtue of his office, the Supreme Pontiff possesses infallibility in teaching when as the supreme pastor and teacher of all the Christian faithful, who strengthens his brothers and sisters in the faith, he proclaims by definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held”. And at the same time, § 3 of the same Canon says: “No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident.” The Church therefore recognizes so far only two cases in which the institution of papal infallibility has been invoked. The first was the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary (1854) by Pope Pius IX. The manner in which this dogma was proclaimed by the Pope also became the impetus for the adoption of the dogma of papal infallibility. The dogma of papal infallibility was invoked a second time in the promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (1950) by Pius XII. This means that since the First Vatican Council, the Pope has exercised his prerogative of infallibility only once.

^[33] For Catholic Tradition teaches us in this place of Holy Scripture that indeed “[w]hatever the Superior commands, the Inferior cannot revoke; the Inferior has authority from the Superior, and therefore has no rights against the Superior. Whoever obeys the higher lord against the will of the lower is without punishment, for even if the lower lord would like to punish him, the higher will not allow it. But whoever disobeys the higher for the sake of the lower lord will be punished, for the lower cannot prevent the [punishment by] higher, and therefore God, as the supreme lord, is to be obeyed more than men.” See Písmo sväté. Nový zákon Pána Nášho Ježiša Krista. Časť I.: Evanjelia a Skutky Apoštolské. [Preložil Ján Donoval.] Trnava—Nagyszombat: Spolok svätého Adalberta (Vojtecha), 1913, p. 211. Nihil obstat: Richardus Osvald (1283/1912). Imprimatur: Ludovicus Rajner, Episcopus, Vicarius Generalis Archeppalis, Strigonii, die 29. Februarii 1912.

^[34] Jn 14:15: “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

^[35] Jn 15:10: “If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; as I also have kept my Father's commandments, and do abide in his love.”

^[36] At this point, Catholic Tradition understands by sheep those who “from water and the Holy Spirit beget spiritual children, i.e., the faithful” — that is, priests. “St. Peter is to shepherd, i.e., to administer both the faithful and the bishops and priests”.

^[37] Luke 5:4: “Duc in altum.”

^[38] For example, as early as 1969, 12 Roman Catholic theologians, at the instigation of Archbishop Mons. Marcel Lefebvre's “Short Critical Study on the New Order of Mass”, which was subsequently sent to Pope Paul VI by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who headed the Holy Office from 1959 to 1966, and Cardinal Antonio Bacci. For example, the document criticizes the incorrect definition of the Mass according to the New Mass Order, which was redefined from the Sacrifice of Calvary of Jesus Christ to the Last Supper according to the Protestant model. There has been a conflation of the Liturgy of the Word with the Eucharistic Liturgy as if both were of equal value. Along with the removal of the prayers “Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas”, that is, “Receive, Holy Trinity”, and “Placet Tibi, Sancta Trinitas”, that is, “Holy Trinity, be it pleasing to you”, the ultimate purpose of the Mass, which is the offering of praise to the Holy Trinity, has been removed. The immediate purpose of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice for the remission of sins for the living and the dead has been undermined. The New Order of Mass, on the other hand, emphasizes only the nourishment and strengthening of those present. The immanent purpose of the Mass, which is to make the sacrifice acceptable to God, has also been removed. The New Order of Mass makes the Mass an exchange of gifts between man and God. And such facts, unfortunately, could go on and on...

^[39] In his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI wrote about the Mass of the Ages: “It is well known that in every century of the Christian era the Church’s Latin liturgy in its various forms has inspired countless saints in their spiritual life, confirmed many peoples in the virtue of religion and enriched their devotion.”

^[40] Cf. Council of Trent, Session XXII, Sept. 17, 1562, Canon VII: “If any one saith, that the ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs, which the Catholic Church makes use of in the celebration of masses, are incentives to impiety, rather than offices of piety; let him be anathema.”

^[41] Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce: Report to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Implementation of the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum in Dioceses Worldwide, 2007—2020.

^[42] Up to 72% in North America, 69.2% in Central Europe, 62.3% in South America, 60.4% in Asia, 57.5% in Oceania, 55.5% in Northeast Europe, 51.7% in Northwest Europe, 31.7% in Southern Europe and 28.6% in Africa.

^[43] Rituale omnium lat. rit. diœcesium slovacchiæ et subcarpatorussiæ. Ad instar appendicis ritualis romani cum approbatione sacræ rituum congregationis jussu et auctoritate omnium præsulum slovacchiæ, 1937. Promulgated by Pius XI, approved by Laurenti, C., compiled by Vojtaššák, J.

^[44] Council of Trent, Session XXII, Sept. 17, 1562, Canon IX: “If any one saith, that the rite of the Roman Church, according to which a part of the canon and the words of consecration are pronounced in a low tone, is to be condemned; or, that the mass ought to be celebrated in the vulgar tongue only; or, that water ought not to be mixed with the wine that is to be offered in the chalice, for that it is contrary to the institution of Christ; let him be anathema.”

^[45] Your Holiness, let us now make you familiar with the artefacts of the Slavonic Glagolitic heritage. In the Franciscan libraries in Slovakia, Father Vševlad Jozef Gajdoš, OFM (* 1907 — † 1978) discovered parchment fragments in Glagolitic script. According to the place of their discovery he called them “Hlaholské listy hlohovské” (Glagolitic letters from Hlohovec) and “Svätoantonský hlaholský fragment” (Glagolitic fragment from St. Anton). These were letters from a Missal of Roman Rite written in Glagolitic from the late 13th or early 14th century, of Croatian provenance, and a fragment from the Glagolitic Breviary, which includes the prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours of the Roman Catholic Church in Old Church Slavonic. Father Vševlad Gajdoš also discovered the “Medicean Glagolitic Codex”. While researching library holdings in Slovakia, he discovered that the “Codex Sclavonicus Hieronymus” was located in the Medicean Library (“Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana”) in Florence, Italy marked as “Psalterium Armenum”. Thanks to this, an incomplete Old Church Slavonic Breviary and Ritual and a complete translation of the liturgical sequence “Dies irae” have been discovered. According to Father Gajdoš, all these relics came to Slovakia thanks to the Croatian Franciscans, who in the beginning of the 18th century worked in Slovakia under the name of “Franjevci trećoredci glagoljaši” (“de litera Sclava, fratres Illirici”, “Glagolitic third-order franciscans”). In the 17th century, the Roman Glagolitic Missal adopts the version of the Old Church Slavonic that was preserved in the Eastern Byzantine rite. Therefore, the Roman Missal published by order of the Council of Trent (1570) was translated into Old Church Slavonic according to this variant. Although this variant of Old Church Slavonic reminded the Croats the Serbian Orthodox variant of the language, they had to wait until the end of the 19th century, namely until 1880, when Pope Leo XIII, on the thousandth anniversary of the bull “Industriae Tuae”, extended the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius to the entire Roman Church with the encyclical “Grande Munus”. In it, he also encouraged the Slavic nations that the renewal of their national identity could be borne by renewal in the Catholic faith. Therefore, already in 1893, at the impulse of Pope Leo XIII, the Glagolitic Missal “Missale Romanum Glagolitice”, edited by the Croatian canon Dragutin Antun Parčić (*1832 — † 1902), was published again in the Croatian Glagolitic variant. Its second edition was published in 1896.

^[46] Zentner, J. V. [ed.]: Glagolský mešní řád Římského misálu staroslověnsky doplněný o mešní texty pro svátky českých svatých, Panny Marie, a liturgické zpěvy. Červený Kostelec: Nakladatelství Pavel Mervart, 2020, 169 s., ISBN 978-80-7465-460-2.

^[47] The fact that “Regnum Hungariae” was also our kingdom is demonstrated, for example, by the figure of the Slovak Archbishop, Primate of Uhorsko and Viceroy Juraj Pohronec Slepčiansky (* 1595 — † 1685). He was involved in the defence of our common homeland against the Turks and in the liberation of the occupied Christian territories. Thanks to him, the Polish King John III. Sobieski took part in the Battle of Vienna (1683), in which Christian Europe defeated the Islamic Ottoman Empire and delayed the Islamisation of Europe for several centuries. At that time, the Slovak Primate of Hungary had made thousands of medals for the Christian defenders of Vienna with the image of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows on one side and the name Mary on the other. He told the Christian army not to be afraid, because the Virgin Mary would fight with them. We may also consider the figure of Cardinal Alexander Rudnay (* 1760 — † 1831), who was also Primate and Archbishop of Uhorsko, and who began the construction of the Esztergom Basilica, one of the largest churches in Europe. In 1826, Pope Leo XII appointed him a Cardinal, and it was in this time when he said “Slavus sum, Slavus ero — et si in cathedra Petri essem, Slavus maneo”, i.e. “I am a Slovak and I will remain a Slovak — even if I am on the See of Peter, I will remain a Slovak”.

^[48] Firstly, Slovak Catholic families were always large in number — and often outnumbered the Calvinist Magyar families in birth rate — consequently, their property was highly divided, and therefore our ancestors' families remained poor. The only way for gifted Slovak boys to graduate was to join a religious order or to study to be a priest with the financial support of bishops and other Christian patrons. Secondly, Habsburg monarchs such as Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II were at that time the bearers of “Enlightenment” ideas in our country, which had already led to a socio-political revolution in France, to the diminution of the influence of the Catholic Church and its liberalisation. The Catholic clergy in Uhorsko, which had already resisted the influence of the widely present Calvinists in Hungary and Lutherans in Slovakia for more than 250 years, finally succumbed to these pressures and to some extent liberalised and protestantised. Or rather, it reflected more strongly on the themes brought by the Protestants, one of which was the emphasis on the role of national languages in the public life of the Church.

^[49] And he really wasn't a Liberal Democrat. Štúr's “Slavdom and the World of the Future” is just a confirmation of this conservative, counter-revolutionary trend.

^[50] Between 1793 and 1796, under the slogan “Pour Dieu et le Roi”, i.e. “For God and for the King”, the defenders of Catholicism from the French department of Vendée united against the revolutionary Republican army. Between 1913 and 1945, the defenders of Catholicism in Slovakia united under the similar slogan “Pro Deo et Patria”, i.e. “For God and for the nation”.

^[51] It is necessary to remember that Jan Hus (* 1369 — † 1415), as a forerunner of Protestantism and a heretic condemned by the Church, is, unfortunately, even today for some Czech Catholics, first and foremost a “national hero”. The day of the burning of Jan Hus has been a commemorative day or national holiday in the Czech lands since 1925 until the present day. Thus, although the peoples of the Czech lands were successfully recatholized in the course of the 160 years after the Battle of White Mountain (1620), it took only 7 years of the free-thinking regime of T. G. Masaryk (* 1850 — † 1937) for the peoples of the Czech lands to once again become believers in Hussitism.

^[52] That is why Mons. Andrej Hlinka already a year after the creation of Czechoslovakia — in the name of which the name of the Slovak nation became a mere suffix — declared: “In this short time, the violent Czechs have caused us more suffering than the Magyars have done in a thousand years. Now we know that 'Extra Hungariam non est vita' [Outside Hungary there is no life for us]. Remember these words, time will prove them right!”

^[53] Constitutional Act of 21 July 1939 on the Constitution of the Slovak Republic: “The Slovak nation, under the protection of Almighty God, has during the ages maintained itself in the living space destined for it, where, with the help of Him from whom all power and law proceeds, it has established its free Slovak state.”

^[54] The case of his election, therefore, was not a historical turning point or an outcome of pressure from the foreign powers. The then German Reich and its ideology of National Socialism viewed Catholicism with the same aversion as the regime of the Czechoslovak Republic. A Catholic priest was certainly not the collaborator they dreamed of.

^[55] In 2014, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Uprising of 1944, the House of Birth of President Tiso in cooperation with the New Free Slovakia NGO published a Syllabus of popular delusions about the Uprising of 1944 in Slovak, English and French, see https://29august1944.sk.

^[56] See Podolský, P. B.: Povstanie roku 1944: bolo národné, slávne, užitočné? Piate, upravené a doplnené vydanie. Bratislava: Post Scriptum, 2020. ISBN 978-80-8218-015-5.

^[57] Father Anton Šalát (* 1892 — † 1944) was shot on the bridge, Father Ján Nemec (* 1911 — † 1944) was dragged behind a horse-drawn carriage and his skull was cut open, Father Rudolf Scheda (* 1898 —
† 1944) had his gold teeth knocked out, a swastika was carved on his back with a knife and he was shot, and Father Martin Martinka († 1944) and 5th year theology student Imrich Teplan (1921 — † 1944) were also murdered.

^[58] On the podium where Your Holiness will give a speech in Košice, a cross from the event of the beatification of Anna Kolesárová will be placed, as well as a reliquary with her relics. However, the context that we are presenting here will never be articulated so clearly and loudly by the organizers of your visit to Košice.

^[59] Let us take the example of the aforementioned Franciscan friar, doctor of philosophy, historian, librarian and pedagogue Vševlad Jozef Gajdoš, who was a pupil of the Czech professor Jozef Vais, who participated in the publication of the Glagolitic Missal. Father Gajdoš was a member of more than 20 scientific societies between 1924 and 1973. At the time when the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts was being founded, the President Mons. Jozef Tiso himself intervened, to the Provincial of the Franciscans in order to secularize Father Gajdoš and release him to work as the head of the Academy of Sciences. However, Father Gajdoš never gave up his eternal vows and did not let himself be tempted to build a secular career. After the execution of President Mons. Jozef Tiso, Father Gajdoš created a photo collage with a photograph of the President and the inscription “Slovak Martyr” and reproduced almost thirty thousand copies of it. For this act, the communist regime sentenced him to an incredible 9 years of imprisonment and 5 years of loss of honorary civil rights.

^[60] They forgot that the primary aim of liturgical innovations was certainly not to lift the nationalisms of small nations from the ground, but only to suppress one of the main instruments of Catholic universalism, and thus of worldwide validity — the Latin language — in a massive and systematic offensive against Tradition.

^[61] Misál latinsko-slovenský. Trnava: Spolok sv. Vojtecha, 1952. Nihil obstat, die 29 Septembris 1952. Episcopus tit. Appianus Ambrosius.

^[62] The introduction to the Advent season (p. 60) is dominated by a cluster of grapes and an ear of rye. The image moves into the Christmas season (p. 95), when the Sacrificial Gifts — already brought by the faithful — are transformed through the exchange between God and man into the figure of the child Jesus standing — no longer on the altar, but — on the Communion Table. It is no longer Christ who made his own Sacrifice on the Cross, which as the only perfect one is accepted by God, but it is the assembly of the faithful — invited to the Communion Table by the Virgin Mary herself — and the fruits of their labour (the Sacrificial Gifts), their talents (the musician with the trumpet), their learning (the man with the book) and their piety (the man with the church), from which the child Jesus is born on the Communion Table. The “admirabile commercium”, or strange exchange, no longer consists of the Son of God becoming a man and we humans becoming sons of God. The congregation transforms the gifts; the baby Jesus is born. The three kings (p. 132) bring their gifts to the priest, who again offers the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ on the Communion Table. At the beginning of the Order of Mass (p. 502), the transition of the Church Militant — that is, we the living — is depicted in the form of the sword and shield to the Church Triumphant — that is, the saints who have preceded us into eternity — depicted by the laurel wreath. However, this passage no longer exclusively involves the Body of Christ, but the presence of the chalice with the Blood of Christ is also emphasized. The author goes further and the traditional depiction of the unity of the chalice with the host is replaced by a whole loaf of bread placed over the chalice. Thus, the author depicts not only the specifics of the liturgical celebration of the post-Conciliar Mass as such, but even its “neocatechumenate” performance sixty years before the huge hosts and the breaking of the loaves became part of the post-Conciliar experimentation! The preface is followed by an illustration of Christ Crucified (p. 526), from whose side His Most Precious Blood gushes. Beneath the cross it is caught in the chalice by a female figure with veiled hair and no halo, so the angels have given up this work and now a priestess is in charge — is she supposed to be a foreshadowing of the ordination of women? Back on the other side, the canon of the Mass is introduced by the image of the Last Supper. In Easter time (p. 552), again, Jesus sits on an open tomb, which is depicted in such a way as to resemble this time the altar from which he feeds his sheep. At Pentecost (p. 617) a dove — which in Tradition is a representation of the Holy Spirit — flies down from heaven onto the Communion Table, flying over the offerings, while more doves sit under the table. What are these other doves supposed to represent? More wafts of the Holy Spirit in other churches?

^[63] “In front of some Roman basilicas to this day there is a well at which the faithful washed when they went to the Holy Sacrifice. This was necessary in part because they received the Body of Christ in their hands during Holy Communion. Certainly from this custom arose the present-day holy water font and sprinkling before the main Sunday Mass.” Misál latinsko-slovenský. Spolok sv. Vojtecha: Trnava, 1952, p. 499.

^[64] Original Latin: “Tantum ergo Sacramentum, Veneremur cernui: Et antiquum documentum, Novo cedat ritui: Præstet fides supplementum Sensuum defectui.”

^[65] See the more recent edition of the JKS, hymn #317: “Let us honor this glorious Sacrament, let us devoutly bow our knees, replace the ancient worship with a new, sublime one; faith with love united, help the senses that are failing.”

^[66] The text of the post-Conciliar Breviary was approved by Pope Paul VI in the Apostolic Constitution Laudis canticum of 1 November 1970.

^[67] See the older edition of the JKS, hymn #317: “To the Sacrament here let us give reverence, homage, the rite of the past give way to the new law right now, faith give substitution to the insufficiency of the senses.”

^[68] But progress was also hindered by an equally old hymn by the same author, “Lauda Sion, Salvatorem,” that is, “Praise, O Zion, the Saviour”, which was sung as a sequence on the feast of Corpus Christi, and in which the liturgy expounded the whole doctrine of the Eucharist. The Saviour is here called by St. Thomas “duce” [Original Latin: “Lauda, Sion, Salvatórem, lauda ducem et pastórem in hymnis et cánticis.”], i.e., “leader” which before World War II was translated as “one who leads,” i.e., “the leader” [See the earlier edition of the JKS, hymn #269: “Praise, O Zion, the Savior, praise the shepherd, the leader, in hymns, in songs, in his cross.”]. However, apparently because the designation of “duce” and the root of the word “leader” after the war evoked fascism, perhaps because this title also belonged to Mons. Jozef Tiso, so the change was made, and the “Savior-Leader” became “Savior-Provider” or “Savior-Nourisher” [See the more recent edition of the JKS, hymn No. 269: “Praise, O Zion, the Savior, — praise the Shepherd, the Nourisher — with heartfelt praise.”].

^[69] Heriban, J.: Biblia: Sväté písmo Starého a Nového zákona. 12. vyd.. Trnava: Spolok svätého Vojtecha, 2013. ISBN 978-80-7162-996-2. Imprimatur: Joannes Sokol, Archiepiscopus — Metropolita, Tyrnaviae, die 6. Maii, 2003.

^[70] We can recommend to the reader the so-called second complete Slovak translation of the Holy Scriptures, which was published in 1913-1926, while the Old Testament was also translated by Mons. Andrej Hlinka. It is noteworthy that he worked on the translation in the Szeged state prison, where he was imprisoned by the Magyar authorities after the so-called “Tragedy of Černová”. Martin Kollár sent him to the prison the translation assignment. Hlinka translated part of the books of the Old Testament himself, and part of them he distributed among the priests of Spiš, among them was Ján Vojtaššák, others were Ignác Kojda, Viktor Milan, Ján Dorník and Štefan Kofrit. Their translations were sent to prison, where Hlinka corrected them and combined them with the fragments he himself translated. The translation was based on the Latin Vulgate as opposed to the so-called third full Slovak translation, which was based on the Greek.

^[71] Kőrper-Zrínsky, K.: Prameň z Boha: modlitebná, obradná, omšová, rozjímačná a poučná kniha pre vzdelaných katolíkov. 5. vyd.. Trnava: Spolok sv. Vojtecha, 1948, p. 5.

^[72] Konferencia biskupov Slovenska: Prosby na 70. výročie oslobodenia. 2015. Available on-line.

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