Dear Francis,
We write to you as fellow sinners, in great need of God’s mercy. In various ways — especially through your Synod on Synodality and persistent opposition to proselytism — you have asked Catholics to have respect for all baptized Christians and their particular religious beliefs. This openness to the religious beliefs of others encourages us to explain our religion to you.
We are Catholics who believe the same truths, and retain the same religious devotions, that all Catholics enjoyed prior to Vatican II. We often call ourselves Traditional Catholics, while others refer to us as rigid and backward.
As you know, prior to Vatican II many popes warned against Liberalism and Modernism because they sincerely believed that those ideas would harm Catholics. In general, they told us that “if you accept these errors, certain evil results will occur.” At Vatican II, John XXIII opened the door to ideas that had been condemned by his predecessors. Men like Yves Congar, Augustin Bea, and Henri de Lubac stepped in and persuaded the Council Fathers to accept the previously condemned ideas, many of which were disguised with ambiguity. What happened when Catholics accepted the errors the popes had warned about?
For over sixty years, we have seen a proliferation of all the evils in the Church about which the pre-Vatican II popes warned. Some people argue that these developments flow not from changes introduced at Vatican II but from broad societal change. This might be persuasive if it were not for the fact that those Catholics who retain the pre-Vatican II beliefs and practices have not experienced the same evils, at least not to the same extent. It is obvious that the pre-Vatican II popes were correct.
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