When Archbishop Lefebvre wrote his letter to ‘confused’ Catholics that is exactly what they were even if they didn’t know it at the time. I think we have graduated from a state of confusion to one of bewilderment. This ‘bewilderment’ seems to me to be one step away from giving up religion completely.
Archbishop Lefebvre wrote his most famous and controversial volume entitled, An open letter to confused Catholics back in the early 1970’s and I remember my reaction upon being handed the book: “but I’m not confused, what rubbish!” Despite the strange goings-on in my local parish in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, I was in no mood to perform a volte face and suddenly make a heroic stand in defence of the pre-Vatican II regime. The saintly Archbishop’s widely reported condemnations cut no ice with me at the time, nor with anyone else I knew. To be frank we all thought he was a bit, well, you know, off the wall. I remember at about that time the Catholic Universe publishing a commentary on a list of books which it had for sale, one of which was An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, describing it as ‘an interesting theory about the modernists taking over the Catholic Church.’
So, what has changed? From my indifference in the 1970’s, through a period of giving up religion completely in my university days, I have now arrived at the position of someone who has embraced whole-heartedly the Son of God and the Church which He founded, the Roman Catholic Church. I hasten to pre-empt the cynic who assumes that I am some kind of ‘born again’ fanatic along the lines of Billy Graham. Not at all: true love of God cannot be emotional but has to be supernatural. Not a ‘funny inside feeling’ but a state of complete trust in our creator, an utter reliance on His providence and, above all, a desire to please Him in everything I think, say, and do.
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