FATHER TOMAS TYN AND THE LEFEBVRISMO

 

The few competent theologians, learned, wise, balanced, brave and faithful to the Magisterium are easily marginalized, defamed, ignored or even persecuted by a modernistic power or rahneriano now established in academic circles and of ecclesiastical authority, so is now operating an inquisition just as modernist and even more sharp-eyed and lasts of the Romans at the time of St. Pius X and Monsignor Umberto Benigni against the modernists of the time …

 

 

We often tell ourselves that we need good theologians, in a situation like the present one, where the greatest damage to the souls and the Church are caused by bad theologians. However, it is so strong, seductive and insidious the influence and power of these theologians, that even the good Catholic, who loves the truth and wants nothing more than to follow the Gospel, sound doctrine and the Church's Magisterium, difficulties or is easily deceived in the knowledge the righteous judgment criteria, of discernment and evaluation for identifying valid theologians from imposters, by hucksters and theologasters O, as Christ would say, by false prophets and wolves in lambs [cf. ].

but yet, know these criteria it shouldn't be too difficult. Since we all must and can save ourselves, It gave, in the most diverse ways, it does not deny to any man of good will the knowledge of saving truth. Benedict XVI had this to say, to distinguish the good from the bad theologians it is necessary to compare them with the Catechism, where we find the fundamental truths of the faith. In fact, today some theologians errors are so crude and glaring, that are not limited as a time to thin sophistry born to the disquisitions of school, where then, after all, were things that only understand craft and clerks were mere opinions of school, that is not questioned by any dogma quietly accepted, but today errors affect all the fundamental truths of the faith, from the divine attributes to the Holy Trinity, to the dogmas of creation, the existence of angels, the Constitution of man, of Eden and original sin, of grace, of Mary's virginity, of the incarnation, of the Redemption, of the Resurrection of Christ, up to the liturgy, natural and supernatural morality, to nature, origin and purpose of the Church, to eschatology, to the value of miracles and prophecies, the same faith, of Tradition, of Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church. Nothing is spared and everything is questioned, questioned or denied or falsified.

The few competent theologians, learned, wise, balanced, brave and faithful to the Magisterium are easily marginalized, defamed, ignored or even persecuted by a modernistic power or rahneriano now established in academic circles and of ecclesiastical authority, so is now operating an inquisition just as modernist and even more sharp-eyed and lasts of the Romans at the time of St. Pius X and Monsignor Umberto Benigni against the modernists of the time, less dangerous than those of today, except that if a poor father Lagrange, Father Juan Arintero or Cardinal Andrea Carlo Ferrari were suspected unfairly by modernism from Orthodox conservatives, today the Orthodox, even moderately progressives, as the maritainiani, they are harassed and persecuted by the modernists.

The Dominican Tomas Tyn the same fate has befallen. Teacher in the 1980s at the Studio Teologico bolognese Dominican, the learned theologian, zealous, brave, generous, thomist, fervent and most faithful to the Magisterium of the Church, warned with a lot of energy and a wealth of arguments against the snaking errors both in the doctrinal field and in that of morality: especially modernists, secularists, relativists, Communists, existentialists, Protestants, idealists and pantheists.

Father Tomas felt a particular interest for the values ​​of the Catholic tradition, warned the Mission of remembering those who had forgotten or neglected, in that climate of reckless then rejection of the past, that, as we well know, characterized those troubled years, remained in our memory as the period of “dispute“, during which, under the pretext of conciliar renewal, many foolishly abandoned or changed sacred and immutable values, You should keep. In those same years, moreover, to complicate matters, a movement of Catholics arose on the initiative of Monsignor Marcèl Lefèbvre, who believed that the new doctrines of the Council were infected with modernism, rationalism, enlightenment, anthropocentrism, liberalism and indifferentism. The Council, so, According to him, had broken with sacred tradition, proposing new harmful, that had already been condemned by the pre-Conciliar Magisterium. The Church had so, col Council, deviated from the truth and had to return there, rejecting those doctrines as false. Among the innovations he condemned Lefèbvre asked also promulgated by Paul VI reformed, claiming that the only valid Mass, the “Mass of All Time“, as they call the lefebvrists, was the previous one of St. Pius V: for this it was necessary to stop immediately with the new Setting and return to the ancient.

Father Tomas welcomed the new docility of the Council, so much so that every day he celebrated that, is in the convent, both the Sunday to the parish of San Giacomo Bologna fuori le Mura, where he served for 14 years from 1976 al 1989. He died on 1° gennauo of 1990, just 39 years of age.

He did not hide his admiration for the Tridentine Mass, of which praised the beauty in a long letter, that he in 1985 He wrote to the then prefect of the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who pleased us to send him a meaningful reply, in which he declared his agreement [1]. This was certainly the condition that allowed some point, in the same year, to Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, to have the prior of the Bolognese convent ask Father Tomas Tyn to celebrate the Tridentine Mass for a group of faithful weekly in a private convent, that earlier had turned to Cardinal, which the Father did until he left Bologna in 1989 hit by disease, that led him to death.

Father Tomas was a traditionalist, but in the sense of the word praiseworthy, as preferential attention to traditional values, more than those of new advance or. His sympathy for the Tridentine Mass can surmise something like. Nothing, however, had to do with the lefebvrist traditionalism, though some, especially the modernistic environment or despiser of tradition, uninformed, for interest or in bad faith I have mistaken for a lefebvrist.

In fact what is lefebvrismo? In the belief that the Second Vatican Council the Church, infected with modernism, taught, under pretext of “pastorality“, false doctrines on itself and damaging about the relationship with the modern world, failing its duty as guardian of Holy Tradition. The lefevriani recognize the validity and legitimacy of the Council, ma, though in fact originates of the doctrines, that they reject as false, consider only pastoral and, because in the Church's pastoral is not infallible, they believe that it teaches wrong doctrines or that they can be wrong. The lefebvrists don't see a witness Council, but a traitor of tradition. They do not understand that the Council has taken a step forward in the tradition, in accordance with what the Council itself teaches on Tradition, where it says it “progresses” e “grows” knowledge of revealed truths, that it transmits to us [2], also contained in Sacred Scripture, It is clarification and completion of what is contained in Sacred Scripture, both, almost forming a single thing (“coalesce“), one word of God, both are sources of divine Revelation, which are infallibly guarded and interpreted by the Magisterium of the Church.

None of these ideas in lefebvriane Father Tomas, what if, as I said, shows a particular attention to the Tradition, has no difficulty to see it confirmed, continued and progressed in the teachings of the Council and of the following Magisterium of the Church. Father Tomas, instead of the lefebvrists who claim to find errors in the doctrines of the Council, he never dares to make any criticism of the Council's doctrines, and the lodi did not return, While stating that should be properly interpreted and warning from misinterpretation or exploitation made by modernists.

Father Tomas, Thanks to his solid faith and theologically strong, he realizes very well with the acute lucidity and fine discernment of a Thomist, reacting with extreme promptness and energy and an inexorable criticism, of indiscipline, of impostures and theological deviations, that swarm in his time, covering Deceits them unfairly with the authority of the Council and it looks good by letting the slander of deceived lefevriani, who would find the cause of those deviations in the same Council.

Father Tomas, with his frankness and parrhesia, with his hand out with both hands the water of wisdom and his battle against counterfeiters and the enemies of the faith, "stumbling stone» [RM 9,33] and «scandal» stone [The Pt 2,8], could not create around itself and two opposing sides against each other armed: one part, a crowd of admirers and devotees, not only believers, but also simple people of good will, He also drove and helped with his charity high priestly and pastoral prudence, especially among the poor and the humble, but also in each social milieu ― arrived everywhere with the intense apostolic activity " ; and the progressive thickening of those storm clouds, especially cultural environments of the left but also the right, modernists, Pharisees, Freemasons, Communists, Protestants, careerists, opportunists and so on, increasingly irritated by his fiery words that were stinging in their consciousness. But the storm was supposed to break out after death.

A fundamental theme of Tynian speculation is that of freedom [3], that must be based on truth, regulated by the moral law, especially of charity, freedom as the person's mastery of his own acts, freedom as a principle of justice, freedom as the primacy of the person over the common good and therefore the rejection of any left or right totalitarianism, but also and especially, as St. Augustine, "freedom under grace».

In this we could make a link between Tyn and Father Giorgio Callegari, Venetian Dominican, that in the late 1960s in Brazil, together with others, he fought and suffered for the liberation of the popular classes from a tyrannical regime, that it was said and hypocritically saw communism in fact only to fight for social justice.

Father Tomas instead met the cruel and inhumane face of communism, so that he too fought and suffered for freedom, and while Father Callegari, calunniosamente accused of being a Communist, fighting for the change of social conditions, the struggle of Father Tomas Tyn, mistaken for a fascist and a Lefebvrian, was to unmask the Hegelian roots of totalitarianism of the left and right, latest offshoot of that Lutheran immanentism that, after having snatched the Gospel from the Church, and have it delivered in the hands of the State, put the bases for the divinization of the State, that in the 20th century would prove in Nazism and communism.

Two Dominicans united in the same ideal of truth, Justice and freedom, though so different for mutual contrast of historical and social climates in which they lived. Father Tyn must be freed from lefevriano label required by the modernists, While father Callegari from rich appioppatagli Communist. The fame of Holiness should always open the hard way between misunderstandings, the slander and lies that would stop the unstoppable advance of witnesses of the Gospel.

Later in the early 2000, God has granted the Church a great gift of his grace in order to make it shine even more for the benefit of the whole Church, that light which Father Tomas had already scattered throughout his earthly life among those whom he had met, family members, faithful of the Church of Bologna and other places, confreres, penitents, friends and enemies, people of all walks of life, believers and non-believers, particularly suffering and thirsting for truth, of justice, of freedom and Holiness.

So the Czech Dominicans, at the beginning of 2000, they were promoters of the cause of beatification of Father Tyn, not only because of its reputation for sanctity there giunta, but also, and it was the decisive thing, for the news or discovery of the vow he had made at the time of his priestly ordination in 1975 and he kept secret, to offer his life under the protection of our Lady for the liberation of his homeland from Communist oppression. Now, God wanted Father Tomas died right on 1 January 1990, at the end of a brief and painful illness, When the President of the Republic, Vaclav Havel, inaugurated in the exultation of the whole nation, the new Government. On that occasion,, being now publicly know father Tomas vow, he was immediately raised to the rank of national hero, so much so that that same State Television which until a few months earlier was an organ of the Communist Party, praised the heroic witness of Father Tyn.

The thought of the servant of God You can qualify as genuinely, frankly and fully Catholic and more precisely thomist, given his absolute adherence to the doctrine of the faith, interpreted, taught and guarded by the Magisterium of the Church. In tal modo, How often reiterates its scholar Gianni Battisti [4], You can find in Tyn thinking what exactly that being Catholic, as defined by the Catholic Church [5], name that is now misunderstood, exploited, falsified and mistreated in a thousand ways with create a huge confusion, damage to the faithful and discredit the Catholic name, with whom do you spend every kind of imposture and heresy. But nothing prevents, wanting to further clarify this Tyn Catholicism, It can be classified as “traditionalist“. E’ however, on this point the most hateful ones have arisen and been relentless, stubborn and nefarious misunderstandings and malice on behalf of theologian, given that some Catholics, lefevrismo related, have tried, though in vain, to make Father Tomas one of their; while others, of modernist orientation and are the majority, as well as having a strong power in the Church, they try to discredit Father Tomas by presenting him or passing him off as Lefevriano or Filolefevriano. But the dishonest operation by the latter consists in the fact that they condemn as block “traditionalist” Anyone who doesn't is modernist or “progressive“, like them, to be a driver of legitimacy, They call themselves, blurring into one appellation dishonorable legitimate traditionalism, How is precisely to Tyn, with the schismatic traditionalism of the Lefevrians.

Despite repeated attempts by witnesses and actors of the process of beatification was opened in 2006 in Bologna by Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, to pluck these poisonous weeds, They allignato among the people and the faithful, to the point of putting an obstacle to continuing the process, the Diocesan phase which was nearly finished, so the testimonial material was almost ready to be sent to Rome to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in order to complete it. Like this, an intervention by the competent authorities and all the devotees of the Servant of God appears urgent to give the Cause a new impulse, whereas the sublime doctrine and the shining example of Father Tyn, for their balance, the courage and wisdom, could play a valuable role in spreading the truth, in refutation of the errors, in the promotion of good morals in individuals and in society, in fostering ecclesial justice and communion and in making peace, with adverse parties reconcile, left and right, that today, with their fanatical presumption and intransigence, they are torturing the Church and paralyzing her in her task of evangelizing the world.

It is therefore highly desirable that the cause of Tyn may progress through a courageous and decisive intervention by its supporters, of devotees, of the disciples and scholars of Father Tyn, scattered in Italy, in the Czech Republic and around the world, from Germany, to France, to Spain, to United States, at Austria, to Switzerland, to Philippines, to Hungary, to Slovenia, to Mexico, to Brazil, the Argentina, to Albania, in Malta. This opposition of forces is one of the earliest signs of trouble more severe macroscopic of today's Church, i.e. the absolutization and ideologization of the two opposing parties of lefevriani and of the modernists, that, arrogatisi in place of the Pope the Church censors function, We condemn and are mutually, as if it were to separate the wicked from the righteous. There is no doubt that these categories have value, being used by the Bible itself, which, however, absolutely does not use them in that meanly biased sense, but only in relation to obedience or disobedience to God, where in individual cases it is prudent to refrain from judging. But the problem that afflicts us is foolishness with which these categories are used by these two parties, which reduce them to their partial vision, one-sided and biased. These categories make sense only in relation to those who serve God and those who hate him; which is not easy to judge in individual cases. Hence the folly and recklessness to use them only in reference to your party, furthermore, tainted by misconceptions and heterodox ideas.

The Catholic as such, How to pose well Antonio Livi in’Patmos Island [see WHO], is neither progressive nor conservative, but simply Catholic without adjectives; is above the left. “Catholic” It means “universal”: Catholic would be one that is partial? Unless it's specifications that have nothing to do with the truths of faith, but add something accidental to the Catholic, how, for example, it would be to distinguish the French Catholic from the Italian one or the young Catholic from the adult one. Reduce instead, How to make lefevriani and modernists, being Catholic at their current size-restricted, you offend the sacredness and universality of the Catholic name. No problems qualify as conservative or progressive: is completely legitimate and normal, provided, however, that this is done within the bed of orthodoxy and of communion with the Church and the Pope, as accidental expressions, modal and contingent of legitimate different ways of living one's Catholicism, respecting and working with the opposite trend, because of the one and the other are made to complement each other and together serve the Church.

Another thing to note. The contents of theology are subject in history to a continuous deepening and clarification, Thanks to the research of the theologian. For this there is a traditional theology, expressing and comment on existing data, for example of the great masters like Thomas Aquinas; and a new or innovative theology, presenting the latest survey results, often only questionable or hypothetical, therefore questionable, and that can also be wrong. The theologian, in principle, has this dual task: comment on traditional data, already acquired, Maybe exposing them with a modern language; and engage in research or formulation of new theories or interpretations, of course on the solid foundation of those already acquired. The theologian more interested in progress, may be called “progressive“, but which, however, has nothing to do with “modernist“, that is a false way to advance and modernize the theology.

Father Tomas chose to devote the exhibition of traditional doctrines, without he disdained any new, which presented themselves as development or explanations of the doctrines of the Council. In fact, they paid attention and did not fail to give himself new contributions e.g. to the advancement of metaphysics or the doctrine of grace and freedom in relation to psychology. In any case and in the aforementioned sense he can be qualified as a traditionalist theologian qualification, of which he was aware and of which he boasted.

Revisit with Father Tyn content of the tradition, just as they are left to us and emerge from the Magisterium of the Church, starting with the Apostolic tradition until Pope's Magisterium, it is a salutary exercise in Catholic orthodoxy, that fixes the lefevriano concept of tradition, locked at the time of the Council, showing how the post-Conciliar progress in the knowledge of God's Word, under the leadership of the Church, It is the most authentic experience of sacred tradition today.

Varazze, 7 September 2015

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NOTE

[1] The correspondence between Father Tyn and the Cardinal is published in my book Father Tomas Tyn. A traditionalist post-conciliar, Editions Faith&Culture, Verona 2007.
[2] Cost.Dogm. God's word, n.8.
[3] CF. The anthology of his writings on freedom in The liberation of freedom, edited by G.Cavalcoli, Editions Faith&Culture, Verona 2008.
[4] CF. t. Tyn performance, The power of truth. Lessons of theologiansa, Diffusion Editorial Umbilicus in Italy, Rieti 2012.
[5] See the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

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Father Tomas Tyn Conference “The virtue of religion“