"There is no room for the cowardly." The story of how Princess Elvina Pallavicini...

...stood up to Paul VI and the whole Vatican 2 nomenklatura, back in 1977, the year I graduated high school. Few Catholics in the U.S. or Hungary probably ever heard this story. Read it now.

I mean, things are so dire in the Church that you might not be able to grasp it all. For example, you might not have been following the information coming out about the pope's abrupt and indeed, quite nasty, removal of the long-suffering Cardinal Müller. There's now a strong suggestion that Cardinal Meisner, Müller's friend and confidant, might well have died in shock when he found out how Bergoglio did it. Check here for the incredible info: 

https://onepeterfive.com/source-before-dismissal-of-cardinal-muller-pope-asked-five-pointed-questions/

And here for a great bio of just who Cardinal Meisner was: https://onepeterfive.com/cardinal-meisners-witness-concerning-fatima-dubia/

It's a beautiful story and I highly recommend it. (And remember that Bergoglio wouldn't deign to even answer Meisner over all this time.)

Then there's the whole gay sex scene in the Vatican, as discussed here:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/top-vatican-official-gay-sex-in-vatican-never-been-worse-than-under-francis

But in all of this unsavory mess, this dissolution of the Vat2 Church just falling to bits even as we look at it, this story I've linked to below of the Princess Elvina Pallavicini is amazing. I'll include an excerpt here but really, you ought to read it. One person, just one, can make a massive difference, folks. He or she can say, indeed, that "The emperor has no clothes."

“I don’t want to form a group of any kind, I don’t want to disobey the Pope, but he must not ask me to become Protestant.” - Marcel Lefebvre

https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/07/de-mattei-example-of-catholic.html#more

An excerpt:

From the Princess’ headquarters there came an immediate reply: “It is difficult to understand how the private expression of theses which have been those of all the bishops of the world until a few years ago, can disturb the security of an authority to such an extent, as it has on its side the strength of doctrinal continuity and the evidence of its positions.” The Princess declared: “I am a more than convinced Apostolic Roman Catholic, seeing that I have reached the true sense of Religion through the refining of  physical and moral suffering: I owe nothing to anyone, I have no honours nor prebends to defend, and I thank God for everything. Within the limits that the Church allows, I may dissent, I may talk, I may act: I have to talk and I have to act: it would be cowardice not to. And allow me say, that in our Home, also in this generation, there is no room for the cowardly.” 

Finally the fateful day of June 6th arrived. The conference was carefully reserved for four hundred invited guests, controlled by “private security” provided by the “Alleanza Cattolica” youth, but there were more than a thousand who filled up the staircases and the garden of the historical Rospigliosi-Pallavicini Palace, famous all over the world for its works of art.  Monsignor Lefebvre arrived accompanied by his young representative in Rome, Don Emanuele du Chalard.  Princess Pallavicini went to meet him in her wheelchair, pushed by her Lady-in Waiting, Donna Elika Del Drago. Princess Virginia Ruspoli, widow of Marescotti, one of the two hero-princes at the Battle of  El Alamein, gave Monsignor Lefebvre a relic of St. Pius X which had been given to her personally by Pius XII.

Despite [the fact] that the Grand Priory of the Order of Malta in Rome had expressed “a binding necessity” to abstain from intervening at the conference, Prince Sforza Ruspoli, Count Fabrizio Sarazani and some other courageous aristocrats defied the censures of the institution and were there in the front row, right beside Monsignor François Ducaud Bourget (1897-1984), who had led the occupation of the Church Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris on February 27th.

Princess Pallavicini introduced Monsignor Lefebvre and he took his place under the red baldachin with the coat of Arms of Pope Clement IX, Rospigliosi. The Archbishop after some moments of prayer, began with these world: “I respect the Holy See. I respect Rome. If I am here it is because I love this Catholic Rome.”  The Catholic Rome that he had before him interrupted his speech repeatedly with thunderous applause. The hall was filled to overflowing and a crowd had gathered on the great staircases of the palace.

The “Council of aggiornamento” – explained Monsignor Lefebvre – in reality wants a new definition of the Church. To be “open” and be in communion with all religions, all ideologies, all cultures, the Church should change its excessively hierarchal institutions and break up into many National Episcopal Conferences. The sacraments will insist on initiation and the collective life, more than the driving out of Satan and sin. The leit-motiv of change will be ecumenism. The practice of the missionary spirit will disappear.  The principle that “every man is Christian and doesn’t know it”  will be proclaimed, so it doesn’t matter whatever confession is practiced - it is seeking salvation.

The liturgical and ecumenical changes – continued Monsignor Lefebvre in the hushed silence of all those present – cause the disappearance of religious vocations and make for deserted seminaries. The principle of “religious liberty” sounds outrageous to the Church and Our Lord Jesus Christ, as it is nothing other than “the right to public confession of a false religion with no interference from any human authority”.

Monsignor Lefebvre then lingered for a bit on the post-council’s caving-in to Communism, referring to the repeated audiences given to Communist leaders by the Holy See; the agreement not to condemn Communism during the Council;  the contemptuous treatment reserved for more than 450 bishops who asked for this condemnation. On the contrary, dialogue with Communism was encouraged by nominating pro-Communist bishops like Monsignor Helder Camara in Brazil, Monsignor. Silva Henriques in Chile and Monsignor Mendez Arceo in Messico.

...

The meeting ended with the singing of the Salve Regina.

The Vatican reporter, Benny Lai in La Nazione of June 7th, commented: “Those who expected a tribune found themselves in front of a man of meek bearing, who, before inviting those present to recite the Salve Regina, concluded [his speech], with these worlds: “I don’t want to form a group of any kind, I don’t want to disobey the Pope, but he must not ask me to become Protestant.”

The conference was a strategic victory for those who were inappropriately called traditionalists, as Monsignor Lefebvre managed to make his theses known on the international level, without [suffering] canonical consequences.

Paul VI died a year later, devastated by the death of his friend Aldo Moro.

...

Princess Pallavicini came out a winner from this “challenge”. Not only was she not excommunicated, but in the following years her palace became the point of reference for many cardinals, bishops and Catholic intellectuals. She and her Roman friends were not “phantoms from the past”, as the Corriere della Sera defined them on June 7th 1977, but witnesses to the Catholic Faith who were preparing the future.  Forty years later, history has proven them right.