Q. What is the `Una Voce' organization and is it genuinely Roman Catholic?

D.M, Los Angeles,CA

A. This organization is not Roman Catholic for several reasons.

First of all, it is an organization founded by lay people without ecclesiastical approval. Taking advantage of the confusion caused by various fruits of the "Second Vatican Council", a Dr.Borghild Krane of Oslo, Norway appealed to concerned Catholics to group together in defence of the Church's liturgical heritage.

According to Mr. Michael Davies, who appears to be the leader of this group, the organization is a kind of admixture of different national organizations that started in France in 1964/1965.

The official date of its foundation is 19th December 1964. Dr Krane, the foundress, died upon 14 October 1997.

As you can see from what follows, its leaders are not very sure when it was founded. It appears that Mr. Michael Davies provided all the information herein contained. Una Voce (from the Preface of the Most Holy Trinity (with one voice) is an international federation of associations, founded in 1966 in Rome, that now includes national associations in 17 nations on every continent. It is dedicated to ensuring that the Roman Mass codified by St. Pius V is maintained as one of the forms of eucharistic worship which are honored in universal liturgical life, and to restoring the use of Latin, Gregorian Chant, and sacred polyphony in Catholic liturgy.

Its current International President is Mr. Michael Davies of London, England.

Members believe that use of Latin in the Mass and Sacraments is a unifying force, needed by the Church in these days of widespread controversy. They believe that using the rites which were the form of Catholic worship for over 1,500 years will preserve the traditional emphasis on the Mass as Sacrifice, with its central teaching of transubstantiation, This, in turn, will help reverse the decline in vocations as altar boys, charged with difficult and meaningful duties, will be imbued from an early age with a sense of the sacred.

We Catholics possess a living heritage. We owe a duty to our posterity to transmit it in its fullness, and as a living tradition, This is not only the feeling of Una Voce, it is the teaching of all the postconciliar Popes.

Those Catholics who are swayed by the superficial aims of this organization fail to realize that underneath all the pious attitudes towards the true Mass, these people fraudulently refer to the "Tridentine" Mass and the "Indult Mass of John XXIII of October 3, 1984.

Note: Despite the almost complete identity of the "Indult Mass" and the "Tridentine Mass", the "Indult Mass" was designed to be a transitional Mass with minor alternations within the Canon and other modifications. Its purpose was to wean Catholics away from the true Mass and to embrace the Protestant version of the Sacrifice of the Mass _ a `sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving".

The leaders and followers of this lay organization claim `obedience' to heretics in Rome and in their respective homelands.

It proves conclusively that their `theology' is very selective. They will recognize blatant heretics as long as they can play games with pieces of the true Mass and feel important.

Since they claim obedience to excommunicated heretics, they, too, must be considered as heretics.

Their plea concerning `Catholic heritage' obviously does not include obedience to legitimate authority (which does not reside in the apostate Modernist Church to which they foolishly belong).

They pretend that the "postconciliar Popes" share their concern. Nothing could be further from the truth! These deluded souls fail to comprehend the vastness of this general apostasy from the Faith. Instead of gathering themselves around the last remaining legitimate bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, they flock to the very heretics who have been responsible for the general apostasy and who continue its destructive work.

All the members of this organization which calls itself Una Voce are excommunicated together with the heretics from whom they pretend to receive some kind of recognition.

The Code of Canon Law states concerning heretics:

"All apostates from the Christian faith, and all heretics and schismatics are ipso facto excommunicated; if after due warning they fail to amend, they are to be deprived of any benefice, dignity, pension, office, or other position which they may have in the Church, they are to be declared infamous, and clerics after a repetition of the warning are to be deposed; if they have joined a non-Catholic sect or publicly adhered to it, they are ipso facto infamous, and clerics, in addition to being considered to have tacitly renounced any office they may hold, according to canon 188,4, are if previous warning proves fruitless, to be degraded. " (Canon 2314,1).

Since all members of this organization claim as their leaders the anti-popes, and the bishops under them, they fall under the above-mentioned censure.

They are forbidden to receive Holy Communion or any other Sacraments of the Church until they abjure their errors and are received back into the Church.

We should bear in mind that our Lord did not leave us orphans. The right order in the Church is maintained by those who have been properly and validly made bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.

We have such a bishop in His Excellency, Bishop Louis Vezelis, OFM. No laymen can honestly and fruitfully serve the Church outside of union with a Roman Catholic bishop.

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