The “other Lefebvre” and the CTM Manifesto

He predicted that liturgical and theological novelty would lead to confusion and a crisis of faith.

Bishop Blaise Kurz and Fr. Gommar DePauw.

As I have mentioned in previous articles, South Africa, my home country, is hardly a hotbed of traditionalism.

We literally have only four SSPX priories in the country and though international Catholic commentators love to point to the African continent as the hope of Catholicism, from where I am sitting this looks doubtful. At least here at the most Southern point of the continent.

Catholicism here is a mix heavy on modernism, with strong African cultural flavors and often a large dose of American televangelicalism.

I guess what I am driving at is that South Africa doesn’t really feature in the annals of Traditional Catholicism.

Imagine my surprise when I recently saw a social media post that read “Yes, we’ve heard of Archbishop Lefebvre. Have you heard of Bishop Blaise Kurz?”, investigated, and discovered that here was not only another Traditional hero I have never heard of, but also that he had a ‘small’ connection to my country.

See, long before Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre became the “face” of the Latin Mass movement, another pastor of Christ was fighting for Tradition in the very halls of the Church. Bishop Blasius (Blaise) Sigibald Kurz (1894–1973) was a saintly and courageous Franciscan friar who spent decades on the mission frontier and later on the forefront of the liturgical crisis. As one Catholic Traditionalist writer observes, he was “a bishop of Faith and courage rarely ever seen”

From rural Bavaria to missionary fields in China and Africa, from the heights of St. Peter’s Basilica to the trials of Vatican II, the life of Blaise Sigibald Kurz mirrors that of a saint and prophet. Though nearly forgotten today, his steadfast devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass and his resistance to modernist trends foreshadowed later Traditionalist figures like Archbishop Lefebvre. His life reminds us that the defence of Tradition began long before it became widely known.

Born on February 3, 1894, in Sontheim, Bavaria, on the feast of St. Blaise, Kurz entered the Franciscan Friars Minor in 1914, taking the name Blasius. Ordained in 1919 by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber—later a staunch anti-Nazi archbishop—Fr. Kurz began his priesthood under one of Germany’s most courageous shepherds.

A missionary by nature, Kurz was sent to China in 1923. There, he embraced the culture, learned the language, and built Christian communities through a life of simplicity and unwavering fidelity to Catholic teaching. His tireless work earned admiration from both fellow missionaries and local converts.

Recognizing his zeal, Pope Pius XII appointed him Vicar Apostolic of Kokstad, South Africa, in 1939. That same year, Kurz was consecrated a bishop by Pius XII himself in St. Peter’s Basilica—becoming the first Franciscan bishop consecrated by that pope. In Kokstad, Bishop Kurz served the deaf, poor, and abandoned, forming a deep friendship with fellow missionary Fr. Adhemar DePauw.

With the outbreak of World War II, Kurz, as a German in British-ruled South Africa, was arrested. Fr. DePauw intervened to secure his release. After the war, Kurz was reassigned to China, where in 1948 he took possession of the Prefecture of Yungchow. But with the Communist takeover in 1949, he was expelled along with many missionaries. He fled to Rome, yet remained ordinary of Yungchow in exile—a bishop without a diocese, praying for his lost flock.

That same year, Cardinal Francis Spellman invited Kurz to reside in New York. There, he reunited with Fr. Adhemar’s brother, Fr. Gommar DePauw, himself exiled from the Belgian Congo. A powerful alliance formed between the aging bishop and the young priest. Kurz made DePauw his secretary and theological expert (peritus) for the upcoming Second Vatican Council.

During these years, Kurz lived modestly, offering Mass and confirmations, and quietly witnessing to the traditional faith. Despite occasional suspicion due to his German accent, he bore all humiliations patiently, offering his trials for the Church.

Summoned to Vatican II as a council father, Bishop Kurz stood firm with the conservative minority—Cardinals Ottaviani, Siri, and others—against the tide of liturgical and doctrinal change. With DePauw at his side, Kurz resisted attempts to water down the faith. When urged by liberal bishops like Cardinal Frings to fall in line, Kurz boldly refused. He even admonished Cardinal Suenens to “come back to the Faith and leave those lousy traitors,” a rare display of episcopal candour. While others stayed in luxury hotels, Kurz lived with religious sisters, sleeping on the floor and maintaining a life of prayer.

After the Council ended in 1965, Kurz was disheartened by what he saw as a betrayal of Tradition. While sympathetic to sedevacantism, he refused to break from Rome, choosing instead to resist from within.

He joined forces with Fr. DePauw’s newly founded Catholic Traditionalist Movement (CTM), which aimed to uphold orthodoxy and the Traditional Latin Mass. In 1965, Kurz became the movement’s spiritual leader as its “bishop-moderator”. He stressed that CTM’s goal was not rebellion but faithful implementation of what it [the CTM] perceived as Vatican II’s authentic intent, especially its allowance for continued use of the Latin liturgy.

Kurz defended Fr. DePauw publicly and fiercely. At a 1966 press conference in New York, he warned Church leaders against attacking DePauw, saying: “I consider any attack on Father DePauw... as an attack on my personal integrity as a Bishop of the Catholic Church.” When Cardinal Shehan of Baltimore sought to suppress CTM, Kurz responded with canonical precision—pointing out that DePauw was under his jurisdiction, not Shehan’s.

Kurz didn’t merely lend words. He consecrated CTM’s Ave Maria Chapel in Westbury, NY, in 1968 and frequently celebrated the Traditional Mass there. He administered confirmations and stood as a lone episcopal voice defending Tradition publicly in America. One CTM pamphlet praised him as the only bishop with the “moral courage” to stand apart from the episcopal establishment.

In 1967, Fr. DePauw asked Kurz to petition Pope Paul VI for permission to ordain bishops who would serve Traditionalist Catholics. While Rome denied the request, Kurz did not protest. Quietly, he continued to offer the Latin Mass and support CTM's work.

In 1969, Kurz returned to Bavaria, settling in Waldsassen, where he served as chaplain at a retirement home. Clad in his simple Franciscan robes, he remained true to the Old Mass and traditional devotions. Even in old age, he continued to ordain priests for Tradition. In 1970 and again in 1973, he ordained conservative European clergy, including theologian Günther Storck, who would become important to the Traditionalist movement.

Bishop Kurz died on December 13, 1973, at the age of 79. He was buried in Nuremberg at the Franciscan seminary where his journey had begun. His gravestone identifies him simply as “Missionary Bishop of China”—no mention of Vatican II, the CTM, or his defence of the Latin Mass.

Yet Kurz’s legacy is deeply tied to that defence. Before Lefebvre or Thuc became known to Traditionalists, Bishop Kurz was already fighting for the “Mass of Ages.” He predicted that liturgical and theological novelty would lead to confusion and a crisis of faith. His resistance during Vatican II and his work with CTM bridged the pre- and post-conciliar Church. Those who met him remembered his holiness, humility, and unwavering love for Tradition.

He once said, “Everything in the Church that is irreformable is to me above all love; everything other must be melted in the fire of the Spirit.” That captures the heart of Kurz’s witness: true reform must be rooted in Tradition, not rupture.

Today, his name may be unfamiliar, but the fruits of his labour endure. Every time the Traditional Latin Mass is offered in fidelity, it echoes the quiet heroism of Bishop Blaise Kurz—the forgotten forerunner who helped keep the flame of Tradition burning in the darkest hour.

________________

I am adding the full original text of Fr. Gommar A. DePauw’s 1967 open letter to Pope Paul VI which became the CTM’s manifesto:

“BE THOU PETER!
By the Rev. Dr. Gommar A. DePauw, J.C.D.
President, Catholic Traditionalist Movement
August 15, 1967

Your Holiness:

I still vividly remember that December 1, 1965 evening when Your Holiness personally blessed me and my work with the traditionalist Catholics who selected me to be their spokesman.

I remember how, during our long conversation in Your Holiness' apartment, Your Holiness literally begged me to urge the Catholics I was to lead in their fight for "TRUTH and TRADITION" not to lose faith in the Church. And Your Holiness justified that request by stating: "Once the dust stirred up by the recent Ecumenical Council will have settled down, the Church will come out of all this with renewed strength and vigour."

May I humbly submit that, for the past two years, I have laboured as hard as any human individual could to do precisely what Your Holiness asked me to do: to keep the faith in our Church alive among those Catholics who had justifiably become alarmed about what they could not help but interpret as the sad state of our post-conciliar Church.

"WHAT, IN THE NAME OF GOD, IS HAPPENING TO OUR CATHOLIC CHURCH?" has been, and is, the cry of anguish uttered by millions of true Catholics in all walks of life. It is this agonizing cry I, their spokesman, feel obliged to echo once more to Your Holiness.

Already then, December 1, 1965, Your Holiness asked me to realize that our Church was going through "one of the gravest crises in its history." If such a description was true then, how much more can be said of our Church today! To say it has gone from bad to worse is the understatement of the century. Today's condition of the Catholic Church is beyond doctrinal heresy, factual schism, and even apostasy. It is in a state of chaos and utter collapse resulting from the systematic destruction of first our liturgical and other traditions, and now our very beliefs and morals.

In December, 1965, we respectfully petitioned Your Holiness to ensure that our American Bishops would correctly implement the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, and would, at least, permit the retention of one Latin traditional Mass a day, for those who desired to assist at it. We also begged Your Holiness to urge moderation upon certain members of the Liturgical Commission, and to prevent the radical changes they were preparing.

Not only were our requests ignored, but those of us who dared to publicly submit them have been ridiculed, maligned, defamed, ostracized, and, yes, persecuted.

The final result is what Your Holiness now witnesses throughout the Catholic world. In open violation of all past and present liturgical directives, the Roman Catholic Liturgy, once the glory of the Christian world, has for all practical purposes been destroyed. And those responsible for this destruction were anathematized in advance by the greatest of all Church Councils, the Council of Trent:

"If anyone says that the Mass ought to be celebrated in the vernacular only, let him be cursed."

Already Pope Pius XII had warned that such changes would "lend support to false opinions."

With one excuse after another, our Church Establishment's "litniks" continue to increase their dictatorial coercion of Catholics, forcing them to attend an entirely new form of Catholic worship. More and more of the beauty and doctrinal soundness of our Roman Rite have been eliminated. And more and more our Catholic people are being conditioned to attend a ceremony not essentially different from a Protestant service.

The work of destruction continues. Our churches are no longer Catholic in appearance, atmosphere, or aim. Altars are ripped out and replaced by tables which look like butcher blocks or ironing boards. The Tabernacle is thrown into a corner or completely removed. Communion rails are taken out, and our people are told they are not allowed to kneel anymore for Holy Communion. The Sacred Species is handled with such disrespect and distributed with such vulgar casualness that many Catholics have lost their belief in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.

Hymns associated with the anti-Catholic rebellions of Luther, Calvin, and Wesley have replaced the majestic hymns of our Catholic Tradition. Gregorian chant, the pride of Catholicism, and the polyphony of the great masters have been discarded in favour of musical trash borrowed from the decadent milieu of the modern "beat generation."

Our children are being deprived of all meaningful Catholic religious education. What they do receive is mostly Protestant, Jewish, or even pagan in origin and content. Confraternity books—approved and imposed by our bishops—continue to destroy the Faith of our children and youth. Catechisms have become a joke in their ambiguity and inaccuracy.

Even our Catholic universities, seminaries, and colleges—once the pride of our American Church—are boldly rejecting the very religious character that justifies their existence. Their students are openly taught to despise the past and to experiment with any idea which promises novelty, regardless of how foreign it is to our Catholic Faith.

Our young seminarians are taught to be "with it" rather than with Christ. Their studies are corrupted with the poison of the new theology, the new morality, the new Protestantism, and the new Judaism. The theological vagaries of men like Teilhard de Chardin are preferred to the unshakable truths of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Marx and Freud are considered more important than the Evangelists and the Fathers of the Church.

Doctrines that even a few years ago every Catholic was required to believe under pain of heresy are now being called into question or outright rejected. We are being told that our Blessed Lord was not God, that He was not born of a Virgin, that He did not rise from the dead, that He did not establish a Church with teaching authority, that He did not leave us Sacraments, and that He will not come again to judge the living and the dead.

All these blasphemies and heresies are openly proclaimed from Catholic pulpits, taught in Catholic schools, published in Catholic newspapers and books, discussed in Catholic lecture halls—and all with complete impunity!

How much longer, Holy Father, are You going to tolerate this cancerous growth in the Church? How much longer are You going to continue to allow Your own authority to be flouted, Your directives to be ignored, and Your own person to be ridiculed by those who publicly disobey You and then brag about it?

If the Vicar of Christ remains silent while the Mystical Body of Christ is being slowly destroyed, then we must cry out with the whole Church Militant: BE THOU PETER!

Speak again with the thunder of Peter and command: “Non licet!”—"It is not allowed!"

Command that the True Faith be taught again, the True Mass be offered again, the True Catechism be used again, the True Priesthood be restored again.

We cannot be silent, Holy Father. We cannot be indifferent. We cannot go along with the crowd. We cannot pretend all is well.

We are Catholics. We are loyal to the Pope. We are devoted to the Church.

But we are suffering—deeply, cruelly, spiritually suffering.

The very fact that we dare to speak out—and, if need be, suffer even more for doing so—is proof of our love for Christ and for His Vicar on earth.

Do not abandon us, Holy Father. We are not heretics, nor schismatics, nor fanatics. We are simply and humbly—Catholics.

If need be, we will wander in the catacombs again, or hide in the deserts, or be nailed to crosses.

But we will not compromise the Faith.

And we beg Your Holiness to help us keep that Faith alive—no matter what the cost.

With filial piety and profound loyalty,
I beg Your Apostolic Blessing,

Fr. Gommar A. DePauw, J.C.D.
President, Catholic Traditionalist Movement”

Though defunct since Fr. DePauw’s passing in 2005, CTM’s legacy survives online. Its site hosts archives of writings, conference recordings, and liturgical resources. Some traditionalist Catholics and bloggers continue to reference CTM and DePauw for their pioneering witness.

Christus vincit!

Christus regnat!

Christus imperat!

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