The Mouth of the Lion: Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer & the Last Catholic Diocese

This excellent book on the life story of Bishop de Castro Mayer is as well the telling of the woeful catastrophe of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the last forty years. The prelate who stood with Archbishop Lefebvre at Econe to consecrate four new bishops is shown here as Lefebvre's intellectual and spiritual equal - high attainment indeed. The lives of these two men with differing backgrounds, differing temperaments and rich with differing circumstances, in the end reveal the same inescapably onerous story of the Church that devoured itself, cannabalising its various parts in a record spate of only ten years of incomprehensible flight from reality, leaving in its rapacious wake a skeletal heap of lies and spiritual betrayal. Bishop de Castro Mayer's formal association with Lefebvre takes up but a small part of the story, yet the deathly shadow of the root cause of their eventual union hovers over every page. While aspects of the book tend faintly toward hagiography, the author for the most part keeps his attention in check, tracing the early life and especially the ordinary diocesan life of Campos, revealing de Castro Mayer's foresight of what was to come in the wake of Rome's apostasy, and the means by which he prepared the people under his spiritual care for it. It's a cautionary tale told perhaps too late to awaken the Catholic world, but important nonetheless for revealing the wisdom of men who refused the treachery of the Roman authorities at every turn. The writing style of the author is banal but sufficiently effective to nourish and maintain interest through to the end. It is, ultimately, a quiet book about simple things, and simple things and quiet turns have a way of entering and illuminating those mysteries which are often obscured by presumptuous flourishes and philosophies.

This book shows us the effort of Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, to mantain the orthodox faith of the Roman Catholic Church in his small diocese of Campos, Brazil.. God heard his prayers and received all his sacrifies... now Campos is the most Catholic place in the World.