Tag: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

REASON for the “RESISTANCE”

REASON for the “RESISTANCE” posted in Eleison Comments on February 10, 2024

God gave us the wise old Saint He knew we need –

How could a youngster think that he could lead?

Less than one month ago, on January 24, the Brazilian Prior of the Traditional Benedictine Monastery of Santa Cruz, nestling in high hills of Brazil behind Rio de Janeiro, Bishop Thomas Aquinas, published a severe denunciation of a prominent leader who is active worldwide in the Traditional Catholic movement. But surely Traditionalists have enough problems from outside of Tradition without having to fight among themselves as well? Normally that is Catholic common sense, but not if the very basis of Catholicism, the Catholic Faith, is at stake. Now in the struggle between Rome and the Society of St Pius X, never has it not been at stake. Let readers judge for themselves if, as a shepherd of Our Lord’s flock, Bishop Thomas has done anything other than his bounden duty by denouncing this wolf in sheep’s clothing – 

The reason for the existence of the Resistance is none other than Dom Fellay, with his words and actions. His words minimized the gravity of the crisis and of the Council. His actions exposed Tradition to suffer the same fate as the Ecclesia Dei communities. 

Dom Fellay did not speak like Dom Lefebvre. Dom Lefebvre strongly denounced the Council’s mistakes, as well as the churchmen who were the cause of those mistakes. He warned virtually all the popes about their responsibilities. He told John Paul II that if he continued on the path of ecumenism he would no longer be the good shepherd, and in the drawing about Assisi he said, with images and words, that John Paul II would go to hell if he continued to be an ecumenist. He told Cardinal Ratzinger that he, Ratzinger, was against the Christianization of society. The Archbishop denounced the apostasy of Vatican II. ( . . . ) He defended priests and faithful from modernist contagion. He exposed himself to an invalid but degrading excommunication. In defence of France he did not back down in the face of the Muslim danger. He protected us against Dom Gérard’s Roman temptation. He was, in short, like bishops of old: the defender of Christianity and of its basis, which is the faith. He was the man of theological virtues, who sustained our faith and all virtues. 

And Dom Fellay? Did he continue Dom Lefebvre’s actions? No. Both in word and in deed, Dom Fellay distanced himself from Dom Lefebvre. Regarding the heresy of Religious Freedom, he minimized the seriousness of what the Council had said. He did not react to the mistakes like Dom Lefebvre. He did not talk about the two churches, as did Dom Lefebvre. He did not clearly distinguish the official Church from the Catholic Church, but spoke of a “Concrete Church,” confusing the faithful and even priests. What specific church is this? Do we have to be in this church? We are in the Catholic Church. We recognize the Pope, but not the Conciliar Church that Cardinal Benelli spoke of. We recognize the Pope, but not his doctrine or his actions contrary to Tradition. These acts are not Catholic, but anti-Catholic. 

It was under the influence of Dom Fellay that the 2012 Chapter modified the principle enunciated by the 2006 Chapter: there can be no practical agreement without doctrinal agreement. This did not please Dom Fellay, and it was changed. Under certain conditions, the Fraternity can now reach a practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement. It is a legal loophole, opening the way to lead the Fraternity down the path of the Ecclesia Dei communities. He did not go that far, but he lowered his guard, and Rome took advantage of that. Opposition from within the Fraternity Dom Fellay repressed by expelling Dom Williamson and other priests; then he punished others, such as the seven deans who rightly protested against Rome’s marriage document. Dom Fellay disorganized Tradition, walked away from Dom Lefebvre’s line, and made others also depart from it. To resist this departure was the reason for the “Resistance” coming into existence. 

We want to follow Dom Lefebvre in everything, in doctrine and also in practical solutions, because, as Aristotle and St.Thomas teach, the examples of the ancients serve as principles of action. We follow Dom Lefebvre in doctrine and action, especially in relation to modernist Rome, and we do this to be faithful to Eternal Rome, teacher of truth and holiness. 

Kyrie eleison 

Ruinations Causes

Ruinations Causes posted in Eleison Comments on March 13, 2021

Two weeks ago in these “Comments” a veteran Traditionalist made some interesting comments on the subject of infiltrators, conscious or unconscious, wrecking the Catholic Church from within. Readers may recall how he strove in vain to restore Catholic Tradition within the Conciliar structure. He found out that it could not be done. When further asked, “But how could the very churchmen commit the Church’s suicide? That makes no sense!,” he had further interesting things to say –

I think all of this comes down to a love of the Truth or a lack of Truth. In my opinion, those who truly love the Truth will find it – or struggle until they do find it, and then act upon it. I think the Faith collapsed in the 1960 and ‘70s because Catholics had become so weak. At the noon Mass at my parish in the 1950s, practically no one went to Communion. Priests come from the people, and the people had become soft. When the changes came, one half of those people gladly accepted those changes since it made living the “Faith” much easier, because non-Catholics were no longer hostile, one faith was as good as another, we could now all smile at each other, and did the clergy ever lead lead the way! Most of the other half either joined Protestant sects or simply gave up religion altogether. A few brave souls, a tiny minority who still possessed that love of the Faith, formed their own chapels. Their greatest inspiration was Archbishop Lefebvre, who alone had the faith to grasp that the hierarchy was in a hopeless state of apostasy.

God alone can judge men’s hearts, but in my opinion there is no excuse for those who abandoned the Faith. Perhaps nearly all who did so will pay with their souls. My generation is the worst because we were born and raised in the Faith and we abandoned it because we thought it would make life easier and far less of a challenge. The following generations, although a bit less guilty because they were denied their Catholic heritage, still had little excuse, as everyone has a duty to live the Truth. Where the faith is soft, Catholics are cowards, particularly when it comes to abortion. The bishops won’t even speak out against it, for fear of losing their tax status or of offending someone. Senator Timothy Kaine who lives in our city is as pro-abort and pro-perversion as one can be, while still claiming that the Catholic Faith is the most important thing in his life. He said it all when he said, “I am a Francis-type Catholic.” To my knowledge, the Bishop of Richmond has never challenged him on abortion, much less denied him what passes for Holy Communion, when he should have excommunicated him long ago.

The veteran above is probing the general collapse of Catholics after Vatican II. Another reader of these “Comments” seeks below the cause of the particular slide of the Society of St Pius X, which had nevertheless been raised by God to resist that general collapse –

I think it’s Pharisaism. It’s the same Pharisaism that killed Our Lord that is now killing the Church and the Society. True humility and charity have been lost. Pharisaism, as of the “whited sepulchres” in the Gospel, leads to spiritual blindness – “Make this people blind, so that seeing they may not see, hearing they may not hear” . . . . The Pharisees had a perfect knowledge of the Scriptures and the Law, yet still they killed their Messiah. Today they are killing the Church, and they simply cannot see it, they are blind . . .

In the Society I do believe there were at least subversive priests, and at the top some leaders suffering from complete blindness, but these would have gotten nowhere if the Society as a whole had not fallen into Pharisaism. Had they humbly followed their saintly Founder, they would not have thought they knew better than he did, nor would they have pushed aside Our Lady’s requests for Rosaries for the Consecration of Russia, thinking they knew better than God Himself. Such an insult could not go unpunished by Him. The punishment was the spiritual blindness as of the Pharisees, a dreadful punishment! God, have mercy upon us!

Kyrie eleison.

Unconscious “Infiltrators”

Unconscious "Infiltrators" posted in Eleison Comments on February 27, 2021

In these “Comments” of three weeks ago, where a reader was looking for an explanation of the decline of the Society of St Pius X after the death in 1991 of its Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, the question arose of possible infiltration of the SSPX by enemies of Catholic Tradition. Had there been infiltrators? These “Comments” took the position that no conscious or clear infiltrators had ever been discovered, but there had been a number of SSPX priests at the top of the Society who had used all their influence at the top to change the Society’s direction from that given to it by the Archbishop, without their being necessarily conscious of acting as infiltrators. In fact they may have infiltrated all the more effectively for being unconscious infiltrators! God knows, one or the other of them may have known exactly what he was doing to cripple the Society from within, but it never seemed so outwardly.

We are right up against the mystery of modernism, which must have sent millions of souls to Hell. Let us take yet another look, with another witness, a veteran Traditionalist who has spent tens of years in the fight for Catholic Tradition in Traditional chapels of the United States. The heavy black print is from the editor of the “Comments,” but every word in italics is from the veteran –

As one who has been a member of three Traditional parishes, a principal founder of two, and an activist in all three, I remember saying many years ago and many times over that the Devil infiltrates with his own people every single Traditional parish, that is, with people who are usually “sleepers,” who bide their time waiting for the right moment to strike. Having an Angelic intelligence and having been around for thousands of years, he is far from stupid and knows it is much easier to destroy a parish from within rather than from the outside. I have encountered these people in all three parishes. No doubt they are within the SSPX, with most not conscious that they are the Devil’s helpers, but he knows it. In fact, if they are not there, he is not doing his job.

The SSPX should disengage all contact with the Conciliar Church until that day when that masterpiece creation of the Devil is converted, which will be almost certainly after God chastises it in the most severe way along with its partner: the world. The SSPX is attempting to do what I attempted to do locally when I and another individual sat down three times in 1990–91 with Richmond’s two bishops and requested and negotiated the founding of St. Joseph’s parish, which, incidentally, was at that time the first and only Traditional Catholic parish in the world in union with Modernist Rome, with the Mass and all Sacraments in the Traditional Rite. ( . . . )

With St. Joseph’s, it was my intent to draw in hundreds of Novus Ordo Catholics and over time to make them all good Traditionalists. I was dreaming. St. Joseph’s today, with its likely thousand plus parishioners and its paid for 2 ½ million dollar building on multiple acres is in the hands of the doubtfully ordained Fraternity of St. Peter priests. It is a hybrid parish, with the “Traditional Mass and Sacraments” but in every other way Novus Ordo. I have not the slightest doubt that should it close its doors today, nearly every parishioner would be at a Novus Ordo “Mass” next Sunday. Such a fate awaits the SSPX should it merge with the Novus Ordo.

Now, were the two bishops and our veteran conscious “infiltrators”? The veteran certainly not. The two bishops possibly, but is it not equally possible that they too were acting in good faith? What seems most likely is that all three men were “dreaming.” Of what? Surely of mixing oil and water. Of mixing Traditional Truth with Conciliar Authority. But it cannot be done. The Archbishop knew that from the beginning. Our veteran came to know it, God bless him. Many souls in the Society still do not know it. They are dreaming, and they are all, in effect, unconscious “infiltrators.”

Kyrie eleison.

SSPX Re-Orientation

SSPX Re-Orientation posted in Eleison Comments on January 23, 2021

Last November Fr Pagliarani, SSPX Superior General, wrote a letter to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Society. Fr. Edward MacDonald, “Resistance” priest in Australia, wrote a valuable commentary on that letter, summarised here below –

1. Fr. Pagliarani asks: “Is the flame (‘that of a fearless charity’) received from our Founder still alive? Exposed to a crisis indefinitely prolonged in Church and world, is this precious torch not in danger of faltering and weakening?” – However, in his letter Fr. Pagliarani does not answer his own question.

2. In his entire letter Fr. Pagliarini barely mentions the Second Vatican Council. Yet, if there had been no Vatican II, there would have been no need for the SSPX. Rome is the source of all the errors of faith, doctrine and morals that the SSPX fought against. The post-Conciliar Popes implemented the teachings of the Council. The apostasy is centred and headquartered in the Vatican. Fr. Pagliarani mentions nothing about the errors of Vatican II. Why not? For him that fight is over. The SSPX is now with Vatican II and the Conciliar Church, against the “Resistance” movement. 

3. Fr. Pagliarani reduces the fight to “the spiritual life.” For Archbishop Lefebvre the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ came first, and bringing spiritual life to souls was a necessary by-product of that primary aim. But Fr. Pagliarani makes the spiritual life primary, saying: “Our combat is to allow Our Lord Jesus Christ to be the axis of our spiritual life, the source of all our thoughts, all our words and all our actions.” 

4. According to Fr. Pagliarani, everything has been said. There is no doctrinal battle left to wage. The SSPX will just continue to speak, presumably repeating old arguments, against the errors of Vatican II. In fact, the SSPX is not speaking against the errors of Vatican II. There is much new to say as the Pope continues to draw new errors out of the documents of Vatican II. Is the response to Amoris Laetitiae complete? If the SSPX has nothing new to say, it is because it has ceased to combat Vatican errors. 

5. Archbishop Viganò is finding plenty of new things to say about the errors of the Conciliar Church. The SSPX cannot say these things because it has capitulated and been silenced. It can no longer defend the rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In November 2020, Fr. Daniel Themann, SSPX District Superior of Australia, forbade members to make a public protest against some very public worship of Satan in Queensland. They made reparation quietly in their chapel. 

6. Weariness is a recurring theme in Fr. Pagliarani’s letter – this is not the case with the saints. They never weary, never grow tired of the battle. Archbishop Lefebvre never wearied of the fight, He was already retired when he realised that he had to take up arms in a new battle against the Conciliar Church. The SSPX has grown weary and fatigued and laid down its arms. It has “nothing new to say.” 

7. For the last fifteen or more years the seminaries of the SSPX have not been giving the seminarians the doctrinal formation to combat the modern errors. Modernism and liberalism have been promoted in the seminaries. The ordinands are willing to compromise on the truth, and eagerly work with and submit to the modernist diocesan bishops. Fr. Wegner, former US District Superior, once boasted that he had made deals with forty US bishops, all of whom were modernist Conciliar liberals.  

8. Every priest that has remained in the SSPX after its capitulation has decided explicitly, or at least tacitly, to accept this new orientation of the SSPX. They are no longer militant Catholics. The Church is indefectible. The SSPX was not. It has defected. 

9. There is no further important organisation to stand against the onslaught of the forces of evil in the form of the atheistic communist conquest of society. The sterilisation of the SSPX stopped the last great source of grace and blessings for the world. The few pockets of resistance remaining are incapable of stopping, or even just hindering, the communist enslavement of the world.

Kyrie eleison.

SSPX Questions

SSPX Questions posted in Eleison Comments on January 16, 2021

A reader of these “Comments,” no doubt anxious from what he sees or hears about the Society of St Pius X being less faithful than it used to be or should be, has in mind a few possible explanations. The author of these “Comments” offered some considerations by way of reply to a few of his questions:—

1. There have been rumours of infiltration of the SSPX. Some of these rumours suggest that there was a plot to infiltrate the Society from the beginning, others argue that it took time for the Society to be infiltrated.

No doubt the classic enemies of the Church, who closely watched Our Lord in His time, discerned rapidly what a threat to their scheming was represented by Archbishop Lefebvre with his priestly Society of St Pius X and its new generation of faithful priests. However, I for one cannot say I ever recognised any clear and conscious enemy infiltrators. But what I could recognise was priestly sons of the Archbishop, formed under his care, but who ceased to recognise what they once recognised, namely the necessity of obeying only selectively orders coming down from the Conciliar Church authorities in Rome and in the dioceses. These priests have gone a long way not exactly to infiltrate but rather to change the SSPX from within. If today it was still defending the Faith as the Archbishop did, it could be doing a power of good to a mass of Catholics now waking up to the Vatican II betrayal, by helping them to see how and where the true Church is surviving. Instead, the loyalty of the SSPX leaders now seems to have gone over to the officials of Vatican II in Rome, and many souls that it could have converted, it now rather confuses than converts.

2. So has the SSPX been infiltrated, and if so, by whom?

Properly speaking, by formal infiltration, perhaps not. But loosely speaking, by an often unconscious abandoning of the Archbishop’s understanding of Vatican II and its officials, yes. The problem has been a gradual going with the flow of today’s universal fantasy, and a corresponding loss of grip on reality, more on the part of the SSPX leaders in HQ than on the part of the humble priests on the ground. The problem of these leaders has been less in their Catholic doctrine than in their application of that teaching to the 21st century, where they have failed to grasp the full evil of the modern world. They are too “nice.”

 3. Some blogs have pointed to an Austrian-Jewish family by the name of “Von Gutmann” who were originally given a financial “leg up” by the Rothschilds. This family has, according to Maximillian Krah, given money to the SSPX via a Foundation. Who is this family and why are they giving money to the SSPX?

It is a Jewish family from Austria, but, as best I recall, the Mrs. Von Gutmann that you name was a bona fide convert, and she left a great deal of money to the SSPX in Austria to help Catholic Tradition to thrive there. 

4. It is rumoured on the internet that Archbishop Lefebvre was a sedevacantist? Is this true?

The Archbishop had, from Paul VI onwards, always a certain sympathy with sedevacantism as a possible solution to the immensely serious theological problem of Vicars of Christ destroying the Church. Twice he entertained in public the possibility – in 1976, and in 1985 – that the apparent Popes in Rome were not real Popes. But he never decided for that solution, and frequently he considered it only to reject it. He considered that it raised more problems than it solves.

5. Why won’t the current SSPX leadership reconcile with Rome? What are your thoughts?

I think that too many of its best priests still think too like the Archbishop about today’s Rome and Romans for the SSPX leaders to be able to slide into the Romans’ arms. But these priests had better watch out!

Kyrie eleison.

Madiran – Betrayal.

Madiran - Betrayal. posted in Eleison Comments on December 26, 2020

In Paris in May of 1968 there occurred student riots so radical and long-lasting as to get attention from media all over the world. For theoretical subversion and practical destruction of everything that had till then made up the Western way of life, they were comparable to the riots that ravaged many cities of the United States last summer (of 2020). In fact the Paris riots inspired the sixth and last Part of Jean Madiran’s book, The Heresy of the 20th century, because they were a picture-book illustration of what his whole book had been trying to say: Catholic civilisation is turning Communist, and it is a great betrayal, and the Catholic bishops are the traitors. Hence the three Chapters of Part Six of the book: 1) May ‘68 is the bishops’ final betrayal, 2) They repudiate the true Catholics, 3) They betray real Christianity.

In Chapter One Madiran tells how when in Paris in the springtime of 1968 the revolting students, like the summer rioters in the USA, threatened to tear down Western civilisation, the French bishops’ official comment was, “It is a wide-ranging movement calling for a new society,” and they were ready to welcome it in the name of Vatican II. In their official declaration one month later they declared: “The 1968 Revolution divides the people for and against, but we bishops are for.” In fact, says Madiran, for those revolting the end justifies the means, so they made such use of force, lies and trickery to get their way that they provoked an even more “wide-ranging” counter-movement, but what do modern bishops care about the radical subversion of all natural law and Christian civilisation? None of them believe that Communism is a betrayal. But it is a movement of reform? That is just a lie and a trap, says Madiran.

In the second Chapter he tells how to ingratiate themselves with the Revolutionaries on the left, the bishops had to bring to them on a platter the heads of the most faithful Catholics on the right, otherwise known as the “integrists,” or followers of integral Catholicism. (Here exactly is why in the 1970’s Pope Paul VI made such strenuous efforts to cripple Archbishop Lefebvre, but God had other ideas. However, just a few more years, and what had been his Society was longing for the approval of modernised Rome.) Back in the 1960’s the French bishops set out on a long course of talking out of both sides of their mouth.

To the left they would say, “Oh, please don’t take us for conservatives or integrists, we’re revolutionaries just like you,” while to the right they would say, “Oh please don’t think we’re changing anything.” And ever since these bishops have been trying to go in two directions at once – a recipe for paralysis. But they always avoid taking on “integrists” in straight argument – they have given up the high ground of truth.

In the last Chapter of his entire book, Madiran finalises his condemnation of the paltry French bishops. The modern world is not good, running on lies in all domains: Evolution, Six Million, Nine-Eleven, Covid, and those are just a few of the outstanding falsehoods. But what had gone wrong? The students hardly knew because they had mostly been told that the modern world is wonderful. But if that is true, then instinctively they want to tear it down. However, the Catholic Church, while it also disbelieves in modernity, knows exactly what went wrong, and in 1864 published a major list of 80 of the errors – Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors. Here is the doctrine that the bishops should have been teaching the students, because had these learnt it well, they could have been rebuilding all “Western civilisation” ever since the 1960’s. As it was, at Vatican II the world’s bishops preferred to join the Communists instead of fighting them, and the students were turned into barbarians, and all Christian civilisation was betrayed.

Referring to the bishops, Madiran adds one final word to his book – “Wretches!”

The analysis of The Heresy of the 20th century is clear. The lessons in the 2020’s for the USA in particular are plentiful. Perhaps only full-scale disaster will enable mankind to learn them. Yet, as Bishop Butler said in the 18th century, “Things are what they are. Their consequences will be what they will be. Why then should we seek to deceive ourselves?”

Kyrie eleison.