Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Horrible Fall – I

Horrible Fall – I on June 8, 2013

The fall of the Society of St Pius X from what it was under Archbishop Lefebvre between 1970 and 1991 to what it has become over the last, say, 15 years, is little short of horrible. In a brief series let us see firstly why the horror is normal in the poor world around us, because to understand is to forgive, and we are all in need of forgiveness; secondly let us face the horror, not in order to be discouraged but on the contrary in order to gird our loins for worse almost certainly to come; and thirdly let us see what we can do to gird our loins, because beneath God’s Heaven he cannot have left us with nothing that we can do (but in this connection it is important not to pour into the sand the little water that we have). Let us begin with three fine Catholic minds taking the measure of our age, to see why horror is today the norm.

In his great Encyclical letter of 1884 on Freemasonry, Pope Leo XIII marks how its evil principles advance from (#13) disregarding to (#14) injuring to (#15) destroying the Catholic Church, and then from (#16) the ruin of all positive religions to (#17) the ruin of all natural religion to (#18) the ruin of great natural truths such as God’s Creation and Providence and the immortality of the soul. In the 21st century we have, logically, gone further still, namely to the ruin of the very notion of truth. Minds have been turned into mush, even the minds of Popes, Cardinals and Bishops.

In his great Encyclical letter of 1907 on Modernism, Pope St Pius X saw clearly the same ruin of all truth and thought by the modernists. It is beneath the dignity of Popes to shout, but in Pascendi Pius X uses the strongest expressions available to him to castigate the mind-rot by which the modernists rot out the Catholic Faith. In so many words he says that modernism is the end of the line. His dramatic warning obtained for the Church a reprieve of half a century, but with Vatican II the Faith-rot that he had flung out of the Church was by John XXIII and Paul VI made official doctrine within the Church! If Popes lose their minds, how should mere Superiors not do so?

A third Catholic mind, measuring the havoc wrought upon Catholic doctrine by Vatican II, was that of Romano Amerio, an Italian layman whose analysis of modern errors, Iota Unum, was highly praised by Archbishop Lefebvre. At one point Amerio says (could somebody find me the reference?) that if things continue on the same path as now, eventually it will become impossible to speak or write any more, all that will remain is to keep silent! This may seem unimaginable, but only recently a very good commentator in the USA, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, almost stopped writing, because it had seemed to him that there was no longer any public able or willing to think.

Truly, in this present dress rehearsal for the Antichrist, if these days were not shortened, as Our Lord says (Mt. XXIV, 22), we could all of us lose our minds and our faith. Then who may still feel inclined to throw the first stone at a Pope or Bishop today losing his mind?

However, while Our Lord forbids us to judge-condemn (Mt. VII, 1), because God alone has that perfect knowledge of all the circumstances which is necessary if one is to judge without error, at the same time Our Lord commands us to judge-discern between true shepherds and mercenaries, or between sheep and wolves in sheeps’ clothing (Mt. VII, 15). Such is our responsibility as Catholics, and that is why we will soon take another look at the horror now taking place within the Society of St Pius X.

Kyrie eleison.

Authority Crippled

Authority Crippled on June 1, 2013

A number of good souls wish that a Congregation were founded to replace the Society of St Pius X. But while I share their fear that the SSPX is presently well on its way to disabling its formerly glorious defence of Catholic Faith and life, and while I therefore sympathize with their desire to see another Congregation like it to take its place, I do not believe that that is possible, and I think it is worth explaining why.

When in 1970 Archbishop Lefebvre wrote the charter of principles in line with which the future SSPX would be founded and would function, namely its Statutes, it was for him of great importance to obtain the official approval of them by the bishop of the Catholic diocese in which the original house of the SSPX was situated. As far as he was concerned, obtaining or not obtaining that approval meant all the difference between founding a Congregation of the Catholic Church and launching a private association of his own. He had every interest in founding a Catholic Congregation, far less interest in launching a private institution.

In fact when he went to see Bishop Charrière of the Diocese of Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg to obtain that approval, he was not hopeful. The Conciliar Revolution was by then well under way, and it was directly contrary to what the Statutes projected. Providentially however, Bishop Charrière gave his approval, perhaps because he knew he was to retire soon afterwards. In any case the Archbishop returned exultant to Écône, and one report even tells of him waving the Statutes triumphantly in the air.

What that meant to him was that from then on, as far as he was concerned, he had the Church’s authority to build a Congregation of the Church, and while a few years later Rome might attempt to take back that authorisation, the attempt was so intrinsically unjust according to Church law that the Archbishop never hesitated to continue exercising inside the SSPX all the authority of a classic Superior of a Congregation. That classic Catholic authority has such power that by harnessing it to lies the Conciliar Popes have been able virtually to destroy the Universal Church, and by its being harnessed to a practical agreement with Conciliar Rome it is now virtually destroying the SSPX. On the other hand, as for authority over priests, nuns and laity outside the SSPX, Archbishop Lefebvre never arrogated to himself any other than that of a father, adviser and friend.

But the days of a Bishop Charrière are long since gone. How many sane bishops are there left in the mainstream Church? And how could any of them today approve of Traditional and anti-Conciliar Statutes? It is as though, just after the Archbishop got out of the Catholic castle with the Catholic Statutes in his hand, the Conciliar portcullis crashed down behind him. “They are mentally sick, but they have the authority,” as one of the four SSPX theologians said about the Roman theologians after the Doctrinal Discussions of 2009–2011. The SSPX is surely the last in line of the classic Congregations to be founded, at least until after the Chastisement. And it has not lasted long.

That is why, in my opinion, “What cannot be cured must be endured.” And that is why, right now, I envisage being little more than father, adviser and friend for any souls calling for a bishop’s leadership and support. Even that is task enough. May God be with us all.

Kyrie eleison.

GREC – IV

GREC – IV on April 27, 2013

A lady having read the first “Eleison Comments” on GREC (EC 294, March 2) wrote to complain that I misrepresented GREC, the Parisian group of Catholics founded in the late 1990’s to bring together Traditionalists and mainstream Catholics so that they could think and talk peacefully with one another for the good of Mother Church. I am happy to correct errors of fact which she pointed out. I have no problem admitting personal faults of mine which she highlighted. However on one major point I must disagree with her.

As for the errors of fact, Mr Gilbert Pérol was French Ambassador to the Italian government, and not to the Vatican. Also he was not a “lay collaborator,” but a personal friend of Fr Michel Lelong, a White Father. Also GREC was launched not “in the salons of Paris,” but in the flat of the Ambassador’s widow, Mrs. Huguette Pérol, who, I was told, takes full responsibility for having founded GREC, purely to help the Church, and with the help of people “competent and concerned to be faithful to the Gospel and to Tradition.”

As for my faults, she wrote that I was “full of myself” and “ignorant,” that I lacked modesty and diplomacy, that I showed insufficient respect for the dead, and that I wrote with a sarcastic tone befitting neither an educated person nor a priest. Madam, how happy I would be if these were the worst faults for which I shall have to answer before God. Do pray for my particular judgment.

However, as to the sarcasm, let me plead that if I mocked the nostalgia of Catholics today for the Catholicism of the 1950’s, I was thinking not of Ambassador Pérol in person, but of the multitudes of present-day Catholics, who, not realizing why God allowed Vatican II to split the mainstream Church from Catholic Tradition in the first place, wish to return to that sentimentalized faith of the previous decade which led directly to Vatican II! Madam, the crucial point has nothing to do with subjective persons, it has everything to do with objective doctrine.

That is why I must disagree with you as to the competence of the people helping Mrs Pérol to found GREC. That a professional diplomat like Ambassador Pérol should have resorted to diplomacy to solve major problems of doctrine is misguided, but understandable. That a Conciliar priest like Fr Lelong should have encouraged such a diplomatic undertaking is graver, but still understandable, given how Vatican II undermined all doctrine by officialising subjectivism within the Church. What is much less easy to accept is the “competence and concern for the Gospel and Tradition” on the part of priests who were trained under Archbishop Lefebvre to understand the doctrinal disaster of Vatican II. Such priests should never have encouraged, let alone taken any active part in, an essentially diplomatic effort to solve an essentially doctrinal disaster, however well-intentioned that effort may have been.

And yet, even in their case the French proverb to some extent applies: “To understand everything means to forgive everything.” The Archbishop was of an earlier and saner generation. They are all children of the world shattered by two World Wars. All credit to them for resorting to his person for their priestly formation, and while he lived he raised us all up. But they never truly absorbed his doctrine, and so once he was dead they began within a few years to fall back. But he was right, and they, and GREC – forgive me, gracious lady – are wrong. Please God they may come right.

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Rising

Resistance Rising on April 20, 2013

Another three-week journey on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean has just given me to see that the resistance to the collapse of the Society of St Pius X into the embrace of apostate Rome is rising, more in quality than in quantity (but Catholic quantity follows Catholic quality, and not the other way round). Traditionalists have been deliberately kept in the dark as to what is going on between the Society and Rome, but as they find out just how the true Catholic religion is being endangered, so a number of good men are reacting with seriousness and resolution.

I visited first of all Fr Jahir’s community of some dozen religious in northern Brazil, behind the city of Salvador where Fr Jahir was a parish priest for many years. Having fled the Newchurch, he sees the situation of the Newsociety very clearly. He has founded his own community in the true Faith, and it is easy to imagine several of his men becoming in a few years’ time valiant priests who will hold that Faith. I gave to one of them Tonsure and the first two Minor Orders, and then headed south to visit another Brazilian priest becoming famous for his staunch adherence to Tradition, as Archbishop Lefebvre understood it.

The Benedictine Dom Thomas is Prior of the Monastery in the mountains near Nova Friburgo behind Rio de Janeiro. It was founded in the 1980’s by Dom Gérard as an offshoot from the Traditional Benedictine Monastery which Dom Gérard had also founded in France in the 1970’s, with the encouragement and support of Archbishop Lefebvre. However, when the Archbishop consecrated bishops in 1988, Dom Gérard broke with him, took his monastery into the Newchurch, and crossed the ocean to do the same with the Brazilian monastery.

Here he ran into the resistance of Dom Thomas, who was still only a young monk, but who before becoming a monk had learned in depth from a famous Brazilian lay Catholic, Gustavo Corçâo, the wrongness of the Newchurch. With help from good laymen and with the support of Archbishop Lefebvre, Dom Thomas stood up to Dom Gérard and saved the Monastery for Tradition. With such a clash behind him it is not surprising that Dom Thomas also sees very clearly the situation both of the Newchurch and of the Newsociety. In a tent set up outside the small Monastery church for the extra visitors to the Holy Week ceremonies, we celebrated with few priests but with all the essentials the Maundy Thursday Consecration of Holy Oils. These the Monastery can now supply for this year to priests in particular whose supply could be cut off by the Newsociety.

Then I flew north to visit three more centres of the Resistance being launched in the USA by the brave Frs Joseph Pfeiffer and David Hewko. Near Connecticut, in New Jersey and in Minnesota I was able to give Confirmations and conferences to Catholics suspicious of what is going on in the Newsociety. They had good questions, deserving of truthful answers.

Good news for benefactors in Euroland: the St Marcel Initiative has at last a RIB and an IBAN, based in France, to facilitate donations in euros to the St Marcel Initiative. To make a bank transfer from inside France use the following RIB: [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]; from outside France use the following IBAN: [write to letters@eleisoncomments.com for the number]. The St Marcel Initiative has just been able to give a little serious aid, much needed, to Dom Thomas’ Monastery. He thanks all of you who have contributed to the Initiative.

Kyrie eleison.

Doctrinal Declaration – II

Doctrinal Declaration – II on April 13, 2013

The Doctrinal Declaration of April 15 of last year, drawn up by the Superior General (SG) of the Society of St Pius X as a basis for the Society’s reintegration into the mainstream Church, has emerged nearly one year later into public view. It was designed by the SG to please both the Conciliar Romans and Traditionalists (“It can be read with dark or rose-coloured glasses,” he said in public). It did please the Romans who declared that it represented an “advance” in their direction. It did not please Traditionalists who saw in it (what they knew of it) such ambiguity as to represent a betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre’s stand for the Catholic Faith, to the point that they considered that the Romans need only have accepted it to destroy his Society.

In fact when the SG met the Romans on June 11 in Rome to receive their decision, he fully expected they would accept it. Numerous observers speculate that if they did not accept it, it was only because the intervening publication of the April 7 Letter of the Three Bishops to the SG warned the Romans that he would not be able to bring the whole Society with him into the bosom of their Conciliar Rome, as he may have given them to understand he would do, and as they wanted him to do. They did and do not want another split to start Tradition all over again.

Be all that as it may, space remains here for nothing but one major argument that the proposal of the Doctrinal Declaration, had it been accepted by Rome, would have destroyed the SSPX. Archbishop Lefebvre declared, and proved, that Vatican II was a break or rupture with previous Church teaching. On that premise arose, and rests, the Traditional Catholic movement. So, confronted by the on-going resistance of that movement to his beloved Vatican II, Benedict XVI proclaimed at the outset of his pontificate in 2005 the “hermeneutic of continuity,” whereby the Council (objectively) contradicting Tradition was to be (subjectively) so interpreted as not to contradict it. Thus there would be no break or rupture between it and Catholic Tradition!

Now see the seventh paragraph (III, 5) of the Doctrinal Declaration. It declares that Vatican II statements difficult to reconcile with all previous Church teaching, (1) “must be understood in the light of Tradition entire and uninterrupted, in line with the truths taught by the Church’s preceding Magisterium, (2) not accepting any interpretation of those statements which can lead Catholic doctrine to be exposed in opposition or rupture with Tradition and that Magisterium.”

The first part here (1) is perfectly true, so long as it means that any Conciliar novelty “difficult to reconcile” will be flatly rejected if it objectively contradicts previous Church teaching. But (1) is directly contradicted by (2) when (2) says that no Conciliar novelty may be “interpreted” as being in rupture with Tradition. It is as though one said that all football teams must wear blue shirts, but football team shirts of any other colour are all to be interpreted as being nothing other than blue! What nonsense! But it is pure “hermeneutic of continuity.”

Now, do the soldiers holding the last fortress of the Faith that is organised worldwide realize what their Commander is thinking? Do they realize that his solemn declaration of SSPX doctrine shows him to be thinking like an enemy leader? Are they happy that they are being led to think like the enemies of the Faith? All ideas must be Catholic, while non-Catholic ideas will be “interpreted” as Catholic. Wake up, comrades! Enemy thinking is in Headquarters.

Kyrie eleison.

GREC – II

GREC – II on March 9, 2013

Before we continue with the story of GREC, namely the Parisian group of laity and clergy meeting from the late 1990’s onwards in pursuit of reconciliation between Vatican II and Catholic Tradition, we must consider the basic attitude of GREC participants. The Church’s future depends on those Catholics who will understand GREC’s error, i.e. how modern minds lose their grip on truth. To illustrate that attitude let us take at random four quotes, typical of dozens and dozens in the book For the Necessary Reconciliationby the Newchurch priest, Fr Michel Lelong, one of the founders of GREC. In a letter he wrote to the Pope in July of 2008 are to be found the first two quotes:—

“We also wish that the excommunications(of the four SSPX bishops in 1988) be lifted and that the SSPX recover its place within the Church to which it has so much to give. That is why we ask the authorities of the SSPX to put an end to the polemical statements and articles criticizing the Holy See.”Comment: (Has that not happened over the last 10 years?) But if polemics are so bad, why were a number of Church Fathers – and Archbishop Lefebvre – so polemical? Polemics are only that bad if unity is that good. But unity is only as good as that around which it unites.

“In our society so tempted by materialism, indifferentism and sectarisms, we think that in response to your request, Holy Father, all Catholics must strive together to be faithful to Christ’s recommendation, ‘Be united so that the whole world may believe’.”Comment: “United” around what? Around Catholic truth, or around the lie that Catholic truth is reconcilable with Vatican II? Then the primary and crucial question for Catholic unity is where Catholic truth is to be found. But GREC leaves questions of truth to the “theologians.” So non-theologians can be saved by lies!?

This letter of Fr Lelong was so well received by Benedict XVI that GREC leaders and sympathisers wrote again a few months later. Here are two more quotes from the second letter to the Pope:—

“For sure we were saddened that the Holy See’s recent proposals were not accepted by the SSPX authorities, but we know that to heal wounds amongst Catholics always requires generosity and patience to restore confidence on both sides and to make reconciliation possible.”Comment: Are wounds only ever to be healed, and never inflicted? Did Our Lord not twice use a lash across the backs of the money-lenders in the Temple? There is a God, his honour is to be defended above all things, and men can be wicked enough to understand nothing but the lash, be it physical or verbal.

“We think that lifting the excommunications would set in motion an irresistible process of drawing closer, with a view to an agreement between the Holy See and the SSPX, or at least an agreement with a large part of the SSPX priests and faithful.”Comment: indeed the friendly contacts between Rome and the SSPX were setting such a motion in process in January of 2009, and only an outburst from within the SSPX of the most horrible heresy of modern times – “anti-semitism” – stopped that process. But either Catholic reconciliation with Vatican II is no problem, or one has to say that that outburst was providential, because it also stopped, at least for a while, the false reconciliation.

In conclusion, GREC, like millions of modern Catholics, above all else seeks unity, non-polemics, reconciliation, agreement, etc. But where does the God of truth figure amongst all these sweet sentiments? Is he a sugar-daddy who blesses all men’s lies, just so long as they lie in unison?

Kyrie eleison.