General Chapter

At least for the moment one may reasonably judge that the General Chapter of the Society of St Pius X concluded in yet another disguised defeat for the Catholic Faith. It is a shame if the 40 leading priests of what was once Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society do not grasp the full dimension of the Church and world crisis in which we all find ourselves today, but that is the reality. In a way they are not to be blamed, because they are no more nor less than children of their age. Given that we are living in pre-apocalyptic times, why should Society priests have been spared the temptations and blindness which have, since Vatican II, brought low the mass of the Church’s bishops and priests? The Church has Our Lord’s promise that it will never fail (Mt. XXVIII, 20), but the Society never had any such promise.

Therefore let Catholics who wish to save their souls “get real”, as Americans say, or adjust their minds to the reality of our situation. For example, an anxious mother from the United States just wrote to me of her concern for her children:– “I want my children to have other children who love the faith. And I want other opportunities for them to meet faithful Catholics and maybe marry one-day. I have a son who is only 12 and would like to become a priest. What is the future for them? Will there ever be in our neck of the woods a “Resistance” priest? And how about a school? And will my son ever be safe entering a seminary?” There must be today many Catholic mothers with the same heartburn. I replied with the immense need that all Catholics have today to grasp reality and to adapt to it:–

Dear Mother,

GET USED TO THE IDEA THAT IN A FAMINE A CRUST OF BREAD IS A LUXURY . The Church is in a state of famine. Therefore –

1 Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, says Our Lord (Sermon on the Mount). There may or may not be a decent Seminary by the time your 12-year old grows up. If there is not, that will mean that Our Lord did not mean for him to be a priest. But much water will go over the dam between now and then.

2 A priest from the “Resistance” in your neck of the woods? Time alone will tell. Meanwhile you are not obliged to attend Masses which diminish your faith, in fact you may be obliged not to attend them. Let you and your husband judge. But if you attend no public Mass, you must adore God at home in a regular way on Sunday. That is the Third Commandment. Your example will teach your children.

3 A “Resistance” school will be a super-luxury. Meanwhile children DOOOOO listen to their biological parents, it is deep in their nature. You can send them to schools not so good, as long as you have the Rosary at home, and watch carefully over all influences that can come to play on them, especially their music… Do not let them be alone in their rooms with any electronics. Keep these out of the home, as absolutely far as possible.

4 Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Remember St Ambrose to St Monica — “The child of so many tears (the future St Augustine) cannot be lost.” Weep tears of blood if necessary for the salvation of each of your children – what else matters? – but at the same time have a boundless trust in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and in the desire and power of His Mother to obtain their salvation.

Therefore, dear readers, the Archbishop and his Society were a super-luxury. It is all too normal if today we lose it. We must “gird our loins”, i.e. tighten our belts, and reckon on saving our souls without it, if necessary. The grace of God is always there. “The help of God is closer than the door.”

Kyrie eleison.

So the latest General Chapter of the Society of St Pius X, the fourth with elections (1982, 1994, 2006 and 2018), came to a close in Écône, Switzerland, last Saturday. The event was followed with interest in many quarters, because for about 40 years from its founding in 1970 the Society emerged as a most important bastion of the Catholic Faith in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which had in effect officially undermined that Faith. However, over the last 20 years or so the Society had given increasing signs of a change of direction, more in line with the Church’s Conciliar officials, and less in line with its Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre. Which direction would the General Chapter now show the Society to be taking?

The detailed proceedings of a Chapter are meant to remain private, like those of the election of a Pope, but at the end of the Chapter emerged public words and actions. The words were the Chapter’s official Declaration of policy for the future, which aligned itself on Archbishop Lefebvre’s famous declaration of November of 1974, “in its entirety.” However, as the website Non Possumus has clearly shown by quoting truly in its entirety that declaration of war against the new religion of Vatican II, the Chapter has deliberately chosen to quote only its more peaceful parts. This is not promising for the Society’s continuation of the Archbishop’s holy war against the dreadful apostasy of Vatican II.

Of course the Archbishop was Catholic first and only as a consequence anti-Conciliar, which is why his declaration of war contains peaceful parts. But how can truth be loved without a hatred of error? Anti-Conciliarism follows immediately and necessarily upon love of Catholicism, which is why hordes of true Catholics came to follow the Society and its Founder who clearly and openly denounced the apostasy of the Church’s officials. Under him, the seminary in Écône once had well over a hundred seminarians, and crowds of thousands would attend each summer the ordination of a dozen or more new priests. In June of this year an estimated crowd of 450 souls attended the ordination of three new priests from among about 40 seminarians. Catholics are voting with their feet – and closing their wallets – against the Newsociety.

As for the Chapter’s public actions, which always speak louder than words, these consisted in the election of a new Superior General and two new Assistants. Participants in the Chapter must be congratulated on having deposed the previous General and Assistants, because these had striven for 12 years to change the Society’s direction in order to pursue official recognition from the Roman apostates. The recognition was not obtained, but the Society was seriously weakened and its best priests disoriented. So who did the Chapter choose as rulers in their place? The two new Assistants have been loyal executives of the previous General with his policy of currying favour with Conciliar Rome. For the common good of the Society? But when was there ever a Catholic common good opposed to the Faith? As for the new General, he may not himself know what he means to do as General, because God alone knows for sure what a man will do when he is put in power. Often he will disappoint, because “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton) – but he can prove to be surprisingly good. Fr Pagliarani certainly needs our prayers.

In this respect however, the Chapter’s last public action came like a thunderclap. Just before the Chapter’s close they voted to add to the Society’s governing Council of General and two Assistants another two “Counsellors,” and who did they choose? The Society’s last two Generals, Fr Schmidberger (1982–1994) and Bishop Fellay, who between 1994 when he was first elected and 2018 when he was at last dethroned, was the main architect of the Society’s weakening and decline! Whose doing was it to put Bishop Fellay right back next to the throne, together with his closest collaborator, Fr Schmidberger? What wise Superior wants his predecessor to be hanging around for another 12 years? What did the Chapter think it was doing? In any case, it is not a good sign if the Society is to love truth and hate error.

Kyrie eleison.

Remember, all of you Capitulants of the Society of St Pius X, preparing to take part in votes that will shape the Society for the next 12 years, remember your grave responsibility! You are not in a few days’ time taking part in a children’s garden-party, but in contributing to decisions with potential repercussions for the entire Church – and world!

Beware of an atmosphere being created at the Chapters by which everybody is made to feel they are being nice together, like in a garden-party, where nobody must break everybody’s nice feelings. You are all on the front line of the final battle between the Blessed Virgin and the Devil (Sister Lucy of Fatima).

Remember the Church crisis, let loose by Vatican II, which gave rise to the founding of your Society. True, Archbishop Lefebvre created seminaries for the true Catholic priesthood and spirituality, but these he fought to uphold in order to save the Catholic Faith. What use would priests be, or spirituality, if nobody had the Faith? In this respect even the true Mass is a means and not the end.

Beware of anybody pretending that the crisis is over, or that Conciliar Rome is no longer Conciliar, or that Pope Francis likes the Society. He and the officials that he has chosen to surround him can only like the Society if and when it stops resisting their Council. Then they will love the Society, because it will make itself into an outstanding advocate for the Universal Church’s apostasy.

Remember your Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, especially the advice and warnings of his last few years, between the episcopal consecrations of 1988 and his death in 1991. Those consecrations against the Pope’s express will did not contradict all his previous loyal service of the Church, they were its crowning glory, because nothing else he ever did so served to defend and uphold the Catholic Faith!

Beware of being told that the Archbishop was always trying to come to an agreement with the Roman authorities. True, he would talk with them, but when in 1988 they finally refused to protect Tradition, then he resolutely put doctrine in front of diplomacy. Since 2012 it is diplomacy back in front of doctrine

Remember how the whole Church had to listen to the Archbishop, because he stood for the Truth and his Society was in the forefront of the glorious fight for the Faith. From 2012 what has the Society stood for? Ever since it renounced the primacy of doctrine, it is less and less different from several Congregations coming under Ecclesia Dei, and the best of Society priests are confused – “What are we now meant to be defending?”

Beware of your decisions completing the Society’s 2012 primacy of practice over doctrine, of men’s unity over God’s truth, of man over God. Never has the world so needed God! Never has the Church been more in need of witness to God’s Truth! And just now the Society’s witness is to fade out?

Remember how meetings like a General Chapter can be skilfully manipulated, like Vatican II, by liberals well prepared beforehand. Do not be afraid of meeting and discussing with fellow-priests before the Chapter begins. Liberals have certainly done so, and they can even have decided all major questions. By all means throw monkey-wrenches into their smooth machinery! Speak up, before the Truth goes down!

Beware of giving up on grace, of renouncing reality, of being docile in dreamland! Beware of “peace and unity” in anything except the Truth. 2018 is do-or-die for the Society. Compromise is not victory. Do not be mere rubber-stamps, but thrash out what the true Church requires of the true Society!

Kyrie eleison.

Upon the up-coming election in two weeks or so of the three senior officials of the Society of St Pius X hangs a great deal. For the first 20 years of its existence it was a unique obstacle in the way of the new man-centred religion taking over and occupying the Catholic Church in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Alas, for the last 20 years its Superior General has been making the Society less and less resistant to the Conciliar officials in Rome at the head of the new religion. Will he be re-elected for a third term in mid-July, or not? If he is re-elected, it is difficult to see how the Society will not come under Conciliar control. If he is not re-elected, whoever is elected in his place will need a divine miracle or much human skill to bring the Society back in line with its Founder’s original intention, to put Jesus Christ back on His throne as God and King of all human society. It is not enemies but friends of the Society who point out how liberalism has been allowed to soak into it.

Perhaps Archbishop Lefebvre’s noble attempt to fight godless liberalism by founding the Society in 1970 was doomed from the start. After all, he had on the one hand Almighty God with him, as so many quasi-miraculous interventions in the Society’s early history prove. On the other hand he had the whole modern world and Conciliar Church against him, so that what had for all the centuries since the early Church of the Apostles and martyrs become normal, namely Christian civilisation, was by his time thoroughly abnormal. And so how could the young men who were drawn to him in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and who are now at the head of his Society, know the relatively normal order of the Church as he himself had known it between the two World Wars? And how could they build what they did not know? And, humanly speaking, how could they not be vulnerable to the universal pressure of today’s abnormality?

For indeed it has become normal for men to disbelieve in God, or if they believe in Him, to treat Him as though He is of little importance. All He has to do is get out of the way. Heads man wins, tails God loses. After all, God is so good that he could never condemn any human being to eternal fires of Hell, and men are so good that merely by being men they have such dignity that they all deserve to go to Heaven. He gave us this life for us to enjoy it. He cannot possibly have meant His ten Commandments to stop us from enjoying it. Yesterday’s Church gave that impression, but technological man has come of age after centuries of backward peasantry, and so it was high time for that old Church to give way to a church of the New World Order, a church bright with inclusion instead of exclusion, with liberty instead of prohibitions, with liberalism instead of Catholicism!

Therefore, divinely speaking, let nobody exclude the possibility of miraculous help from Heaven whereby the Society’s General Chapter will choose three top officials who understand what God wants from the Society, and mean with His help to give it to Him, namely the Society’s continuing or restored witness throughout the Church to the Social Kingship of Christ the King and to the one true religion instituted by the Incarnate God. But humanly speaking, let nobody be under any illusion as to the likelihood of such miraculous help. God owes His miracles to nobody. It was already a miracle that the Society came into existence, survived and thrived for 40 years, and shone throughout the Church. It may have played its part of handing down Tradition for as long as God meant it to, and now all it has to do is to watch while the same torch is handed down to others. God knows. Men choose. God decides.

For our part, we pray: Blessed Mother of God, from your divine Son we beg of you to obtain for the Society’s General Chapter to choose for its leaders for the next 12 years servants of His who put no merely human calculation or ambition in front of His interests alone – the restoration of His own Kingship over all mankind, the Triumph of your own Immaculate Heart, and the salvation of souls. Amen.

Kyrie eleison.