Tag: practical agreement

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.

Two Bishops

Two Bishops posted in Eleison Comments on December 21, 2019

Ever since the summer and autumn of 2012 when it became clear that two of the three bishops of the Society of St Pius X were no longer taking the position towards relations of the Society with Rome which they had taken in their April 7 letter to Society Headquarters, followers of the Society, priests and laity, have wondered why. Few people, then or since, will have taken the bishops’ change of position to have been a question of persons or personalities. Since the letter warned severely against abandoning Archbishop Lefebvre’s clear refusal of contacts with unconverted Rome, most people took the two bishops’ change for what it was, namely a rallying to the Superior General’s new principle of contact before conversion. Yet since Conciliar Rome had hardly changed except for the worse between 1988 and 2012, why had the two bishops changed?

The question retains all of its importance for today. What is to be gained by the Society for the Faith – not by the Faith for the Society! – through friendly contacts of the Society with the Conciliar Romans still hell-bent on their Vatican II ecumenism, down to and including the Pope’s veneration of the Pachamama idol in the very gardens of the Vatican? One thing seems certain: for the last 20 years the Society has staked everything for its future on that friendship, and to give it up now would mean admitting that these 20 years had all been a big mistake. Therefore the Society, in grave need of new bishops for its worldwide Traditional apostolate, cannot choose and consecrate its own choice of Traditional bishops, because these would certainly displease the Conciliar Romans. Therefore the two bishops in 2012 laid a heavy cross on their own backs, heavier each year – they helped to drive the Society up a blind alley – in 2019 it cannot have, and it cannot not have, its own bishops.

Recent information became available that throws some light on the two bishops’ decision to abandon the Archbishop’s line of conversion-before-contacts, to which they had so recently adhered. As for Bishop de Galarreta, we learn that almost as soon as the April 7 letter appeared on the Internet, he hastened to SSPX Headquarters to apologise to the Superior General for its appearance, which he absolutely disclaimed. But how could he disclaim the appearance without also dissociating himself from the content? It seems that the publication made him fear the imminent implosion of the Society more than the content made him fear the blind alley of the Society, its essential abandoning of the Archbishop’s defending of the faith. Was the Society’s survival more important than that of the faith?

Bishop Tissier de Mallerais took longer to retract his signature, so to speak, of the April 7 letter, but by early 2013 that retraction was also clear. To a friend he then gave the following episcopal guidance: Rome’s conversion cannot today come all at once. Official recognition will enable us to work that much more efficaciously from within the Church. We need patience and tact to take our time so as not to upset the Romans who still do not like our criticism of the Council, but we are making our way gradually – is that not what the Saints did? We must continue to denounce scandals and to accuse the Council, but we need to be intelligent so as to understand the way of thinking of our adversaries, who do after all include the See of Peter. Bishop Fellay’s policy has not really failed: nothing was signed on the 13th of June, 2012, nothing catastrophic, nothing stupendous has happened for the last 17 months. A few priests left us, which I find deplorable, from lack of prudence and judgment, but it was all their own fault. In brief, try to be more trusting in others and less trusting in yourself. Put your trust in the Society and its leaders. All’s well that ends well. That should be the spirit of your next decisions and writings.

Here end the bishop’s reasons for recommending his friend to follow Bishop Fellay. But have either Bishop de Galarreta or Bishop Tissier de Mallerais or Bishop Fellay fully understood the Archbishop’s reasons for cutting contact with the Conciliar Romans? Do not all three of them gravely underestimate the unprecedented crisis caused by the Conciliar churchmen’s on-going betrayal of the Truth and of the Faith? How can doctrinal compromise or merely human politicking with Rome solve that pre-apocalyptic crisis?

Kyrie eleison.

Sliding Still – II

Sliding Still – II posted in Eleison Comments on November 9, 2019

In case readers think that the August conversation reported here last week between Dom Placide of Bellaigue in France and Society of St Pius X authorities in Switzerland is insufficient to prove that the Society is still sliding away from the defence of the true Faith, here is another report leading to the same conclusion: at about the same time as the Society’s Superior General (SG) gave his re-assuring interview of September 12, he presided over the appointment of a Commission of three to go down to Rome and pick up again the theological discussions with the Conciliar Romans which ran from 2009 to 2011 with no result. And what three representatives of the Society were chosen for the discussions? None other than Bishop Fellay and Fathers Pfluger and Nély, the Society’s ruling triumvirate from 2006 to 2018, when all three were voted out of office at the elective General Chapter of July, 2018! A little background is again necessary.

In the preceding elective General Chapter of 2006, the Society’s 40 leading priests remained faithful, less faithful than in 1994 (as Bishop Fellay once admitted) but nevertheless faithful, to Archbishop Lefebvre’s principle of Catholic common sense, that in the clash between the Society and Rome such important questions of the Faith were at stake that no merely practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement could possibly resolve the clash. Now by 2006 Bishop Fellay had himself long since ceased to take doctrine seriously. For him, like for Pope Benedict XVI, for all modernists and for the mass of the world’s inhabitants today, God’s Truth is less important than men’s unity, but he knew that inside the Society many members still followed the Archbishop in their respect for God’s Truth, and so he continued to ask Pope Benedict for doctrinal discussions to take place so that the Society and Rome could be united.

The request was intrinsically foolish from the very start, because the doctrines of Catholic Tradition and of Vatican II can no more be united than the doctrines of 2+2=4 and 2+2=5. But both the Pope and the SG apparently hoped that the two sides could settle for 2+2= four and a half, because for both of them unity was more precious than truth. And so “doctrinal discussions” took place between four representatives on each side, from 2009 t0 2011. However, back in 2009 Bishop Fellay had still had to appoint four Society representatives who took Catholic Truth seriously, while the Romans were adamant in their attachment to the anti-truths of Vatican II, so that the discussions went nowhere. Unity failed then to prevail over Truth.

But at the Society’s interim (non-elective) General Chapter of 2012, opinion had shifted among the Society’s 40 leading priests, so that the Archbishop’s principle of doctrine first was abandoned, and the Society officially accepted that unity should come first. However, a hard-core resistance movement of Society priests immediately arose, threatening Society unity. And so when at the elective Chapter of 2018 the 40 priests still loved the Truth enough to vote Bishop Fellay and his two Assistants out of office, the new SG picked up afterwards on the idea of doctrinal discussions with the Conciliar Romans, an idea still intrinsically foolish but always as appealing as it is to have one’s cake and eat it. Down he went to Rome, and both the Romans and the SG must still have been dreaming of four-and-a-half, so it appears that “doctrinal discussions” are back on the table.

But whereas in 2009 Bishop Fellay had had to choose lovers of the Truth to represent the Society, the new SG seems to have chosen the very three officials of the Society who presided over the Chapter of 2012 which put unity before Truth! So who is fooling who? If the new SG is fooling himself that a non-doctrinal unity is possible, woe unto the Society, now and for the foreseeable future. If he is not fooling himself, is he acting under pressure from Rome or fellayised Menzingen, or both? It is the same thing, because Bishop Fellay did all he could to put Menzingen and the Society under Rome’s power. It is Rome that is therefore calling the shots, and rubbing the Society’s nose in the Society’s own dirt. Honourable Fr. Pagliarani, if you do not like taking responsibility for such dirt, the honourable thing to do is to resign!

Kyrie eleison.

Bishops’ Letter

Bishops’ Letter posted in Eleison Comments on October 5, 2019

A reader asks what were the circumstances behind the writing of the letter of April 7, 2012, addressed to Bishop Fellay and his two Assistants, by the three other bishops then of the Society of St Pius X. The letter is fast becoming ancient history, but readers may remember that the letter played an important part in making Traditional Catholics aware of the significant change of direction of the Society that had been surreptitiously taking place over the last 15 years, and which many of them had not noticed. But in March of 2012 the animal had just broken cover, or come out into the open.

In that month in “Cor Unum,” the Society’s magazine appearing three times a year for priests, the Superior General (SG) wrote that it was time for the Society to change Archbishop Lefebvre’s policy of no practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement, because the hostility of the Roman churchmen towards Catholic Tradition was growing less, and so the Society’s trust in the Conciliar Romans should grow more. In fact since the early 2000’s, more and more priests and laity of the Society had been suspecting that the Society was being led in a different direction. Now the SG himself was confirming those suspicions. That “Cor Unum” caused quite a stir within the Society.

At the dinner-table in the Society’s Priory in London, England, the editor of these “Comments” wondered aloud about writing to the SG a letter of protest against the change of direction, and about sending it to Bishop Tissier for him to check the contents. A priestly colleague at table asked if the letter should not be submitted also to Bishop de Galarreta, in case it could go to Society Headquarters as a joint protest against such a serious departure from the Archbishop’s constant preaching and practice of “Doctrine first.” The colleague was right, and so the idea of a letter of the three bishops was born. When consulted on the project, Bishop Tissier recommended that a draft of the letter be written, and when a draft was submitted to him he gave to it his enthusiastic approval. The draft was then submitted to Bishop de Galarreta who also approved, but reinforced considerably the draft by rewriting the last part of it. A final text was then signed by all three bishops and posted to Headquarters in Menzingen with copies for the SG and his two Assistants.

Their reply came just one week later. Not for nothing had Headquarters been changing the Society’s direction while disguising the change. They genuinely thought that Conciliar Rome was becoming more Catholic, to the point that the Archbishop’s grave reservations as to co-operating with the Neo-modernists in Rome were in effect out of date. To Cardinal Ratzinger in 1988 the Archbishop had said that co-operation was impossible, because the SSPX and Rome were working in directly opposite directions – Rome wanted to de-christianise society while the SSPX was striving to re-christianise society. But in 2012, SSPX Headquarters were adamant that the situation had changed, and so by opposing the three bishops they were not opposing the Archbishop. But what would the latter have said about the shenanigans of Pope Francis? What would he not have said? Yet in a recently appeared book-interview of the now former SG, Bishop Fellay vigorously repudiates even the least criticism of Pope Francis.

And so on a pre-arranged date in June of 2012 the latter presented himself in Rome with a trusted adjutant to put the seal on an agreement with Rome which would at last put an end to what SSPX Headquarters must have considered was an unnecessary 37-year squabble between the SSPX and Rome. Unnecessary? Squabble? Conciliar Rome is at war with Catholic Tradition! And the Romans had obviously learned of the three bishops’ letter. In which case what use would it have been for them to trap the Society’s official leadership if the other three of its four bishops avoided the trap? Tradition risked starting up all over again. And so the SG in 2012 was sent away from Rome, empty-handed. He would have to get to work on those bishops to bring them round. He wasted no time . . .

Kyrie eleison.

Macchabees? Where?

Macchabees? Where? posted in Eleison Comments on January 26, 2019

What does the reunification of the Society of St Pius X with Rome mean to the great mass of the world’s inhabitants, even to the large number of its Catholics? The answer must be, very little. Similarly when passengers on the Titanic saw a team of engineers going below decks to investigate something or other, they may not have shown much interest, but as soon as they came to learn that their great ship was doomed, their interest must have grown much keener. The Catholic Church hit the iceberg of Vatican II over 50 years ago. A great engineer of the Church warned the Church’s captain of what had happened, and what would be the result, and he showed how to stop the Church from sinking. Alas, Archbishop Lefebvre was not heeded by the captains then or since, and his discouraged successors prefer today to listen to the misguided captains, who are, if the Society no longer shows the true way out, to be pitied.

Let us recall the last six years of the process of reunification, and assess where it is at today.

The decisive step in that process was the Society’s General Chapter of 2012, where it renounced the Archbishop’s fundamental principle that without a doctrinal agreement between the Society and Rome, no merely practical agreement could serve the Church. This is because a Catholic is a Catholic firstly by his subjective virtue of faith submitting his mind and will to the objective creed of the Church’s Faith. What the error of subjectivism does is to render the objective Faith subjective, so that I become free to believe, and consequently to behave, how I like. Like believing 2 and 2 are 4, OR 5 OR 6 OR 6,000,000. This unfaith of Vatican II the Society essentially adopted in 2012, yet Society leaders immediately began reassuring their priests and laity that nothing essential had changed in the Society. BUT –

In 2013 began a series of publicly admitted meetings in Rome with the Roman authorities, to prepare a step-by-step process of full recognition. This process duly followed:—

In 2014, There were visits of Roman dignitaries to SSPX seminaries, and there was the temporary Jubilee “concession” of official jurisdiction for SSPX Confessions.

In 2015, the “concession” on Confessions and Extreme-Unction was made permanent.

In 2016, priestly ordinations in the SSPX were no longer to be punished by suspension “a divinis.”

In 2017, Society Marriages were rendered “licit” by the participation of a Newchurch priest as witness.

In 2018, the SSPX General Chapter elected for their General Council three men who are no tigers of the Faith, and created two new positions alongside them (General Councillors) to enable Bishop Fellay and Fr. Schmidberger to retain their power as the two leading tigers of reunification.

And in 2019? – Rome has just re-absorbed the Commission Ecclesia Dei (ED) into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), from which it was hived off in 1988 to draw back to Rome Catholics tempted by the Society’s episcopal consecrations to follow the Archbishop instead of Rome. As such, ED was meant to be relatively kind to Traditionalists. But Pope Francis has no time for Tradition. Therefore since the Newsociety now agrees with Rome that there is no longer the clash with Rome that there was in 1988, he has put an end to ED. But ED was kind to Tradition, whereas the CDF are tigers of the Newchurch. Like Little Red Riding Hood, the Newsociety is throwing itself into the jaws of Rome – “Oh, sweet Big Bad Rome, what lovely teeth you have!” “All the better to eat you up with, you silly child!”

And the Society? Just as it will be happy if Rome dissolves ED because the CFD will then treat it as belonging fully to the Church, so it risks being happy if Rome were to attach to the Society two relatively decent Newbishops to look after its need of Ordinations and Confirmations, but from outside the Society and always under Rome’s own control. On Rome’s part it would be a clever move, closing the trap even tighter on what remains of the Archbishop’s Society. And how many Newsociety priests will even see that here is “a sea of troubles,” let alone “take arms, to end them” (Hamlet)? Not many, one may fear.

Kyrie eleison.