resistance

France Stirs

France Stirs on July 26, 2014

Many of you know that on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week was held in the Dominican Friary of Avrillé close to Angers in North-west France a meeting of resistant priests from wherever the “Resistance” is up and running, but mainly from France. This was the third such meeting of French priests held in Avrillé since the beginning of the year, and it was the most important. This time they began to co-ordinate and to organize their activities in France, a country often decisive for the Church in various ways.

The credit for calling these meetings goes to the Prior of Avrillé, Fr Pierre-Marie. For several years Avrillé has been offering support and a refuge to priests of the Society of St Pius X who have been finding their priestly life more and more difficult under its present leadership, whose pursuit of reconciliation with the Newchurch in Rome is, despite the disguise and denials, relentless. Only a few weeks ago the Society’s Second Assistant is reported to have said, “The train is leaving for Rome, and those who want to get off will get off.” For as long as possible Fr Pierre-Marie sought not to break off relations with the official SSPX, but earlier this year came the letter from Bishop Fellay finalising the rupture. That was inevitable, unless Avrillé would also betray Tradition.

Originally Fr Pierre-Marie designed last week’s meeting for the French priests, but I suggested to him that resistant priests from outside France might also be invited for a double reason: the priests from outside would be encouraged to see the “Resistance” stirring in France, where it has stirred little – outwardly – up till now, and the French priests in turn might be reminded that there is not only France. Fr Pierre-Marie accepted my suggestion, and that is how it turned out, some 18 priests in all.

The meeting went very well. There was little looking back and no bitterness, much looking forward. The first day’s business was largely for the French priests. They began by nominating as their co-ordinator Fr. de Mérode, a priest from Belgium with 30 years’ experience in the SSPX, all over the world. Then for their organisation being born they chose the name of “Priestly Union of Marcel Lefebvre,” a name that announces clearly the orientation. And finally Fr. De Mérode began organising a network of Mass centres all over France – back to the 1970’s, but in harsher conditions, and with very limited resources, at least for the moment.

The second day’s business was given over to international concerns for the defence of the Faith, and here of course arose the question of episcopal consecrations, because I for one wished to know the mind of the priests present. It was relatively unanimous. Readers will be encouraged to know that while the priests thought that the time for consecrations had not yet come, nevertheless it could not be too far off. For indeed as of now it is very difficult to imagine any of the three bishops who remain within the SSPX undertaking to consecrate anybody without the approval of |Rome, and it is impossible to imagine neo-modernist Rome approving of any anti-modernist candidate! Patience.

Do pray, both for the quiet success of the budding Priestly Union, and for God to give us, in his good time, the additional bishops needed for the defence of the Faith.

Kyrie eleison.

Dickens’ Broadstairs

Dickens’ Broadstairs on June 21, 2014

A number of friends have asked me how I like the house newly purchased for the “Resistance” in Kent, England. I like it. It is spacious and it is being beautifully set up by a fellow-exile from the Society of St Pius X, Fr Stephen Abraham. Only Heaven knows how it intends the house to be used in the near and distant future, but it is meanwhile a delightful refuge, five minutes on foot from the sea which God created, and which the liberals cannot touch.

Several famous English artists and writers from the past have also found refuge in this delightful corner of north-east Kent. Most famous of the artists is J.M.W. TURNER (1775–1751). Born in London where he spent most of his working life, from age 11 he spent several formative years in Margate, some four miles up the coast from Broadstairs. Here he discovered the sea, which with its light effects was a lifelong inspiration for his painting, and to Margate he frequently returned later in life.

Also in Margate the most famous poet in English of the 20th century, T.S. ELIOT (1888–1965), composed in an open-air pavilion still standing on Margate’s beach, a substantial section of the third part of his most famous poem, The Wasteland (1922). He had come to the seaside town as a refugee from London where an unhappy marriage had seriously affected his health. He did not stay long, but went on to Lausanne, Switzerland, where thanks to the care of a good doctor he completed his recovery and The Wasteland. But the prospect of the sea at Margate had no doubt helped.

Another famous poet, at least in England, was a frequent visitor to Ramsgate, two miles down the coast from Broadstairs. Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, one of England’s five outstanding Romantic poets, is best-known for his long poem, The Ancient Mariner. He loved bathing in the sea at Ramsgate, perhaps also for health reasons. In any case, the colder the sea, the more he liked it.

Most famous of all, however, was a frequent visitor to Broadstairs itself, the novelist Charles Dickens (1812–1870). He first resorted to Broadstairs in 1837, as a quiet place in which to complete his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, but he so fell in love with the antiquated little seaside town that he often returned with his family to write, or to rest from writing, through the 1840’s and into the 1850’s. His name and names of his novels, or of characters from his novels, are to be found all over the old town that he knew. It is now surrounded, not to say strangled, by Victorian and modern suburbs, but Broadstairs still celebrates every year its most famous visitor with a Dickens Festival in June.

Dr. David Allen White, a Catholic teacher of literature and music who is well-known to many Catholics striving to keep the Faith all over the English-speaking world, is a great lover of Dickens. Since he is passing through London this summer, he agreed to visit Broadstairs in order to hold on August 2 and 3 a 24-hour weekend seminar on Dickens, open to the public and including three conferences and Sunday Mass, and a visit which he will guide to the Dickens Museum in town, set up in a little old house known to, and visited by, Dickens himself. If you are interested in attending, let us know soon (through info@dinoscopus.org), because if numbers have to be limited, first come will be first served. Meals will be provided in-house, but visitors will have to find their own accommodation outside. Beware, it will be the height of the holiday season.

Dickens was not Catholic, but Dostoevsky called him “a great Christian.” Dickens certainly had a warm and open heart, and a brilliant pen.

Kyrie eleison.

Resistance Policy – II

Resistance Policy – II on April 26, 2014

The Faith must be preserved despite the Shepherd being struck (cf. EC 348). If there was one man given to us by God to show us how to keep the Faith in stricken times, by preserving the true sacrifice of the Mass and the true Catholic priesthood, that man was certainly Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991). And since the disaster wrought upon the Church by the Conciliar Shepherds has not essentially changed since his time, then what he said and wrote applies essentially today, and any newcomer to the disaster cannot do better than read and study his words.

However, the disaster has also grown much worse since his death, and any so-called movement of “Resistance” today will do well to learn the lessons that are there to be learned from the threatening fall of that Society of St Pius X which it was the Archbishop’s stupendous achievement to found, within the collapsing mainstream Church, for the preservation of the Faith. Why is the leadership of the SSPX now taking it in a direction different from the Archbishop’s, a direction that must lead to the SSPX’s entirely similar collapse?

Because, in my opinion, the leaders which the SSPX chose for itself after the Archbishop’s death in 1991 at the General Chapters of 1994 and 2006, never took the full measure of the Conciliar disaster, because they were children of the undermined 1950’s or the Revolutionary 1960’s and later still. Having drunk in the Revolution with their mothers’ milk, so to speak, they never understood how it wrecks from within churchmen still seeming Catholic without. In brief, these leaders have either never studied modernism, or never understood what they studied, or have been too “pious” or “supernatural” to think that it could apply to the mainstream churchmen in front of them.

Thus where Archbishop Lefebvre saw clearly that the Conciliar Church, by losing all four marks of the Catholic Church (one, holy, catholic, apostolic), was not the Catholic Church, Bishop Fellay (Superior General since 1994) and Fr Nicholas Pfluger (First Assistant since 2006) insist today that there can only be one Church, and so the Conciliar Church is the Catholic Church. Naturally then, where the Archbishop kept the SSPX at a safe distance from the Conciliar Church, Bishop Fellay and Fr Pfluger want to abolish that distance and bring the SSPX back within that Church which is Conciliar. And neither Bishop Fellay nor Fr Pfluger will feel Catholic until they have achieved that end.

But the Faith is firstly in the mind and not in the feelings. It follows that whoever has, for whatever reason, begun to recognize that the present leadership of the SSPX is on the wrong track, must continue by studying the total problem of the Revolution, of modernism and of Vatican II. That is a tall order, because one can have a text-book knowledge of the Revolution and still not recognize it right under one’s nose. I feel so nice when I feel that everybody else is nice that I lose from view the objective falsity of almost all of us as seen by God. One may say that it requires a special grace from God to see that falsity as he sees it, without losing one’s compassion, but a soul can obtain that grace if it seeks God seriously, especially in prayer.

God is good to those that seek him, says Scripture in many places. Assuming he exists, what could he be other than supremely good to those that seek him?

Kyrie eleison.

Balance Proposed

Balance Proposed on April 19, 2014

“Keep therefore and do the things which the Lord God hath commanded you: you shall not go aside neither to the right hand nor to the left.” This instruction from the Lord God to be passed on by Moses to the Israelites (Deut.V, 32) is certainly valid for God’s Chosen People of the New Testament (Rom. IX, 25–26), but it is not so easy to apply in our own time when the Shepherd of the New Testament is struck, and we sheep are scattered (Zech.XIII, 7). Is the Pope so lightly struck that Catholics need not take care how they obey him? Or is he so seriously struck that he cannot be Pope? In any case the sheep are scattered and will remain so, until Russia is consecrated to the Immaculate Heart.

Meanwhile, as it seems to me, a letter published in the latest issue of the Angelus, official magazine of the Society of St Pius X in the USA, goes astray to the left. Fr. S. has several reasons for urging the SSPX to put itself “in the hands . . .of the Pope as soon as possible.” Firstly, to think that the Roman churchmen are intentional destroyers of the Church is implicit sedevacantism. But I need be no sedevacantist, implicit or explicit, to recall that their subjective intentions no way lessen the objective damage that they have done to the Church, and would do to the SSPX, if it came under their control. Secondly, for the SSPX to wait until the Romans’ full doctrinal conversion to put itself into their hands, is unrealistic. But one heresy is enough to make an enemy of the Faith, and modernism is an all-embracing heresy (Pascendi, Pius X). Too much contact with the Romans has already seduced the SSPX’s leaders.

Thirdly, the SSPX must give back to Rome as soon as possible the doctrine and practice of the true Faith. But if Rome were still only half modernist, such a giving back would be to throw pearls before swine (Mt.VII, 6). Fourthly, the SSPX has for so long kept its distance from Rome that it risks losing all Catholic sense of hierarchy, obedience and authority. But the true Faith must be kept at a safe distance from all-embracing heresy. If the heresy is not my fault, God can look after my Catholic senses, so long as I am faithful to him, for 40 years or more in the desert, just as he looked after the faithful Israelites (Exod. – Deut.). And fifthly, the so-called “Resistance” is dividing and weakening the SSPX’s true resistance to Conciliar Rome. But unity around any non-doctrinal understanding with modernists will be unity around error, fatal for Archbishop Lefebvre’s SSPX. In brief, Fr. S. has lost sight of just how seductive and deadly for the Faith is the error of modernism.

On the other hand, as it seems to me, a priest now refusing any longer to mention the Pope’s name in the Canon of the Mass is in danger of going astray to the right. If I see the deadly danger of modernism to the Faith, certainly I see the enormous objective damage done to the Church by Conciliar Popes. But can I truthfully say that there is nothing at all still Catholic left in them? For example, as Fr. S. would say, do they not still have at least good subjective intentions? Have they not all at least meant to serve the Church? In which case can I not celebrate Mass in union with whatever is still Catholic in them? The mainstream Church may be sick unto death, but I for one could not maintain that there is nothing Catholic whatsoever still happening within it. It is not yet completely dead.

“In things certain, unity. In things doubtful, liberty. In all things, charity.”

Kyrie eleison.

Fiftiesism Observed

Fiftiesism Observed on March 8, 2014

If there is, at least up till now, relatively little reaction from within the Society of St Pius X to its complete change of direction under Bishop Fellay, that is because of the desire to return to the Catholicism of the 1950’s. So observes a Catholic attending Mass at an SSPX Chapel in the English-speaking world. She wrote to me recently:—

“Why is there no “Resistance” in our part of the world? I think I’ve figured it out. You’ve mentioned many times that most of the original leaders of the Society of St Pius X never really understood Archbishop Lefebvre. Locally, I think that that applies to many of our original chapel founders here, who are the ones clinging to the Society and to its present leaders. How come? Why don’t they take action, when what they fought so long and hard for is threatened with destruction from within?

“On Sunday, an elderly lady summed it up for me. As she and her husband see it, they strove valiantly through the 1970s into the early 80s, and the fruit of their labours is the chapel itself. The Mass with all the outward trappings, the property, the buildings, the pews, the statues, the vestments – this is what is threatened by the mere existence of the Resistance! They fought all those years to restore for themselves the Catholicism of their youth. For them, it’s NOT a question of doctrine at all. The woman is member of a Third Order, yet she believes doctrinal matters are for priests and bishops, not laity. For example, to study Papal encyclicals is meddling in affairs that God assigned to the hierarchy.

“I asked if they see a need to understand their Faith, if individual souls do not answer to God for knowing their Faith? Their response was sincere, I believe, but to me it was astonishing. They said, ‘No! The responsibility of the Catholic is to obey his superiors.’ And if the superiors are in error? ‘Obey anyway! To do otherwise is rebellion.’ It is for a Catholic ‘a sign of rebellion’ to even question his superiors ‘in matters that do not concern him,’ i.e. doctrine. If the superior is wrong, God will judge him – ‘You will never go wrong obeying the priest.’ So there you have it. The Resistants are rebels, disobedient, disrespectful. How dare they question the superior? How dare they presume to study doctrine, to ask questions of their superiors about it? The Resistants are evil, not because they are doctrinally wrong, but because their words and actions threaten the Catholicism of the 1950’s.

“But blind obedience is ridiculous! What are we lambs to do when the Shepherd is struck and the sheep are scattered? Pretend all is well. and let ourselves be devoured by wolves in the name of obedience? What can one say to such people? They are wilfully ignorant in the belief that wilful ignorance is a virtue! Where does such a mindset come from? What error crept into the Church to make Catholics switch off their minds? All I can say is that if the SSPX is left with flocks of lobotomised sheep, it will be easy for Rome to wipe out the last fortress of Tradition! The SSPX chapels need only to be handed over to the jurisdiction of the local bishop by formal agreement, or by de facto cooperation with Novus Ordo priests, which we have seen locally.”

Notice her evocation of the possibility of Rome absorbing the SSPX no longer by any clear-cut agreement, but by a gradual merger. It is a real danger. I wonder if that is not what SSPX HQ is being advised to do by its “new friends” in Rome.

Kyrie eleison.

Father Rioult – II

Father Rioult – II on December 14, 2013

Let me quote Fr Olivier Rioult from his October 6 interview in Paris (cf. EC 333) on another question, much disputed within today’s Catholic Resistance – the question of organization. Fr Rioult was asked whether he thought it was possible to set up a new worldwide organization, or would he rather opt for some kind of free association such as has grouped together sedevacantists for a number of years? Here is his answer, this time in his very own words:—

“In the months to come I may be setting up a broad kind of association based on friendship with other Catholics in the Resistance, whether or not they are sedevacantists, sedevacantism being for me an opinion. But the situation is not ripe here and now for such an association. In any case whatever is Catholic is ours. So any Catholics ready to operate as Catholics and to resist the modernism reigning supreme within the Church, we will work with. Therefore yes, to a broad kind of association sharing the same common good: the Faith and worship of the Catholic Church, the defence of the Faith. Having this same common good can create friendship amongst all our groups.

“I think that the closer we come to the end times, the more Catholics will have to be anarchists, not in principle but in practice. By which I mean, they will have to be against all the powers that be, because these will all have been neutralized, undermined or subverted, operating contrary to the natural order. Hence, in practice, Catholics will have to stand up to them all, in Church or State . . . because they will all be twisted out of shape, under Masonic influence . . . serving in any case the Prince of this world. So I think it will be very difficult to create any more worldwide structures. The French Dominican priest, Fr Roger Calmel, had a clear view of things. As far back as 1970 he said that the natural leaders in any given place will have to make their ministry shine out in that one place, being tied by bonds of no more than friendship to the leaders in any other place.

“In 1970, in the French periodical “Itineraires” (#149), he wrote: “The fight for the Faith will have to be fought by little groups refusing to enter into any structured or universal organizations. Within these various groups, such as a small school, a humble convent, a prayer group, a gathering of Christian families or the organizing of a pilgrimage, the authority is real and accepted by everybody . . . All that is needed is for each Catholic to reach as far as his grace and authority will carry him in the little sphere which is certainly his to lead, and which he will take charge of without having over him any grand administrative structures to make him do so’. “

If Fr. Calmel wrote that in 1970 for the circumstances of 1970, one might say either that he was seeing too far ahead, or that Archbishop Lefebvre proved by organizing the Society of St Pius X what could still be done in 1970. But I do think that Fr. Calmel was right in the long run. One might say, watching what happened to the Society last year, that it was bound to run into the sand. Archbishop Lefebvre, like Pope St Pius X, conducted a marvelous rearguard action, but one notes how much less the Archbishop could achieve, coming70 years later than the Pope, and now we are 40 years on from the Archbishop. In a world marching to its ruin the realization of Fr. Calmel’s prophecy could not be indefinitely delayed.

Dear readers, if we wish to stay with Our Lord, we have no choice but to gird our loins. In my opinion, Fr Calmel and Fr Rioult are right. Mother of God, Help of Christians, help!

Kyrie eleison.