Rome

LEFEBVRE post 1988 – I

LEFEBVRE post 1988 – I on September 14, 2024

A liberal is a wolf, dressed like a sheep.

Judge by the fruits – sheep corpses in a heap.

For what use is it to him to be “free,”

If by God’s tenfold Law still bound he be?

“To Hell with Heaven! I will do as I like!

And let God with His Hell for ever strike!”

After consecrating four bishops in June of 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre saw more clearly than ever that the Conciliar Romans are no servants of the Catholic Faith. In 1989 he gave a long interview in France, cruelly shortened below. For the complete original, see https://sspx.org/en/one-year-after-consecrations-30335

Why the consecrations?

For several years I had been trying to get Rome to understand that as I was advancing in age, I had to ensure my succession. They were afraid that I would consecrate bishops, so they alluded to the possibility of our having a bishop who would be my successor.

I went to Rome for conversations, but without any confidence in their success. I wished to go as far as possible to show what good will we had. Very soon, however, we realized that we were dealing with people who are not honest. Rome brought up the question of the Council, which we did not want to hear of. A formula for an agreement was found which was at the very limits of what we could accept. I obtained only one bishop, whereas I was asking for three. That was already virtually unacceptable. And, when, even before signing the protocol, we asked when we could have this bishop, the answer was evasive or null.

The accumulation of distrust and reticence impelled me to demand the nomination of a bishop for the 30th June. Either that, or I would go ahead and consecrate. Faced with such a choice, Cardinal Ratzinger said, “If that’s how it is, the protocol is over. It’s finished, and there is no more protocol. You are breaking off relations.” It’s he who said it, not I.

Lefebvre should have stayed in the Church

What Church are we talking about? If you mean the Conciliar Church, then we who have struggled against the Council for twenty years, because we want the Catholic Church, would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order, supposedly, to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion.

Danger of schism?

To say that we are not the “visible Church”, that we are quitting the “visible Church”, which is infallible, all that is just words which do not correspond to reality. It is incredible that anyone can talk of the “visible Church”, meaning the Conciliar Church, as opposed to the Catholic Church which we are trying to represent and continue. We are against the Conciliar Church which is virtually schismatic, even if they deny it. In practice, it is a Church virtually excommunicated because it is a Modernist Church. We are not making a parallel Church. We are what we have always been – Catholics carrying on. That is all.

Each of these recent popes is truly two popes in one. It was John XXIII who launched the opening of the Church to the world. From that point on, we were framed within ambiguity and duplicity, i.e. the two-faced way of acting proper to the liberal.

We are not against the pope insofar as he represents the values of the Apostolic See which are unchanging. But we are against the pope insofar as he is a modernist who does not believe in his own infallibility, who practises ecumenism. So long as in Rome they stay attached to the ideas of the Council: religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, they are going the wrong way.

Reconciliation?

I do not think it is opportune to try contacting Rome. I think we must still wait. Wait, alas, for the situation to get still worse on their side. But up till now, they do not want to recognize that fact.

Kyrie eleison

BISHOPS DYING OUT ?

BISHOPS DYING OUT ? on April 13, 2024

Today, it seems, such points exaggerate? 

Tomorrow they might be looking out of date!

Last autumn I received the following letter, only slightly shortened below, from a former colleague, still a priest of the SSPX (perhaps because he may be more of a threat to them from outside than he is from inside the Newsociety, so long as he continues to respect their authority). May God be with Bishop Huonder, who died before the lines below were published. One may think he was less cunning than the villains who instrumentalised him. 

The Priestly Society of St Pius X, from what it was for 21 years under Archbishop Lefebve (1970–1991) has become very liberal, and from the top downwards has in fact since 2012 abandoned the course that he set. To call it today the „Newsociety”is to bring the name in line with the reality. Alas. And I think all the problems of this „Newsociety”have for a moment come to a head with Bishop Huonder. 

1. He was ordained priest and bishop with the new rites of Ordination and Consecration respectively. This fact is no longer seen as a problem in the Newsociety. An appeal that he should let himself be conditionally reordained and reconsecrated unfortunately had no effect. The Newsociety has abandoned the Church’s classic principle of „tutiorism“, namely taking the certainly valid course whenever there is the least serious doubt as to the validity of sacraments being received, as there is with Newchurch bishops’ Consecrations, if not also priests’ Ordinations. 

2. Bishop Huonder does criticise – half-heartedly – Pope Francis, Vatican II and the New Mass. And this is enough for a large proportion of our Newsociety layfolk to be calling him „Our man, our bishop“. But in fact he has never clearly condemned either Vatican II (Revolution in the Catholic Church) or the New Mass (the Luther Mass). Bishop Huonder told one person that he celebrates the New Mass with dignity, that he sees it as an altogether worthy form of Mass. This shows clearly how he means to reconcile the old Mass with the Newchurch, wholly in the spirit of Pope Benedict XVI, but in absolute contrast to the late Archbishop Lefebvre. 

3. In his lectures Bishop Huonder openly admits that he still has the task of bringing the Newsociety under Rome. He is therefore an infiltrated agent of Pope Francis. Just as Pope Francis by legitimising Newsociety Confessions, then Marriages, then Ordinations, used salami tactics over three successive years (2015–2017) to draw the Newsociety into the Moloch Newchurch, so Bishop Huonder is setting himself exactly the same task. And just as the Newsociety Superiors at the official legitimising of their Confessions and Ordinations and Marriages cried out towards Rome, „Oh, Holy Father, we thank you!“, so too our Superiors are now being inspired by Bishop Huonder, and are rejoicing that a Newchurch bishop has found his way to the Newsociety, and by living in one of our houses is openly joining the Newsociety, like a submarine. How blind our Superiors have become. 

4. Bishop Huonder wrote his Doctoral thesis on a Jewish problem of the Middle Ages. Bishop Huonder introduced into the Swiss Church a Day for Jews. Not one member of the Newsociety seems to have asked if the bishop’s relationship to the Jews corresponds to the Catholic Church’s traditional view of them. 

5. A colleague wrote to me that if the new rite of bishops’ Consecration turned out to be invalid, it would have dire consequences. From the beginning of the 1970’s there would have been no more valid priests or bishops. That would mean that all Tradional-rite Congregations officially recognised within the Newchurch, like St Peter’s or Christ the King, would have no valid priests either. That would mean that only in the Newsociety would the Church of Christ still be existing. Neither Pope Benedict XVI nor Archbishop Vigano would have been valid bishops. These conclusions, of a certain logic, must be taken into account. 

The Newsociety Superior General, Fr. Pagliarani, raised this question at his Conference in Econe on September 8 last year, but if the Newsociety absolutely wants to be loved and recognised by freemasonic and modernist Rome, then such a question simply cannot be raised. Which is why he took a clear position – the new-rite Consecrations are valid. Could such an immensely serious conclusion possibly be true? We are constantly hearing that Bergoglio means to reform the New Mass, that in the reform of the reform there will be no more words of Consecration said over the bread or the wine, which would mean the complete extinction of the Mass. Moreover, in my opinion something like two out of every three New Masses are already invalid, because the priests no longer believe in the Real Presence of Christ. But if the total extinction of the Mass is an eventual possibility, why not also the total extinction of bishops being truly Consecrated? 

Kyrie eleison. 

Communism Returning

Communism Returning on January 2, 2021

The USA presidential election of November last year has seen a decisive confrontation between the conservative political right and the revolutionary political left. This is because for a long time in the West the conservatives whose strength was God have been growing weaker, while the revolutionaries whose strength is revolt against God have been growing stronger. A confrontation had to come, and if the left does not prevail in 2020, no doubt they will be back in force in 2024, unless the American people turn back seriously to God between now and then.

Meanwhile an editorial printed in the Dixie Heritage Letter of last November from the American South highlights in four paragraphs four main points of the 2020 confrontation. The text is abbreviated, the four main points are highlighted in heavy print –

1 The judges judging Trump’s appeal for fair play are liberals with no concern for truth or justice. Concerning the massive electoral fraud which without doubt took place in the presidential election of November 3rd, Mr. Trump’s legal team has dug up all manner of evidence. But it will not be easy for them to prevail, mainly because many of these judges hearing their complaints are “never-Trumpers” who, quite frankly, do not care what evidence is presented, no matter how compelling, because they are denizens of the Deep State and they must make sure that Trump is not re-elected, no matter what.

2 Even Supreme Court “conservatives” are weaklings in the face of resolute liberals.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers will have to go all the way to the Supreme Court and then pray that one or two of the “conservative” jurists do not decide to sell out the way John Roberts did years ago, when as a supposed conservative he voted liberal. Roberts was actually a conservative except when he was busy placating the liberals, which seems to be happening more and more of late. You might almost say “with conservatives like Roberts, who needs liberals?”

3 Decent liberalism cannot stand up to the indecent communism to which it naturally leads.

A local editorial said, “Many Americans believe communism is an abstract concept, something that only affects faraway nations, without realizing that it has already arrived at our doorstep. Communism has spread in America under such names as socialism, progressivism, liberalism, neo-Marxism, and so on, in a slow process over decades of systematic subversion by first the Soviet Union and now the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Belief in God and the principles derived from the belief are the fundamental reasons why the United States can enjoy freedom, democracy, and prosperity, and why the United States has become the nation it is today. This year the democratic process has been subverted. The far-left and the communist devil behind it are using lies, fraud, and manipulation in an attempt to deprive the people of their rights and freedoms.”

4 The USA is on the brink of communism if our judges prefer their anti-religion to reality.

We do not realize how close to becoming a communist country we really are. We may end up being communist if the elite in this country somehow decides that Trump’s opponents need to be the winners, no matter what. Then, as they say “You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out.” That’s why the left wants your guns. You’re not supposed to be able to shoot your way out. A lot depends on the outcome of this election – for both sides.

Kyrie eleison

Madiran; the Heresy

Madiran; the Heresy on November 14, 2020

In his book “The Heresy of the 20th Century” Jean Madiran (1920–2013) has presented the heresy’s gravity (Foreword); its underlying philosophy (Part I) and the bishops responsible for it (II); in Parts III, IV and V he comes to the heresy itself, which he analyses according to its seven Propositions. In Part III he presents the first two on their own because of their importance; in Part IV the first six in a little detail; in Part V the seventh Proposition, also on its own because of its overwhelming importance for Madiran. Part III, subject of this week’s “Comments,” sub-divides into six Chapters.

In Chapter One, Madiran declares that on the eve of Vatican II (1962–1965) the religious atmosphere was already pestilential in general, but the then Bishop of the city of Metz in Eastern France, Msgr. Schmitt, brought the whole vague pestilence into clear focus. Seven Propositions sum up what was in fact the new religion which he backed by all his episcopal authority. The first Proposition declares that today’s changing world imposes a change in the very concept of salvation brought by Jesus Christ. And the second declares that the Church’s idea of the plan of God was up till then not evangelical enough. In brief, (P1) the Church must promote “socialisation,” says the Bishop of Metz, because (P2) the old Church was not collective enough, but too merely personal in its practice of the Gospel. But what the Bishop is in fact promoting is Communism, says Madiran.

For indeed “socialisation,” argues Madiran in Chapter Two, rests upon a Marxist view of history, materialistic and determinist, which shows that the Bishop of Metz has lost the Christian faith, because how can the spiritual goals of Christianity coincide with the materialistic goals of Communism? Communism is a social system to be rejected for religious reasons, because as a social system it pretends to replace the Church’s social system and therewith Christianity.

In Chapter Three Madiran rejects Bishop Schmitt’s claim that men today best of all understand Gospel brotherhood (cf. Proposition II above). Such a down-grading of all the social works and achievements of the pre-Conciliar Church is ridiculous and for Catholics, says Madiran, it is an unseemly narcissism.

Thus by 1967, says Madiran in Chapter Four, it had become clear to the world that Bishop Schmitt was promoting no less than a new religion, or a heresy, vandalising centuries upon centuries of Catholic tradition. The French bishops are vandals without intelligence or character. Henceforth it is up to the laity to defend the Penny Catechism, in other words the very basics of the Faith!

In Chapter 5, against keeping up with the times (Prop. I), Madiran upholds the First Commandment, because it is the unchanging God and not the changing world that must hold first place in our hearts and minds. Nor will the times ever be with the Church, because the Church is with Jesus Christ. It is only worldly Catholics that the world admires. And against the Church not practising the Gospel enough (Prop. II), Madiran says that the Saints never invented anything in order to be “evangelical enough,” on the contrary they always strove to be as faithful as possible to tradition in order to put the Gospel into practice.

In conclusion, Chapter Six, Madiran denies that there is any truth to be salvaged from Propositions I and II, and he declares that Bishop Schmitt’s new religion wants the Church to gain the whole world by losing its own soul. The new religion has neither true authority nor true obedience, and Madiran has a prophetic vision of Catholic Tradition surviving Vatican II, because it makes free men kneel nobly before their God in accordance with a real authority and a real obedience. Such Catholics will never follow the false religion of poor bishops like the Bishop of Metz, just let him wait and see!

Kyrie eleison.

Men Lacking

Men Lacking on May 23, 2020

When Authority abandons Truth in the Catholic Church as it has been doing ever since Vatican II, then it is easier said than done to walk the fine line between heresy on the left and schism on the right. So it is not surprising if an unusually sharp remark like that of Archbishop Lefebvre quoted in the last two issues of these “Comments” (“Hoist the ladder . . . ”) arouses interest.

One layman even doubted the authenticity of the remark – could the sweet Archbishop really have said such a thing? Oh yes, he did. The original words are a little less elegant than the polished quotation, but the substance is identical – “With that, all that’s left is to pull up the ladder. There’s nothing to be done with these people (the Conciliar Romans). What have we got in common with them? Nothing! It’s not possible. It’s not possible” (6 Sept. 1990). The 1990 audio tape reference is Audio – Retrec – PASCALE90 or SACERDOTALE90. (However, let anyone wishing to check the quotation for himself beware of “revised” collections of the Archbishop’s tapes, because any words of his strongly opposed, like these to the Conciliarists in Rome, may well have been cut out by “editors” of the pro-Rome Newsociety.)

Another reader who reacted to the quotation is a priest, from the Novus Ordo, but now firmly established in a Newsociety Priory in Switzerland (without having been conditionally re-ordained, as best we know).

He thinks that “things really look different today” because the present generation of officials in Rome are a different breed from those that the Archbishop was reacting to in the 1980’s, and the best of them want a genuine restoration of the Church. He concludes that to adopt the Archbishop’s attitude today leaves only two solutions – either the “Resistance” or sedevacantism.

But, Father, while the present breed of Church leaders may be different men from the traitor-priests of the Archbishop’s time, who did all they could to destroy the true Church, have they understood (or read) Pascendi? And what use are sweet and well-meaning Church authorities to the Faith or to the Church or to the SSPX or to the “Resistance,” if they have not grasped that the problem is rubber minds which cannot even conceive of truth condemning error or of dogma condemning heresy? A rubber mind sympathetic to Tradition is basically no more use to Tradition than a rubber mind condemning Tradition. Nor is it true that things are “really different” from the Archbishop’s time. The sign that a priest has really understood the problem is when – at least figuratively – he wants to go down to Rome with a machine-gun and send all sweetie-pies to meet their Maker, as Putin would say. In brief, the “Resistance” must stay on the road, otherwise the road will be torn up to provide stones to cry out the Truth in place of the silent shepherds and their non-barking dogs (cf. Lk XIX, 40). The “Resistance” must not, may not, give way!

Finally a good priest seeks to console us with the news from a Society Prior that the Newsociety Superior General told a meeting in February of all Newsociety Priors in France that discussions between the SSPX and Rome are at a standstill because the SSPX is still insisting on doctrine first – well done, Fr Pagliarani – while Rome insists on fixing first a practical agreement. But need Rome even be concerned? Need it not merely wait for the ripe fruit to fall into its lap? Bishop Tissier is now so unwell that reportedly a room is being hospitalised inside Écône for him to retire to. Only two SSPX bishops remain to look after its worldwide needs. So either the Superior General must submit to Rome’s terms for the consecration of further bishops, continuing his predecessor’s disastrous conciliating of Church leaders who, however sweet they are, have lost the Faith, as the Archbishop said. Or he must consecrate more bishops without the Pope’s permission, as the Archbishop did. But would the Newsociety still follow in the Archbishop’s heroic line, of defying the (at least) objective traitors in Rome? One may doubt it.

Kyrie eleison.

Two Bishops

Two Bishops 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.