Society of St. Pius X

“Pious” Dreams – I

“Pious” Dreams – I on May 12, 2018

In June of last year a colleague in France put together a good article on whether the Society of St Pius X should or should not obtain from the Church authorities in Rome a canonical status that would protect the Society’s interests. Obviously Society Headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland believe in obtaining such a status, and if the present Superior General is re-elected for a third term in July, that is the goal which the Society will continue to pursue. However, it is rather less obvious that such a goal should be pursued. An argument of eight full pages from Ocampo # 127 of June 2017, is compressed below into one single page.

The article’s position is that the Society can in no way put itself under all-powerful Church authorities imbued with the principles of the French Revolution as embodied inVatican II, because it is the Superiors who mould the subjects, and not the other way round. Archbishop Lefebvre founded the Society to resist the betrayal of the Catholic Faith by Vatican II. By submitting to the Conciliarists, the Society would be joining the traitors to the Faith.

Church authorities are the diocesan bishops and the Pope. As for the bishops, those downright hostile to the Society might be less dangerous than those who may be friendly but have not understood the absolute demands of Catholic Tradition, which are not just the demands of the Society of St Pius X. As for the Pope, if his words and deeds show him to be working against that Catholic Tradition which it is his duty to uphold, then Catholics have the right and duty to protect themselves both against the way in which he is misusing his authority, and against their own in-born need to follow and obey Catholic authority. Now in theory a Conciliar Pope can promise a special protection for the Society’s Tradition, but in practice he must by his own convictions be striving for the Society to recognise the Council and abandon Tradition. Given then his great authority as Pope to impose his will, the Society must stay out of his way.

Experience shows that Traditionalists who rejoin Conciliar Rome may begin by being merely silent as to the Council’s errors, but they usually finish by accepting those errors. Their initial agreement to keep quiet is in the end deadly for their professing of the Faith. And by the natural downhill slide from one compromise to another, they can even finish by losing the Faith. It is the Faith that made Archbishop Lefebvre say that unless the Conciliar Romans return to the doctrine of the great anti-liberal Papal Encyclicals – which they have not done since his time and are not about to do – further dialogue between the Romans and Traditionalists is useless, and – he could have added – positively dangerous for the Faith.

The article also lists eight objections to this position, given here in italics with the briefest of answers:

1 With the Personal Prelature Rome offers the Society a special protection. Protection from the diocesan bishops, maybe, but not from the Pope’s own supreme authority in the Church. 2 Rome’s demands for the agreement have been diminishing. Only because concessions towards practical co-operation are more effective to obtain Catholics’ submission, as Communists well know. 3 The Society is insisting on being accepted by Rome “as we are,” i.e. Traditional. For the Romans that means “As you will be, once practical co-operation has made you see how nice we are.” 4 So the Society will continue to attack the Council’s errors. Nothing will change. Rome can take its time to insist on ever greater changes. 5 But Pope Francis likes the Society! As the Big Bad Wolf liked Little Red Riding Hood! 6 The Society is too virtuous to be fooled by Rome. Foolish illusion! The Archbishop himself was at first fooled by the Protocol of May 5, 1988. 7 Several Traditional communities have rejoined Rome without losing the true Mass. But several of them have gone over to defending major errors of the Council. 8 Pope Francis as a person is in error, but his function is sacred. To recognise the sacredness of his function cannot oblige me to follow his personal errors, i.e. the misuse of his function. The true Faith is above the Pope.

Kyrie eleison.

Bleeding Church

Bleeding Church on May 5, 2018

A colleague resisting the change of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X into Menzingen’s Newsociety, just like the change of the Catholic Church of Tradition into the Newchurch of Vatican II, has written some interesting considerations, translated here below. They were private, but they are too precious not to be shared more widely. A colleague of his had written to him expressing the hope for Easter that “the Church (and the SSPX) might soon rise from the dead.” He replied:—

A 60-year old man who I take to be wise, said to me on Holy Saturday, “The Church must be crucified as was her divine Master on Good Friday . . . we are now living through Good Friday . . . . Holy Saturday is still to come, and it will last a while yet.”

To which I would like to add a few thoughts.

The Church is by no means about to rise again, rather it is going to bleed to death in a most painful way until it even seems to be no longer there. Whether the SSPX (above all its priests) will be part of this glorious bleeding to death, Heaven alone knows. In any case it is the death by bleeding which is sowing seed for the resurrection.

If the SSPX refuses to belong to the bleeding Church by wanting to continue to work its way little by little into the multi-religious community presided over by Pope (?) Francis – and Menzingen and Fr Schmidberger have been at work for years to turn the Society into another such Fraternity of St Peter – then the Society will still bleed to death, because one way or another the persecution is probably coming for everybody, especially for people wearing the cassock. However, the Society will not then be suffering as glorious Apostles of the end-times, but rather, alas, as a punishment for their material comfort, lukewarmness and unfaithfulness to the Archbishop who founded their Society . . .

(If there is above a question mark against “Pope Francis,” it is because for objective reasons there is at the least some uncertainty, some doubt, as to whether he is Pope. That is precisely why in 1988 in the gentlest of ways Heaven separated the Society from a Rome which had become somewhat schismatic . . . . Indeed we have no communion in the Faith with the present authorities in the Vatican, we are truly outside of their communion, or ex-communicated – which is our good fortune and to our honour – just as on the afternoon of the first Good Friday, the Church severely reduced in numbers was also to be found only outside of Jerusalem, on Calvary . . . )

In truth, nothing throws so much light on the present state of the Church as the Gospel narrative of the Passion of Christ, and conversely one can say that nothing throws so much light on the Gospel narrative as the present desolation of the Church. And just as then the Apostles themselves, even after being repeatedly warned by Our Lord of his coming Passion (Mt. XVI, 21; XVII, 21; XX, 17–19) could still not believe it was real when it came upon them, so too now many a good Catholic can hardly believe that it is the Church of Christ which has such tormenting problems and such inadequate Popes.

But God’s purpose in creating the universe was to share His divine happiness by populating His Heaven with rational creatures, angelic or human, that would freely choose to join Him in His Heaven. The key word here is “freely.” With the faculty of reason God gives to every human being capable of using it, also free-will, and He so balances circumstances for each of us as to make the choice real between Heaven and Hell. Therefore He allows as much freedom as possible for human beings to kill His own Son or to pull down His Son’s Church, but never so much freedom as completely to frustrate His Son or His Church. Therefore He allows unimaginable tribulations for His Church such as only time will fully tell between now and world’s end, but the wisdom of God reaches way beyond our little imaginations (Is. LV, 8,9).

Kyrie eleison.

Chaos Deciphered

Chaos Deciphered on March 24, 2018

Just before Holy Week is a good moment to reflect on the passion (suffering) of the Catholic Church. A

reader writes: “Can you tell us what on earth is going on with SSPX, Bishop Fellay, and others? We’re hearing some weird stories down here, and we don’t quite know what to believe. THINGS ARE FRACTURED ALMOST BEYOND BELIEF – EVERYWHERE. Starting from (1) the Novus Ordo, we have (2) the SSPX, (3) the Sedevacantists, (4) the SSPX Resistance, and (5) Fr. Pfeiffer’s group, with more splits to come, no doubt! What on earth is “Pope” Francis up to? He spends all his time playing politics, nothing spiritual! And one hears that Fellay is chasing a scarlet hat! What does that mean?

Dear Friend, the Catholic Church is in a state of chaos, by a just punishment of God, because His Church is the “light of the world” and the “salt of the earth,” but all over the world mankind is turning away from Him, including even His own churchmen. Nor is it any use God raising a good Pope too soon, because the churchmen would merely turn and tear him (Mt. VII, 6), as perhaps they assassinated John-Paul I. So the whole world is going to be in darkness (no light) and corruption (no salt), until enough men are so overwhelmed by today’s galloping chaos that they get back on their knees to beg God in His mercy to put the Pope back on his feet, who at the moment, as you say, is playing politics instead of religion.

The Pope is crucial because he is the rock on which the Church is built (Mt. XVI, 18), so that if he is fractured through wanting to follow the corrupt world instead of leading it out of its corruption, then as you say “things are fractured almost beyond belief – everywhere.” When Our Lord was struck in the Garden of Gethsemane all the Apostles were scattered (Zachary XIII, 7; Mt. XXVI, 31). Today Pope Francis is so deeply struck that authority throughout the Church is essentially dislocated.

The problem of Pope Francis goes back to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), because that was when and where the Popes gave up resisting the decadent modern world and decided to follow it instead. Up till Pius XII included (1939–1958), the Popes had resisted that decadence, but it was so glamorous and overpowering that John XXIII, Paul VI, John-Paul II and Benedict XVI all allowed themselves to be deluded (not without their own fault). They created your (1), the Novus Ordo or Conciliar Church, named after the New Order of Mass which has turned masses of Catholics into virtual Protestants. Pope Francis not only shares these Popes’ errors from the accursed Council, but he also puts them most destructively into practice, causing more chaos in the Church than ever.

Yet soon after the Council, God had raised a Catholic Archbishop to found a Congregation to look after all souls that refused to abandon Catholic Tradition which was then being abandoned by the Popes and the mass of churchmen. That was your (2), the SSPX, or Society of St Pius X, which flourished until the Archbishop died in 1991. But before he died there began also your (3), the “sedevacantists” who are so scandalised by the Conciliar Popes that they refuse even to believe that they are true Popes. And after the Archbishop died, his younger successors at the head of his Society, suckled on the modern world, fell foul of the same errors as the Council, notably Bishop Fellay who may well be seeking a Cardinal’s hat as a reward for his corrupting the resistance of Tradition to the Newchurch. This betrayal of the Archbishop’s true resistance from inside the Society gave rise to your (4) the SSPX “Resistance,” in which scattered priests hang loosely together to keep the Catholic Faith being now corrupted inside both the Novus Ordo and the SSPX. Good Catholics hanker for less looseness, but by now half a century of Conciliar Popes had essentially broken Catholic structure. However, your (5) now arose, Fr. Pfeiffer’s group, to which the (4) “Resistance”did not seem to be resisting enough.

In brief, within all five groupings there are scattered Catholic sheep known to God, who have the faith and want and mean to be Catholics, but Conciliar Popes are incapable of pulling Catholics together in the true Faith. And since nobody less than a Pope in his right mind can fulfil that function, then “what cannot be cured must be endured,” until God intervenes. For God to intervene, let any Catholic – or non-Catholic! – pray 15 Mysteries of the Rosary every day for God’s Mother to intercede with her Son.

Kyrie eleison.

Menzingen Defended – II

Menzingen Defended – II on March 3, 2018

No doubt some readers of these “Comments” are not so interested in reading about what seem to them merely internal squabbles among relatively few Catholic priests. Let such readers beware of missing the importance of these “squabbles.” Religion leads the world because God exists, and how men stand to him (religion) governs how they stand to their fellow-men (politics). The Catholic Church leads religion because since Christ’s Incarnation Catholicism is the only religion founded by the one true God. And Catholic Tradition leads the Catholic Church because that Church is as essentially unchanging as Our Lord Himself. And for 42 years (1970–2012) the Society of St Pius X was in the front-line of the defence of Catholic Tradition because it was the only worldwide Catholic organisation effectively resisting the unfaithful modernisation of the Church by the Second Vatican Council. Therefore all men alive, atheists or Protestants or Conciliarists, especially priests and followers of the SSPX, are concerned by the problem of infidelity to Catholic Tradition within the SSPX. Read on, everybody!

Another champion of Menzingen, Fr. B., has stepped into the lists to defend its policy of rejoining Conciliar Rome – let us call them the Reconciliarists – with an article in the official monthly magazine of the SSPX in the USA. Ever since Vatican II separated Catholic Authority from the Catholic Truth which it only exists to defend and maintain, all Catholics have been necessarily more or less schizophrenic – either they follow Authority and abandon Truth, or they follow Truth and abandon Authority, or they choose any one of a variety of combinations in between.

The Founder of the SSPX, Archbishop Lefebvre, chose Truth, but kept as much respect for the holders of Catholic Authority as was compatible with faithfulness to the Truth, and as a result he suffered serious persecution and condemnation from all Catholics who more or less preferred Authority On the contrary, his successors at the head of his Society are wanting to take it back under Conciliar Authority, so that from 2012 the Society has been officially Reconciliarist. By this switch of the SSPX from the Founder’s Truth back to Conciliar Authority, they have filled the Society with schizophrenia, causing a movement of “Resistance” to their “Reconciliarism.”

For most of his article, Fr B. is Catholic in his principles, but at the end he is Reconciliarist in their application. Therefore possibly to help the Society’s present Reconciliarist Superior General to be re-elected in July, he attacks the “Resistance” not for its attachment to Truth, which is its strong point, but for its detachment from Catholic Authority, both in Rome and in Menzingen. Thus, Fr B. says, towards Rome the “Resistance” is for the sake of its own “ease and convenience” in danger of ignoring the Pope and of not acknowledging his authority, while towards Menzingen it is refusing proper respect and obedience, and by criticising every word uttered by the Superior General it is sowing suspicion and blocking the channels of grace.

But, Reverend Father, among your Catholic principles you yourself acknowledge the primacy of the Faith. Now Vatican II was a disaster for the Faith, by trying to put modern man in the place of God. Therefore Conciliarism and Reconciliarism are both disastrous, and both the officials of Rome and the Society’s present Superior General are to be judged accordingly. And he must not be replaced by another Reconciliarist. The problem is not the “Resistance” which does not “ignore” the Pope and is certainly not seeking its own ease and convenience, because it is highly uncomfortable for Catholics to be deprived of all support from recognisable Catholic officials above. Therefore the “Resistance” is neither falling into “a schismatic attitude in its own right,” nor is it wrecking the channels of grace. The problem is the Council causing schism, the Council poisoning the Popes and the Council strangling the grace of Jesus Christ. The present Superior General must not be re-elected if anything of the true Society is to survive.

Kyrie eleison.

Defending Menzingen

Defending Menzingen on February 10, 2018

Thanks to the directly anti-Catholic words and deeds for the last five years of the present occupant of the See of Peter, delinquencies to which the way was opened by Vatican II, it is less comprehensible than ever that the successors of Archbishop Lefebvre still want to put the Society under Roman control, but in effect they do. Does a Cardinal’s hat appeal? Are they tired of the battle? Are they desperate to be “recognised” by Conciliarists? Can they really think that the Archbishop would have approved of what they are doing? God knows. Howsoever that be, servants of Menzingen are still trying to defend its 20-year slide down from the position of the Archbishop. Here are two recent examples:—

Firstly, to defend Bishop Fellay’s policy of accepting a personal prelature from Rome, a Society priest (http://​fsspx.​news/​en/​content/​34797) seems to think that such a prelature will guarantee for the Society protection from the modernists in Rome. But will Rome be in control of the prelature or not? If it is in control, it may take its time, as it did with St Peter’s Fraternity, but it will use its control slowly to strangle Tradition within the prelature. To think otherwise is simply not to have understood who these Romans are. “Only Saints believe in evil,” said Gustavo Corçao. As for the Archbishop, he called these Romans “antichrists.” And if the prelature does not put them in control, they will never grant it in the first place.

And secondly, this priest attempts to discredit adversaries of the prelature by claiming that they say that the Archbishop changed his principles when he refused the Protocol of May, 1988. The claim is groundless. As the priest himself says, the Archbishop’s change was merely prudential, following on the definitive demonstration just given by the Romans in the Protocol negotiations that they had no intention of looking after Tradition, such as the Society and the Archbishop understood Tradition. For as long as the Romans gave any sign of genuine concern for Tradition, the Archbishop was patient, and he went as far as he could to meet them (in fact further in the Protocol than he should have done, as he once admitted later). But once they had made it clear that in reality they had no such concern, then the Archbishop was inexorable – from then on doctrine would take the place of diplomacy, and the Romans would first have to prove that they were on the same doctrinal page as Catholic Tradition. That was on the Archbishop’s part no change of principles, but merely the final recognition that the Romans were set upon dechristianising, and not on rechristianising, as he wrote a month later to Cardinal Ratzinger.

Likewise the Catholic Family News blog of November last year serves Menzingen. The blog is intelligent, speculating that Rome’s real bait-and-trap to catch the Society is not aimed at the Society’s wholesale surrender, but at its piecemeal division and disintegration (actually, Rome is achieving both). Thus Rome makes repeated enticing offers, each of which divides Society priests so that some break away, while Menzingen gets up its hopes, only to see them dashed by another impossible demand of Rome. And the game will go on until the Society is completely undone. Therefore, concludes CFN, the Society must remain united at all costs and no Society priest must defect.

But, dear CFN, how did the Archbishop build up the Society in the first place? Certainly he too suffered from divisions and defections under him. Did he nevertheless build by crying for unity, unity, unity? That was the great argument of Rome against the Archbishop! His own great argument was the Faith, the Truth, the Faith. To plead as you do for the Society’s unity behind pro-Rome Menzingen is to plead for the Society’s destruction! Unity is always specified by that around which one is to unite. Under the Archbishop it was around Catholic Truth, the whole strength of the Society. Since 2012 it is around Menzingen, presently the division and ruin of the Society.

Take heart, dear readers. “The truth is mighty and will prevail,” with or without the Society of St Pius X.

Kyrie eleison.

“Official Church”?

“Official Church”? on February 3, 2018

One needs to be very careful with words, because words are the handle of our mind upon things, and things are the stuff of everyday life. Therefore upon words depends how we will lead our lives. At the flagship parish church of the Society of St Pius X in Paris, France, there is a Society priest taking due care of words. Fr Gabriel Billecocq wrote in last month’s issue (#333) of the parish’s monthly magazine Le Chardonnet an article entitled “Did you say ‘official Church’?.” In it he never once mentions Society Headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland, but he does complain of the “wish” coming from somewhere, presumably on high, that the words “Conciliar Church” should always be replaced by the words “official Church.” And he is right, because the words “Conciliar Church” are perfectly clear, whereas the words “official Church” are not clear, but ambiguous.

For on the one hand “Conciliar Church” signifies clearly that large part of today’s Church which is more or less poisoned with the errors of the Second Vatican Council. Those errors consist essentially in the re-centring upon man of the Church which should be centred on God. On the other hand “official Church” is an expression with two possible meanings. Either it can mean the Church officially instituted by Christ and officially brought to us down the ages by the succession of Popes, and to that “official Church” no Catholic can object, on the contrary. Or “official Church” can be taken to mean that mass of the Church’s officials devoted to Vatican II who for the last half-century have been using their official power in Rome to inflict upon Catholics the Conciliar errors, and to this “official Church” no Catholic can not object. Therefore “Conciliar Church” expresses something automatically bad, while “official Church” expresses something good or bad, depending upon which of its two meanings it is being given. Therefore to replace “Conciliar Church” by “official church” is to replace clarity by confusion, and it also stops Catholics from referring to the evil of Vatican II.

Fr Billecocq never suggests that Society Headquarters did “wish” such a thing, but a fact and a speculation do suggest it. As for the fact, earlier this month the Society’s French District Superior, Fr Christian Bouchacourt, being interviewed in public about the Society’s up-coming elections in July, said: “As soon as a Superior General is elected, the Vatican is immediately notified of the decision.” Such notifying of the Vatican by the Society as to Society elections has never been done before. And it strongly suggests that the Society’s present leaders look forward to Rome not only being informed but also giving its official approval of the Society’s choice of its leaders – why notify if not to get approval? What else will the Newsociety beg for from the Newchurch? What will it not beg for? How far the Society has come from the days when the faith of Archbishop Lefebvre used to force Rome to do the begging!

As for the speculation, we hear that two main candidates are being groomed by Menzingen for voters at the Society’s July elections to choose as Superior General, because the post will no longer be taken by a bishop. At a guess, Rome is already in virtual control of these major decisions being taken within Society Headquarters. In that case Rome has little to fear of either of these two candidates substantially changing Bishop Fellay’s pro-Roman policies, while it may have much to gain from the appearance of a change at the top, and it may be able to make use of Bishop Fellay in Rome to be head of a “renovated” Ecclesia Dei Congregation, to include all Traditional communities, including his own former Society.

Who can doubt the skill of the Romans to turn all situations to their advantage? Unless . . . unless there were to break out again within the Society that Faith and Truth which were the driving force of Archbishop Lefebvre and of his victory over all the liberals and modernists in Rome. These demons strive to undo once and for all God’s Catholic Tradition which is the most serious potential obstacle to their new One World Religion. And God may require no less than the blood of Catholic martyrs to stop them. The martyrs coming from among the Society’s priests and lay-folk will be its glory.

Kyrie eleison.