Society of St. Pius X

Defending Marriage

Defending Marriage on May 27, 2017

Many of you must already know of the Open Letter of seven senior priests of the Society of St Pius X, a Letter co-signed by Superiors of three other Traditional Congregations, in which all ten protested three weeks ago against an attempt by Roman authorities to interfere in marriages celebrated within Tradition by Traditional priests. As usual, Society authorities have taken the side of Conciliar Rome, and are in the process of punishing their seven “subversive” priests. But the true subversion is coming from that Rome which is subverting Christian family and marriage, for instance by Amoris Laetitia. Society leaders are giving yet another proof of their suicidal blindness. Here is the gist of the well-written Letter:—

Addressed to Society lay-folk to prevent them from being confused by Rome’s interference, the Open Letter begins by establishing that marriages celebrated within the Society for the last 40 years have been and are certainly valid. This is because, to strengthen marriages, the Council of Trent decreed that they must be witnessed by a parish priest or his delegate to be valid. However, if for 30 days it is not possible without “grave inconvenience” to find such a priest, then the couple may marry validly in front of merely lay witnesses, by what is known as the extraordinary form of marriage (Canon 1098, Old Code).

Now for 40 years the Society has been fighting the neo-modernism of Vatican II which is poisonous for the Faith and highly infectious, and which has infected almost the entire Church since the 1960’s. So the Society has instructed souls to stay away from the Novus Ordo Church and its clergy, as a whole. For instance in Amoris Laetitia the Pope himself made statements and proposals directly harmful to families and Catholic marriages. Here is the “grave inconvenience” for the Faith which is why for 40 years, when couples have wished to get married, the Society, seeing the danger for their Faith, has steered them away from Novus Ordo parish priests and towards the extraordinary form of marriage, usual within the Society and certainly valid.

However, how could neo-modernist Rome see a “grave inconvenience” in exposure to their neo-modernising priests? Therefore in future, says the Ecclesia Dei Commission, as one more step in Rome’s absorption of the Society into the Newchurch, the extraordinary form of marriage is no longer to be used by Society priests, and instead Society marriages are to be witnessed by a Novus Ordo priest appointed or delegated for that purpose by the local Novus Ordo bishop, without whose participation Society marriages will continue to be judged invalid by the Newchurch authorities. This means bringing the extraordinary form of marriage under the local bishop’s control. But after repeated bitter discussions, even the framers of the New Code of Canon Law (1983) judged that such a measure was too opposed to the natural right of couples to get married, and New Canon 1116 maintains the extraordinary form. That is why the ten senior priests who signed the Open Letter conclude that they will continue to use the extraordinary form, without resorting to any Newchurch bishop. Nor, they add, will they resort to Newchurch tribunals to judge of marriage cases, because these tribunals all too easily grant annulments for inadequate reasons. All ten priests who signed the Open Letter are to be congratulated!

And the Society’s reaction? On April 4 the document of the Ecclesia Dei Commission on SSPX marriages became known, spitting in effect on the Society. Immediately Society Headquarters in Menzingen welcomed the document, treating it in effect as rain from heaven. On May 7 the ten senior priests made public their protest against the Ecclesia Dei interference. On the same day the Society’s French District Superior branded their protest as “subversive,” and on May 10 the seven Society priests who signed the Open Letter he stripped of their senior rank within the District, and Fr. de la Rocque, pastor of the Society’s flagship parish in Paris, St Nicolas du Chardonnet, he gave three days to clear out.

Such leadership proved that the Society is sinking. The Open Letter proved that it is not yet sunk.

Kyrie eleison.

Church Predictions

Church Predictions on April 22, 2017

As might have been expected, there has been not a little reader reaction to the portrait of the “slowly declining” Society of St Pius X, as presented in two recent issues of these “Comments.” Reaction shows that not all Catholics are blind or unthinking. Here are two readers speculating, one on the Society’s near future, the second on the Church’s more distant future. Here is the first:—

“The destabilisation, confusion and softening of the minds of Society priests and laity will, alas, continue, and for many become even more painful, because the present leadership of the Society will persevere and continue straight on with the game it has set up with the Semiconservatives. Consecrating the bishops “urgently needed” (Bishop Tissier) will not be mentioned. And when the election of the Society’s top officials can no longer be avoided at the General Chapter normally due in July of 2018, the Society’s present leaders will do all in their power beforehand to make sure that their pursuit of recognition by Rome will continue uninterrupted.”

Depending on how many prayers are said for the rescue of the fortress of the true Faith built by Archbishop Lefebvre, Almighty God may intervene with a miracle to save it, but humanly speaking one would say that the rot is indeed too far gone for it to be saved. Thus the Society’s worldwide apostolate urgently needs some new and younger bishops, but how can they be chosen to serve the true anti-Conciliar Faith without alienating the Conciliar Romans who alone can give the Society the recognition so desperately pursued by Society HQ in Menzingen? Archbishop Lefebvre said in 1988 that that pursuit would be the Society’s “Operation Suicide,” but since when have crusading liberals ever backed down? The crusade for their Brave New World Order is their real religion, forget about Catholicism.

The second reader assumes that the Society’s suicide is a done deal, and he looks forward to the future of the Faith without the Society, more from a divine point of view.

“The silence coming from Econe concerning the ‘regularization’ at present is deafening. It would appear that the deal is, in actuality, a ‘fait accompli.’ In which case, may we now turn our attention to the long road of recovery and care that the Traditional Catholic Refugees will surely need. A restoration of order out of chaos and a life-raft to grasp, as the sinking ship of Rome sucks the weak in faith to the bottom of the sea. Is the Faith shrinking or just purging itself of those who have been unfaithful? God help us!”

When we think of the future of the Church today, let us bear in mind that the situation is so dramatic that “all bets are off,” meaning, nobody knows, because if the Society is indeed sinking which has acted as a buoy for the true Faith for 40 years, then what indeed still prevents Conciliar Rome from sucking those weak in the faith down to the bottom of the sea? But God is God, and He can intervene at any moment and in a variety of ways to interrupt His Church’s headlong course to destruction. Nevertheless, this reader’s human pessimism does seem well justified right now.

Less easy to understand is his optimism for the future of a restoration of order and the launching of a life-raft, if the Popes stay Conciliar. For if there is any lesson to be drawn from the history of the “Resistance” since 2012, it is the extreme difficulty of founding a Catholic work without approval from what at least appears to be the official Church. Catholic Truth is immensely strong in itself, but without the backing and protection of Catholic Authority, which is Our Lord’s authority, Truth remains highly vulnerable. For instance, within a framework of authority a priest can easily submit to a proposition he disagrees with, but outside any such frame, he can easily dispute the wisdom of the wisest of propositions.

Patience. The problem is insoluble. Let us pray, and wait for Almighty God to stun us all with His solution!

Kyrie eleison.

Declining Slowly – I

Declining Slowly – I on March 25, 2017

Here follows an abbreviated testimonial from the United States, which hits many a nail on the head:—

The Society of St Pius X has been “rebranded,” and it is not the same as it was. As the original SSPX belonged to the Catholic Church, so the Newsociety belongs to the Newchurch. To those old enough to remember, it seems like Vatican II all over again, only worse, because this time there is no direct doctrinal attack, nor a major Council, instead the revolution is being spread by slow, almost imperceptible social transformation.

For while the appearances of Tradition are being maintained, the Traditionalist Movement is being slowly changed from within. Outwardly and materially things appear to be more successful than ever, with increasing amounts of money and buildings, but inwardly and spiritually there is decay, because the disease of modernism is imperceptibly infecting the ranks. A variety of symptoms indicate that the modernism is the same, for instance the new, young happy-faced Society priests who are just like the “peace priests” of the 60s and 70s, as the great Cardinal Mindszenty called them. But unlike the previous generation of priests they lack masculinity, and so do some of the Newsociety’s leading lay teachers.

Thus the Mass may still be Traditional, but the whole culture around it is Novus Ordo. Traditionalists want to preserve the Old Mass and the Sacraments, and some of the morals from the Catechism, but at the same time they want to have everything else the modern world has to offer. This makes many so-called Traditional Catholics, outside of the Mass and the Sacraments, largely indistinguishable from their counterparts in the rest of the modern world. The statistics are the same when it comes to divorce, annulment, “single mothers,” etc. If Traditionalists want to go with the modern world, they cannot stay with the true religion. It is one or the other.

As it is, the Traditionalist Movement is now opening up to the world, to become socially acceptable and normal. and the process of modernization is underway, slowly but surely. There is a new, young generation in charge and they are changing things. The old, quirky, embarrassing hardliners have been replaced, and Tradition has a new image, a young, happy, friendly face. The mainstream Church had its aggiornamento fifty years ago, the Society is being updated today. The old generation which fought so many battles to preserve things is now being replaced by a new generation which never knew the Novus Ordo, or how it came to be, and has never had to fight for anything. Today’s youngsters are liable to have grown up in a Traditional bubble, and have too little knowledge of yesterday’s war, background of today’s. Before the Council Bella Dodd testified to the Communist infiltration of the Church. Are we so sure that the same thing is not being done now to the Traditionalist Movement?

It was all too predictable. Being neither infallible nor indefectible, the Society is now going through what the Church went through fifty years ago – infiltration, compromise, disintegration and the same process of autodemolition. Archbishop Lefebvre would have noticed the radical change immediately, but a large number of the frogs in the Society pot have not even noticed how the water temperature is rising. The Archbishop”handed down what he received,” but how can the new generation hand down what it is no longer receiving? Therefore we now hear that the “inevitable reconciliation” is at hand. The SSPX will be accepted as part of the Newchurch, and conversely, it will have to accept the Newchurch. It will now be just one of many side-chapels in the Pantheon of the New World Order. And as for “reconciliation,” which side has given in to the other? Has the Conciliar Church become Catholic? Far from it!

See next week further examples from the same witness.

Kyrie eleison.

“Holy Priests”?

“Holy Priests”? on March 4, 2017

By a great grace of God, one reader of these “Comments,” immersed by family and work in today’s world, has nevertheless kept a true sense of what is going on around him – the great drama unfolding every day of the salvation or damnation of the souls which he meets. It is not a comfortable sense. He might wish that he could not see what he sees, but by another great grace of God, he does not want to go back to sleep. He knows what the Society of St Pius X used to represent, and he used to profit greatly by it. Now from a simple layman’s point of view, with no pretention of getting into the higher arguments, he observes that the Society is not what it was, but has joined the sleeping brigade, and he wonders what he is going to do. His words are not to be found on the Internet, but they must be in many a sad Catholic’s heart. Here they are, in italics:—

I have mentioned this before but I keep seeing it at work. Souls are starving and they are withering away under the weight of sin and the pressures of this anti-culture engulfing all of us. Almost all of the former Catholics I have talked to have either been disgusted with all the abuse taking place in the Church (I imagine though that many use this as a big rationalization for their own sins), or they have seen in the priests nothing but selfish men who have not died to self and put on Christ. Their view of the Church is clouded by so much unfaithfulness and so much sin.

No doubt the abuses in the Church serve as an excuse for Catholics to give up the Faith, but what a responsibility of priests who, even without causing grave public scandal, nevertheless by their example cease to inspire and uplift! Priests of the Society – you used to inspire and uplift – where are you now?

Honestly, I would dare say that The Angelus Press (magazine of the SSPX in the USA) no longer has a cutting edge. We need to be jarred from our complacency (I know I certainly do with my fallen human nature!). We need to be jarred from our intellectual sloth. It is all very well to write beautifully about spiritual and doctrinal issues, indeed I do not think anyone can accuse AP of promoting heresy but . . . . and here is the kicker . . .  if none of these ideas are woven into the fabric of daily life or address any of the problems of modernity, then the Church becomes just one “sweet thing” to soothe us from the realities of real life.

Here is the problem. Real priests deal in “the realities of real life.” “Lord, give us holy priests,” prays the SSPX. Alas, is not “holy priests” liable to mean soothing priests? And should priests be soothing souls so as to make them comfortable in this life, or should they not rather be making them uncomfortable in this “valley of tears,” so that all their desires go towards life eternal?

I am becoming more and more indifferent to what the SSPX does because we layfolk have no influence on what they do. So if they want to rush headlong into oblivion and obscurity and irrelevance, which is what I think will happen, then let them go ahead. The unique glory of the SSPX used to be that it was the only organized resistance against Conciliar shenanigans out of a principled rejection not of authority but of anything that was destroying the Faith. Alas, the SSPX is using the same principle of authority – good in itself – to co-opt any opposition to error, whereas authority is meant to be at the service of the truth. So quite honestly, I have no idea what I am going to do, practically speaking. We still attend the SSPX but (at least for myself) the fervor I had with the SSPX has almost been extinguished. Patience. Amidst all of this, Christ is the one who will give victory.

Is the Newsociety indeed not on its way to making itself as irrelevant for life eternal as the Newchurch?

Kyrie eleison.

Excellent Communiqué?

Excellent Communiqué? on November 19, 2016

On October 31 Pope Francis held in Sweden an ecumenical meeting with leading Lutherans to prepare for next year’s 500th anniversary of Luther’s revolt against the Catholic Church. After the meeting the Pope signed with the President of the Lutheran World Federation a joint Declaration, which is yet another utter scandal, coming as it does from the man who is meant to be the Vicar of Christ. On November 2, in protest, the Superior of the French District of the Society of St Pius X issued a Communiqué to condemn that scandalous Declaration. Much of the Communiqué is excellent, and it should be what is needed from Society Superiors in order to place a serious obstacle in the way of the Archbishop’s Society being betrayed to the Roman neo-modernists, but the conclusion is weak, and so the Communiqué may have the opposite effect.

Fr Bouchacourt opens his Communiqué by stating that the scandal of the Pope’s pro-Lutheran Declaration is such that he “cannot keep silent.” And the whole passage where he denounces Luther is beyond reproach. Here it is:—

How can we be “profoundly thankful for the spiritual and theological gifts received through the Reformation” (quotation from the joint Declaration) , when Luther manifested a diabolical hatred towards the Sovereign Pontiff, a blasphemous scorn for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as well as a refusal of the saving Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ? He also destroyed the doctrine on the Eucharist by refusing Transsubstantiation, turned souls away from the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and denied the existence of Purgatory. No, Protestantism brought nothing to Catholicism! It ruined the unity of Christendom, separated whole countries from the Catholic Church, plunged souls into error, putting their eternal salvation in peril. We Catholics want Protestants to return to the unique fold of Christ which is the Catholic Church, and we pray for this intention. In these days when we celebrate all the Saints, we call out to Saint Pius V, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Ignatius and Saint Peter Canisius who heroically fought the Protestant heresy and saved the Catholic Church.

But compared with this denunciation, Fr. Bouchacourt’s conclusion is relatively lame:—

We invite the faithful of the District of France to pray and do penance for the Sovereign Pontiff so that Our Lord, whose Vicar he is, may preserve him from error and keep him in the Truth of which he is the guardian. I invite the priests of the District to celebrate a Mass of reparation and to organise a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament, to ask pardon for these scandals and to beg Our Lord to calm the tempest which has been shaking the Church for more than half a century now. Our Lady Help of Christians, save the Catholic Church and pray for us!

Fr Christian Bouchacourt, SSPX French District Superior.

This conclusion is pious, and perfectly respectful towards Pope Francis, but does it give any idea of the gravity of the Pope’s disorientation when the Pope so praises one of the greatest anti-Christian heretics in all Church history? It is difficult to imagine Fr Bouchacourt not having obtained from Bishop Fellay prior permission to publish his Communiqué. Was it Bishop Fellay who had no problem with the Luther of 500 years ago being denounced, but insisted on toning down the criticism of the major wrecker of the Church here and now? In any case the Communiqué serves Bishop Fellay’s purpose of deceiving Traditional priests and laity and putting them to sleep by suggesting that the supposedly imminent Personal Prelature will prevent none of them from denouncing Papal scandals, etc . . .

Then does Fr Bouchacourt realize how, like his predecessor, he may be serving, even against his own will, the betrayal of the Society? Let us be “simple as doves” but also “as wise as serpents” (Mt. X, 16).

Kyrie eleison.

Disintegration

Disintegration on October 29, 2016

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of a passionate intensity.

These famous lines from The Second Coming, a poem written in 1919 in the wake of the First World War by the Anglo-Irish poet, W.B.Yeats (1865–1939), come to mind as a possible explanation of how the movement of resistance to the 2012 betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X can be so strong in truth and yet weak in unity and numbers. 1919 is nearly a hundred years ago, and Yeats was neither Catholic nor particularly concerned with the condition of the Catholic Church, which did then seem to be flourishing. But poets can be visionaries, and Yeats caught in these lines an essential truth about Western civilisation as it emerged from that war that was “putting out the lights all over Europe” (Earl Grey): the Western nations were spiritually disintegrating in a process uninterrupted ever since.

Nevertheless many Catholics today who wish the Faith to survive are upset by the apparent weakness of the “Resistance” of Archbishop Lefebvre’s own priests in particular to the obvious betrayal of his principles by their present leaders, and they look for an explanation. Some think that the SSPX priests do not take a public stand against the false conciliation of Tradition with Vatican II because they are scared of being thrown out of the Society with nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. But the priests have to know that there are layfolk who would be glad to support them. A deeper explanation might be that the priests are scared of cutting themselves out of that Society which is both their human family and the framework by which they belong to the structural Church. But again with a strong enough faith they would know that Providence can supply for both needs.

On the other hand if we set the 2012 sell-out of the Society in the context of the double disintegration of the two World Wars, followed by the far more terrible disintegration of the Catholic Church at Vatican II (1962–1965), then we must admire the heroic feat of Archbishop Lefebvre in gathering together flying fragments from that unprecedented explosion, but we can hardly be surprised if the Society of St Pius X should in turn explode from within, or if refugees from its disintegration should have difficulty in re-integrating without. Things have fallen apart, and minds and hearts with them. I think that there is not enough integrity or integration left in hearts and minds for us to be able to think of repeating the Archbishop’s feat. We are nearly 50 years downhill from 1970 when the Archbishop founded the SSPX.

What that means is not that there is nothing to be done, but that what is to be done must be worked out more from God’s point of view and less from man’s. At the very end of the world, God will allow the Faith almost to disappear (Lk XVIII, 8), but there will still be a few souls believing, hoping and loving. In 2016 he is giving us a foretaste of that disappearance, but souls should be able to recognize that they still have considerable freedom to believe, hope and love. And they should be able to foresee that even the most powerful of police states will not have the power to stop them from doing so. Moreover, the more heavily circumstances are made to weigh upon that freedom, the more glorious in Heaven will be the persevering devotion of any soul to God, to his divine Son and to the Blessed Virgin, and the greater will be the merits of that soul. Above all, the greater will be its unstoppable contribution to the welfare of the Church. All is by no means lost, and it can never be lost. God’s Church is not a merely human affair.

Kyrie eleison.