Society of St. Pius X

Newsociety Thinking – III

Newsociety Thinking – III on February 21, 2015

These “Comments” having declared (395) that the Newsociety’s First Assistant lacks doctrine, and (396) that this lack of doctrine is a problem as broad as broad can be, namely the whole of modernity against the whole of Truth, it remains now to show how this universal problem manifests itself in a series of particular errors in the interview that Fr Pfluger gave in Germany towards the end of last year. For brevity we will have to make use of the summary of his thinking (not essentially unfair) given here two weeks ago. Propositions from it are in italics:—

The Catholic Church is much broader than just the Traditional movement.

Yes, but the Traditional movement’s doctrine is no more nor less broad than the Catholic Church’s doctrine, being identical with it, and that doctrine is the heart and soul of the Traditional movement.

We will never make Tradition attractive or convincing if we remain stuck in the 1950’s or 1970’s.

To think of making Tradition “attractive or convincing” is too human a way of conceiving it. Catholic Tradition comes from God, and it has a divine power to convince and attract, so long as it is presented faithfully, without human change or alteration.

Tradition cannot be confined within the 19th and 20th century Church condemnations of liberalism.

True, but the Gospel could not then be defended without those doctrinal condemnations, and since the 21st century is more liberal than ever, Tradition cannot be maintained without them today.

Our time is different, we cannot stand still, much that is modern is not immoral.

Our time is not so very different. It is more liberal than ever (e.g. homosexual “marriages”), so it may not all be immoral, but Catholic doctrine is absolutely needed to sift moral from immoral.

So we must re-position ourselves, which is a practical problem and not a question of Faith.

Any re-positioning that the Church ever does must always be judged in the light of the Faith. The XSPX’s re-positioning since 2012 is clearly leaving behind the Archbishop’s fight for the Faith.

The “Resistance” movement has fabricated its own “faith” by which to condemn the Newsociety.

Whatever the human failings of the “Resistance,” it has, just like the Traditional movement in the 1970’s, arisen spontaneously all over the world in reaction against the Newsociety’s betrayal. The reaction may seem disjointed, but it is held together by the identical Faith held by Resistants.

SSPX HQ never betrayed Tradition in 2012 because its actions were attacked from both sides.

So the Truth is always in the middle, to be measured by human reactions? That is human politics, inadequate to judge of divine Truth, absolutely inadequate to solve today’s crisis of the Church.

The official Newsociety texts of 2012 were not dogmatic.

But the most official XSPX document of all in 2012 was the General Chapter’s six conditions for any future “agreement” with Rome, i.e. the six gravely inadequate conditions for submitting the defence of the Faith to its deadly Conciliar enemies. Is the whole Faith not dogmatic?

Rome was much less aggressive in 2012 to the XSPX than it was in 2006.

Because from 2006, and before, Rome could see the SSPX steadily turning into a paper tiger.

The Newsociety follows the Spirit and draws on Tradition.

The neo-protestant Charismatics “follow the Spirit.” The Indulterers “draw on Tradition.”

It should be clear by now that Fr Pfluger wants to leave behind the doctrinal anti-liberal Society of Archbishop Lefebvre, and to reshape it into a Newsociety that will harmonize with the Newchurch of Vatican II. Nor is it enough to say that no decisive step has yet been taken by the XSPX towards Rome, because unless there is a firm resistance, and soon, from within the Newsociety, its leaders are taking it, slowly but surely, into the arms of Conciliar Rome. Is that what Catholics want?

Kyrie eleison.

Newsociety Thinking – II

Newsociety Thinking – II on February 14, 2015

Some 650 words of a single “Eleison Comments” are by no means enough to make clear the enormous problem posed by the interview given by the Newsociety’s First Assistant to a Newsociety magazine in Germany towards the end of last year (cf. last week’s EC). Fr. Pfluger’s thinking springs from the poisonous modern mentality, so that it is not surprising if Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X (SSPX) is being poisoned from top to bottom and changed into Bishop Fellay’s Newsociety (XSPX). The poison consists in the move from God to man; from the religion of God to the religion of man; from the truths of God to the liberties of man; from the doctrine of Christ (“Going, TEACH all nations” – Mt.XXVIII, 19) to the uniting of mankind.

Like millions upon millions of modern men, thousands upon thousands of churchmen in high office and all too many priests and layfolk of what was once the SSPX, Fr Pfluger does not understand the crucial importance to the Church of Catholic doctrine. “INDOCTRINATE all nations,” Our Lord could have said. Why? Because all men are created by God to go to Heaven (I Tim. II, 4). This they can only do by Jesus Christ (Acts IV, 12), by firstly believing in Jesus Christ (Jn. I, 12), which they can only do by hearing about the Faith (Rom. X, 17), in other words by hearing Catholic DOCTRINE. For someone to be disinterested in Catholic doctrine means that he is not interested in going to Heaven. Good luck to him, wherever he will spend his eternity!

Now from start to finish Fr Pfluger’s German interview betrays his relative disinterest in Catholic doctrine, but as last week’s “Comments” declared, that disinterest is most clearly betrayed by his implicit disparaging (not too strong a word) of the great anti-liberal, anti-Masonic, anti-modernist documents, notably Papal Encyclicals, of the 19th and 20th centuries, let us say from Mirari Vos of 1831 to Humani Generis of 1950. To Fr Pfluger’s way of thinking, probably these “anti” documents seem merely negative, whereas Catholic doctrine is essentially positive. One might as well think that medicine is merely negative, while health is essentially positive. But medicine can be essential to preserving health, for goodness’ sake! However, why are the Encyclicals such necessary medicine for the health of the Church today?

Because man is not made to live alone (Rousseau’s noble savage), he is by nature a social animal (Aristotle) – observe the thousand ways in which men get together. Now the French Revolution of 1789, by spurning Aristotle and following Rousseau, overthrew the natural basis of society and placed it on merely man-made foundations instead, hostile to human nature as designed by God, and therefore hostile to God. Therefore as the Revolutionary ideas advanced, through France, Europe and the world, so the Catholic Church found itself in a more and more hostile social environment, because the profound influence that any society has upon the individuals belonging to it has been working more and more against God and against the salvation of souls.

For a long time the Catholic Popes were not deceived, and they revived the medicine of the Church’s true social doctrine to apply it through their Encyclicals to the sickness of Revolutionary mankind. Thus the Encyclicals teach nothing but the Church’s age-old doctrine on the nature of human society between man and God, that social doctrine which it had not been necessary to repeat for as long as it had gone without saying. Thus the Encyclicals are not an unfortunate accident of unfortunate times in the past. They are central to the defence of the Faith in the present, as Archbishop Lefebvre so well learned from Fr Le Floch. But then came “good” Pope John to declare that modern man is no longer sick, and now comes Fr. Pfluger. More next week.

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop’s Sense – II

Archbishop’s Sense – II on December 27, 2014

Twelve weeks ago (Oct. 5) “Eleison Comments” presented a first series of extracts from the last public interview of Archbishop Lefebvre, given to Fideliter magazine in early 1991. Here follows a second and last series of extracts, slightly edited but only for the sake of brevity and clarity:—

Q: What conclusions can we draw from the Society of St Pius X after 20 years of its existence?

A: The Good Lord wanted Catholic Tradition. I am deeply convinced that the Society is the means that God wanted to keep and maintain the Faith, the truth of the Church. We must continue faithfully to keep the treasures of the Church, hoping that one day they may resume the place which they should never have lost in Rome.

Q: You often say that, more than the liturgy, it is now the Faith which opposes us to modern Rome.

A: Certainly the question of the liturgy and the sacraments is very important, but the most important is the question of the Faith. This is not a question for us. We have the Faith of all time, of the Council of Trent, of the Catechism of St. Pius X, of all the Councils and all the Popes before Vatican II. For years they have tried in Rome to show that everything in the Council was fully consistent with this Tradition. Now they are showing their true colours by saying there is no longer any Tradition or Deposit to be transmitted. Tradition in the Church is whatever the Pope is saying today. You must submit to what the Pope and the bishops say today. Here is their famous ‘Living Tradition,’ which was the only basis for our condemnation in 1988.

Now they have given up trying to prove that what they say is consistent with what Pius IX wrote or with what the Council of Trent promulgated. No, all of that is over; it’s outdated, as Cardinal Ratzinger said. It is clear, and they might have said so earlier. There was no point in our talking, in our discussing with them. Now we suffer from the tyranny of authority, because there are no longer any rules from the past.

They are showing more and more that we are right. We are dealing with people who have a different philosophy from ours, a different way of seeing, who are influenced by all modern subjectivist philosophers. For them there is no fixed truth, there is no dogma. Everything is evolving. This is really the Masonic destruction of the Faith. Fortunately, we have Tradition to lean on!

Q: You have emphasized that you are sure that the Society is blessed by God, because at several points it could have disappeared.

A: Indeed. It has kept coming under very difficult attacks. That is very painful, but we must nonetheless believe that the line of Faith and Tradition that we are following, is imperishable, because God cannot allow his Church to perish.

Q; What can you say to those of the faithful who still hope in the possibility of an agreement with Rome?

A: Our true faithful, those who have understood the problem and who have precisely helped us to continue along the straight and firm path of Tradition and the Faith, told me that the approaches I was making towards Rome were dangerous and that I was wasting my time. Yet I hoped until the last minute that in Rome we would witness a little bit of loyalty, so I cannot be blamed for not having done the maximum. So now too, to those who say to me, “You’ve got to reach an agreement with Rome,” I think I can say that I then went even further than I should have.

Kyrie eleison.

Fortieth Anniversary

Fortieth Anniversary on November 22, 2014

Yesterday was the 40 th anniversary of Archbishop Lefebvre’s historic Declaration on November 21, 1974, of the reasons for which he and the priests and laity following him were taking their stand against the total change of the Catholic Church and religion being wrought in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The Declaration is a fresh today as it was on the day when it was written, because the true Catholic religion of God is unchangingly true, while the Conciliar religion of man is resolutely false and it is occupying Rome more than ever.

The Declaration consists of ten brief paragraphs, little more than 50 lines in all: 1/ We cleave to Catholic Rome, eternal Rome. 2/ We refuse Conciliar Rome, neo-Protestant and neo-modernist. 3/ The Conciliar reform is destroying the Catholic Church and diminishing our Catholic Faith, 4/ as not even an angel from Heaven has the right to do (Galatians I, 8). 5/ We choose Tradition, we refuse innovations. 6/ Everything in the Church is being renewed in a way opposite to age-old Catholic doctrine. 7/ The Conciliar reform, coming from heresy and resulting in heresy, is unacceptable to Catholics, so 8/ we shall continue to form Traditional priests. 9/ And we shall cleave to the Catholic teaching and practice of all time, 10/ being convinced that by so doing we will remain truly faithful Catholics.

Notice firstly the clear and sharp distinction (1 and 2) between Catholic Rome and Conciliar Rome. Now it is true to say that Conciliar Rome is occupying the structures of Catholic Rome, but to say that the Conciliar Church is therefore none other than the Catholic Church is as foolish as to say that a cuckoo is a nightingale because it occupies a nightingale’s nest. (And to say that the Archbishop wrote of Conciliar and Catholic “Rome” and not of the Conciliar and Catholic “Church” is to quibble with words.)

But how does the Archbishop distinguish between Conciliar cuckoo and Catholic nightingale? By doctrine! Conciliarism is neo- Protestant and neo- modernist (2). Our faith is being diminished (3), in opposition to Catholic doctrine (6). Conciliarism is heresy (7). We cleave to Catholic teaching (9). And the brief summary above does not give all of the Archbishop’s references to doctrine. Catholic doctrine was the Northern star of his mind and action. It is because modern man wants freedom for his mind and action that he in effect wants his mind to be reduced to mush, whereupon doctrine has no more than a merely decorous function. It has no more bite upon man’s action, except the one disastrous doctrine that doctrine is unimportant. And that disastrous doctrine has a total bite. Here is why the Archbishop is being reduced within the Society of St Pius X, which he founded, to little more than a decorous mascot.

One is impelled to ask, what is it going to take to restore the bite of doctrine, the sense of reality and the love of truth in Society, Church and world? Surely suffering, no less. Solzhenitsyn made a remark to the effect that it will take the crowbar of events to smash open the concrete casing which modern man has built around his sinful way of life. Truly, Lord have mercy.

Kyrie eleison.

Inside Story – V

Inside Story – V on November 15, 2014

When Bishop Fellay’s long-laid plans to save the Society of St Pius X and the Church by reconciling them through a blending of Tradition with the Council were blown out of the water in January of 2009 by the worldwide publicity given to the totally “politically incorrect” views of a colleague in the SSPX, one might have sympathised with him, were such a blending not an impossible dream. But God’s own Catholic religion mixes with its Conciliar imitation, “fruit of the work of human hands,” like oil mixes with water, or truth with falsehood. Catholics with memories reaching back to 1988 could remember Archbishop Lefebvre branding any such effort for the SSPX as “Operation Suicide,” suicide firstly for the SSPX but also for anything the SSPX might have been able to do for the Universal Church.

Therefore clear-minded Catholics breathed a great sigh of relief when in that month Providence used the Church’s enemies with their wordwide media to torpedo the joint efforts of Benedict XVI and Bishop Fellay to blend Council and Tradition. And such Catholics may have had dramatic but discreet confirmation from Providence that they were thinking correctly.

The “lifting” by Benedict XVI of the 1988 “excommunications” of the four SSPX bishops declared by Rome immediately upon their consecration, was directly attributed by Bishop Fellay, in public, to the intervention of Our Lady, thanks to the second SSPX Rosary Crusade at the end of 2008. Yet she had told him through her messenger early in the same year that if the Crusade was not this time dedicated to the Consecration of Russia, she would use the rosaries prayed for some other purpose. If these messages are true, Heaven cannot have taken too kindly to her having been manipulated for Church politics at the SSPX Jubilee celebration in Lourdes of October, 2008.

In any case, when on February 11, 2009, three weeks after the “lifting,” seminarians from the SSPX mother-house in Écône, Switzerland, were making a recreational excursion in the mountains nearby, three of them were caught in an avalanche, swept downhill and drowned in an icy mountain lake. And what is February 11? The Feast-day of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Mere coincidence? Or Heaven speaking through events, by one more correspondence between the inside story of these messages and the outside story of the first two Rosary Crusades? Readers will judge for themselves. If they are convinced that the Newsociety is on the right track when it seeks official approval from the Newchurch, they will have no difficulty in dismissing this series of messages supposedly from Heaven as one more “private revelation,” unworthy of serious consideration. On the other hand if in their judgment both Newsociety and Newchurch are on the wrong track, then it would make sense that, the world being on the brink of unimaginable disaster for having neglected the Consecration of Russia, Our Lady made one more attempt to obtain that Consecration through prayers launched by the SSPX.

Not that the SSPX was ever the salvation of the Church, but that if its prayers had been rightly directed, then as Our Lady gave her messenger to understand, she could have obtained from her Son the graces necessary to obtain that Consecration, and by it she could have saved both SSPX and Church and world. It is of no use now to “cry over spilt milk.” It is of use to practise the devotion of the First Saturdays, for Our Lady’s sake especially. She will not cease trying to save us.

Kyrie eleison.

Inside Story – IV

Inside Story – IV on November 8, 2014

And so we come to the climax of the inside story of the outside events of the Rosary Crusades of the Society of St Pius X six years ago. Would Bishop Fellay choose Heaven’s solution to the crisis of Church and World, trusting in Our Lady’s promise at Fatima of Russia’s conversion and a “period of peace” if only Russia is consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart, or would he choose the human solution of talks with Rome to fabricate a synthesis of Tradition (2+2=4) with the Council (2+2=4 or 5)? We can be certain that this is not how the Devil presented the choice to the Bishop, especially when in June 2008 the Romans came back into play.

In that month the Vatican became aware of the possible Rosary Crusade for the Consecration of Russia through a letter which the same messenger of Our Lady had addressed to Pope Benedict XVI, invoking his blessing upon such an endeavor. The Vatican took the letter seriously. Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos ordered Bishop Fellay to return directly to Rome from Hawaii where His Excellency had gone to administer the sacrament of Confirmation. On June 4, Cardinal Castrillón with a group of several Roman prelates threatened Bishop Fellay that if he were to call for a Rosary Crusade for the Consecration of Russia, Rome would close the door to any future discussions, and Rome would revive the dormant “excommunications” which had for the time being been rendered inoperative. That was also when the Vatican tried to impose on Bishop Fellay the “Vatican Ultimatum,” or five conditions necessary for any discussions.

So under this Roman pressure, Bishop Fellay had still not decided in the early autumn of 2008 to do as Our Lady asked, despite her repeated requests, and in fact on October 5, 2008, despite her direct warnings, he chose to apply the Second Rosary Crusade, set to run from November 1 until Christmas, to the intention of the “excommunications” of 1988 being lifted. On the same day Our Lord displayed His anger to the messenger of Our Lady by a vision of Him bringing down His hand to destroy the SSPX, while he referred to them as “Pharisees and hypocrites,” and said, “I can no longer put up with them.” But in the very moment of Our Lord’s hand falling, the messenger saw the Blessed Virgin Mary interceding on the Society’s behalf, pleading for mercy and saying “Remember the weakness of men.” The messenger then saw Our Lord’s anger immediately give way to His mercy.

But the Bishop’s mind was now made up. Three weeks later on October 26, at the Pontifical Mass climaxing the Society’s pilgrimage to Lourdes for the 150th Jubilee of Our Lady’s apparitions at Lourdes, he went ahead with announcing that the second Rosary Crusade would be dedicated to the lifting of the “excommunications” of 1988. On December 16 he wrote in private to the Pope, as requested by Benedict XVI, the letter asking the Pope for the lifting of the excommunications of 1988. On January 24, 2009, these were partially lifted by Rome. Bishop Fellay directly attributed this to the intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and he must have exulted in this seeming triumph of his patient diplomacy.

Alas, any triumph was short-lived, because within days the enemies of Catholic Tradition fired off in their worldwide media a torpedo perfectly designed to blow out of the water the threatening reunion of the Catholic Pope with Catholic Tradition. When the six-minute film clip from November 1 of an SSPX Bishop casting serious doubt on the “holocaust” and “gas chambers” of World War II was made public, Benedict XVI had to run for cover from the deadly accusation of consorting with “anti-semites.” The SSPX-Rome agreement was blocked, for at least a few years. (To be concluded.)

Kyrie eleison.