Society of St. Pius X

French Tour

French Tour on April 12, 2014

Good news again, this time from France, once more small in quantity but high in quality. A handful of good priests are gathering together and taking action to make sure that the Faith will continue to be defended along the lines laid down by Archbishop Lefebvre, steering between sedevacantism on the right and conciliarism – from above. SSPX HQ will be left to disarm its followers, while a remainder of happy priests will continue to take arms with the true religion for the next stage in their persecution.

This is what I observed on a fourth lecture tour since last autumn of centres in France where the laity are interested in the anti-liberal doctrine of the Catholic Popes between Pius VI (1717–1799) and Pius XII (1876–1958). That doctrine was not new, even at the beginning of the century and a half over which it was elaborated. It was merely that particular part of the Church’s timeless teaching which needed to be refreshed from the moment when the Christian social order of 15 centuries was undermined and supplanted by the French Revolution of 1789.

That Revolution was Freemasonic liberalism making war on God by seeking to overthrow throne and altar. Since then the Catholic thrones have been virtually overthrown by “democracy,” while the Catholic altars were virtually overthrown at Vatican II by that Council’s conversion to the religion of man. Archbishop Lefebvre however, cleaving to the religion of God, wished that his seminarians would be thoroughly familiar with the Church’s anti-Revolutionary doctrine in order to know how to take their Catholic stand in the midst of a liberal world. It follows that Catholic lay-folk who can see how the Archbishop’s Society of St Pius X is being cunningly transformed into the Newsociety, are interested in the Popes’ Encyclical Letters of those 150 years before Vatican II. On the first of my four lecture tours there were five stops. On the latest, between end March and early April, there were nine, and there risk being more invitations. There are, all the time, more French lay-folk waking up to how the Society is being misled.

Alas, all too many SSPX priests are still spellbound by a master of seduction, lost in his worldly dream. I met a few of them on this latest tour. They are no doubt good men, they have been good priests, they have their eyes open and see many things, but when they are exposed once more to that seducer, their vision clouds over and their will is puzzled. The Greek verb “diaballein” from which come the English words “diabolical” and “devil,” means to turn upside down, to throw into confusion.

These confused priests contrast with the half dozen mentioned above who have seen clear and are taking action on what they see. The tension by which they were tortured for as long as they tried to remain loyal to diabolical leaders is a thing of the past. They are serene, and happily making plans for the continuation of the Archbishop’s work. Fr. de Mérode, ordained many years ago, has left the SSPX of his own accord, has bought one house in Lourdes and is buying another in the Southwest of France. These will act both as bases for an apostolate to many interested souls in the region, and as refuges for priests needing somewhere to recover. I can add that I met a venerable soul in Lyon who is offering a studio of hers in that city to any priest similarly looking for a roof. Also the “Resistance” House in Broadstairs, England, is now open and can receive priestly visitors. One has already come by. Discretion guaranteed.

Outside, Archbishop, of its structure bent

Your noble work continues, as you meant.

Kyrie eleison.

Fiftiesism Observed

Fiftiesism Observed on March 8, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kyrie eleison.

Good News

Good News on January 18, 2014

The first piece of good news is that Queen of Martyrs house in south-east England is being bought these very days. At first the purchase price seemed out of reach, but two telephone calls to a French and an American benefactor promptly raised about two fifths and another quarter respectively of the sum needed, and suddenly the purchase came within range. About another seventh part came from the many benefactors of the St Marcel Initiative, I emptied out several piggy-banks of my own, and finally an Asian benefactor put us over the top.

Resounding thanks to every one of you that contributed, because the smaller donations are not to be scorned. God does not look only on the amount. Maybe only when he sees enough widows caring enough to pay in their widows’ mites (Lk.XXI, 1–4), does he inspire the benefactors capable of the larger donations. With God, spirit leads matter, and not the other way round. But do please pray for the three benefactors mentioned above, to whom we are all indebted. Especially I think of the house being able to serve as a refuge for priests to visit, as an island of sanity.

For indeed the second piece of good news is that the betrayal of the Faith by the leaders of the Newsociety of St Pius X is becoming clearer, little by little, to SSPX priests. One by one, some of the best of them are being alienated and then excluded by the Newsociety. It pretends that they are leaving of their own free will, or for purely personal reasons, or that they are being excluded for their disobedience. Never of course will these traitors in SSPX headquarters admit that it is their own treachery which is driving these priests out. Yet one after another they are declaring that their problem with the Newsociety is one of doctrine: the official SSPX documents of April 15 and July 14, 2012, and June 27, 2013, demonstrate that the Newsociety leaders are abandoning Archbishop Lefebvre’s glorious fight for the Faith in exchange for a mess of Conciliar pottage.

Thus in South America a capable and devoted SSPX Prior is refusing a change of post obviously designed to control and silence his opposition to the sell-out by Headquarters, and he writes to his District Superior that his refusal is for purely doctrinal reasons. In Austria a long-suffering and faithful former Prior gives five serious reasons for his departure from the SSPX, and all that the First Assistant finds to reply is that his reasons are “beneath consideration.” In France above all, a group of 12 priests have met together and issued a public declaration of allegiance to the doctrinal stand of Archbishop Lefebvre, and they have placed their priesthoods at the disposal of parents needing education for their children, of young men needing formation for the priesthood and of souls needing the sacraments. It has taken time for the priests in France to begin to react, but the reaction should be all the stronger for the delay. Archbishop Lefebvre was fond of quoting the French proverb which says that time does not respect anything done without it.

Have patience, dear readers. God is not in a hurry, nor is he mocked (Gal.VI, 7). If the SSPX misleaders try to console themselves that the priests departing or excluded represent only a small minority of the total of some 500 SSPX priests, how little they understand the power of truth! They have abandoned it, and it is abandoning them – inexorably. God have mercy on us all.

Kyrie eleison.

Billot – III

Billot – III on January 4, 2014

The present leaders of the Society of St Pius X are working steadily and craftily towards inserting it into the framework of the mainstream Church, which is steadily and craftily pushing forward the Revolutionary and Conciliar ideals of liberty (religious liberty), equality (collegiality) and fraternity (ecumenism). Yet these leaders surely take Cardinal Billot seriously. They should meditate on his reflections on our Fifth Age of the Church which follow his exposition of the Seven Ages in the Epilogue to the first volume of his celebrated Treatise on the Church of Christ. Here are some of those reflections, freely translated and adapted from the Latin:—

“Our own age would then be the Fifth Age, Age of defection, apostasy and liberalism, coming between the end of the Holy Roman Empire and what St Paul calls a“resurrection from the dead” (Rom. XI, 15). May it be so! It gives us all amidst our so many and so great tribulations of today(the Cardinal wrote in 1927 – what would he have written in 2013?) hope of a future restoration and – forgive the expression – Counter-revolution. Already today many leading scientists, politicians and economists are recognizing and freely admitting how poisoned are the fruits of the French Revolution of 1789, which proclaimed that the one and only source of all the world’s ills was scorn for the “rights of man.” What frivolity! What silliness! What stupidity!

“The Revolutionaries’ liberty results in tyranny of the strong over the weak; their equality results in a few millionaires lording it ever more over the people(one thinks of Wall Street, 2013!); their fraternity results in internal strife and class hatred. Some people grasp this, while many do not see the essentially satanic character of the Revolution. However those who go beneath the surface see that the religious question underlies all other questions presently agitating mankind: that the plague of political and economic liberalism arises from the atheistic and anti-Christian liberalism laid out above; that the social order can in no way be restored unless the Church’s principles once more direct public life.

“Would that this recognition of the theory might bear practical fruit! With all our heart we call for such a restoration, knowing how the pagan laws under which we are now living may still allow individuals to be Christian(in 2013, how much longer?), but they make a Christian society altogether impossible. Therefore we seek above all the kingdom of God and his justice, without despising the rest that will be added unto us(cf. Mt. VI, 33). As St Paul says of godliness that it is, “profitable to all things,” so too is the Church’s influence, “having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come”(cf. I Tim. IV, 8).” It is not difficult to see here how the Cardinal was not one of the many souls he mentions that do not see through the false glamour of the modern world. On the contrary his firm grasp of Catholic doctrine enables him to describe our own times, nearly a century later.

SSPX Headquarters, wake up from your foolish dream of converting the liberals now controlling the Church, and stop pretending with a flow of ambiguous Declarations that you are still defending Tradition. Your actions prove the contrary, and actions speak louder than a series of Declarations! You have the name of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die. Have in mind what you received from the Archbishop, and put it into practice, and do penance. Kyrie eleison.

Father Rioult – II

Father Rioult – II on December 14, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kyrie eleison.

Father Rioult – I

Father Rioult – I on November 30, 2013

Why was there not an uprising amongst priests of the Society of St Pius X when their leaders’ loss of grip on Catholic doctrine and subsequent betrayal of Archbishop Lefebvre’s work became absolutely clear from March of last year onwards? Fr. Olivier Rioult, trail-blazer of the “Resistance” in France, gave several good reasons last month in an interview accessible in French on pelagiusasturiensis.wordpress.com. The following summary is freely adapted from the original text:—

Basically, original sin: Once the original fight for Tradition in the 1970’s and ‘80’s had succeeded in guaranteeing the survival of the essentials of the Faith, Traditionalists sat back on their laurels to enjoy their cosy enclaves, and they settled into a comfortable routine which they are now reluctant to lose. They have lost the spirit of fighting for the Faith.

Secondly, that particular form of original sin which is liberalism: Over the last ten years Society leaders have given the lead in weakening the fight against liberalism, error and immodesty. But to cease swimming against the current is to drift backwards, and a number of SSPX priests – by no means all – have grown weaker in their convictions and their preaching.

Thirdly, activism: some colleagues can also let themselves be run off their feet by their priestly tasks, leaving themselves no time or inclination to read or study. Turning into mere administrators and communicators, they weaken their convictions and preaching.

Fourthly, Bishop Fellay’s trickery: for years his double-talk deceived everybody except a small minority of clear-sighted souls who could absolutely not get a hearing. Only last year did his mask come off with the March “Cor Unum” and with his reply of April 14 to the three bishops. The great majority of Traditionalists he had put to sleep (as he is now doing again).

Fifthly, fear of the unknown: when the whole world around you is going mad, and you find an enclave of sanity, and then that enclave also begins to go mad, it requires unusual strength of character to face up to the reality and not prefer some illusion or other, and of illusions there are plenty! Thus many priests realize that they are living through a drama calling for some crucifying decisions, but they lack the necessary fortitude to launch into the unknown.

And last but not least, bad leaders: of course there have always been liberals within the SSPX as within the mainstream Church, but for as long as the leaders hold firm, these can be held in check. However, when in the mainstream Church John XXIII and Paul VI favoured their liberalism, the result was a tidal wave , and now that SSPX leaders have turned liberal, liberalism is sweeping through the Society as it would never have done under good leaders, true leaders.

These reasons given by Fr Rioult are all true, but none of them are stronger than that Faith which is “our victory over the world” (I Jn.V, 4). Indeed one might say that all the reasons come down to the lack of a strong enough Faith on the part of the priests, because they are living in a world in which the grip on Truth of every soul alive has been loosened, and if Truth is not true, how can Faith be true?

Then what is the simplest way to strengthen one’s grip on Truth, as we absolutely need to do in today’s crazy circumstances? In my opinion:—

“Watch and pray, watch and pray,

Fifteen Mysteries every day.”

Kyrie eleison.