Society of St. Pius X

Unconscious “Infiltrators”

Unconscious "Infiltrators" on February 27, 2021

In these “Comments” of three weeks ago, where a reader was looking for an explanation of the decline of the Society of St Pius X after the death in 1991 of its Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, the question arose of possible infiltration of the SSPX by enemies of Catholic Tradition. Had there been infiltrators? These “Comments” took the position that no conscious or clear infiltrators had ever been discovered, but there had been a number of SSPX priests at the top of the Society who had used all their influence at the top to change the Society’s direction from that given to it by the Archbishop, without their being necessarily conscious of acting as infiltrators. In fact they may have infiltrated all the more effectively for being unconscious infiltrators! God knows, one or the other of them may have known exactly what he was doing to cripple the Society from within, but it never seemed so outwardly.

We are right up against the mystery of modernism, which must have sent millions of souls to Hell. Let us take yet another look, with another witness, a veteran Traditionalist who has spent tens of years in the fight for Catholic Tradition in Traditional chapels of the United States. The heavy black print is from the editor of the “Comments,” but every word in italics is from the veteran –

As one who has been a member of three Traditional parishes, a principal founder of two, and an activist in all three, I remember saying many years ago and many times over that the Devil infiltrates with his own people every single Traditional parish, that is, with people who are usually “sleepers,” who bide their time waiting for the right moment to strike. Having an Angelic intelligence and having been around for thousands of years, he is far from stupid and knows it is much easier to destroy a parish from within rather than from the outside. I have encountered these people in all three parishes. No doubt they are within the SSPX, with most not conscious that they are the Devil’s helpers, but he knows it. In fact, if they are not there, he is not doing his job.

The SSPX should disengage all contact with the Conciliar Church until that day when that masterpiece creation of the Devil is converted, which will be almost certainly after God chastises it in the most severe way along with its partner: the world. The SSPX is attempting to do what I attempted to do locally when I and another individual sat down three times in 1990–91 with Richmond’s two bishops and requested and negotiated the founding of St. Joseph’s parish, which, incidentally, was at that time the first and only Traditional Catholic parish in the world in union with Modernist Rome, with the Mass and all Sacraments in the Traditional Rite. ( . . . )

With St. Joseph’s, it was my intent to draw in hundreds of Novus Ordo Catholics and over time to make them all good Traditionalists. I was dreaming. St. Joseph’s today, with its likely thousand plus parishioners and its paid for 2 ½ million dollar building on multiple acres is in the hands of the doubtfully ordained Fraternity of St. Peter priests. It is a hybrid parish, with the “Traditional Mass and Sacraments” but in every other way Novus Ordo. I have not the slightest doubt that should it close its doors today, nearly every parishioner would be at a Novus Ordo “Mass” next Sunday. Such a fate awaits the SSPX should it merge with the Novus Ordo.

Now, were the two bishops and our veteran conscious “infiltrators”? The veteran certainly not. The two bishops possibly, but is it not equally possible that they too were acting in good faith? What seems most likely is that all three men were “dreaming.” Of what? Surely of mixing oil and water. Of mixing Traditional Truth with Conciliar Authority. But it cannot be done. The Archbishop knew that from the beginning. Our veteran came to know it, God bless him. Many souls in the Society still do not know it. They are dreaming, and they are all, in effect, unconscious “infiltrators.”

Kyrie eleison.

SSPX Re-Orientation

SSPX Re-Orientation on January 23, 2021

Last November Fr Pagliarani, SSPX Superior General, wrote a letter to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Society. Fr. Edward MacDonald, “Resistance” priest in Australia, wrote a valuable commentary on that letter, summarised here below –

1. Fr. Pagliarani asks: “Is the flame (‘that of a fearless charity’) received from our Founder still alive? Exposed to a crisis indefinitely prolonged in Church and world, is this precious torch not in danger of faltering and weakening?” – However, in his letter Fr. Pagliarani does not answer his own question.

2. In his entire letter Fr. Pagliarini barely mentions the Second Vatican Council. Yet, if there had been no Vatican II, there would have been no need for the SSPX. Rome is the source of all the errors of faith, doctrine and morals that the SSPX fought against. The post-Conciliar Popes implemented the teachings of the Council. The apostasy is centred and headquartered in the Vatican. Fr. Pagliarani mentions nothing about the errors of Vatican II. Why not? For him that fight is over. The SSPX is now with Vatican II and the Conciliar Church, against the “Resistance” movement. 

3. Fr. Pagliarani reduces the fight to “the spiritual life.” For Archbishop Lefebvre the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ came first, and bringing spiritual life to souls was a necessary by-product of that primary aim. But Fr. Pagliarani makes the spiritual life primary, saying: “Our combat is to allow Our Lord Jesus Christ to be the axis of our spiritual life, the source of all our thoughts, all our words and all our actions.” 

4. According to Fr. Pagliarani, everything has been said. There is no doctrinal battle left to wage. The SSPX will just continue to speak, presumably repeating old arguments, against the errors of Vatican II. In fact, the SSPX is not speaking against the errors of Vatican II. There is much new to say as the Pope continues to draw new errors out of the documents of Vatican II. Is the response to Amoris Laetitiae complete? If the SSPX has nothing new to say, it is because it has ceased to combat Vatican errors. 

5. Archbishop Viganò is finding plenty of new things to say about the errors of the Conciliar Church. The SSPX cannot say these things because it has capitulated and been silenced. It can no longer defend the rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In November 2020, Fr. Daniel Themann, SSPX District Superior of Australia, forbade members to make a public protest against some very public worship of Satan in Queensland. They made reparation quietly in their chapel. 

6. Weariness is a recurring theme in Fr. Pagliarani’s letter – this is not the case with the saints. They never weary, never grow tired of the battle. Archbishop Lefebvre never wearied of the fight, He was already retired when he realised that he had to take up arms in a new battle against the Conciliar Church. The SSPX has grown weary and fatigued and laid down its arms. It has “nothing new to say.” 

7. For the last fifteen or more years the seminaries of the SSPX have not been giving the seminarians the doctrinal formation to combat the modern errors. Modernism and liberalism have been promoted in the seminaries. The ordinands are willing to compromise on the truth, and eagerly work with and submit to the modernist diocesan bishops. Fr. Wegner, former US District Superior, once boasted that he had made deals with forty US bishops, all of whom were modernist Conciliar liberals.  

8. Every priest that has remained in the SSPX after its capitulation has decided explicitly, or at least tacitly, to accept this new orientation of the SSPX. They are no longer militant Catholics. The Church is indefectible. The SSPX was not. It has defected. 

9. There is no further important organisation to stand against the onslaught of the forces of evil in the form of the atheistic communist conquest of society. The sterilisation of the SSPX stopped the last great source of grace and blessings for the world. The few pockets of resistance remaining are incapable of stopping, or even just hindering, the communist enslavement of the world.

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop Tranferred

Archbishop Tranferred on September 26, 2020

Two days ago, the mortal remains of Archbishop Lefebvre were transferred from the vault next to the Seminary of Écône where they had rested temporarily since his death in 1991, to a solid marble sarcophagus in the crypt beneath the Seminary Chapel specially prepared for their permanent repose. All splendour is fitting for the place of burial of the greatest man of God, the greatest hero of the Catholic Faith, of modern times, the Archbishop who virtually single-handed saved the Catholic doctrine, sacraments and priesthood from perishing, from their corruption and elimination by modern men who no longer believed in them as they had been handed down by the faithful Catholic Church through nearly two thousand years.

And one may say that after his death his successors continued his work more or less faithfully for another 20 years, but then in 2012 occurred a change in his Society of St Pius X which obliged many souls to speak of a New-society, somewhat as the changes in the Church following on the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) obliged many Catholics to speak of a New-church, so radical were the changes. Alas, the ceremony of transferral of the Archbishop’s remains reflected this transferral of his work from Society to New-society, because it was celebrated not by the present Superior General, Fr. David Pagliarani, but by his predecessor as Superior General, the one who was mainly responsible for the transfer from Society to New-society. This choice of Fr. Pagliarani’s predecessor to celebrate such an outstanding event in honour of the Society’s Founder is neither a good omen nor is it an accident. It reminds us of the quote of Our Lord (Mt. XXIII):

29  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’

It may well be that today the universal hypocrisy of a world spurning Our Lord runs so deep that many souls taking part in the ceremony of two days ago were not conscious hypocrites, God knows, nor so severely to be condemned as Our Lord condemned those who He knew were about to crucify Him. For indeed many Catholics, who had been faithfully following the Archbishop in his “disobedience” towards the Church’s unfaithful officials, were skilfully mislead by his successors back towards the same officials with their Conciliar religion of man. Nevertheless, objectively speaking, the parallel is clear.

* The Pharisees built monuments to honour the prophets that they themselves would also have killed.

The New-society builds a sarcophagus for its Founder when it itself has been making friends with the Pachamamists whom he already abominated.

* To the Pharisees Our Lord promised to send messengers to denounce their infidelity, but these they would kill just the same.

To the New-church and New-society he sends an Archbishop Viganò to remind them of their infidelity. As for the New-church, it would kill him. The New-society does its best to pay no attention to him.

* The Pharisees were warned by Our Lord of the grave consequences of their infidelity, and indeed in 70 AD Jerusalem was utterly destroyed.

As for the New-society, it has for now reduced the work of Archbishop to radical impotency, because the worldwide network of the Faith which he built up is in absolute need of new bishops to maintain that Faith, but by the New-society’s refusal to consecrate new bishops without the Pachamamists’ consent, it is refusing new bishops who will maintain the faith of Archbishop Lefebvre, because the Pachamamists will never consent to the consecration of bishops who will defend that faith.

In brief, the New-society’s members allowed that predecessor of Fr Pagliarani to honour their Founder’s place of burial who did more than anyone else to bury his work. Are they aware of how they risk contributing to the transferral of a gathering for heroes into a playpen of Neo-pharisees?

Kyrie eleison.

Men Lacking

Men Lacking on May 23, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kyrie eleison.

Hoist Ladder – III

Hoist Ladder – III on May 16, 2020

The last two issues of these “Comments,” # 668 and # 669 of May 2 and 9 respectively, sought to defend the apparent harshness of Archbishop Lefebvre’s parting advice in 1990 to the priests of the Society he founded when he said to them that they should have nothing further to do with the Church’s Conciliar officials in Rome. # 668 underlined the gravity of the subjectivism denounced by the Archbishop as underlying all the Council’s main documents. # 669 recognised that respect and charity are due to the highest officials of Our Lord’s true Church, but repeated yet again that their subjectivism is so grave for the Church’s Faith that the due respect and charity had to be measured by the Faith and not the reverse.

However, the “apparent harshness” may need further defence, and those “Comments” some explanation.

Firstly, a brief reminder of some Society history of those crucial years between 1988 and 2012. In 1988 the Archbishop at the end of a long and outstanding career in the Church’s service apparently performed a grave disservice to the Church by consecrating four bishops against the express will of Pope John-Paul II in order to defend the Faith and the Church from the ravages of the new Conciliar religion being promoted worldwide by the Pope. Of course the Pope did not understand his action, and behaved like a swine in the comparison of Our Lord warning us not to throw pearls in front of swine because they will trample on the pearls and then turn and rend us ourselves. Indeed until 2000 John-Paul II trampled upon the Church’s Tradition as defended by the Archbishop and did his best to “rend” the Society.

However, all over the world there were serious and believing Catholics who fully understood and supported the Archbishop, and who so rallied to his support that the Society arguably enjoyed its golden years in defending the Faith between 1988 and 2000. As a result, not only did the trampling of Rome and the Pope upon the Society not succeed, but it was even counter-productive, attracting more and more customers to buy the Church’s true pearls of Tradition, thanks to the Archbishop and his Society. The official Church’s failure to tread those pearls into the mud became absolutely clear with the success of the Society’s Jubilee Year Pilgrimage to Rome in the spring of 2000. That was when the “swine” of Rome switched their strategy from the stick to the carrot, and began cooing like doves in order to entice the Society to descend from its impregnable fortress of doctrine down to the shifting sands of diplomacy.

And the Archbishop having died in 1991, his charisma and wisdom were no longer there to prevent his relatively young successors from being seduced by the cooing of the apparent doves.

And so the battle-lines in the fight for the Faith seem to have been re-drawn, with the official Society having gone over to the enemy, so that it is now more angry with the lightweight “Resistance” than it is with heavyweight Conciliar Rome. In fairness however, the present Society leaders have not yet signed over the store, and a good number of Society priests are truly opposed to their store being signed over. But any Catholic must wish that the Society never cease to stand for what the Archbishop stood for.

And his “harshness”? Pachamama is merely one very clear example of how right he was to sound the alarm and to take action in the wake of Vatican II. The same “swine” as later had cooed like doves also at the Council (1962–1965) to fool a huge number of Catholic sheep and shepherds at the time, by no means all of whom woke up later or in the next 55 years to date. But the Archbishop had learned to value the good philosophy he had been given at the seminary to fortify his common sense, and so he judged everything in the light of true principles and the Faith. In that light the modern world and its wretched Council are a sorry affair, leaving only an appearance of Christianity while the substance is becoming something completely different. To say, take to the hills and do not look back, is only what God Himself told Lot. It is good advice, however difficult now to apply, for a world being confined in folly.

Kyrie eleison.

Hoist Ladder! – I

Hoist Ladder! – I on May 2, 2020

Many people who should be listening to Archbishop Lefebvre are no longer doing so, as though they know better, or as though at the end of his life, after he had bequeathed four bishops to the Society of St Pius X to ensure its survival, he had nothing more to say or to do of any importance. But in September of 1990 Providence granted him to give in Écône a retreat to his priests in which he could hand on to them – or at least to those that had ears to hear – his guidelines for their future. Let us quote again one of the most important passages, and sigh with sorrow that he was not listened to, or was not understood:—

This fight between the Church and liberal modernists is the same fight as that of Vatican II. It is not that complicated. And the effects are far-reaching. The more one analyses the documents of Vatican II together with the interpretation given them by the authorities of the Church after the Council , and the more one realises that the problem is not just certain errors like ecumenism, religious liberty, collegiality or a form of liberalism, it is a whole perversion of the mind. It is a new philosophy, based on the modern philosophy of modernism. The book which a German theologian Johannes Dörmann has just published, and which I hope can soon be in your hands, is very instructive in this regard. He is commenting on the thinking of Pope John-Paul II, in particular on a retreat which he preached in the Vatican while he was still just a bishop. Dörmann shows that the Pope’s thinking is entirely subjective. And on re-reading his speeches, one realises that that is the case. Despite the appearances, it is not Catholic.

The Pope’s understanding of God, of Our Lord, comes from the depths of man’s consciousness and not from any objective Revelation to which he adheres with his mind. Man constructs his own idea of God. Recently for instance the Pope said that the idea of the Trinity can only have arisen very lately, because man’s inner psychology had to be capable of rising to the Holy Trinity. Therefore the idea of the Trinity came not from any outer revelation but from the inner depths of man’s consciousness. Here is a totally different concept of Revelation, Faith and philosophy, and it is a total perversion. How do we get out of it? I have no idea, but in any case that is the reality. These are no small errors. We are running into a line of philosophy going back to Descartes and Kant, the whole line of modern philosophers who paved the way for the Revolution. ( . . . )

The Archbishop then quotes Pope John-Paul himself saying that the ecumenical movement is his “prime pastoral concern,” as we see put into practice by his constant receiving of delegations from all kinds of sects and religions, and yet, says the Archbishop, all this ecumenism has not made the Church advance one little bit, nor can it do so – all it has done is to confirm non-Catholics in their errors without trying to convert them. Finally the Archbishop quotes the Pope’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Casaroli, in a then recent address to the United Nations Commission for the Rights of Man, quoting in turn the Pope to the effect that religious liberty is like a corner-stone of the building of the rights of man. Man, and every man, is the central preoccupation of the Holy See, as he is undoubtedly also yours, concludes the Cardinal. And the Archbishop concludes, for the Society priests in front of him at the retreat –

All we can do is pull up the ladder (i.e. cut all contact) . There is nothing we can do with these people, because we have nothing in common with them.

This is the correct conclusion whenever one is faced by people who start out from a denial of reality outside the mind, or else of the mind’s ability to know that extra-mental objective reality. They are mentally sick, like swine in front of whom pearls should not be thrown, says Our Lord, “lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you ” (Mt. VII, 6). For has Conciliar Rome over the last 20 years done anything other than turn to attack the Society in its striving by contacts to obtain official recognition?

Kyrie eleison.