Society of St. Pius X

Guidelines

Guidelines on March 8, 2008

A young German friend asks me some questions which deserve straight answers. Here is how he expresses his main concern:—

Question:— Since the promulgation last July of the ‘Motu Proprio’ of Benedict XVI partially liberating the Tridentine rite of the Mass, there are various views and opinions as to what it means or can mean for the Society of St. Pius X. Some people are optimistic. Others say it is a trap for the SSPX. Some go so far as to say that the leadership of the SSPX is preparing a sell-out to Rome . . . I have the feeling that the average SSPX faithful are somewhat confused. What can you give me by way of a guideline, so that I don’t get lost in useless guessing-games or needless fears? Answer:— We must save our souls. To save our souls we must keep the Catholic Faith, because “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. XI, 6). The stupendous achievement of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre between 1970 when he founded the SSPX and 1991 when he died, is that he enabled many souls to keep the true Faith in a Church where millions of Catholics were losing it, consciously or unconsciously, because the leading churchmen had come to believe in the anti-Catholic ideals of the modern world. Ever since the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), these churchmen have behaved like ice-salesmen who are convinced they must expose their wares in bright sunshine! The Church has been melting before their eyes ever since!

Yet still they cling to the anti-Catholic ideas of Vatican II. Alongside the “Motu Proprio” apparently favoring the Mass of the true Faith, Benedict XVI organizes and presides over ecumenical meetings which, by placing the Catholic religion on a more or less equal footing with all other religions, officially represented and all necessarily more or less false, are a grave offence to God. So any apparent benevolence shown by Benedict XVI towards the true Faith or the true Mass can only mean that he wishes them to be reconciled with the Conciliar religion and all other religions! Therefore if he is not a conscious agent of truth-dissolving Freemasonry, at any rate he has no understanding of the true Faith, and so he cannot grasp how absolutely opposed it is to the man-centred religion of Vatican II.

Question:— Then was the ‘Motu Proprio’ a trap to draw the SSPX (along with others) towards reconciliation with this false Rome? Answer:— God alone knows for sure what were Benedict XVI’s intentions. Any benevolence of his towards Tradition, towards the SSPX, towards the true Mass, may, for all we know, be subjectively sincere. But objectively the Motu Proprio and the Letter to the Bishopswhich accompanied it, by no means recognize the full rights of the True Mass or the true Faith. So if someone suggested that either of these documents did recognize those rights, he would indeed be falling into a trap.

Question:— Yet there has been much praise and little criticism of the ‘Motu Proprio’ from within the SSPX.

Answer:— Catholics are so longing for the Roman churchmen to come back to the Faith that they rejoice at the least indication of Rome’s doing so, but, sadly, that can be a mistake. What use is it if an arithmetician says two and two are four when you know that alongside, and all the time, he is also saying they are five? He obviously has no grasp of true arithmetic. What use is it for Benedict XVI to say that the true Mass has never been abrogated, and (within limits) to set it free, when he is also constantly organizing ecumenical meetings? He obviously has no grasp on the true Faith.

Question:— What about the rumor of the SSPX preparing a sell-out to Rome? Answer:— Certainly the SSPX has no intention of betraying Archbishop Lefebvre’s defence of the Faith. So if any of the members entertain any serious thought of going in with Rome’s Neo-modernists, it is because they will have been deceived by the modern world, like so many before them. This time round the deceit will have taken the form that things have got better in Rome since the Archbishop’s time. But they have not. The apostasy at least objective is as wild as ever. So I cannot believe that the heirs of Archbishop Lefebvre would let themselves be deceived to that extent.

However, I have often made myself unpopular with colleagues in the SSPX by recalling the obvious fact that the SSPX does not have the guarantee of indefectibility that the Catholic Church has. The SSPX could fail. That is why, given what service it has rendered since 1970 to the Universal Church in guarding the Faith, and what service it can still render, Catholics must pray for it, especially for the leadership, that it may not fail.

Question:— If the SSPX were to be re-absorbed into the mainstream Church, would that mean the crisis of the Church had come to an end?

Answer:— By no means. The SSPX being “re-absorbed” or not is not the problem. The problem is the Roman churchmen, especially the Pope. When they come back to the true Faith, and only then, will the crisis be over.

Question:— And what if the SSPX is re-absorbed without the crisis being over?

Answer:— Our Lord says, “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” In other words, we will cross that bridge when we come to it, as the proverb says. However, one thing is certain: the Good Shepherd CANNOT abandon sheep that do not want to abandon him. Have no fear! If in His wisdom and providence He were to allow the SSPX to fail – and that is merely a possibility, not a certainty – he would offer to all sheep of good will, in some other form, all the guidance and support they would need to save their souls.

Question:— I have a strange sense of violent storms on the horizon. What do you think? Answer:— Nothing seems to me more likely. The financial storm has started, and is increasing every day in weight and speed. Storms economic and political are bound to follow, and, as a chastisement of God, I do believe, World War III, which will be terrible.

“In the world you shall have distress,” says Our Lord, “but have confidence, I have overcome the world.” (Jn XV, 33).

Kyrie eleison.

1984 Attracts

1984 Attracts on January 26, 2008

When in a small publication of the Society of St. Pius X in England – circulation about 500 – an article recently appeared describing the police-state fast closing in on Great Britain, the British authorities complained to SSPX headquarters in Switzerland! It gives one to reflect . . . .

As people have today less and less religion, so they have less and less reason to control themselves. If I believe neither in God nor in any moral law, nor in any after-life, eternally rewarding or punishing my observance or non-observance of that law, why should I put any brake upon satisfying my selfish desires in this life? But a society of such egoists must turn into a jungle of human beasts devouring one another.

Therefore where the people have neither faith nor internal self-discipline, they must welcome any external discipline enabling their society to survive, e.g. (or i.e.) a police-state. As seminaries close, so prisons must open. Today, prisons can hardly be built fast enough.

Now in any such dissociety of course there will be villains fabricating reasons to impose and extend the police-state for their own nefarious purposes. 9/11 is a classic example. However, even in the case of 9/11 there might have been amongst the authorities some honest men who said, “Lies and fabrications are nasty, but how else can one govern a modern population?” Alas, they would have had a point!

So the police-state may be a bad substitute for godliness, but where the people are godless, such a State may appear to be the only way to hold a society together, and whoever opposes the police-state will then appear to be anti-social. In this respect the defenders of modern police-states may mean well, and not deserve blame.

However, let them have no part in tomorrow’s persecution of Christians towards which today’s police-states are being steered! The Catholic Faith upheld by the SSPX is not in fact their problem, but it is, of their real problem, the true solution.

Kyrie eleison.

Just Dispossession

Just Dispossession on January 19, 2008

An SSPX colleague in North England tells me a frightening little tale for the future of our country. Two months ago, parking his car briefly to take a telephone call in what looked like the ordinary street of an ordinary suburb of an English Midlands city, he found himself within a few moments being glared at by two immigrant youths standing in front of his car and then by two more positioned behind. Within minutes a car also pulled up alongside him, and the adult immigrant behind the wheel was facing him down with a still more hostile glare.

My colleague rolled down his window – “Is there a problem?” he asked. “What are you doing here?” “I have parked for a couple of minutes to take a telephone call.” „Alright.” Then my colleague ventured to add, “But this street doesn’t belong to you, does it?” The answer was a stream of vicious profanities (in English), concluding with, “If you don’t get out of here in two minutes, we will smash your car to pieces.” My colleague chose to move on.

The non-native Englishmen in this case were Muslims who have made of large parts of a number of English cities “no-go areas,” where the native English hardly set foot any longer, and where even the police prefer to stay out. In the early 1970’s when the immigrants began flowing into England, a native-English politician, Enoch Powell, famously warned that the flow would end in “blood in the streets.” He warned in vain. The flow of immigrants has not stopped since.

The same has happened in many a Western nation. How can one not see here the sentence of God upon these nations’ way of life? Firstly, the soft selfish living which refuses children in order to “enjoy life,” means that there are not enough native workers to man the pumps, so to speak, so that without immigrants the whole way of life would risk collapsing. Secondly, the liberalism and materialism of that way of life so undermine patriotism that the scheming globalists have a virtually free hand to pave the way for their international godlessness by breaking down the nations’ identity through unchecked immigration.

The kingdoms of the West are being taken from the natives and given to peoples that at least have babies (cf. Mt. XXI, 43). But without Jesus Christ as the uniting corner-stone (Eph. II,20), it means – blood in the streets.

Kyrie eleison.

Scarce Vocations

Scarce Vocations on December 1, 2007

In the up-coming edition of « Credidimus Caritati », the trimestrial bulletin of the Latin American Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), will appear some interesting remarks of an Argentinian deacon due to be ordained priest in three weeks’ time. He is asked by the interviewer what he thinks the present lack of vocations is due to. Here is his reply:—

“It seems to me that one can speak of the lack of vocations either amongst Catholics attached to the SSPX, or amongst Catholics who are for whatever reason more or less far from Society positions.

“Amongst the latter, it is clear to see that the farther away they are from the true doctrine and Faith, the fewer will be the vocations, because the modern world catches hold of such men or women the more easily that they belong more to the world and less to Our Lord. Generally speaking, the religious Congregations closer to the SSPX are those that have the more vocations.

“Amongst SSPX Catholics, it seems to me that youngsters born and raised within the SSPX, with a few praiseworthy exceptions, develop a split personality, one side Traditional and the other side modern. The Traditional side comes from parents, relations and friends who have struggled to keep the Faith as best they could, and have wanted their children to follow in their footsteps, continuing the struggle. Where the modern side comes from is obvious – today’s world swamps the youngsters in all kinds of enticing novelties to get them for itself. The youngsters are aware of the clash in their own lives and try to combine the two sides as best they can. Add in the lack of a serious prayer life and the lack of resorting to the sacraments, and the result is that the youngsters grow used to living with a split personality, it comes to seem quite normal, even comfortable, and who wants to have to quit a comfort zone?”

Simple. Clear. What is the solution? Family fathers must so fortify true religion in the home, especially by their own example, that the false glamour of the world is out-gunned, and loses its power to attract. That requires a real effort, but it can be done. St. Joseph, Patron of the Church and of vocations, help!

Kyrie eleison.

“Excommunications”

“Excommunications” on November 24, 2007

As rumors circulate that Rome may soon lift the “excommunication” of the four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, declared by Cardinal Gantin on the occasion of their episcopal consecration by Archbishop Lefebvre back in 1988, it may be opportune to set the record straight on one or two points.

First and foremost, those “excommunications” were, from the moment they were declared, neither valid, nor to be taken seriously. A valid Church excommunication can only take place either positively (“ferendae sententiae”) or automatically (“latae sententiae”). It is positive, when Church authorities declare by a judicial sentence (in the good old times with a solemn ceremony of “bell, book and candle”) that the offender no longer belongs to the Church. It is automatic, when the offender so clearly breaks certain Church laws incurring excommunication that by his action alone (“ipso facto”) he has put himself out of the Church.

Now in 1988 there was no positive excommunication by judicial sentence or ceremonial expulsion. Nor was there, by Canon Law, any automatic excommunication, because the Archbishop acted for the good of the Church (New Code, canon 1323, number 4), and even if he was objectively mistaken in thinking so, he will still not have incurred the full rigour of the law, in this case excommunication, because he was certainly subjectively convinced in thinking that he acted for the good of the whole Church (New Code, canon 1324, §1, number 8). Therefore there was no excommunication at all.

What Rome did was to declare, without judicial sentence or ceremony, that the excommunications had been automatic, when by Church Law they were not. It follows that the Society for its part cannot ask for the “excommunications” to be lifted by any form of words which might imply that they have ever been valid.

On the other hand any unilateral lifting of the “excommunications” on the part of Pope Benedict XVI, whatever form it may take, would, in his circumstances, be a courageous act of justice. All the neo-modernists would hate him for it, unless they hoped it would help to dissolve Tradition’s resistance, but Almighty God would certainly reward him for his restoring of truth, especially if his intention was upright.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on your Church!

Kyrie eleison.

Agreementitis – II

Agreementitis – II on November 10, 2007

The argument in favor of the SSPX “coming in from the cold” and “getting back into the Church” can also be expressed in this sort of double proposition: all great clashes in the Church have always finished in some sort of compromise – what other solution is possible for the long-standing discord between the SSPX and Conciliar Rome?

As to the first part of the proposition, one might agree to some compromise if it were not the Faith at the root of this discord. To help out the Pope, or to restore the good name or canonical status of the SSPX, some compromise might be conceivable, but not if the Faith is at stake, because the Catholic Faith is that body of objective supernatural truths without (an at least rudimentary) belief in which, no soul can be saved (Heb. XI, 6).

But is the very Faith involved in the so far 37-year struggle of the SSPX? Yes, says a distinguished German theologian, Professor Johannes Dörmann, who is quite independent of the SSPX. After prolonged and professional study of the complete speeches and writings of John-Paul II, he recognized and declared that “Lefebvrism” was not just about Latin or the liturgy, but about the very foundations of the Faith. Indeed. Being another form of subjectivism, Neo-modernism turns any rock of truth into plastic.

As to the second part of the proposition, there being no other solution possible than some kind of compromise, one may reply that there are problems which man can make and which God alone can solve. An elephant can fall into an elephant-trap, but not by himself climb out again. In Noah’s time, mankind had so “corrupted its way” (Gen. VI, 12) that the Lord God was driven to wash it out and virtually start all over again.

In the Sodom of today’s Church and world, have not merely human solutions been made similarly impossible? When in the troubles of the near future enough human beings get down on their knees to beg the Lord God to rescue them, then through his Mother he will do so. Meanwhile the bounden duty of all Catholics belonging to the “remnant chosen by grace” (underline the “by grace” – Rom. XI, 5), is not to let anything, love of Rome or family or life or whatever, take precedence over safeguarding the true Faith, which is an obedience to, and love of, the true God. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us!

Kyrie eleison.