Society of St. Pius X

Modernism’s Malice – I

Modernism’s Malice – I on March 7, 2020

If the Society of St Pius X is no longer an outstanding spearhead of the defence of the Catholic Faith as it was under Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991), that is surely because his successors at the head of the Society never understood as well as he did the full malice of that error presently devastating the Church, which is modernism. In fact towards the end of his days the Archbishop is quoted as saying that if only he had read sooner in his career the History of Liberal Catholicism in France from 1870 to 1914 by Fr. Emmanuel Barbier (1851–1925), he would have given to his seminarians a different direction. If this remark is authentic, it suggests that even the Archbishop had been overtaken by the malice of modernity. Similarly the valiant founder of the periodical Si si no no in Italy, Don Francesco Putti (1909–1984), is quoted as having told his good friend, the Archbishop, “Half of your seminarians are modernists.”

But the malice of modernity is easy to underestimate, because it has been building up in the West for centuries, and because all Westerners are soaked in it from the cradle to the grave. From this modernity came modernism in the Church, precisely to adapt to it, and this same modernity provided the background of all Council Fathers in the 1960’s, and of the Archbishop’s successors from the 1980’s onwards. In fact it can only have been by a special grace of God that the Archbishop saw the problem as clearly as he did.

Let us suggest how the failure to understand modernism underlies most of his successors’ errors –

1 95% of the texts of Vatican II are acceptable. On the contrary, Archbishop Lefebvre said that the problem with Vatican II is not so much even its great errors of religious liberty, collegiality and ecumenism as the subjectivism suffusing all its texts, whereby objective truth, God and the Catholic Faith dissolve ultimately into nothingness. By the Copernican revolution wrought in philosophy by Kant (1724–1804) and denounced by Pius X in Pascendi (1907), instead of the subject turning around the object, henceforth the object was to turn around the subject. Around this madness now turns the entire world.

2 True, the Council was bad, but it is losing its grip on Romans today. Really? And Pachamama? Since when have we seen such public idolatry in the Vatican Gardens and in churches of Rome itself?

3 It is no use for the Society to wait until Rome converts from its modernism, but if they are willing to accept us “as we are” it means that Rome is on its way to converting, so we should come to an agreement. Indeed it is useless to wait for the Roman modernists to convert, because they are liberals. It takes a miracle to convert a liberal (Fr Vallet), because liberalism is a comfortable and flattering trap out of which humanly speaking it is virtually impossible to climb without a miracle, and that miracle for world and Church will be the Consecration of Russia, not a Society that is going the liberals’ way. If they accept “as is” the formerly recalcitrant SSPX, that is only because the SSPX is no longer anti-liberal as it once was, because the salt of the Society has lost its savour (cf. Mt. V, 13).

4 We need patience and tact in order to understand how the Romans think in order not to offend them.

To understand how these modernists in Rome think, we need humility and realism and shattering courses in Pascendi in order to make sure that we properly understand the virus of their modernism, vicious and highly contagious, before we go anywhere near them. What they would most need, if they could take it, is to be offended and shocked out of their modernism, until they grasp what Fr Calmel meant when he said, “A modernist is a heretic combined with a traitor.”

5 No proper agreement between Rome and the Society has been signed, so no harm is yet done.

There has been immense harm in a series of partial agreements, e.g. on confessions and marriages, by which large numbers of Society priests and laity understand less and less what their Founder meant when he wrote in his last book that any priest wishing to keep the Faith should stay away from these Romans. They may be “nice” men. They may “mean well.” But, objectively, they are murdering Mother Church.

Kyrie eleison.

Professor Drexel – III

Professor Drexel – III on January 18, 2020

In the third and last extracts for these “Comments” from the admirable book of Professor Drexel from the 1970’s in Austria, “Faith is greater than Obedience,” we are entitled to think that it is Our Lord speaking, because in itself the message is entirely orthodox, and in the context of the confusion in the Church which followed on Vatican II (1962–1965), it is a clear signpost that the official Church was going the wrong way, as it is still doing, well into the 20th century. For the Catholic clergy, the message is a clear warning: if you insist on following men’s new direction so as to abandon God’s true religion, you face a frightening condemnation in Hell when you die. For the Catholic lay-folk, the book is an encouragement equally clear: if with faith and courage you remain faithful to the true Church, your reward will be great in Heaven. For clergy and laity alike, the message is entirely up-to-date in 2020.

MAY, 1974.

Do not become dejected because of the confusion and heresies of unfaithful and apostate priests, whose body and sensual enjoyment count more than the love of My Church and of immortal souls. Let all the real, true believers know that the interior and exterior enemies of the Church shall perish – forever – unless they return with interior repentance to the one and only doctrine of the Church.

I tell you: Priests will arise, who are even now being trained, hidden away in silence for the future and for the time – coming soon – when with an apostolic spirit, following in the footsteps of the saints, for that divine order and for that unity of My Catholic Church which I desire, they will step forward with a holy reverence for the mystery and miracle of the Holy Eucharist. (This is surely a prophecy of the young priests of Tradition who would start coming out of Écône in small but significant numbers in 1976.)

JULY, 1975.

My Church lives in the midst of apostasy and destruction. She lives on among numerous faithful and loyal people. In the history of My Church, there have always been times of decline, desertion and devastation, because of bad priests and tepid shepherds. But the spirit of God is stronger, and upon the ruins and graveyard of infidelity and betrayal it has raised up the Church and caused it to blossom again, only smaller than before. My servant Marcel’s work in Écône is not about to perish! (The “Marcel” here mentioned is of course Archbishop Lefebvre who founded in 1970 the Traditional seminary of Écône.)

MARCH, 1976.

My faithful son Marcel, who is suffering so much for the sake of the Faith, is on the right track. He is like a light and pillar of truth, which many ordained priests of Mine are betraying. Faith is greater than

obedience. Therefore, it is My will that the work for the theological education of priests should continue, in the spirit and according to the will of My son Marcel, so as to contribute powerfully to the rescue of My one true Church. (Whoever has ears to hear, has here the clearest endorsement of Catholic Tradition.)

DECEMBER, 1976.

Those who prepare themselves for the priesthood and enter seminaries under the diocesan bishops, enter without having a whole or deep faith in Transsubstantiation; and not a few priestly candidates flirt with the idea of one day getting married. Therefore, the time is not far away when people will be without priests in many places.

Yet those priests who see in the sacramental Sacrifice of the Mass the truest and holiest of sacrifices, and who celebrate with a holy reverence the mystery of My Body and Blood, as does My worthy servant Marcel, are persecuted, despised, and outlawed.

Kyrie eleison.

Professor Drexel – II

Professor Drexel – II on January 11, 2020

As with many alleged messages from Heaven, if anyone were to say that the essence of the messages given to Professor Drexel from 1970 to 1977 is already in the Gospel, namely “Blessed are you when men revile and persecute you . . . for your reward is great in Heaven” (Mt. V, 11–12), they would be quite right. But if they went on to say that his messages are not necessary because they are already in the Gospel, they would be quite wrong. In the 1970’s began the moral torture of many good Catholics torn by the priests of Vatican II between their Catholic faith and their Catholic obedience. It took Our Lord to tell souls like Prof. Drexler, again and again, that it was His own priests who had betrayed.

For indeed Catholics who for 400 years had been saved by their obedience to the faithful Council of Trent (1545–1563) could not, to begin with, grasp that the same obedience could no longer be given to the unfaithful Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). By 2020 the fidelity of Archbishop Lefebvre to the unchanging pre-Conciliar faith and Mass have had time to raise Tradition all over the Church (although there is still a long way to go), but in 1970 it was simply inconceivable except to a very few souls that the Catholic Pope and bishops and priests could be demolishing the Church. Hence the need for messages like this one of July 3, 1970 from Our Lord (as one may well believe) to Professor Drexel:—

“Be in good spirit and do not let yourself be discouraged by the unrest and attempted demolition of My Church, nor by the subversion of the order of the world. It is true that Satan and his demoniacal powers are in action as never before in the history of mankind and the Church. But through the influence of God and the action of the Holy Ghost, is not a Work being created, which, more than any other work, calls upon the help of the angels, the supernatural powers and the good spirits? This work is of divine origin!

May all the faithful of My Church walk in peace and with firmness towards the future.

Satan will rage, and his best helpers are the priests who have fallen away, interiorly and exteriorly, from their faith and their consecration. Mary Immaculate, never touched by sin, shall be victorious. Although My flock that follows me and My cross, and that is faithful and with love believes in the holy presence of My Body and Blood, may become smaller, nevertheless faith and prayer, the profession of faith and hope, and the love of truth, shall triumph in the end. The storms may rage. In nature they can crack rocks and burst dams. But God is all-powerful, truth is stronger, grace richer and more abundant, and therefore the Rock which I have founded will last until the end!”

In the same vein are words from the message of March 5, 1971, to Professor Drexel:—

“Do not be discouraged by the present internal and external oppression of My Church. It is from within that the servants of God have become unfaithful to their vocation and their grace ( . . . ) These are the priests and theologians, as they call themselves, who have abandoned and betrayed me, and who are still persecuting me. Their number increases ( . . . ) Never since I walked visibly among men have the troubles of My one and true Church been so great as at this present time – and the distress is still growing.

Nevertheless, do not despair – even if the flock of which I as Divine and Good Shepherd spoke, becomes very small, that Church which I founded on Peter and which I compared to a rock, shall be destroyed neither from without nor from within. But you and all souls who have been entrusted to you by the Father, must continue to work for the Church, for the faith and for souls. The people helping you shall harvest blessings for their good deeds, and this blessing cannot be compared to anything in this world.”

Kyrie eleison.

Two Bishops

Two Bishops on December 21, 2019

Ever since the summer and autumn of 2012 when it became clear that two of the three bishops of the Society of St Pius X were no longer taking the position towards relations of the Society with Rome which they had taken in their April 7 letter to Society Headquarters, followers of the Society, priests and laity, have wondered why. Few people, then or since, will have taken the bishops’ change of position to have been a question of persons or personalities. Since the letter warned severely against abandoning Archbishop Lefebvre’s clear refusal of contacts with unconverted Rome, most people took the two bishops’ change for what it was, namely a rallying to the Superior General’s new principle of contact before conversion. Yet since Conciliar Rome had hardly changed except for the worse between 1988 and 2012, why had the two bishops changed?

The question retains all of its importance for today. What is to be gained by the Society for the Faith – not by the Faith for the Society! – through friendly contacts of the Society with the Conciliar Romans still hell-bent on their Vatican II ecumenism, down to and including the Pope’s veneration of the Pachamama idol in the very gardens of the Vatican? One thing seems certain: for the last 20 years the Society has staked everything for its future on that friendship, and to give it up now would mean admitting that these 20 years had all been a big mistake. Therefore the Society, in grave need of new bishops for its worldwide Traditional apostolate, cannot choose and consecrate its own choice of Traditional bishops, because these would certainly displease the Conciliar Romans. Therefore the two bishops in 2012 laid a heavy cross on their own backs, heavier each year – they helped to drive the Society up a blind alley – in 2019 it cannot have, and it cannot not have, its own bishops.

Recent information became available that throws some light on the two bishops’ decision to abandon the Archbishop’s line of conversion-before-contacts, to which they had so recently adhered. As for Bishop de Galarreta, we learn that almost as soon as the April 7 letter appeared on the Internet, he hastened to SSPX Headquarters to apologise to the Superior General for its appearance, which he absolutely disclaimed. But how could he disclaim the appearance without also dissociating himself from the content? It seems that the publication made him fear the imminent implosion of the Society more than the content made him fear the blind alley of the Society, its essential abandoning of the Archbishop’s defending of the faith. Was the Society’s survival more important than that of the faith?

Bishop Tissier de Mallerais took longer to retract his signature, so to speak, of the April 7 letter, but by early 2013 that retraction was also clear. To a friend he then gave the following episcopal guidance: Rome’s conversion cannot today come all at once. Official recognition will enable us to work that much more efficaciously from within the Church. We need patience and tact to take our time so as not to upset the Romans who still do not like our criticism of the Council, but we are making our way gradually – is that not what the Saints did? We must continue to denounce scandals and to accuse the Council, but we need to be intelligent so as to understand the way of thinking of our adversaries, who do after all include the See of Peter. Bishop Fellay’s policy has not really failed: nothing was signed on the 13th of June, 2012, nothing catastrophic, nothing stupendous has happened for the last 17 months. A few priests left us, which I find deplorable, from lack of prudence and judgment, but it was all their own fault. In brief, try to be more trusting in others and less trusting in yourself. Put your trust in the Society and its leaders. All’s well that ends well. That should be the spirit of your next decisions and writings.

Here end the bishop’s reasons for recommending his friend to follow Bishop Fellay. But have either Bishop de Galarreta or Bishop Tissier de Mallerais or Bishop Fellay fully understood the Archbishop’s reasons for cutting contact with the Conciliar Romans? Do not all three of them gravely underestimate the unprecedented crisis caused by the Conciliar churchmen’s on-going betrayal of the Truth and of the Faith? How can doctrinal compromise or merely human politicking with Rome solve that pre-apocalyptic crisis?

Kyrie eleison.

Both… And…

Both… And… on November 30, 2019

If issues of these “Comments” can broadly be divided into those that treat of the modern problem and those that treat of the Catholic solution, it would seem to be a pity if a number of readers are interested in the problem but not in the solution, or in the solution but not in the problem. This is because if I know the problem without the solution, I can be seriously tempted to despair, especially today, when God is giving to His enemies unprecedented permission almost to destroy His Church. On the other hand if knowledge of the solution leads me to mistake or to underestimate the problem, then the problem is liable to catch me unawares by going around my inadequate defences.

St Paul was a classic case of someone who knew both, and who grasped so well the New Testament solution, Jesus Christ (Rom. VII, 24–25), only because he had been a fervent Pharisee according to the problem of what sinful men had made of the Old Testament (I Cor. XV, 8–10). So it was only because St Paul had directly experienced the powerlessness of the Old Testament to forgive sin that he so deeply understood the salvation which Christ had brought to men by the New Testament. Another great convert who profited from many years in error to become one of the Church’s greatest ever servants of Catholic truth was St Augustine. Here is why the French have a saying, “A convert is worth two apostles.”

And here is why Catholics today should not scorn knowledge of the enemies of God or of how they are fighting Him, however vile that fight may be. And non-Catholics will be wise not to scorn the Catholic Church, because, however downtrodden it may appear to be, it still has the only true solutions to any of the world’s real, i.e. properly human, problems. All such problems are the poisoned fruit of sin rearing up against God in men’s souls, where God alone, and not psychiatrists, can penetrate with His forgiveness, which He chooses to bestow through His divine Son alone, and the Church purchased with His Blood.

Then let us suggest to non-Catholic readers of these “Comments” that they take interest not only in the analyses of the modern arts or politics, but also in their arguments that can seem to be merely squabbles among Catholics, such as what is wrong with Vatican II, or how the Society of St Pius X is more and more following Vatican II. This is because the Catholic Church may well be the only true solution of all readers’ true problems, but that solution is vulnerable to constant falsification by sinful men, and if it is falsified it is no longer the solution but part of the problem. Now Vatican II was the logical climax of many centuries of men wishing to put man in the place of God, and the Society of St Pius X, while it was designed and founded in 1970 to resist the errors of Vatican II, has since 2012 in particular fallen under the poisonous charm of those errors. Therefore non-Catholics looking for real solutions to the modern problems that they know all too well should follow the arguments over Vatican II and the Society.

Correspondingly, to Catholic readers of these “Comments” let it be suggested that they follow not only the arguments concerning Vatican II and the Society’s dangerous slide into conformity with the modern world but also the analyses in depth of what is wrong with that world. For indeed if the Society leaders are sliding in this way, is it not because they have underestimated the problem of that world? Are they not heading for defeat by waging a war without knowing the enemy? Whereas Archbishop Lefebvre once said that the whole of Vatican II is shot through with subjectivism, did not Bishop Fellay once say that 95% of its texts are acceptable? And whereas the Archbishop often said, in so many words, that one needs a long spoon to sup with today’s Conciliar Romans, is not Bishop Fellay’s successor following the latter’s example of behaving as though he thinks he can outwit the Roman devils? The real strength of the Archbishop was never his cleverness but always his faith, and his faithfulness to Catholic truth. And the same is true of the Society which he founded. Then let Catholic readers of these “Comments” not think that they have no need to consider the Comments’ analyses of modern corruption, however distasteful that consideration may be to them. They cannot afford to hide their heads in the sand.

Kyrie eleison.

World Sliding

World Sliding on November 23, 2019

It is not just the Society of St Pius X which is sliding, it is a whole world that is sliding, within men’s souls. And just as “you cannot make silk purses out of sows’ ears,” and “you cannot make bricks without straw,” so it is hopeless to expect yesterday’s institutions not to be emptied out by today’s human beings, like so many collapsed balloons in which the air has been let out. Here is the interesting answer of somebody who is still thinking, when he was asked what he saw in the future for the “Resistance,” for the SSPX, for the Church and for the world –

As for the “Resistance” there will be no great increase in numbers, no large harvest of souls, because the suitable material is simply not there. How can you make anything Catholic out of people who have little or no idea any longer of true and false, of right and wrong, of what truly needs to be resisted? Truth and right have been undermined, and more and more people have given up believing that they are of any importance, both because man is a social animal that takes his colouring from those around him who have today massively given up on truth and right, and secondly because life is so much less demanding if truth and right are insignificant. I can then go with the flow, and there is nothing I still need to resist.

As for the SSPX, if Bishop Fellay is fearful, his fear will spread to the rest of the Society and from there to the rest of the Church, insofar as the Archbishop’s Society was in its heyday the stiffening in the backbone of the Church. Without that stiffening a soft Conciliarism will prevail, with a hybrid Missal blending the Tridentine Mass with the New Mass, with a “hermeneutic of continuity” blending Catholic doctrine with Vatican II, with doubtful priests and rites making possible an illusory re-run of the 1950’s. And so the Church will end up with nobody still telling the Truth, and the “light of the world” will give out only a dim and optional glow, and the “salt of the earth” will be powerless to hinder the universal corruption.

The world will consequently become more and more degenerate, more and more wilfully artificial, because the Church was the supernatural protector, by grace in men’s souls, of everything natural in God’s creation. And in this New World Order even the remains of the true Church will continue to be persecuted by today’s passive-aggressive intimidation. Beneath an appearance of passive toleration, the reality is one of relentless pressure to conform – “You had better be ‘politically correct,’ like everyone else, or we will make you an outcast.” To this pressure from without corresponds a mysterious weakness within the modern mind which cannot hold on to any truth. The Devil then gets inside at the natural level, and swings minds to the left, away from God, making Catholics doubt themselves – ‘Who am I to say that Archbishop Lefebvre was right? Were his enemies really evil? Who am I to judge?’ And in this state of mind, it is easy to betray . . .

It was the Council of the 1960’s which let loose the confusion in the 1970’s, and it has had another half-century to spread since then, with the SSPX secretly working for the enemy for the last 20 years . . . .

This vision of the future is dark, but it is a realistic forecast on the merely human level. Fortunately God is God, He does indeed exist, and His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are our ways His ways, “for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah LV, 8–9). Nor will this God be frustrated by the machinations of men: “The word that goes forth from My mouth shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I intend, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills before you shall break forth into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off.” (Is. LV, 11–13).

Kyrie eleison.