Tag: Society of St. Pius X

Sliding Still – II

Sliding Still – II posted in Eleison Comments on November 9, 2019

In case readers think that the August conversation reported here last week between Dom Placide of Bellaigue in France and Society of St Pius X authorities in Switzerland is insufficient to prove that the Society is still sliding away from the defence of the true Faith, here is another report leading to the same conclusion: at about the same time as the Society’s Superior General (SG) gave his re-assuring interview of September 12, he presided over the appointment of a Commission of three to go down to Rome and pick up again the theological discussions with the Conciliar Romans which ran from 2009 to 2011 with no result. And what three representatives of the Society were chosen for the discussions? None other than Bishop Fellay and Fathers Pfluger and Nély, the Society’s ruling triumvirate from 2006 to 2018, when all three were voted out of office at the elective General Chapter of July, 2018! A little background is again necessary.

In the preceding elective General Chapter of 2006, the Society’s 40 leading priests remained faithful, less faithful than in 1994 (as Bishop Fellay once admitted) but nevertheless faithful, to Archbishop Lefebvre’s principle of Catholic common sense, that in the clash between the Society and Rome such important questions of the Faith were at stake that no merely practical agreement without a doctrinal agreement could possibly resolve the clash. Now by 2006 Bishop Fellay had himself long since ceased to take doctrine seriously. For him, like for Pope Benedict XVI, for all modernists and for the mass of the world’s inhabitants today, God’s Truth is less important than men’s unity, but he knew that inside the Society many members still followed the Archbishop in their respect for God’s Truth, and so he continued to ask Pope Benedict for doctrinal discussions to take place so that the Society and Rome could be united.

The request was intrinsically foolish from the very start, because the doctrines of Catholic Tradition and of Vatican II can no more be united than the doctrines of 2+2=4 and 2+2=5. But both the Pope and the SG apparently hoped that the two sides could settle for 2+2= four and a half, because for both of them unity was more precious than truth. And so “doctrinal discussions” took place between four representatives on each side, from 2009 t0 2011. However, back in 2009 Bishop Fellay had still had to appoint four Society representatives who took Catholic Truth seriously, while the Romans were adamant in their attachment to the anti-truths of Vatican II, so that the discussions went nowhere. Unity failed then to prevail over Truth.

But at the Society’s interim (non-elective) General Chapter of 2012, opinion had shifted among the Society’s 40 leading priests, so that the Archbishop’s principle of doctrine first was abandoned, and the Society officially accepted that unity should come first. However, a hard-core resistance movement of Society priests immediately arose, threatening Society unity. And so when at the elective Chapter of 2018 the 40 priests still loved the Truth enough to vote Bishop Fellay and his two Assistants out of office, the new SG picked up afterwards on the idea of doctrinal discussions with the Conciliar Romans, an idea still intrinsically foolish but always as appealing as it is to have one’s cake and eat it. Down he went to Rome, and both the Romans and the SG must still have been dreaming of four-and-a-half, so it appears that “doctrinal discussions” are back on the table.

But whereas in 2009 Bishop Fellay had had to choose lovers of the Truth to represent the Society, the new SG seems to have chosen the very three officials of the Society who presided over the Chapter of 2012 which put unity before Truth! So who is fooling who? If the new SG is fooling himself that a non-doctrinal unity is possible, woe unto the Society, now and for the foreseeable future. If he is not fooling himself, is he acting under pressure from Rome or fellayised Menzingen, or both? It is the same thing, because Bishop Fellay did all he could to put Menzingen and the Society under Rome’s power. It is Rome that is therefore calling the shots, and rubbing the Society’s nose in the Society’s own dirt. Honourable Fr. Pagliarani, if you do not like taking responsibility for such dirt, the honourable thing to do is to resign!

Kyrie eleison.

Sliding Still – I

Sliding Still – I posted in Eleison Comments on November 2, 2019

There have been signs to give one hope that the official Society of St Pius X is no longer sliding under the power and control of the Conciliar churchmen in Rome, but such signs are overwhelmed by the evidence to the contrary. For instance, on September 12 the new Superior General (SG) who was voted to take over from Bishop Fellay in July of last year, Fr Davide Pagliarani, made public an interview in which he said many good things, enough to make at least one reader of these “Comments” rejoice that the Society’s slide was being thrown into reverse. Alas, a recent report from Society HQ in Switzerland gives us to fear that Fr Pagliarani is being directed to say such conservative things in order to fool all Traditionalists who are not watching his actions. Here is the background and the report –

Catholic Tradition has houses in France of three outstanding Orders of monks and friars from the Church’s past: the Benedictines in Bellaigue, the Dominicans in Avrillé, the Franciscans in Morgon. All three were encouraged and helped to start in their day by Archbishop Lefebvre, but never did he claim authority over any of them, in fact he positively refused to do so, because he did not see the Society as having any mission to monopolise Tradition or to control all Traditional initiatives. Since their founding, all three independent houses have, relatively speaking, flourished, and in 2019, as is normal for monks and friars, all three exert a special influence over Traditionalists, all over the world one might say.

However, with the Society’s major change of direction which became public in 2012, relations of these houses with the Society have become problematic, because its leaders have naturally wanted these influential religious to change direction also. Several years ago the SSPX broke off relations with the Dominicans of Avrillé who were considered to be too independent, while the Franciscans have needed over the same period of time to adopt a policy carefully balanced between co-operation and independence. And as for the Benedictines, their young Superior from Brazil, Dom Placide, came last August under particular pressure from the Society.

Summoned to Menzingen by Fr Pagliarani, he was rebuked for his lack of co-operation with the Society, and a piece of paper was put before him by which he was to sign over to the Society all control over the Benedictine Monastery! When – to put it politely – he declined the offer, he was threatened that the whole world would be told that the SSPX was cutting off all relations with the Monastery. Dom Placide replied that it was up to the SG to do what he thought best, whereupon the threat changed. Now the threat was that all priories of the Society would be ordered to send no more vocations to Bellaigue. And this threat has been carried out. Dom Placide declined the offer to stay for lunch in Menzingen.

We are entitled to speculate upon such a conversation. If we wish to keep up our hopes for Fr Pagliarani personally, we might speculate that he himself was directed to use such bully tactics upon the relatively young head of the Benedictines. But he cannot avoid the responsibility for at least consenting to act the part of the bully. More seriously, the bully tactics suggest that Rome and Menzingen are plotting jointly to sweep together under the Society all presently independent Traditional groupings, and then to restructure the Society and replace it by a Personal Prelature under Conciliar Rome’s complete control. This would have two advantages for Rome’s war on Tradition: firstly the independence and last traces of Archbishop Lefebvre in the structure of the Society which he designed would disappear, and secondly Rome could then gently strangle, together with the Society, all Traditional groupings and initiatives in one fell swoop. Nor would the Society’s present leaders disapprove of the fell swoop, on the contrary, because as they gently dropped dead of the strangling they would at least have the official recognition for which they have striven for so long.

So much for the misleaders of the Society. But what about its followers, priests and laity?

Kyrie eleison.

Father Bruewiler

Father Bruewiler posted in Eleison Comments on October 26, 2019

The following analysis of the present situation of the Newsociety of St Pius X appeared in the St Gallen parish bulletin #3 of Fr Aloïs Bruewihler for autumn of this year. Fr Bruewihler is a former Society priest who left the Society in 2015 because he could not reconcile himself with the false direction being taken by the Newsociety which is still pursuing recognition by the Newchurch authorities in Rome, although these are always insisting on acceptance by the Newsociety of the profoundly anti-Catholic documents of Vatican II as the indispensable condition of that recognition. Fr Bruewihler’s article is adapted here to the A4 length of each of these “Comments.”

In a time of severe crisis when life’s very foundations are being attacked, shaken and even overthrown, a Catholic must in all humility, with trust in the protection of Almighty God, concentrate on “the one thing necessary” (Lk. X, 42), without calling God in question, but instead humbly accepting the trial that His Eternal Wisdom has allowed (or even set up?) as a grace-laden means of punishing or purifying or sanctifying or saving us, body and soul.

Since Mother Church, humiliated and in chains since Vatican II, is as occupied and swamped as ever by sinister Freemasonic powers established within the “Conciliar church,” God’s all-wise Providence gave to Catholics a faithful successor of the Apostles, Archbishop Lefebvre, in order to guarantee for us in our extreme and continuing need an emergency source of the unadulterated doctrine of Christ. The more the Newvatican speaks and acts under the influence of the “smoke of Satan,” the more attention Catholics should pay to the doctrinal heritage left to us by the Founder of the Society of St Pius X if they wish to save their souls. For just as St Paul warned the Corinthians to keep to the Gospel as he had preached it to them, and as he had received it from Christ (I Cor. XV, 1–3, etc.), so today to abandon the Archbishop’s teaching on the New Mass and the Council is in effect to abandon the teaching of Christ.

But soon after the Archbishop’s death in 1991, the Society’s leaders set out on a new path, by which they have striven ever since to “normalise” the Society’s canonical standing within the mainstream Church, as though it were the Archbishop’s Society and not the Conciliar Church that was abnormal. This change of direction began clearly to appear with the Society leaders’ attempt in 2001 to submit to the Conciliar Romans, and it came still more clearly into focus with the Letter to those leaders on April 7, 2012, from three of the Society’s four bishops, one of whom was soon after excluded from the Society. The Society was being split in two, and whoever approved of that exclusion then must be approving now of the Society’s new friends, such as the Swiss Newchurch Bishop, whose doctrine on Council and Mass is far from that of Archbishop Lefebvre. Thus the Newsociety is now being formed on the basis of practical unity before doctrinal truth, which is a Freemasonic principle, absolutely not Catholic. Yet, more and more blinded priests and laity seem to be hoping that a Society-Rome agreement will come about.

The problem goes back to Vatican II (1962–1965) when faithful Catholics, in their families and at work, had to learn to their cost what it meant for Church officials to depart from Catholic Truth. Catholics could no longer follow or obey those Popes, bishops and priests who had authority over them, because Catholic Authority is at the service of Faith and Justice. On the contrary, Benedict XVI’s “Motu Proprio” of 2007, and the SSPX Superior General’s ambiguous and misleading Press Statement issued at the same time, are two examples of serious disregard for truth and justice. As Bishop Tissier said in 2016, “The ‘Motu Proprio’ Mass is not the true Mass.” We could add, the Newsociety, forming steadily ever since 1991, is no longer the true Society.

Kyrie eleison.

Modern Convert

Modern Convert posted in Eleison Comments on October 19, 2019

If anybody is tempted today to think that Almighty God has resigned from governing His Church or the world, there are testimonials reaching the office of these “Comments” which show clearly – at least in this Commentator’s opinion – that the Holy Ghost is still at work. A fallen away Catholic tells below how he came back to the Church, how he then found Catholic Tradition and soon after that the “Resistance,” and what sense he makes of it all. Amidst the confusion and discouragement which we all know, he writes with a remarkable breadth and serenity, surely a sign that he is being led by God.

I am a married man with two girls, one nearly adolescent and the other a baby. It is to my grandmother that I owe my return to the Faith. One day five years ago I was just passing by a church when out of the blue I thought of her praying the Rosary, and I was impelled to enter the church to pray. From then on I began to pray once more and to attend Mass. Of course it was the New Mass at first, until about three years ago when I discovered the existence of Catholic Tradition.

From then my family and I have been attending the local chapel of the Society of St Pius X, where we were welcomed with great joy by the priest and congregation. But I soon discovered that there were many divisions in the chapel, and so you can imagine the difficulty I had in sorting out what was going on. Having so recently arrived in Tradition, I needed a good deal of patience, courage and perseverance in order to hang on and not just run away in the first six months! But our thirst for truth and our search for roots overcame our fear, and so we stayed, thanks be to God.

I understood that the SSPX is truly a holy part of the true Catholic Church of Christ, and that is why I am staying at least for the moment inside the Society, with my family. But I am listening all the time to what the sedevacantists and “Resistants” have to say, in order to continue making up my mind. I have an enormous admiration for Archbishop Lefebvre, a true man of God, a holy successor of the Apostles. To see his Society vacillating under the world’s infernal pressure is very difficult to bear, and it requires of us to pray even more.

Certainly the Society still has a great deal to do, because it can still do much good. So can the so-called “Resistance” which plays, and is right to play, the part of a guard-rail whenever the Society strays off course and totters under the attacks of the modern world and the temptations held out to it by the Conciliar churchmen. I am convinced that the “Resistance” has a vital part to play, and that Our Lord enables it to exist for a great good, even inside the Society although it appears to be outside. Personally I count myself as a firm resistant to anybody who does not clearly attack, head on, the Second Vatican Council which was inspired by the Devil. After all, how can one live as a true Catholic today without resisting everywhere and all the time? So is not being a Catholic here below the hardest and most beautiful thing that there is? Thank you, granny, for praying to Jesus and Mary for me!

In this life we never see God Himself, but we do see Him at work: a grandmother’s prayers; prayer of a soul as its first and most important step; attending Mass as a next step: the New Mass still carrying grace, however strangled the grace may be; the Catholic soul being somehow shown Tradition by God, and gravitating towards it; the refuge in a local chapel of the Society, and the welcome there, only for the next severe trial to begin! Trial overcome by the need for roots and the love and pursuit of truth, which settles down in the mind staying open amidst all the confusion, but anchored in respect for the Archbishop and in hatred of Vatican II, profiting by both the Society and the “Resistance” for what each has had to give him, without excluding either; the recognition that any Catholic must swim against the current, and finally gratitude for how God has led him. Many lessons in not too many words. May God bless the writer, and keep him and his family faithful until death. He stands a good chance.

Kyrie eleison.

“Resistance” Unity

“Resistance” Unity posted in Eleison Comments on August 3, 2019

With the purpose of aiming a fire-extinguisher at pride, these “Comments” choose rarely to highlight any achievement of the priests and lay-folk labouring since 2012 to ensure the survival of Catholic principles and practice, especially but not exclusively within the Newsociety of St Pius X, i.e. that Society which is sliding into the arms of Rome. Newsociety leaders naturally condemn the so-called “Resistance” or “Fidelity” movement, pointing out in particular the divisions that have arisen between its various priests. But the time has come to highlight the contrasting unity of the Catholic “Resistance.”

For instance a long-standing observer of the “Resistance” scene makes the following pertinent remarks: The main argument of the Superiors of the Newsociety against the “Resistance” is to point out the divisions between Resistant priests. But while various Resistant priests have a variety of vocational gifts, giving rise to a variety of Resistant works (e.g. a Friary, a Seminary, a Monastery, a Priory, a Mission, etc.), there reigns amongst them all a remarkable unity as to the end being pursued – the survival of the Catholic Faith. On the contrary, the Newsociety is a giant with feet of clay, held together only by disciplinary measures, the fear of sanctions and personal interests, but as to the end being pursued it is highly divided: an Agreement with Rome, or not; marriages under official authority, or not; flirting with Conciliar bishops, or not – the Newsociety is cracking in all directions.

Once again, what we are seeing today is how all Catholics without exception are undermined by the split between Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority which resulted from the conscious or unconscious betrayal of the 2000 bishops and two Popes who engineered Vatican II. Thus in 2019 on the one hand the “Resistance” holding to the Truth suffers outward divisions from the lack of Authority, because the need for authority cannot from below create its reality, because authority can by definition only come from above. On the other hand the Newsociety holding to Roman Authority suffers inward division from the lack of Truth, because that Roman Authority is clinging to the lies of Vatican II.

But Truth is the purpose of Authority, and not the other way round. “Peter, when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Lk. XXII, 32). In other words, firstly recover your own shaken faith in the Truth, then secondly exercise your Authority over the other Apostles. This is because in a fallen world, the inward Truth needs outward Authority to defend it, but if the outward Authority is no longer defending that inward Truth then it has lost its true reason for being, and it becomes an end in itself, ultimately a tyranny to serve personal positions, as with Paul VI and the Archbishop’s successors.

Thus however plentiful be the personal miseries of individual Resistants, so long as they are faithful to the Truth, the “Resistance” will outlive the Newsociety, just as the Archbishop’s Society, as long as it was faithful to the Truth, dominated, and will ultimately outlive, the Conciliar Romans. The ultimate problem is not one of persons or Authority, but of doctrines and Truth. Thus when in the early 2000’s the successor of the Archbishop at that time appealed to Authority to solve divisions inside the Society, he was already well down the Conciliar path of preferring Authority to Truth, of preferring will to reason. As a result, the Archbishop’s Society has been turned into a tyranny, and although the tyrant was apparently dismissed from the seat of power by the election of a year ago, really he is back there. Such is our modern world. Reality gives the lie to appearances.

Kyrie eleison.

Huonderland Again

Huonderland Again posted in Eleison Comments on June 1, 2019

On May 20th, the day on which Bishop Huonder’s term of office as head of the major Swiss Diocese of Chur since 2007 came to a close, the disputed question of his future place of retirement was settled once and for all by a Declaration signed jointly by himself and by the Society’s Superior General, Fr David Pagliarani – the Bishop will be living in the Society’s boys’ school in Wangs in Eastern Switzerland. Doubts had arisen as to where the Bishop would retire because of the natural improbability of a Conciliar bishop settling inside a Traditional house, but on both sides of the doctrinal abyss between the Second Vatican Council and Catholic Tradition, the anti-doctrinal dream of bridging that abyss has prevailed. Thus about his decision the honourable Bishop himself has just written, “In accordance with the wishes of Pope Francis, I shall strive there (in Wangs) to contribute to Church unity.” It is an honourable intention, but it leaves out of account the evil of Vatican II.

As the modern world goes, and with it the modern Church, and with the Newchurch the Newsociety, Bishop Huonder is a decent and well-meaning churchman, full of good intentions which can make any “decent” person think that he is good company, and safe to mix with, and safe to place within a “decent” school. Certainly one may hope that Traditional surroundings in Wangs will do him good.

But from the standpoint of God and of the true Catholic Church, he is a believer in the Second Vatican Council, and therefore he believes in working with the present Pope of that Council, Pope Francis, and in working with all followers of Tradition who have lost their grip on the objective ambiguity and evil of that Council, with its six Conciliar Popes. For indeed that Council is profoundly godless and contaminates all that it touches (see several issues of these “Comments” due soon to appear), and it twists out of true all persons who believe in it. Therefore from the standpoint of the salvation of souls – which is God’s own standpoint – Bishop Huonder is, objectively speaking, contaminated and twisted, not fit company at all for Catholics or a Catholic school, all the more dangerous for his being subjectively decent, well-meaning, likeable and so on.

Nor need he be blamed any more or less than thousands of other “decent” bishops since Vatican II for having let himself be misled by a series of Conciliar Popes, nor need he be insulted as though he is a villain, nor need he be socially shunned like a pariah. But Catholics should absolutely avoid any kind of contact with him, social or otherwise, which might give rise to any temptation to keep with him, for as long as he believes in Vatican II, any kind of company in matters of the Faith. And if to avoid any such temptation it would be necessary to shun his company altogether, then his company should be shunned altogether. God and the Faith must come “first, last and foremost,” otherwise we risk losing our souls.

In conclusion, we can only wish to Bishop Huonder in his retirement all grace of God to understand the perfidy of Vatican II, and we can only wish all grace of God to the Traditional inmates of the Society school in Wangs to help him by their example to understand the danger of the “wishes” of Pope Francis towards the Society, which another example has just brought to light.

The report has come from Rome in the last few days that the Argentinian priest who was appointed by Bishop Fellay to be the Society’s General Bursar, at the request of Pope Francis and with the permission of his successor at the head of the Society, Fr Pagliarani, has rejoined the official Church, and in accordance always with the wishes of Pope Francis he resides presently in the Casa Santa Marta where the Pope himself lives; he will be incardinated in the diocese of Rome, possibly waiting to be appointed bishop by Pope Francis. If such a report were only half true, what would it not still reveal of the inability or unwillingness of high Society officials to understand that Archbishop Lefebvre fought the Second Vatican Council for reasons of the Faith?

Kyrie eleison.