Society of St. Pius X

Bishop Huonder

Bishop Huonder on March 30, 2019

It was widely known that Bishop Huonder (BpH) of the official diocese of Chur, Switzerland, when he is due to retire in April at the age of 77, was due to take up official residence for his autumn years in a boys’ school of the Society of St Pius X in Wangs, Switzerland. There was even a rumour circulating, from a close collaborator with two previous Superior Generals of the SSPX, that this same Conciliar bishop would be the principal consecrator of two Society priests to give, with Pope Francis’ full approval, two new bishops to the SSPX, perhaps after Easter. A date so soon for an event so significant is certainly impossible now, but its logic was inexorable, given the Newsociety’s 20-year old policy of blending with the Newchurch.

The same logic was behind BpH’s settling for his retirement in the Society’s school for boys in Wangs. Even as official bishop for one of the largest Newchurch dioceses in Switzerland, he is reported to have made several visits already to the school, and to have made himself popular with the Newsociety priests and boys living there. But he would not be cutting all contact with the Newchurch in Rome. On the contrary, his present diocesan spokesman announced in January that the bishop’s retiring to Wangs in April “is tied to a mission being entrusted to him by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to maintain contact with the SSPX.” Clearly BpH, reputed to be a personal friend of Pope Francis, was planning to act as a link between Newchurch and Newsociety, in the hope of bringing them closer together.

Nor was the hope necessarily dishonest. Many a Newchurchman cannot see (or will not see) the gulf that separates the Catholic religion of God from the Conciliar religion of man. On both sides there exists the wish to pretend that there is no such gulf. On the one hand Catholics find it hard to bear being outside the structure of the Church’s visible Authority, while on the other hand followers of Vatican II need re-assurance that they have not broken with the true Church’s unchanging Tradition. It may be to BpH’s credit that he wanted to settle in a more Catholic environment than the official diocese where he probably has no alternative to giving Communion to young women badly dressed, and no alternative to taking back remarks entirely justified against homosexuality. But “A fact is stronger than the Lord Mayor,” says the English proverb.

The fact is that Vatican II was the greatest break with Catholic Tradition in all Church history. Take for instance the Newmass, which is to the Council as practice is to theory. Would BpH have been asked never to say it in the school? Could he have accepted never to say it? And even if so, could he possibly have admitted that the theory and practice of his priesthood and episcopacy have been immersed in the Conciliar sell-out of God’s true Church to the godless modern world? Could he have shed overnight the convictions of all his tens of years of immersion in the Conciliar Church? Ordained priest in 1971 and consecrated bishop in 2007 with the rites of the revolutionary Paul VI, could he have admitted that to eliminate all doubt as to the Newrites’ validity, he needs to be conditionally re-ordained and re-consecrated? Or would the Newsociety have required neither? That seems most likely, given its recent practice, but how would the Swiss Traditionalists have responded to that? To all appearances Bishop Vitus Huonder may be an honest and well-meaning man, but his honesty is Conciliar, which means that he is loyal to a thoroughly dishonest corruption of the Catholic Faith and Church.

Alas, all over the world Society Traditionalists are being accustomed to the replacing of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society by the Newsociety. Bishop Fellay wanted to establish the SSPX within the walls of official Rome for it to act as a Trojan horse to convert Conciliar Rome. But was not BpH, even granting him all the good will in the world, being placed to act as a Trojan horse within the walls of the Society? One may hope that the school in Wangs would have enabled him to see the gulf between Tradition and the Council, but that is a fond hope. Alice was in Wonderland. The Newsociety wanted to be in Huonderland.

Kyrie eleison.

Convert Today – III

Convert Today – III on March 16, 2019

Dear young friend,

Two weeks ago these “Comments” related your own story of your conversion from the wasteland of a modern university to the truth of the Catholic Faith. It ended with your request for advice because you yourself realised that God had given you the Truth, but you needed to get your bearings in a very confused situation of Church and world. It took last week’s issue of the “Comments” to give you the basic advice that is valid for a Catholic convert in general, i.e. in all times and places. It will take this issue to offer you the particular advice recommended for you to see where you are in today’s chaos of the Church, unprecedented in all 20 centuries of Church history.

The crisis is unprecedented because the world will have only one ending, and we are approaching it. See Our Lord’s own description of the last times (Mt. XXIV, Lk. XXI), and see St Paul’s warning, dating from around 67AD, for these times (II Tim. III, 1–9), especially verses 5 and 8: men will be “corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith,” “having the appearance of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Now these avoid.” Excellent advice for 2019AD, because it is important to realise that today men in general and Catholics in particular are as a whole not “normal,” but men at the wrong end of a long process of degeneration. The purpose of such a realisation is neither to scorn them, nor to despair, but to take the right measure of what it means to live as a Catholic in a post- and anti-Christian world. In God it can be done – “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me ” (Phil. IV, 13).

The chaos in the Church is special today because never before Vatican II in the 1960’s had the official Church in Rome departed officially from the Catholic Faith. Now Catholic Truth and Catholic Authority were designed by Our Lord to go hand in hand – when Peter is to be confirmed in the Faith (Catholic Truth), then he is to confirm the other Apostles (Catholic Authority – Lk. XXII, 32). Thus Truth is the very purpose of Authority, but it needs Authority to protect it. Each needs the other, but at Vatican II they were split apart, because the Popes and Cardinals and Bishops (Authority), magnetised by the modern world, gave up the old religion (Truth). From now on all Catholics had to be schizophrenic – either they clung to Truth and let go of the false authority, or they clung to Authority and let go of the Truth, or they found their way somewhere in between. From now on every Catholic sheep had to find its own way through the thorn-hedge set up by the bad shepherds of Vatican II.

Judging by the fruits (Mt. VII, 15–20), Archbishop Lefebvre’s way, of resisting the false shepherds while still recognising their authority, has proved to be one of the most fruitful ways of dealing with the confusion let loose by the Council, but his successors at the head of his Society have not proved faithful to his balance between Truth and Authority. Even now many are crawling back to false Rome, when it is falser than ever! Let this be a warning to you of the danger of thinking today that the appearance of Catholicism is the same thing as its substance. Then how do you know where the substance is to be found? The best answer is Our Lord’s, just mentioned – judge by the fruits. By what fruits? By supernatural faith, as God has just given you to understand it, and by genuine supernatural charity.

Then mix for a while with all kinds of Catholics, but listen more than you talk. Be in no hurry to pursue a vocation because God is never in a hurry (Gal. I, 18; II, 1). Have a boundless trust in His Wisdom and Providence, and be careful of clinging to any human leader or leaders, until God puts His Church back on its feet (as He certainly will do). Always honour your father and mother, however wrong they may seem to be (God has not given them the grace He has given to you). Have a boundless compassion on the mass of confused souls around you, but never confuse subjective sincerity with objective truth. Love the Mother of God, and pray every day for as long as you can all 15 Mysteries of Her Holy Rosary. And God be with you.

Kyrie eleison.

Macchabees? Where?

Macchabees? Where? on January 26, 2019

What does the reunification of the Society of St Pius X with Rome mean to the great mass of the world’s inhabitants, even to the large number of its Catholics? The answer must be, very little. Similarly when passengers on the Titanic saw a team of engineers going below decks to investigate something or other, they may not have shown much interest, but as soon as they came to learn that their great ship was doomed, their interest must have grown much keener. The Catholic Church hit the iceberg of Vatican II over 50 years ago. A great engineer of the Church warned the Church’s captain of what had happened, and what would be the result, and he showed how to stop the Church from sinking. Alas, Archbishop Lefebvre was not heeded by the captains then or since, and his discouraged successors prefer today to listen to the misguided captains, who are, if the Society no longer shows the true way out, to be pitied.

Let us recall the last six years of the process of reunification, and assess where it is at today.

The decisive step in that process was the Society’s General Chapter of 2012, where it renounced the Archbishop’s fundamental principle that without a doctrinal agreement between the Society and Rome, no merely practical agreement could serve the Church. This is because a Catholic is a Catholic firstly by his subjective virtue of faith submitting his mind and will to the objective creed of the Church’s Faith. What the error of subjectivism does is to render the objective Faith subjective, so that I become free to believe, and consequently to behave, how I like. Like believing 2 and 2 are 4, OR 5 OR 6 OR 6,000,000. This unfaith of Vatican II the Society essentially adopted in 2012, yet Society leaders immediately began reassuring their priests and laity that nothing essential had changed in the Society. BUT –

In 2013 began a series of publicly admitted meetings in Rome with the Roman authorities, to prepare a step-by-step process of full recognition. This process duly followed:—

In 2014, There were visits of Roman dignitaries to SSPX seminaries, and there was the temporary Jubilee “concession” of official jurisdiction for SSPX Confessions.

In 2015, the “concession” on Confessions and Extreme-Unction was made permanent.

In 2016, priestly ordinations in the SSPX were no longer to be punished by suspension “a divinis.”

In 2017, Society Marriages were rendered “licit” by the participation of a Newchurch priest as witness.

In 2018, the SSPX General Chapter elected for their General Council three men who are no tigers of the Faith, and created two new positions alongside them (General Councillors) to enable Bishop Fellay and Fr. Schmidberger to retain their power as the two leading tigers of reunification.

And in 2019? – Rome has just re-absorbed the Commission Ecclesia Dei (ED) into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), from which it was hived off in 1988 to draw back to Rome Catholics tempted by the Society’s episcopal consecrations to follow the Archbishop instead of Rome. As such, ED was meant to be relatively kind to Traditionalists. But Pope Francis has no time for Tradition. Therefore since the Newsociety now agrees with Rome that there is no longer the clash with Rome that there was in 1988, he has put an end to ED. But ED was kind to Tradition, whereas the CDF are tigers of the Newchurch. Like Little Red Riding Hood, the Newsociety is throwing itself into the jaws of Rome – “Oh, sweet Big Bad Rome, what lovely teeth you have!” “All the better to eat you up with, you silly child!”

And the Society? Just as it will be happy if Rome dissolves ED because the CFD will then treat it as belonging fully to the Church, so it risks being happy if Rome were to attach to the Society two relatively decent Newbishops to look after its need of Ordinations and Confirmations, but from outside the Society and always under Rome’s own control. On Rome’s part it would be a clever move, closing the trap even tighter on what remains of the Archbishop’s Society. And how many Newsociety priests will even see that here is “a sea of troubles,” let alone “take arms, to end them” (Hamlet)? Not many, one may fear.

Kyrie eleison.

Trap Closing?

Trap Closing? on January 12, 2019

And so Church and world have staggered into another calendar year with everything coming into place for a third World War to wipe mankind off the face of the earth. And these “Comments” have reached their 600th issue when it seems just yesterday that they were celebrating their 500th issue. The world is spinning at a giddy pace – in Latin, “volvitur orbis” – but Almighty God is in full command, and His Cross is firmly planted, nor does it budge – “stat crux.” God gives a great degree of liberty to His enemies to act as His scourge upon a godless generation, but the scourging is for their good, to separate the sheep from the goats and to stop the sheep from sliding into Hell. And let His enemies not think that they will get the better of Him – He used the Assyrians to chastise the Israelites, but woe to the Assyrians if they thought they would escape His justice! – Isaiah X, especially verse 15 – God is not mocked.

But at the very heart of the world’s problems is the unprecedented problem of the Catholic Church. The Church depends on its hierarchy of bishops and priests, so it was logical that if God planned for His Church to decline before the end of the world (Lk. XVIII, 8), then the hierarchy would be involved in the decline, and that was the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). The time for their holding strong had lasted from the Counter-Reformation in the 1500s, four admirable centuries of Catholicism, but after that resistance they gave way, and replaced God’s Catholic Church with their own Newchurch, or Conciliar Church. In the 1970’s there was still enough faith in Catholics to make possible a serious continuation of the resistance, for which Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of St Pius X provided a lead, but after another 40 years his successors gave up that effort, and then Catholics were more abandoned than ever.

Today the life still seems to be draining out of them. It is an illusion to act or to react as though we are still in the 1970s. “Volvitur orbis.” The world has moved on, and with it, the Church. Extreme conditions call for extreme measures. As one once thriving Catholic institution after another turns slowly into a shell-game, Catholics turn slowly into walking ghosts of their former selves, and it seems as though there is little they can do about it. Nor are rhetoric or fine words the answer. The fine words are worn out, and the rhetoric is hollow. Catholics depend on their hierarchy, and their hierarchy is stricken. The Shepherd is struck, and the sheep are scattered, and it is no use their turning to the stricken Shepherd. He is gone!

A recent piece of news, or rumour – the geometry is variable, according to public reaction – is that the Roman sub-Congregation of Ecclesia Dei (ED) , founded by Rome immediately after the Society’s 1988 Consecrations, to reach out to Catholics tempted to follow Archbishop Lefebvre instead of Rome, is going to be re-absorbed into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Apparently the re-absorption was due to be announced on December 20, but perhaps Rome thought twice. For while the Society’s present leaders might be only too happy to renounce the special outreach of ED and to put an end to their own “schism” (as they see it) by their coming fully under the “normal” CDF, there may still be enough Catholics Catholic enough to want Rome to make at least some gesture still in favour of Tradition. But ED is long since a shell-game. Both Rome and the Society leaders want the Roman trap to be closed . . .

Then what do Catholics do who have the Faith and want to keep it? First of all, take stock. The Church building in Rome was cemented by 250 years’ worth of the blood of martyrs, blood gushing red, including of many young girls. Where are the potential martyrs today? Almighty God has had enough of Catholics growing over centuries weaker and weaker in the Faith, and He is bringing back the lions to make some worthy candidates for Heaven. Secondly, let us gird our loins accordingly, prepare to play the man, as did those girls (without a trace of feminism), and humble ourselves beneath the Wisdom and Justice of God. Thirdly, let us remember that many presently last may soon be first, and vice versa. And fourthly, always, “Watch and pray, watch and pray, Fifteen Mysteries every day.”

Kyrie eleison.

The Problem

<u>The</u> Problem on December 29, 2018

God’s way is rarely the easy way. Here is an email from a reader of these “Comments,” elaborating on a point raised here often but that cannot be raised too often, because it lies at the heart of the problem and danger for the Society of St Pius X since 2012 and for the foreseeable future: the down-grading of doctrine. Here is what he writes, abbreviated and edited as usual for these “Comments”:—

When I think about the Society’s 2012 switch from doctrine before practice to practice before doctrine, ending in a secret agreement with things going unsaid but no less agreed, I do believe that the SSPX Headquarters have been behaving like the Communists whose tactic it was, in post-war France, to say to Catholics, “ Look, you want to help the working class just like we do, but you have the Faith, whereas we are atheists. Let us leave to one side questions of doctrine. You let us keep our Marxist ideology, and we will not ask you to abandon your Faith. Let us just act together to relieve the workers’ misery and to give back a bit of hope to the victims of modern society.” And by this means the large number of worker-priests who had consented to lead the lives of factory workers were turned into Marxists. The reason was, as St Augustine said, that if I do not act as I think I will end up thinking as I act. Pius XII forbade the worker-priest experiment to continue, but only after many priests had been lost to the priesthood. And the future Paul VI in Rome and the Archbishop of Paris rivalled with one another in undermining Pius XII’s ruling, because already then they believed more in action than in doctrine.

Thus the Society switch in 2012 from doctrine to action has not ceased to produce bitter fruits. When one hears people remarking that Rome is no longer requiring the Society to give up anything at all, that is sheer foolishness. Benedict XVI saw clearly what was at stake when he explained to modernists worried about Rome and the Society getting back together, that a practical agreement would so change the atmosphere as to put an end to the Society’s criticism of Rome without any further special intervention being needed on Rome’s part. The example of the Traditional Congregations that have since 1970 made agreements with Rome proves his point. As for the Society, it is now caught with both feet in this trap.

The Popes’ teaching, the voice of reason, experience itself, might all just as well have gone for nothing. And all these priests and laymen formed in Catholic Tradition now have the most terrible prejudice of all – the mindset of somebody who knows, but thinks it best to relativise, or leave to one side, what he knows.

What matters now is not waiting to see what Rome will or won’t do to stop Tradition. The real enemy is not outside the Society. What matters is to understand that, with regard to Rome, by claiming from Rome a normalisation, or recognition, or regularisation (call it what you like!), the Society is in fact accepting the Romans in their present wretched state, and is thereby compromising its own integrity. This behaviour shows that the Society has swallowed the modernist poison, which just like a cancer is now spreading within the Society all the time.

Dear Society priests, this excellent analysis warns you of your own very real and present danger. The Society’s real enemy is not only within. It is within your leaders. It is the self-righteous delusion that contact with the criminal or deluded modernists ruling the Church in Rome is not only not dangerous, but is positively advantageous to the Universal Church. However, if any of these modernists in charge of God’s Church are genuinely deluded, can you think that God is not offering them all graces necessary to see their fruits as they are, i.e. the radical destruction of His Church? In which case, how many of them can be genuinely deluded? In which case, what business do your leaders have to be mixing and planning with them? God told Lot to get out of Sodom, and not look back! You must, for your own salvation and that of your flock, take whatever steps are necessary to insulate yourselves from the mafia not only in Rome, but also in Menzingen unless it changes course! May God be with you.

Kyrie eleison.

Discussions Renewed? – III

Discussions Renewed? – III on December 15, 2018

Many readers of these “Comments” may not be content if for the third time in succession they deal with what can seem to them mere arguments between priests, namely the meeting on November 22 in Rome between Cardinal Ladaria and Fr Davide Pagliarani. But every human being, Catholic or not, must suffer eternally in Hell if he does not save his soul. This can only be done in accordance with Catholic doctrine, and so that doctrine must be kept pure. Since the 1970’s the staunchest defender of Catholic doctrine against Vatican II confusion inside the Catholic Church, was the Society of St Pius X. But since 2012 the Society too has been wavering in its faithfulness to that doctrine. Therefore it is a matter of concern to every human being alive whether discussions with Rome today will or will not put an end to the Society’s faithfulness to the Church and to the doctrine of the one and only Saviour of men, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Two weeks ago these “Comments” (EC 594) presented in general the press release of November 23 in which Society Headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland, described the meeting on the previous day between the Society’s new Superior General, Fr David Pagliarani, and Rome’s head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ladaria. One week ago the “Comments” (EC 595) presented the full text of the third and fourth paragraphs of that press release, with their glimmer of hope that the Society will come back on its Founder’s track to defend the doctrine of the Faith. But when the fifth paragraph concluded that doctrinal discussions with Rome should be re-opened, the glimmer grew dark, not only because doctrinal discussions between Rome and the Society were already held between 2009 and 2011 (EC 594); not only because neo-modernists like today’s Romans cannot think straight (EC 595); but also because Rome has only one purpose in discussing with the Society, and that is to put a final end to the Society’s historic resistance to their own sell-out to Satan’s New World Order.

Thus whenever Communists wanted to take over a country, the main obstacle in their way was always the Catholic Church, which utterly rejects – doctrinally – the atheistic materialism of Communists. But Communists learned not to fight Catholics on doctrine, where faithful Catholics are too strong. Instead they invited Catholics to join them in a joint action, supposedly on behalf of the people, because once Catholics and Communists were collaborating in action, the Communists would exploit the practical contact to get around the doctrinal blockage. The one thing that the Communists did not want was for the Catholics to break off all contact. Then they no longer had the means of working on them.

Similarly, when Cardinal Castrillón was Rome’s man to deal with the Society ten years ago, he used basically the same tactic – “Let us first get together, and we will sort out all the doctrinal problems afterwards, once we are together. The important thing is first a practical agreement,” he said. On the contrary Archbishop Lefebvre always insisted on Catholic doctrine coming first. His successors thought that they knew better, and have time and again sought contact with the Roman apostates, who have been, logically, only too happy to oblige, with the result that the Society’s defence of the Faith has grown steadily weaker since 2000. The salt is losing its savour. Unless the Society seriously changes course it will become fit only to be thrown out and trampled underfoot (Mt. V, 13).

Another problem is if the Society is wanting discussions in order to obtain official permission for the consecration of the new generation of bishops that it needs for its worldwide apostolate. But if it does not want to consecrate them without Rome’s permission, then it can only agree to Rome’s terms, because it is making itself the beggar and Rome the chooser. But thereby the Society is putting the Conciliar Romans firmly in the driving-seat, where for the defence of the Faith, they absolutely do not belong. So is the new Superior General wanting to re-open discussions with a view to obtaining a Roman permission? God knows. But in any case, discussing with Rome means that the Superior General will be dancing with wolves. A dangerous occupation.

Kyrie eleison.