Bishop Fellay's Actions

by G. Gilbert

June 27, 2012

I see this matter [of the discussions with the Pope and the CDF] as Bishop Fellay simply trying to do the right thing by manifesting his loyalty to the Pope in practice and not merely in theory.

There is absolutely no incontrovertible evidence (and conspiracy theories by anonymous authors do not constitute evidence) to suggest: (1) Bp. Fellay's intentions are anything less than honorable and in accordance with what is and should be expected of a truly Catholic bishop; or (2) that he is looking at this problem set in a wilfully negligent manner.

Absolutely none.

Moreover, there is absolutely no evidence to support the theory that Bishop Fellay is acting out of self-interest or out of personal ambition. Bp. Fellay, like his brother bishops, has spent his entire adult life fighting for Catholic truth as a pariah, and who, in my opinion, deserves the benefit of the doubt and the respect of those of us who consider ourselves "friends and benefactors" of the SSPX.

However, there is evidence to suggest that Bp. Williamson and certain individuals close to him have willfully undermined Bp. Fellay's leadership.  (See: http://angelqueen.org/2012/06/26/what-we-know-about-the-sspx-leakers/)

Furthermore, as much as I admire and respect Bp. Williamson (and I do so sincerely, as I have had the honor to have been confirmed by him, as did my wife), using a military analogy (and I do so because the Church is a hierarchy just as is the military, therefore I think the analogy holds), Bp. Williamson's actions -- over time, and cumulatively -- are essentially insubordinate as they pertain to Bp. Fellay's position as Superior General of the SSPX, and especially now as he treats with Rome.

This would not be as big a deal as it is right now, if we were simply talking about two bishops, each with no expectation of loyalty and/or obedience to the other, voicing their opinions on matters not affecting anyone else but themselves.  (As many of you with military experience know, brother bishops, just as brother officers, can disagree on matters of policy up to the point where the commanding officer makes a decision.  At that point, it is time to close ranks, keep your opinions to yourself, get behind the boss, and carry out the plan of the day.)

But, that's not what we're talking about: Bp. Fellay is Bp. Williamson's superior general; his, "commanding general", so to speak.  Bp. Fellay has, in so many words, ordered Bp. Williamson to keep his opinions regarding this matter to himself... and Bp. Williamson has refused to do so.  And Bp. Williamson's "disobedience to lawful orders" is having obviously severe consequences not only on the Society's relationship with the Church as a whole, but internally to the Society itself.

And, for this to happen right now -- right at the very moment that the Society is on the verge of bringing the "fight" to "Rome" from "within the walls" -- is, in my opinion a shameful disgrace.  It makes the SSPX look like a laughing stock.  It is "conduct unbecoming" an "officer" of the Church.  It shows a lack of discipline, a lack of respect for authority, a lack of a practical understanding of hierarchy, a lack of unity.

In short, it is a repudiation of all of the values that the Society has claimed to defend these past 40 or so years.  For, Catholic tradition doesn't support the principle of rebellion against legitimate authority.  Yet, that is precisely what is occurring right now.  Although, I suspect that those who are against the Society's negotiations with Rome are now calling into question Bp. Fellay's legitimacy.

Without clear and incontrovertable evidence, I do not.  There is no reason to believe that Bp. Fellay's episcopate is illegitimate or that his intentions are evil... unless you want to call into question everything the SSPX has done since Abp. Lefebvre consecrated his successors against the will of the Holy Father.  Because that is where this line of thinking leads, inevitably.

I am also reasonably certain that those who support the scuttling of the current negotiations with Rome see themselves as defending Catholic tradition.

I do not.

As I peruse the anarchnet looking for more information concerning these talks, I cannot help but notice that those who are against these negotiations are inching further and further towards a de facto sedevacantist mentality or sedevacantist sympathies, regardless of their protestations to the contrary.

I think this is a negative development.

Perhaps this is much ado about nothing.  Perhaps, as is often the case, we are only seeing a part of the situation, being as we are merely laymen with no true inside knowledge of what is really going on.  Perhaps, and I hope that is the case.  I want to be wrong.

But, viewing this from the outside looking in, from the perspective of a career infantry officer who has experience actually leading men in, shall we say, "very difficult circumstances" (e.g., people trying to kill you), this whole episode -- to me -- is disgusting.

In Christo per Mariam,

Müller back in the running according to La Stampa.

Last month (May 2012), according to Cathcon's blog, Gerhard Müller, Bishop of Regensburg, was out of the running to replace Cardinal Levada at the CDF.  Among the speculated reasons is his past hostility to the SSPX.

Today, Andrea Tornielli reports in La Stampa that the Pope is likely to choose the 64 year old Bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, for the post of Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith., unless there are any last minute surprises.

This is the same Bishop who scoffs at the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin, believes that it is problematic to refer to the Blessed Sacrament as the "body and blood" of Christ, and believes that Adam's father was a monkey. 

Can you imagine the productive meetings the Society will have with him in his role as the new head of the CDF? How does one discuss ecumenism and religious liberty with a Cardinal who believes that Adam was begotten by an orangutan?  How is it that this Primate will be appointed to defend the doctrine of the faith?

Will A Rejection of the Regularization Initiate a Slip into Sedevacantism?

It appears possible that something changed with the response of the Pope to the SSPX and the long meeting that Bishop Fellay had with Cardinal Levada before leaving Rome a few weeks ago.  Cardinal Levada will soon be leaving his post. Perhaps he had some off-the-record advice for Bishop Fellay in the event that part of the communication from the Pope contained a new “poison pill”, so to speak.  What may be surprising would be the revelation that the new difficulty does not have as much to do with the preamble as it does with the prelature.  Indeed, as much as leaks are to be trusted, parts of the preamble have appeared on the internet in the last few days and, truth be told, they seem to favor the perspective of the Society, allowing for a wider berth of criticism of the council and its aftermath.

So, not knowing much more than almost nothing, I would speculate that an unacceptable “something” has been demanded by the Pope (the curia, more likely) and perhaps has found its way into either the prelature, or the “ground rules” for the lack of a better term.  What might this something be?  Here is my short list.

1)      Most, if not all SSPX priests and seminarians will tell you that the New Mass is ‘intrinsically evil’.  That is based on the fact that it was created specifically to refocus the Mass from the unbloody sacrifice with Christ as the oblation, to a re-enactment of the Pascal meal.  To Protestantize it, as we say. All of the changes, some small and some wholesale were introduced, not to give greater glory to God, but to mimic the Calvin, Lutheran, and Anglican services.  Even the smallest addition to the words of sacramental institution  “ .. which will be given up for you.” turn the formulaic “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum” into the biblical commemorational narrative favored by Luther.  So what if one of the conditions is to publically accept the Novus Ordo on a somewhat equal plane as the Tridentiine Mass?

2)      If the diocesan bishop has the power to order an SSPX chapel closed, for any reason, what recourse would the Society have to fight or prevent that from happening?

3)      How ironclad can any agreement be?  Pope Benedict is 85 years old.  Of the ten oldest Popes in history, he is as old as seven of them. Only one lived to be pope past 90 and that was Leo XIII who reigned a few months past his 93^rd birthday. It is very likely that there will be a different pope in 5 years and with a different pope, pretty much everything will be on the table once again.  While Traditional Catholicism appears to be growing, especially among the young, five years will not be nearly enough time to clean out the malevolence towards it in the curia and the episcopacy.  According to an article in La Stampa last week, the bishops who head the Congregation for Evangelization bemoan their own sluggish progress and believe that the church needs to listen to and more adapt to what people want from the church.  It is evident that the clueless pilots of that ship are headed straight for the iceberg.

4)      It should also be evident by now who the SSPX Superior General’s boss will be.  Maybe it will be the new head of the CDF?  That could make one nervous.

Bishop Fellay has decided, it would seem, to lay his fortunes before the District Superiors, Bishops, and elder priests who are invited to the July meeting.  He has indicated to Rome that the response will come after that.  Perhaps whatever has changed is not bad at all, but rather a concessional change that completely favors the SSPX and might even be begrudging palatable to Bishop Williamson.  In that case, Bishop Fellay might feel that he can bring back a goodly amount of support from the meeting.

More likely, the change is something that Bishop Fellay cannot in conscious agree to.  He is therefore bringing it to the meeting to demonstrate that most of the priests would not be able to abide by the new condition, whatever that may be.  Such an agreement would serve no one.

Another possibility is that the July meeting could ask for Bishop Fellay’s resignation as the Superior General in favor, perhaps, of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais.  If that were the case, I would expect that priests are privately communicating their support to him in advance of the meeting.  At that point, the deal would be dead – if it already isn’t. And I am thinking that it already is.  If it is, it should become evident that the blame will equally go to those within and without the Society.

And then finally, what will be left?  I truly believe that it will break the pope’s heart to declare the SSPX to be in formal schism.  If Bishop Tissier takes over, it will happen. The pope will not declare it personally. It will come with certain delight from some Congregation of Declaring Schisms.  If and when a formal schism is declared, the SSPX will be on its way to sedevacantism.  If perhaps the pope was succeeded by say Cardinal Ranjith, maybe the situation would change.  But the bitterness associated with praying for a pope not interested in restoring the faith would soon make the sede position more palatable. And the leisure of not having a hierarchy to report to will become more comfortable.  The SSPX will freely consecrate more bishops at that point.

Most of  the laity will go along – there is no other readily available choice.  The peaceful resolution of sedevacantism will slowly be accepted in at least a material sense.  

I pray that it does not happen this way because I have a hard time reconciling the fact that the visible church and the pope has transitioned to the false church and now the invisible church is the remnant. I’m sure I’ll have friends that will try and help me understand that.

Our Aversion to the Leprosy in the Church

The crisis of apostasy from the Catholic faith is still as evident as ever, with no strong or effective proponency from within the church to derail it. One need only visit a diocesan parish and suffer through a wedding or funeral to verify that the ill-formation of priests from the 1960’s forward still haunts a preponderance of the church.

I recently attended a Novus Ordo funeral for an infant who died after only 3 weeks of life. This was the first child of a young couple married a little less than a year. Although this child was baptized, the 55 year old priest told his parents “We pray that God will accept Emily into heaven”. Yet another example of the diabolic disorientation of the church where when adults die, we attend their white-vestmented canonization service and yet when this tender infant dies and our faith assures us of her place in paradise, for some reason, we have to pray that God will accept her. To the bafflement of even the modern Catholics in attendance, this bearded balding priest added “Do not let anyone tell you that it was God’s will that Emily died. It was not His will.”
I am not sure how one reconciles this with the traditional belief that every beat of our hearts and every breath that we take is ONLY by God’s will, who sustains our very existence every moment of our lives. Of course, I am being sarcastic, it cannot be reconciled along with much of the nonsense that one hears from the modern pulpit.

I recount this story up not to add to the sad and wearily long list of what we have and still suffer in a church so crippled with priests who have been formed, not to nurture souls with the food of the true faith, but rather to synthesize an ad-hoc in-the-moment psychological ministry that he somehow attempts to placate the human spirit with to the exclusion of the soul.

I bring it up to lay it before my eyes, like a bloodied and diseased body, and force myself to understand that the time that I have spent blessedly separated from all this nonsense in the comparative Valhalla of an SSPX chapel may soon come to an end. Maybe ‘end’ is too harsh, let’s say, ‘a transition’. I may really now have to play a role in the extrication of the disease. I may now have to do more than just complain about it or shake my head 'yes' when Father complains about it from the pulpit. Here, I believe, I may lay bare the core of what nauseates many SSPX’ers about the possible regularization of the Society. We use the excuse that all other groups have been swallowed up into the Novus Ordo obscurity and are no longer ‘visibly’ fighting the good fight. We may wring our hands and worry that a bishop will demand that we close some 2.5 year old fledgling SSPX chapel in rural Michigan. We point to Bishop Rifan and somehow worry that eventually all of our Bishops will be saying the Novus Ordo. After all, wasn’t Bishop (then Father) Rifan a part of the Operation Survival ceremonies at Econe in 1988? You can see him in the pictures assisting Bishop de Castro Mayer.

It is not really any of these or even Benedict XVI’s stilted appearance at Assisi. It is that we do not want to be involved with the stinky business of the Novus Ordo. We don’t want that smell on our chapel veils. We do not want to be in the same chain of command with the Bishops whose clown and gay-friendly Masses are still widely celebrated. Come on, admit it. We do not want our sedevacantist friends to laugh at us and completely write us off as the ‘new’ enemy in collusion with the Roman Leviathan. We will not be able to bear what the purveyors of Trad-porno like Traditio are saying about us.

So take a deep breath and consider this stinking body I’ve laid before you. This leprous body that, as diseased as it is, is still the Mystical Body. The hemorrhaging sores make it no less the Spouse of Christ.
What is our obligation for tending to the wounds of this mess, if any?

What do you think moved St. Damien to minister to the lepers of Molokai? He certainly ministered to their ailing bodies but I would guess that if it were possible for him to eliminate the source of their illness, he would have put much effort into that. At some point, one must have compassion on the sick to the extent that one becomes engaged in eliminating the source of the sickness.

That is where I believe we are headed, my friends, with this rapprochement. We must certainly use all of our graces and prayers as a shield, lest we contract the illness, which would not be impossible. Modernism is tuned to the pleasures of the world and they will be enticing, especially in small innocuous doses. We must take this fight to the church, to the source of the illness. Most importantly, we cannot despair of the help from St. Michael the Archangel or even Marcel Lefebvre who I think is in a position to intercede for us. As a veteran of a few battles, my experience is that one either takes the fight to the enemy, or one waits on the sidelines for the enemy to bring the fight to you. The advantage usually goes to the former.

What's Next?

Here is what gives me hope that a final disposition between the Vatican and the SSPX will be an arrangement that a majority of the SSPX priests and seminarians will accept.

1)      The Holy Ghost has need of the SSPX working the vineyards which consists of the structure of the “Visible Church”.  That is, working to reform the Cardinals, Bishops, priests, and laity affected by modernism.  If you believe that the Visible Church consists of the Pope, his Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, and faithful, then this HAS to be important to you.  That is the Visible Church, with Peter as its head, which Our Lord promised will never pass from this earth.  If you believe that the Pope, Bishops, priests are not validly ordained and therefore do not comprise the Visible Church, there are several sedevacantists groups, bishops, popes, and even modernists you can attach yourself to.  However, you do not belong in this discussion.

2)      The SSPX statement following the latest meetings in Rome: "The desire for further clarifications could usher in a new series of meeting".  This tells me that Bishop Fellay continues to be cautious and reflective in the talks and documents exchanged with the Vatican.  This bespeaks his pastoral desire to ensure the safety of his priests, bishops, and those attached to the Society. The unfortunate and cowardly leaking of the private letter of the three bishops has put all of the bishops in an undesirable position.  They cannot now easily retreat from their recommendation even if they felt the eventual solution was tenable. Should the “further clarification” result in the modification of the supposed conditions made popular recently by some YouTube sermons, those priests would owe a “mea maxima culpa” at least for the frenzy it has cost and the added strain it has put on Bishop Fellay in carrying out this sensitive negotiation.

3)      The recent establishment of a personal ordinariate for the TACs in Australia allows the superior to open new parishes within the diocese having heard the opinion of the diocesan ordinary (but not necessarily heeding the advice).  Perhaps Bishop Fellay is working out a hybrid and as yet undefined combination of the Prelature and Ordinariate.  Since these structures are very vague in canon law, the governing statutes of the structure will need to be made clear and precise in its articles of erection.

If you feel that you will be integrated away into heresy, you can certainly just roll up into the fetal position with your rosary.  If you are ready to re-take Our Holy Roman Catholic Church from the enemies who hold it, be ready for an increase in the battle as we’ve never seen it.  The onslaught will come from your diocese, from your family, and from the curia. The antagonists from your own chapel will be the ones who no longer fight modernism, but fight the concept of inclusion in the visible church as if it is a greater heresy because of what the preponderance of the modern church represents.

Take your example from St. Joan of Arc if you must, who was encouraged by her own to cease and desist from the battle and she did not.  She died excommunicated. It does not seem to have had that bad of an effect on her.  Are you more worried about being forced to accept the Novus Ordo Mass or of being excommunicated for taking a stand against it within the visible church?

Pope To Take Phone Off the Hook?

The much anticipated Pentecostal reconciliation announcement whereby the Pope rolls out the red carpet for the SSPX has obviously been delayed.  Most pundits anticipated it. I even had a (non-monetary) bet riding on it happening before the end of May.  But May came and went and no announcement was forthcoming from the Vatican.  Why? 

Well the Pope hasn’t consulted your humble servant on the matter but I would bet that these things played a part:

• 1)      The Vati-leaks scandal has perhaps influenced the delay more than any other reason.  By all accounts, this has been a huge distraction for the Pope and his closest advisers.  Perhaps some high Curial prelates are complicit in this affair and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.  Apparently, the Pope is not merely angry but rather somewhat beside himself.   The secular arena has called on the Pope to resign, dissolve the Curia and the College of Cardinals, and hold elections to form a new government.  Whether the calls for the Pope’s resignation come from within or without the church is not as important as the realization by some Vaticanistas that an important Vatican II chicken has come home to roost.  That is the transformation of the hierarchy of the church into a democratic system of government .  This might also be surprising to the neo-sedevacantist, Hans Kung, who recently described the SSPX as ultra-democratic(?). A democratically elected hierarchy would be a welcome development in the eyes of the ADL (who I am sure can manipulate Nostra Aetate into a justification for the ADL to have a vote) and a preponderance of Germanic Bishops, but terrifying to the old power holders resident in the Vatican City.
• 2)      The letter of the three SSPX Bishops has probably forced the Pope to consider how to handle an SSPX schism.  It would not benefit the situation to regularize half of the SSPX.  This most certainly has caused someone to go back to the drawing board and determine what the response would be to this eventuality. Perhaps Bishop Fellay has been discreetly requested to clean it up.  The Vatican response appears to be “we’ll deal with that if it happens”. 
• 3)      Bishop Fellay has spent time in Rome recently.  There is the possibility that the details are still being finessed.  Perhaps the letter of the bishops has led Bishop Fellay to insist on some points that previously were details that would be left for later resolution?  Perhaps the relationship to the local diocesan Bishops is still not at a comfortable point from Bishop Fellay’s perspective.
• 4)      The Pope is not concerned with the objections of traditional sedevacantists to a regularization.  They have for some time determined that the pope is an imposter and the visible church he pretends to head is the anti-church and the visible church now exists at Mt. St. Michaels, or Round Top, or St. Gertrudes, or Holy Family Monastery, or wherever Pope Michael is. Among these, the thing they consistently believe is that their visible church is mutually exclusive of the other sedevacantist visible churches. However, he may (unfortunately) be somewhat attentive to the rantings of neo-sedevacantists like Hans Kung who, while still in somewhat of a tenuous “communion” with the Pope, has been in complete schism from the Roman Catholic Church for decades.

Add to those a June meeting with the State of Israel concerning the treatment of churches in the Holy Land, the baying of the association of feminist nuns both in the US and in Germany who complain that they have been unfairly saddled with the wrong set of genitalia, and the latest tired ravings of the Pope’s old buddy, Hans Kung who joins Pope Michael and friends in the sedevacantist group, and , well, its no wonder that the Pope will probably slip off to Castel Gandolfo, let fly a series of declarations, and then take the phone off the hook.

Where are the courageous SSPX priests and Bishops?

How does one find the Visible Church on earth? The answer is that it has, as its head, the Vicar of Christ. That will be true until the end of time. To say that we are not bound by or do not recognize the legitimate request of the Pope to solve a canonical dispute or irregularity implies that we reject him at an authoritative level and implies that he is illegitimate. The further implication is that the solution of the canonical irregularity is a de-facto acceptance of heresy. It despairs of the Hope (and therefore the Holy Ghost) and implies that within the halls of Rome, it would be impossible for the SSPX to find like-minded priests or bishops, to maintain the faith, or convert the heretics. We are fortunate that the original apostles did not despair of converting the monolithic pagan societies of Rome and Greece! The heretical sayings and teachings of Bishops and Cardinals in the Newchurch do not give us dispensation from canonical regularity with the Vicar of Christ – as long as we do not accept heresy in a matter of faith. Archbishop Lefebvre did not seek, at any time, to break canonical regularity with the Pope and the Church and when it happened, he vigorously protested the legality of it according to canon law and he sought to rectify it so that his little Society could grow and populate the clergy with his traditionally trained priests. He said after reneging on the protocol the following day that it was “.. with great excitement ..” that he signed the accord but then after reflection, feared that the SSPX was not adequately protected against the whiles of modernist Bishops and the Curia.  He wrote “I Accuse the Council” in 1982 and went on to entertain signing the Protocol in 1988 without requiring the conversion of Rome as a condition.  He also did not take a vote of his priests before initially signing the Protocol.

It would have been possible for St. Issac Jocques to have sent the Hurons here in Central New York some written materials denouncing their pagan religion and warning them from France that they would all end up in perdition without Christ. In that case, there would be no Huron Catholics, or St. Kateri or even St. Issac Jocques. He knew that the only way to convert was to live among the pagans and convert by example and the witness of the faith. We are currently NOT converting Rome. We are in essence sitting on an island and complaining about their heresy which they effectively ignore.

So my question is: Where are the truly courageous traditional priest warriors?  Where are the priests with true backbone? Where are the truly courageous traditional Bishops with true backbone? Where are the priests with the stomach for fighting Rome from within Rome? Are there any courageous laity up for that fight or are you completely content in the private Valhalla of your chapels? Do you not possess the same fervor to restore the church that the liberals had to destroy it?

I am absolutely fed up abdicating the treasures of Holy Mother Church including the Eternal City to modernists and heretics.  Perhaps many of you will not mind crawling back into your local Howard Johnsons for Mass on Sundays but I condemn that retreat.  With no apologies to St. Athanasius, I want the faith AND the churches!

Have you ever been to Rome and visited the bones of St. Peter in the crypt far below the main altar next to the Clementine Chapel? I have and I want so badly to see the custody of those sacred places restored to the true faith. I want to see St. Peter’s turned back into the sublime place of worship that it once was instead of the irreverent museum it has become. I am personally sick of walking into beautiful Basilicas like those in Syracuse and Buffalo and seeing the “Table” in front of the glorious altar.  I want to see SSPX Cardinals in the Curia and electing Popes.

Why do I hear erstwhile traditional men, priests and laity alike, cower at the prospect of what modernist Rome may make them do after a canonical regularization?  It is sickening to me.  How many liberals did it take to hijack the faith in the 60’s?  Not that many. All of the traditional groups that have regularized their situation since 1988 have been comprised of roughly a half a dozen priests and no laity to speak of. The exception would be Campos with a bishop. Our situation is 550+ priests, 200+ seminarians, monasteries, convents, and perhaps nearly a million faithful. So there is absolutely no precedent in modern history of a sizable united stable group of Traditionals accepting a canonical regularization.

I am ready to do that battle from within the castle walls. If you are content with lobbing artillery shells at its walls and then retreating to a safe distance to avoid counter-attack, I would argue that it takes very little, if any, courage to do that.  We can post sermons on YouTube and sit in our chapels and shake our fists and preach to the choir about modernism and the new Mass, or we can enter through the front gates of the citadel.  Maybe they’ll attempt to take away some of our weapons? I suggest it might make the battle more interesting since the Holy Ghost will certainly be our support.