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Contents
The
SSPX Mindanao Relation.
The Big Announcement.
Some Historical Background.
Mind boggling Testimony on the Mentality Shift of the
60s.
Corruption and Catholicism (mostly corruption).
The New Priory and the Work of Restoration.
The Situation of the Priory foundation Right now.
Summary of expat and Support Group Donations up to the
Present.
The 3 Immediate Material needs and the big Spiritual
need.
Adios.
Dear Expat and Philippine Support
Group member,
It is a great joy for us to be able
to communicate to you good news about our Philippine
Missions. Our only sorrow is that we are far too few for
our huge task of bringing Tradition back to the
Philippines, and though our resources in terms of talent
and sanctity fall far short of the need, you are our
consolation. In all truth, our lacking of spiritual and
material means is in great part alleviated by having you
as part of our support crew, helping us both spiritually
and materially.
Here in the Philippines, Traditional
Catholics in Mindanao literally jumped for joy when Fr.
Couture announced plans for planting a new Priory on the
big Southern Island in the early part of this year
2011. This move had been contemplated for quite some
time because it was the next logical step to the
restoration of Catholic Tradition in the Philippines.
The original Spanish Missionaries conceived the
Philippines in three broad geographical areas, the North
consisting of Luzon and its environs, the Middle
consisting of the Visayas, and the South consisting
chiefly in the Island of Mindanao. Thus, whereas the
Society already had a Priory for the North in Manila,
and one for the Middle in Iloilo, it made sense to
establish the third one in the Southern tier of the
Philippines. The new Priory will alleviate travel for
the Priories of Manila and Iloilo, who took turns over
the years attending to the 6 Missions in Mindanao. At
the same time, it permits the possibility of reaching 10
other villages that are potential centers of Tradition.
It is very significant that
Providence so arranged the Catholicization of the
Philippines that the first Cathedral of the Northern
sector was dedicated to Our Lady, under Her title of the
Immaculate Conception, and the first Cathedral of the
Middle Sector was consecrated to the Infant Jesus, and
the first Cathedral of Mindanao was dedicated to St.
Joseph. Accordingly, it was only natural to choose St.
Joseph as Patron of the new Priory. Since the executive
decision to open the Priory in Davao coincided with the
Consecration of the District of Asia to St. Joseph on
March 19th, 2011, the new Priory in Davao is
in fact the first public act of devotion of the Asian
District to St. Joseph. This joyful coincidence is a
great inspiration to us, and a powerful guarantee of
divine assistance.
The beautiful Philippine Isle of
Mindanao was Missionary territory up until the 1960s.
It was animated by such Missionaries as the Columban
Fathers whose main work was reanimating and maintaining
the Catholic Faith of a large Catholic population that
had been converted by the Spanish several centuries
earlier. It is an incredible testimony to the intrepid
Faith and sanctity of these Missionaries that the
Filipinos retained the Faith they implanted, even though
Priestly resources and assistance were so lacking after
the initial Missionary campaigns. In the 1930s and 40s,
when the Columban Fathers first came to Mindanao, many
villages had not seen a Priest for years. The
missionary would arrive in a village for the Village
feast, would hear hours upon hours of Confession,
rectify 10 – 20 Marriages, and then hold Mass. After
Mass, the waves of baptisms began: first a round of 30,
then a round of 25 more, then a round of 45 more…until
the Missionary would depart the village with a bundle of
150 certificates tucked under his arm. Then, the
Bishop’s confirmation tour had to be organized. Such a
tour through a particular sector could include something
like 3000 Confirmations in 4 days.
Today, the Traditional Missionary
isn’t so popular, nor are there great crowds waving palm
branches to receive him. Something has been lost over
time. Unfortunately, during the 1960s, as the old
Missionaries began to move towards better organization
of the circuits and the people, as they began to realize
economic reforms to better the poverty of their flock,
Vatican II hit the Church, and everything was affected.
The situation they faced in the 1960s was that there
were too few Priests for too many people. It wasn’t
uncommon to find one Priest saddled with 18,000
parishioners. The natural solution was adopted and lay
catechists were formed and they did great work in
educating the youth and in maintaining the Faith so that
the Sacraments of the Faith were fruitfully received.
This work of forming catechists was taken very
seriously and applied with vigor. For instance, the
Catholic University in Osamis, was originally an
institution for training a large body of well-prepared
catechists. Missionaries from St. Francis Xavier to
Archbishop Lefebvre realized this necessity and
carefully organised their teams of catechists.
But something really changed in the
1960s, and to give you a closer impression of the
doctrinal mental shift that has had disastrous
Missionary consequences, I would like to make an
extended quotation from “Mindanao Mission”
published in 1978.
“Patrick Cronin’s
generation were pioneers, builders of Churches and
schools, but the tendency now is to spend more money on
social action programs, for the young missionaries want
to see the good things of God’s world better
distributed. The older men stressed the need for
vocations, while the younger ones are concerned with
developing a priesthood of laymen. The pioneer poured
into his parishioners what he had brought with him; the
new missionaries say they seek enrichment from the
goodness found in their people. The early missionaries
approached other religions as competitors, but the
younger ones stress the value of all religions,
searching out the inspiration in each.
“These shifts in
attitude were much discussed at a conference of Asian
Bishops, Priests, Religious and laity held in Hong Kong
in the spring of 1977. They said, for example, that one
of the Church’s problems is learning “how to enrich its
Christian identity and life by opening itself to the
great religious traditions of Asia.” They believe the
Church will have to become allied with other religions
in a fight against atheism; it will need to become
really “catholic” by introducing into its life the
riches of all nations.
“Missionaries
realize that the Church should not just teach; it should
learn too. Many are learning to enrich their own lives
within their own religion by drawing inspiration from
the spiritual experiences of those in other religions.
The time is right for this.
“Cardinal Bea,
when head of the Vatican Secretariate for Christian
Unity, said in January of 1964, “The Counter Reformation
is over.” It had been a long siege, four hundred years
of militancy, rigor, and uniformity, characteristics of
any organization that is attacking or counterattacking.
Now the period is past when the Roman Catholic Church is
conditioned to react to Protestantism. ( … )
“Father Walbert
Buhlman, a Swiss Priest with years of experience in the
missions, said, “When we do come to the Baptism of an
individual, this should not entail a final break in his
loyalty to his social, cultural, and religious past. As
Hinduism is, in the first place, a form of social
community and leaves plenty of room in matters of faith,
we could in the future think of “Catholic Hindus”.
These would be persons, or preferably whole families,
who have become Christian but continue to celebrate
Hindu rites, interpreting them in a new way and
receiving Christian sacraments in addition . . . just as
the apostles continued to attend the synagogue and
celebrated the Eucharist in addition.””
(Mindanao Mission, Edward Fisher, 1978, pp
141-142)
The fruits of the novel attitude laid
out above by an objective Edward Fisher are all too
evident to the Missionary today. Protestantism and the
sects are as prolific as the Catholic is ready to
receive them. Keep in mind that the Philippines are
supposedly 80% Catholic. But the distinction and
definition of the Catholic catechism has been lost to an
ecumenical-sociological spin on the Faith that enables
it adapt to any religious denomination. In the
villages, it would appear that Catholics simply follow
the religion that the fellow most interested in him will
impart. As a Priest from Manila told me: “People
follow Religion based on their relationship with
others. Protestants are forming those relationships.”
In practice, the new missionary method developed in the
60s was that laymen went into the villages, almost like
the catechists of old, but they would gather the people
for Bible reading and the “Liturgy of the word”, rather
than clear catechism and distinctly Catholic prayers.
Though they were instructed to unite themselves to the
Mass in the distant Parish in the 60s, they began simple
“priest-less Masses” later on. The current practice in
one of our Villages is for a lay minister to come, read
the Bible and distribute communion once every two or
three months. The faithful in this village have not
been to confession in years. In this context, a common
abuse was that the lay minister, running out of hosts,
would touch un-consecrated hosts to consecrated hosts in
order to “consecrate” them, and then give them as
communion to the faithful. With this transformation from
catechist to lay minister presiding over a Protestant
style liturgy, all distinction of the Catholic
population from the heretical denominations was lost,
and so Catholics continue to pass without a murmur to
the Protestant sects, often without even realizing what
they are doing.
Even though things are really bad, it
is important to realize that out of all of Asia, the
Philippines stand alone as a country reportedly 80%
Catholic. One of the largest English speaking countries
in the world, it retains the deeply Religious Eastern
spirit lost to the Asian countries dominated by
Communism. At first sight, the Philippines can impress
with its Catholic devotion. Even in the airport, Our
Lady of Fatima is honoured and it is not unusual to see
people praying the Rosary there before Her statue. And,
throughout the country, Catholicism is in evidence, and
it is publicly practiced. Nevertheless, its Catholicism
is chiefly of the popular and devotional quality that is
poorly enlightened. And so while many Philippinos pray
the Rosary, their country is well on the way to
implementing a massive and aggressive Birth control bill
that will prosecute uncooperative Catholics. As they
publicly visit statues, they privately practice
contraception. Meanwhile, the Bishops have publicly
stated that, should it pass, they will protest the birth
control bill in public disobedience, but their public
reason is to safeguard human rights. They neglect to
take up the weapon of Revealed truth and sacred
theology, choosing to fight with the enemies’ weapons
with which they can only lose. Given this situation, it
is unlikely that the tide of materialism and immorality
can be stemmed, unless dogmatically doctrinal
Catholicism is quickly restored. And that means
re-educating 75.5 million Catholics just to begin
with.….
And that work of restoration through
Catholic re-education begins with Priests in the
bastions we call Priories. Davao was definitely a good
strategic move because while on a map it looks like it’s
on the corner of Mindanao, the perceptive eye will
understand (with a little geographical knowledge in
mind) that it is actually the logistical travel center
for Mindanao. It provides easy access to any Mindanao
city via bus, and provides a decent airport with daily
flights to all the big cities in the Philippines. The
new Priory itself is located about 3 km from the airport
terminal at the North end of the city and 20 minutes
from the Southern downtown bus terminal that links us to
our Gensan and Marbel Missions.
The new Priory of St. Joseph will
serve 6 Missions regularly, 5 more once or twice a
month, and in addition will pray and ponder on what to
do for nearly 9 other villages that require our real
presence. Roughly 660 souls scattered throughout our
missions attend our Masses, and more than double that
number are on the fringes to be gathered in. The most
encouraging part of these numbers is that we have about
10 Praesidia of the Legion of Mary at work in our
Missions, and 3 clans of the Apostles of Mary, and from
these strongholds, we can do the double work of
consolidation and new conquests. For instance, just two
weeks ago, in following up the work of our Apostles of
Mary, I baptized a sick child who died 3 days later,
gained for the Kingdom of heaven through the zeal of our
Apostles in the nick of time!
Our steady Missions comprise the
following: 1. Island of Bohol: San Miguel (1ce a
month), Dagohoy (1ce), Tagbilaran (2-3 per month),
Island of Cebu: Cebu (2-3 a month), Island of Mindanao:
Camiguin (1ce), Cagayan de Oro (1ce), Butuan (1ce),
(these last 3 cities are served by Iloilo 1 – 2 per
month), Marbel (3 per month, sometimes every Sunday),
Gensan, (3 per month, sometimes every Sunday), Davao
(every Sunday). 7 Missions contingent upon the Medical
Missions aided by the ACIM and the Legion of Mary need
our attention, as does 2 other villages clamouring for
our help to the North of Davao.
One of the great blessings that falls
within the purview of our new Priory is the HQ of ACIM,
“Association Catholique de Infirmieres et Medecins”,
located in General Santos, one of our Mission centers.
This Association which runs a Medical Mission every year
in needy parts of the Philippines, staffs their Gensan
office year round. This small office represents real
follow-up on the yearly Medical Mission and maintains
links to over 14 villages in Mindanao wherein souls are
assisted both medically and spiritually. ACIM works in
close connection with both the Legion of Mary and the
Apostles of Mary in these South Cotabato and Sarangani
Province villages, and as such ACIM is a precious
“clef-de-voute” of an incipient Traditional Catholic
Social infrastructure. May it please God that this
great initiative continues to grow and bear ever
abundant fruit.
Another key component of our
Philippine-wide Priestly plan calls for collaboration
with Manila and Iloilo in preaching consistent and
frequent Ignatian Retreats. This Island hopping
strategy envisages going to the different Islands
periodically and organizing local retreats accessible to
the Missions of the concerned Island in order to provide
ease of access for Catholics throughout the Archipelago.
A part of the original plan for the
foundation of our new Priory in this Southern tier was
to simultaneously relocate the Bethany Sisters from
their current, but temporary location near Iloilo.
Since the implementation of this plan involves a
donation of 1 hectare and the construction of a suitable
building that will serve as a Novitiate for Oblate
Sisters of the Society, the move of the Bethany Sisters
must wait until their new building can be constructed.
And this brings us to our current situation with our
Priory building.
At the moment, we are accommodating
for our use a loaned house located 1.9 km from our
future Priory. Over the next few months we must do
fund-raising for the two-fold task of completing
payments on the property purchase and to remodel this
house for our Priory use. The house, known as the
German House in honor of Walter, its German owner of
much building talent and of true German character, is
approximately 544 square meters on 3 floors, and is
located on a property of 30 meters deep by 27 meters
wide. We purchased it for 5.5 million, though the
asking price was 10 million, and though nearby
development is causing property values in the area to
rise rapidly. In some places near our Priory it can
average 4,000 PP a square meter and in some places can
rise as high as 8,000 PP per square. The purchase was
vintage SSPX, a great idea and a good bargain for which
we don’t have the money, but which we bought anyway.
Now let the fundraising begin! The next phase will be
the building of the Sisters’ Novitiate… and the next a
500 capacity Parish Church! And this is without
considering the plans already begun for a 300 capacity
Church in Gensan, a project whose initial funds have
already been pledged by a generous French benefactor…
Up to the present moment, expats and
support group friends have donated around 327,849 Pesos
to the cause. Of this, approximately 50,000 supported
the 500 strong Bohol Pilgrimage in May, 175,000 helped
in the third payment for the new Priory in July and
108,000 is laid aside for purchasing a Priory vehicle.
Originally, we had thought to purchase a scooter, but
when the Knights of Singapore assisted us with 108,000
Pesos, we were able to think a little bit bigger. We
have just begun shopping for the best bang for our
Philippine peso.
1)
We must pay off 3.8 million on the Property.
Since we are obtaining private interest free loans, we
plan on making 60,000 PP payments monthly for the next
5.3 years. In this scenario, we desperately need 12
volunteer loan carriers who can pledge 5000 or more
Pesos per month, so that we can pay off the interest
free loan and to enable all our Philippine side
fundraising to generate the cash in hand needed for the
continuing remodelling and construction, firstly of the
Priory, and secondly of the Novitiate. This computes to
either 120 USD or 150 SGD, or 90 Euros per month. We
would coordinate a monthly or bi-monthly payment either
to our US account, or to our Singapore District account,
and in this manner, so organize transfers of funds as to
minimalize transfer fees. We will be paying off our
future creditors in a similar manner.
2)
Purchase a vehicle (we already have 108,000 on
hand this, thanks to the Spore Knights).
3)
Remodel the Priory. The remodelling entails
transforming the German House to go from 3 bedrooms to
10; to accommodate 4 offices, a laundry room and
workshop on the ground floor/basement; to accommodate a
refectory, and a recreation room on the middle floor; to
turn the 78 square meter porch into a small but
beautiful Priory chapel. Though I haven’t been able to
make official estimates on this work, I am guessing that
it will all cost between 1 and 2 million Pesos.
Our most pressing spiritual and
cultural need is to save and foster the Philippine
family. Infamous RH 96 has not yet become law, but
seriously threatens to do so. But even if it does, most
Catholic families have become contraceptive anyway. In
your daily rosaries, and in your extra rosaries for the
current SSPX Rosary Crusade, think of the Philippines
and pray for your fellow Catholics struggling to fulfil
the law of God in a very difficult economic and social
situation. If there is any chance of salvaging Catholic
Philippines, we must come up with a real practical plan
to help the Catholic family find meaningful and useful
employment for the Father and to reorient the Mother to
virtuous domestic motherhood. The general situation is a
broken family backbone with the father forced into
domestication and the Mother forced into breadwinning.
Our expat and support group can make significant
contributions in this regard, but firstly, we need
Divine inspiration to proceed to fixing a situation so
systemically bad that it almost seems hopeless of
solution. Nevertheless, when matters look the worst,
divine Grace works the best.
At the moment of this newsletter, my
two collaborators, Fr. Alexander Hora and Fr. Joseph
Pfeiffer have not yet arrived in our temporary quarters,
but by the end of July, our Priestly team of 3 Priests
will be fully assembled and operational. Your prayers
and support are necessary ingredients to keeping us
going and we are deeply appreciative. May St. Joseph
both enable you and inspire you to help in some way.
To help, contact me by e-mail at
jtpfeiffer@juno.com, or by phone at +63 905 291
7032. Soon, we will have efficient structures in place
to facilitate the process of aiding our Philippine
Missions.
May St. Joseph bless you and reward
your generosity with longevity and divine blessings.
In Our Lord,
Fr. J. Timothy Pfeiffer.
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