Superior
general Letter # 59
to
Friends and Benefactors
November
1, 2000
Dear Friends
and Benefactors,
Thirty years
ago on the first of November 1970, Bishop Charrière of Fribourg
in Switzerland signed the Decree of Erection of the society of St.
Pius X. What a series of events the Society has seen since then!
Starting with the Church’s recognition and praise of the Society
in its early days, both at diocesan level in the first dioceses
where it was set up, and at pontifical level in Rome. Within two
years of the Society’s erection, the Vatican itself was undertaking
the first steps towards granting the Society pontifical status at
a time when it was setting up its first priests overseas.
After this
promising start there soon came years of trial. While the Seminary
in Ecône was fast filling, Church authorities on high prepared to
cause trouble. In 1974, Bishop Etchegaray told some Catholics: “In
six months, Ecône will be dead and buried”. So our fate was decided
in advance. But they had reckoned without the tenacity of our valiant
Founder, who in the name of the highest principles would stand up
to the steam-roller that was meant to crush from the outset his
work of priestly renewal. It began with the scandalous canonical
visitation of autumn 1974, scandalous in the sense that the visitors
from Rome scandalized Ecône’s professors and seminarians by their
modernist remarks. The result was the famous Declaration of November
21, 1974, which is always astonishingly up-to-date. Meetings in
Rome with a Commission of Cardinals confirmed Archbishop Lefebvre
in his anxiety over the line of action being followed by the Roman
authorities at that time: they seemed less concerned with saving
souls or with nourishing them at the sources of liturgical grace
or the integral Faith than with imposing the recent Church reforms,
however devastating these might prove to be.
“I do not want
to be part of destroying the Church”, said the Archbishop more than
once, like a heart-rending musical refrain.
The unjust
suppression of the Society in 1975 would impel the Archbishop to
carry on courageously with the work he had just begun. The media
mockery and insults would rain down on him, the threats and commands
from Rome and the Pope would make no difference: remaining under
fire as calm and gentle as ever, the Archbishop soon to be suspended
from saying the new mass went ahead regardless. The splendid priestly
ordinations of June 1976, on the occasion of which it became absolutely
clear that for him merely to have celebrated once the New mass “would
have arranged everything”, showed our Founder’s determination not
to compromise on principles. From those years of war the Society
drew the determination which has inspired it to this day.
Those same
years show also the Archbishop’s superior wisdom, foresight and
grasp of events: in those circumstances, to “obey” would have been
quite the opposite of practising the virtue of obedience, it would
have been to render the Church a grave disservice by inflicting
one more wound, by depriving it of a means of salvation it could
well one day be in need of in the middle of a shipwreck one does
not throw away the lifejackets. If then Rome pretended that the
Society’s attitude was a problem of Church discipline, the Society
for its part saw in Rome’s attitude the tip of an enormous iceberg,
no less than the anti-christian Revolution within the Church — did
not Cardinal Suenens say that Vatican II was the French revolution
of 1789 inside the Church?
The introduction
of freemasonic principles, the harmonization with the world, the
way of looking kindly on everybody previously considered by the
Church to be dangerous enemies such as liberals and even communists,
together with the opening to the east, modern philosophy, a new
way of dealing with other religions no longer to be called false,
and ecumenism’s dropping of the exclusiveness of the Catholic Church’s
mission to save souls — all of this made clear to the Archbishop
the gravity of the hour, and would make him a few years later take
further action along the same lines to save the situation: the consecration
of four bishops. When we speak of emergency in connection with these
consecrations, we mean the state of emergency in which the whole
Church is to be found, an unprecedented state of havoc (which Rome
quietly admits), from which suffer above all those Catholics who
no longer know whom to turn to for the spiritual bread which will
nourish and save their souls.
At those consecrations,
Rome predicted and counted on a mass departure of souls from the
Society, and, at the Archbishop’s death, on the Society falling
to pieces from within. On the contrary, the Society quietly continues
sanctifying souls and forming priests.
Over the same
period of time up to today, certain bishops discreetly recognize
what the Society is accomplishing, while others tell us of the Church’s
death-agony in several countries of Europe. And Rome? What position
does Rome takes towards the Society? Towards the Traditional movement?
What line of thinking lies behind the silence in which it smothers
us?
Rome’s action
towards the Fraternity St. Peter is a good indication.
How can we
interpret Rome’s recent action against St. Peter’s Fraternity except
as an over-all determination to continue driving up the blind alley
of the new mass? Rome shows a coherence in its line of action matched
only by its blindness: at all costs the new mass must be imposed
everywhere. Only when souls submit to this condition will some of
them be allowed a rare taste now and again of the old rite of the
Mass, henceforth ranked as a museum-piece! While on all sides breaches
are made in the teaching and transmission of Catholic doctrine,
while Catholic morals in numerous countries are reeling under unheard-of
blows destroying marriage and normalizing homosexuality, we are
given to understand that the only thing prohibited, the only behaviour
forbidden is a normal Catholic life, entirely faithful to the teaching
and discipline which go back centuries! The fruits are there for
all to see: what is Rome waiting for to change direction, and recognize
the legitimacy of our refusal to slash to pieces the religion received
from our ancestors? In the name of the Holy Ghost, Rome still refuses
even to begin discussing our questioning of the Council, its ambiguities,
its errors, its application in the post-conciliar reforms, and this
at a time when at least one Cardinal recognizes that the Society’s
fruits are good and that the Holy Ghost is at work in the Society!
Why continue to brand us or let us be branded as Enemy Number One?
All around, the true destroyers of the Church are at work and the
true rebels against papal authority are given free rein as they
openly defy the henceforth virtually futile attempts to call them
to order.
“Those Society
people are dangerous”, said the Abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls,
when we were there on pilgrimage in August. Dangerous to who?
Over the last
30 years the Church has undergone a spectacular change of direction:
putting Vatican II into practice by a series of reforms affecting
all domains of Church life has changed the face of the Church. That
is why the differences are notable between priests and laity of
the Novus Ordo and those of the Society. These differences
were obvious during our pilgrimage this summer to Rome. The contrast
between our Roman visit and the World Youth Days was a contrast
between two worlds. The Vatican frankly had to undo its moral regulations
concerning dress to let those young folk into the roman basilicas...
Indeed the
last 30 years have been full of action. And we must thank God especially
for having allowed us to keep our Catholic identity amidst such
upheavals. And we thank you, dear friends and benefactors, for your
generous support without which our dramatic story could never have
achieved the results we see. We number now over 400 priests scattered
all over five continents, with 60 countries receiving the support
of Tradition, 50 of them by the regular apostolate or passage of
priests. Gradually garages everywhere are making way for buildings
more worthy to be called churches. The effort going into building
is quite simply immense: over the last few years the Society has
built some 50 churches throughout the world, while an even greater
effort is going into our 70 odd schools. Will we have enough priests
to continue the effort? Our seminaries number some 180 seminarians,
but that figure falls well short of our needs. We entrust this important
intention to your prayers.
However, the
spiritual building up of your souls, which is not to be measured
in numbers, counts much more than any material advance in the eyes
of God and of ourselves. The welfare of your families is more dear
to us than all these buildings.
On this Feast
of All Saints, we ask the Immaculate Heart of Mary to repay your
generosity with graces: graces of charity, of peace, of untiring
courage which will not give way. May the same Heart to which the
Society is consecrated deign to protect it and make it grow ever
more, and inspire it ever better with the zeal that drove the Apostles
to set alight in all places the fire that Our Lord burned to see
it everywhere.
May God bless
you abundantly.
+ Bernard Fellay,
Superior General
Zaitzkofen, Feast of
All Saints
CHANGES OF
ADDRESS TO NOTE
Autonomous
House of Spain/Portugal
New
fax number : [34] 91 /812. 17. 27
(PS :
For your information : the previous fax number became Bishop
de Galarreta’s private number.)
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