SSPX Asia newsletter: April

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

The year of the Lord 2008 will be of the past, never to return, when you will read these lines. Looking back, we can say that it was truly a Marian year, full of the touch of the Immaculate Mediatrix of all graces.

On one hand, as you will see in the abundant Chronicle elsewhere in this issue, our District has been kept busy in managing the ongoing flow of graces obtained through the generous prayers of all our spiritual troops. The summit of these graces, without doubt, was the August Medical Mission in the Philippines, and the October Asian Marian Pilgrimage to France, the latter culminating at the feet of Our Lady in Lourdes with the other 20,000 faithful from all horizons. Since 1970, it has been the largest ever gathering of traditionalists worldwide. The presence of the four bishops of the Society of St Pius X and most of its Major Superiors made this event very impressive. Indeed, Deo Gratias et Mariae!

On the other hand, it is clear that the crisis in the Church is unfortunately neither over nor near its end. Vatican II with all its errors of ecumenism, religious liberty and collegiality continues to be lived Urbe et Orbe. The Motu Proprio on the Mass has revealed, if more proofs were ever needed, that the authority of the Holy Father is still deeply undermined by an undue independence given to the Bishops' Conferences. The irony of it all is that after having heard ad nauseam over the years from innumerable bishops that traditionalists were disobedient, now the same bishops do not hesitate to affirm, when asked for a traditional Mass in their diocese in line with the Papal Document, that "I am the bishop here, I will do as I please!" As a matter of fact, in all of Asia, to our knowledge, there is one monthly Motu Proprio Mass in Singapore, one weekly in Hong Kong, about 15 in the Philippines – nothing else! Nothing in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka…

This minimal response to the Motu Proprio is an a posteriori confirmation of what our venerable Archbishop Lefebvre used to say: our apparent disobedience is in fact true obedience to the Church, and their apparent obedience is in fact true disobedience to the Church. At most the virtue of obedience has been reduced to a very frail submission to the lawful authority when it pleases, in the manner that it pleases, if it pleases. Without doubt this is the consequence of a new conception of authority on the part of the holders of authority who have shifted the foundations of their authority - from being the guardians and defenders of the objective divine truth - to their own subjective person. As you can read elsewhere in this Newsletter in the article on the authority of Vatican II, a French writer, Louis Salleron hit the problem of this obedience to the Conciliar authority on the head when he wrote: "From now on, in order to be Christian, (a bishop) must be faithful to the Conciliar Church. What is this fidelity? What is precisely this absolute innovation of a Conciliar Church, distinct from the Catholic Church? We are still waiting for the answer, but we notice the novelty, we notice a Magisterium which is getting more and more badly defined, makes its own will the supreme norm of religious life." To which Archbishop Lefebvre commented: "That is capital, this last sentence is absolutely fundamental: 'we notice the novelty, we notice that a Magisterium which is getting more and more badly defined, makes its own will the supreme norm of religious life.' That is precisely what we are colliding with!” more

This being said, as our promotion of the DVD on the Mass has finally been launched in India and in Sri Lanka in the past months, and the response having been rather positive so far (almost like in the Philippines), matters could improve in these two countries in the future months. Oremus! On this matter, I must add that the Asian version of this DVD on how to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass according to the traditional rite is done. The European version has eight European languages. The Asian one has, besides English, the commentary available in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian. It is aimed at these countries where English is not well known among the clergy. We will need help to promote this DVD to the clergy of these various languages. Please contact the District Office if you can help. Wishing that you may all "grow in grace and wisdom before God and men" in this New Year with the help of the Immaculate Virgin Mary,
Fr. Daniel Couture