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Letter # 59 to Friends and Benefactors
H.E. Bishop Bernard Fellay
 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
mean 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 take 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 everywhere.
May God bless you
abundantly.
Menzingen, November 1st 2000
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