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Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Thirty years ago on
the first of November 1970, Bishop Charriere 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 Econe was fast
filling, Church authorities on high prepared to cause trouble. In 1974, Bishop
Etchegaray told some Catholics, "In six months, Econe 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 Econe'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
practicing 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 throwaway 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 of St. Peter is a good indication.
How can we interpret
Rome’s recent action against Fraternity of St. Peter 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 only thing prohibited, the only behavior forbidden is a normal
Catholic1ife, 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 hence forth 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, 500 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. We will 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 lit everywhere.
May God bless you abundantly,
+Bernard Fellay
Superior General |
