Bishop Fellay of the Society of St. Pius X to Meet Pope August 29

In this year’s May-June issue of the French bi-monthly magazine “Sous la Bannière”, on page 7, there is a most interesting quotation attributed to Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. It reads as follows:

“A source in Austria, preferring to remain anonymous, assures us that Cardinal Ratzinger recently made the following admission to an Austrian bishop who is a friend of his: ‘I have two problems on my conscience: Archbishop Lefebvre and Fatima. As to the latter, my hand was forced. As to the former, I failed’.”

Of course if the “source in Austria” prefers to remain anonymous, we have no means of verifying whether the Cardinal truly said these things about Archbishop Lefebvre and Fatima, but the quotation is at least true to life, so it is worth dwelling on for a few moments.

As for what the Cardinal says about Fatima, we suspected back in June of 2000, when the Vatican – with the Cardinal in the forefront – supposedly released the third Secret, that there was some trickery going on. Either Rome was still hiding the true Secret, the one kept in his room by Pius XII but never looked at, or Rome was revealing the true Secret but twisting its interpretation. Either way, we said to ourselves at that time, Rome was wanting to have done with Fatima, and we saw Cardinal Ratzinger playing a leading part in the manoeuvre. Now comes the quotation from Austria confirming that the Cardinal was indeed taking part in a manoeuvre. Who “forced his hand”? Was it John-Paul II? Some hidden power behind both Pope and Cardinal? God knows.

As for what the quotation says about Archbishop Lefebvre, there too, if the quotation is not true it is certainly true to life. In May of 1988 when Archbishop Lefebvre was threatening to consecrate with or without Rome’s permission bishops for the Society of St. Pius X, it was Cardinal Ratzinger who represented the Holy See in the negotiations meant to head off the “break” that such consecrations would involve. We recall that the Cardinal almost “succeeded” on May 6 when Archbishop Lefebvre signed a draft agreement, but the Cardinal “failed” when the Archbishop after a sleepless night took his signature back on the following day. And now comes the quotation from Austria confirming that the Cardinal still sees the termination of those negotiations as a “failure”.

This confirmation is important as suggesting that the Cardinal will remain, now he is Pope, in the same frame of mind to deal with the Society of St. Pius X in the audience which this August 29 he is due to grant to Archbishop Lefebvre’s successor at the head of the Society, Bishop Bernard Fellay. In other words, it is highly likely both that the present Pope is sincerely convinced that the “break” between the Society and Rome must be brought to an end, and that he will give all the appearances of being of good will when he employs all possible means, including his long experience of Roman diplomacy and all the prestige of his now exalted rank, to bring the “break” to an end.

In fact, a Rome-SSPX agreement seems impossible. And of course if the Society rejoined Rome, the resistance of Catholic Tradition would carry on without it, and if the Pope “converted”, then instead of the gentle war now being waged on his right by Tradition, he would be faced with a savage war being waged on his left by the cabal of neo-modernists. Either way, the war goes on between the friends and the enemies of the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But what is important here and now for Catholics who will be following with interest the up-coming meeting between Rome and the Society, is not to fall into any of the traps that the Devil will be setting for them.

Firstly, the fact that the Society is asking to be received in audience by the Holy Father does not mean that it is on the point of betraying. If there is no contact between Tradition and Rome, now will the truth of Tradition ever make itself heard in Rome?

Secondly, there being a contact does not mean that an agreement is possible. Let all the Catholics who dream of fitting together Catholic Tradition and the present neo-modernist authorities of the Church come back down to earth. Catholic Authority and Catholic Truth will one day re-unite, but nothing for the moment indicates that that day is tomorrow – or the day after!

Lastly – and this is the subtlest trap of them all – let nobody think that because the Pope is of good will, therefore he cannot be a neo-modernist, or that because he is a neo-modernist, therefore he cannot be of good will. The present crisis of the Church would be much less grave and would deceive far fewer people if the neo-modernists were obviously of ill will. It is characteristic of these last times that bad principles are so widespread that few people are aware of the fact, and many people do evil convinced that they are doing good. That is why the Cardinal’s quotation is true to life in which he says that his “failure” of 1988 weighs “on his conscience”.

Let us pray to the Mother of God for Benedict XVI to see, above all the need to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, and if we ourselves can see, let us pray to her that we too not go blind – “He who thinks he stands, let him take care not to fall”, says St. Paul (I Cor X, 12). The times are bad!

I respectfully disagree. As a former SSPXer I have more than a fair knowledge of the mindset of most (though in fairness not all) of the clergy of the society. I think even a casual reading of their writings and literature will demonstrate that they have indeed passed judgment upon the late pope and also upon Vatican II. The word "heresy" has been used with astonishing frequency in connection to the person of the late Holy Father.

It is one thing to disagree with the Pope in matters of church discipline. One can even disagree with the wisdom of the reform of the liturgy and whether or not it is in any way superior to that which it was intended to replace. I would argue strongly that is manifestly inferior. But that is not the same thing as rejecting it as heretical and invalid.

You note that disobedience to the Pontiff can be in some cases justifiable. This is true. But such cases must be extreme and so obvious that they do not admit to serious debate. You refer to so called "bad popes." If by this you are referring to those popes who were mired in the tragic corruption that was rampant in the Church from roughly the late middle ages until the reforms of Trent, then certainly you are correct. There have been "bad popes." And yes one would be completely within ones right to refuse obedience to an order to commit a sin. A pope who orders you to sell church offices or demand money for the sacraments should indeed be ignored and even publicly denounced. But that is not at all the same thing as passing judgment on the theological orthodoxy of the Sovereign Pontiff and the College of Bishops.

Disobedience can be licit in the most grave circumstances. But when you are disobeying the order of any bishop, you had better be 100% sure that you are on solid ground and the bishop is wrong. I would take that a step further and say that even if your are certain your right, unless obedience to the order would constitute a grave sin or a danger to the faith, one should still obey it.

Thank you for the thoughtful and courteous reply.

I have only been to one SSPX mass. Most of what I think I know about them, I learned here, so I will defer to your superior knowledge of the people involved.

I am only trying to deal with troubling issues; I have no emotional investment in defending the SSPX, nor, as many here seem to have, in painting them as villains.

That said, I want to reply to a few specifics in your post.

"The word "heresy" has been used with astonishing frequency in connection to the person of the late Holy Father."

There are, I think, several troubling things. On this forum we have often been treated to pictures of the late Holy Father kissing a Koran and presiding at a Mass where the "lector" is a well-endowed woman with her udders hanging out.

Two other troubling questions are, why did he succeed as a cleric under the communists, and why didn't he don a flamethrower and burn the homos out of the seminaries and the priesthood?

Charity, as you may have divined, is not my strong suit, but to extend a bit of it to people who call that "heresy," don't you think they may have a point?

"I would argue strongly that is manifestly inferior. But that is not the same thing as rejecting it as heretical and invalid."

Suppose a person were out to hurt the Church. He needs to show some restraint, lest his motives become too obvious. Therefore, instead of introducing temple prostitutes and drunkenness as features of the mass, he merely introduces a manifestly inferior mass that, while valid, will nonetheless result in many souls being lost, because as spiritual food it is simply inadequate. Is heresy the wrong word for that?

"A pope who orders you to sell church offices or demand money for the sacraments should indeed be ignored and even publicly denounced."

What about a pope who sends you bishops who send you predatory homosexuals (sorry for the redundancy) for priests, and insist on women lectors, altar girlies, faith-killer ditties instead of the magnificent music of the Church, wreckovation of lovely Churches, clown masses, invalid matter, liturgical dancing, and on and on and on...

What about a Holy Father who gives Phoney Mahoney a red hat?

You can argue that he didn't know. I would reply that he had a responsibility to know, and that the Holy Spirit would certainly have helped him find out.

"unless obedience to the order would constitute a grave sin or a danger to the faith, one should still obey it."

You're right. But many of us feel that we are on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, who am I to challenge even the humblest parish priest? On the other, there are things that seem to cry out to be challenged.

Frankly, I think that many of the masses I've attended have constituted a danger to the faith.

If there is any authority superior to the Holy Father, short of the Holy Trinity, it is the Church itself.

The Pope is the Head of the Church. How, then, could the Church be an authority superior to the Pope?

To understand her regime, you have only to look at her beginnings. She did not emerge from any collectivity or community whatever. She was formed around Jesus Christ her Head, her Ruler, from whom all her life, perfection and power came to her. You have not chosen me, He said, but I have chosen you. Thus from the birth of the Church her constitution clearly appears. Authority does not reside in the community; it never passes, as in the civil order, from the community to one or to several heads. By its very nature, and from the very outset, it resides in a single recognizable prince. Since this prince is the Lord Jesus, who is to live and to reign yesterday, today, and for ever, it results that in natural right it was for Him and not for the ecclesiastical community to choose for Himself a vicar, whose role it would not be to represent the ecclesiastical community, born to obey not to command; but to represent a Prince, the natural Lord of this community. That, then, was what Our Lord Himself deigned to do when, having risen, before ascending to heaven, He chose, as St. John tells us, the Apostle Peter alone for His Vicar. And just as in natural right the Prince of the Church does not draw His authority from the Church, so neither does His Vicar, who depends upon Him and not upon the Church. (Cardinal Cajetan, Apologia de Comparata Auctoritate Papae et Concilii, cap. i, nos. 450-452)

Fidelity magazine

One of those four men Lefebvre ordained, the English born Bishop Richard Williamson, has arguably become the most notorious of his class. Besides performing his duties at the Society's seminary in Winona, Minnesota, Williamson has apparently had time to establish some connections with some, shall we say, interesting groups of people.

An advertisement appearing in the January 1993 issue of the Researcher newsletter, for example, enthusiastically announces the release of the first of a projected series of videos entitled Christian Separatists and Traditionalists. The 50-minute color video is "partly an interview with and partly a lecture by Bishop Richard N. Williamson of the Roman Catholic Society of St. Pius X given in Syracuse, New York, apparently sometime around the latter part of 1992. The author of the ad first attempts to assuage the fears of any anti-Catholic Nazis who might be reading it:

"Diehard anti-Catholics will groan and imagine this is a tape full of direction about Catholic piety (there is some), "Popery" and the usual church support for the system. Ah, but this is a churchman with a difference! In the late 1980s, Bishop Williamson spoke in Quebec where he told a packed church that Ernst Zundel was right! (The Zionist-controlled satrapy of Canada tried to have him permanently barred for that). Next Bishop Williamson invited battling barrister Doug Christie to St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minnesota to give an address. This is no ordinary bishop!"

For the uninitiated, Ernst Zundel is a German-born Canadian immigrant who, according to the Anti-Defamation League, acts as a commercial artist when he is not serving as a Nazi apologist. According to the ADL, Zundel has written such books as Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions and The Hitler We Loved and Why. One of his main theses is, of course, that the stories of the Holocaust are simply untrue.

The ADL notes that Zundel was charged in 1985 under a provision of the Criminal Code of Canada prohibiting individuals from "knowingly publishing false news that caused or was likely to cause damage to social or racial tolerance." Another Canadian revisionist, high school teacher James Keegstra, was accused in 1985 of "willfully promoting hatred towards a definable group, i.e., the Jewish people." Both defendants were successfully represented in court by attorney Douglas Christie, who was featured as a guest speaker at the institute for Historical Review's Seventh International Revisionist Conference in February 1986.

Since 1981, according to the Anti-Defamation League's 1993 book Hitler's Apologists, the IHR Conventions have provided an annual forum for revisionist historians to come together and present papers challenging the veracity of the Holocaust. One of the featured speakers at a recent IHR convention was Ditlieb Felderer of Sweden who asserts that Anne Frank's diary is a hoax. Felderer was convicted in May 1983 by a Swedish court for distributing anti-Semitic hate mail, including locks of hair and pieces of fat which he claimed belonged to Holocaust victims.

The IHR's Eleventh Revisionist Conference took place in October 1992 in the Los Angeles area. According to the ADL, the IHR's "George Orwell Free Speech" award was presented to the "neo-Hitlerian" Ewald Athans, who accepted it on behalf of Ernst Zundel, who reportedly had been denied entry into the United States. Also appearing as a speaker at this same conference was none other than Wolf Rudiger Hess, the son of Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess. Another interesting note: the July 1989 IHR Newsletter reported that Dr. Boyd Cathey, a former priest with the Society of St. Pius X and erstwhile professor at the Society's seminary in Ridgefield, Connecticut, was the latest addition to its Editorial Advisory Committee.

Judging from the friendly tone of the ad in the Researcher as well as from his invitation to Christie to speak at his seminary, it appears that Bishop Williamson shares at least the historical perspective of these men. Arriving at such a conclusion is not difficult when one reads the panegyrical concluding lines from the Researcher ad: On the video [Williamson] even predicts, in line with a prophecy of La Salette that Rome will become the seat of the Anti-Christ.... If we had even one Protestant bishop of a church congregation the size of the Society of St. Pius X that spoke and acted as Bishop Williamson does, our cause would be far advanced."

It seems fairly certain that no one at the Institute for Historical Review would fault Williamson for not trying his hardest to advance the standard of the historical revisionists. After his address in Quebec in 1989, the IHR Newsletter proudly reported that Bishop Williamson had been subsequently harassed by "Jewish groups, abetted by 'interfaith groups' and the local Catholic hierarchy (Bishop Williams [Sic] movement is considered schismatic by the current Catholic hierarchy), [who] not merely denounced the bishop but set the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on his trail, since the interfaith posse deemed the bishop to have violated Canada's 'hate laws' which have already been applied against James Keegstra and others to good effect."

The idea of Bishop Williamson having to flee "the interfaith posse" provokes an interesting image. An excommunicated Catholic bishop on the run from the Canadian Mounties, his fine, white-laced surplice blowing about him as he flees for the American border, a modern-day martyr for truth, at least in the eyes of the revisionists. Frenzied crowds of swastika-toting skinheads wildly cheer him on, while St. Thomas Aquinas, from his heavenly vantage point, prayerfully pulls for the cops.

* I think it's a good idea for you to go to AngelQueen. Birds of a feather and all that..

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