SSPX FRANCE REPORTEDLY IN CHAOS

Envoy Magazine ^ | September 18, 2004 | Pete Vere

[NYer]

Taking a break from judging annulments earlier today, I visited a number of French traditionalist websites.  I also had the opportunity, yesterday, to speak with a friend of mine who is a canonist from France following the situation as well as another friend who keeps tabs on the traditionalist movement in both the English and the French speaking world.  Everyone agrees -- the situation has degenerated into total chaos, as nobody knows exactly what is going on with the highly-respected French SSPX clergy that have criticized what they see as the SSPX's growing rigidity. 

It does appear that Rome has refused to take competency over the case, more-or-less stating that the SSPX denied Rome's jurisdiction over them when Lefebvre carried out a schismatic act through the 1988 episcopal consecrations.  Beyond that, Rome refuses to comment other than to say, "Our door remains open for their return to full communion."

Beyond that, the rhetoric, polemic and accusations suggest that indeed civil war is breaking out among the laity and clergy within the SSPX's French District.  In fact, two websites have now popped up that are exclusively devoted to tracing all the news stories associated with the crisis.  What I find personally find interesting is that every news report, commentary, polemic, etc... mentions Fr. Aulagnier's expulsion from the SSPX around this time last year.

In the months that followed, it appears that the SSPX more-or-less tried to sweep Fr. Aulagnier's expulsion under the rug.  But in so doing, even the regime currently in charge of the SSPX had to admit the important role played by Fr. Aulagnier in the founding of the SSPX.  This is probably why the SSPX appeared to hope the issue would go away.

Yet it is also well-known that Fr. Aulagnier was a close friend of Fr. Laguerie as well as Fr. de Tanouarn -- two of the SSPX's leading priests.  (As Fr. Laguerie's assistant, Fr. Henri appears to have just happened into the situation).  It is also well-known that a number of French (and some American) SSPX priests were not happy with Fr. Aulagnier's expulsion.  Therefore, I will venture to guess that the current SSPX chaos is the effect of Fr. Aulagnier's expulsion coming back to haunt Bishop Fellay.  As for the particular details, this is the first time in almost fourteen years of being a traditionalist that I find the fog of war too thick to reasonably discern what is going on.  (What I find even more troubling is that behind the scenes, under the flag of truce, other SSPX and traditionalist commentators with whom I am in contact have admitted to having the same problem.)

So if I can end on a personal note to the moderate SSPX clergy and their supporters who follow this blog, I'm more than happy to abide by the flag of truce and keep you guys in prayer while you fight whatever battles need to be fought, but I honestly cannot make heads-or-tails of what is happening. But like Rome has said, the door is open for you to return.  I will pray that God gives you the necessary strength to walk through it.

[Mershon]

<I think all that is great, my hat off to you, but you are missing the point I am many others have been making.

BCM: I answer your direct question directly, and then you say I am missing the point.

<I have never attacked the indult neither in public nor in private. I am sure there have been some on this site who do but I do not see it very often.

BCM: SSPX literature, which I picked up and read again after attending the chapel, said effectively that Catholis attached to Tradition should not attend the Novus Ordo because it is "evil" and should not attend the indult. I read this years ago, and now I read it again. It is dangerous to tell people to stay at home and NOT go to Mass, when the Mass is the Mass, but it is the LITURGY we are really discussing.

<Many of the people who defend SSPX are Indult people but it is a bit of a split down the middle as far as I can tell.

BCM: And believe it or not, I have been one of them. I read the most recent issue of Latin Mass and thought Bishop Fellay's Q&A (BRAND NEW and I can't find it on the web) was phenomenal. I continue to hope and pray for a reconciliation.

<This half-n-half situation is one of the major reasons I do not attack them, the other being sympathy for their situation.

BCM: Me too. But I also think that having a LARGE Novus Ordo parish (where our indult is offered) to evangelize too is also advantageous to building the Kingdom.

<They will be coming for you just as soon as they can. I bet you suspect this is right even if you dread to admit it. Who wants to admit something we love has gone bad?

BCM: I am quite uncertain what you are speaking about.

<Half of you Indult folks come to our defense and half attack us. Some one side one thread, on the other side with the next.

BCM: It depends upon the specific topic. I would not say we are attacking anyone. We clarify ideas and put up what Vatican I and Ecclesia Dei Adflicta say. I am not saying any particular people here are SSPX adherents. That is for your own examination of conscience. I can say what it appears to be based upon what certain people write. I also know that the SSPX attendees, for the most part, are just Catholics seeking solace. However, the diocesan structure, even those open to the indult, are easily dissuaded by the type of acrimony and discussions we have on this board.

Like it or not, the individual feelings and predispositions of Novus Ordo bishops and priests do matter in the Big Church. We might not like that, but it is a fact of life. I would prefer to keep them on our side, or at least tolerate us.

And our younger pre-seminarians, well, my children will be richly blessed, because the half dozen or so I know are traddies through and through--or at least coming that way. But this kind of acrimony could dissuade them. This is my primary concern--as well as the sede tendencies I detect here.

"We acknowledge the Pope is the Pope, but we pick and choose what we want to obey."

This is the impression I am left with.

<But you have about SSPX and they are most likely the only reason you have your Indult. By the way, your welcome.

BCM: No, the Mass survived because Ratzinger and the Pope stuck to their original agreement with Lefebvre. Unfortunately, Lefebvre did not. I used to agree we had it because of him, but we really have it due to our bishop, the Pope and our director of prayer and worship who offers it.

I would say "thank you," but you are not Lefebvre as far as I can tell. What I would have said to him was "Think about how much more good you could have done and leaven your priests could have provided from within the heart and soul of the Church."

I am not in any way saying there are not good fruits. But everything SSPX is NOT a good fruit.

[charliemarlow]

Traditionally speaking, the Church has spent centuries working on issues, making certain that a decision was right. Now, we have a major change once or twice a year.
Would you be surprised to see another new Mass before the decade is out?
There seems to be no end to it. The Church resembles a US public university in this respect.
Isn't the Church supposed to take care of its flock? If so, what is to be said about the Great Falling Away we have experienced over the past generation?

[bornacatholic]

The See of Peter and posts of authority in Rome being occupied by Antichrists, the destruction of the Kingdom of Our Lord is being rapidly carried out even within His Mystical Body here below."

The Apostolic See...

From ancient times a distinction has been made between the Apostolic See and its actual occupant: between sedes and sedens. The object of the distinction is not to discriminate between the two nor to subordinate one to the other, but rather to set forth their intimate connection. The See is the symbol of the highest papal authority; it is, by its nature, permanent, whereas its occupant holds that authority but for a time and inasmuch as he sits in the Chair of Peter. It further implies that take supreme authority is a supernatural gift, the same in all successive holders, independent of their personal worth, and inseparable from their ex-officio definitions and decisions. The Vatican definition of the pope's infallibility when speaking ex cathedra does not permit of the sense attached to the distinction of sedes and sedens by the Gallicans, who claimed that even in the official use of the authority vested in the See, with explicit declaration of its exercise, the sedens was separate from the sedes.

* any sane individual can see lefevbre was calling the Pope an antiChrist. That is a heresy

[Mark in the Old South]

Sometimes I ask rhetorical questions. And I asked you not to give me a list of so and so said this on this and that. I already knew what you were saying about the SSPX position on the Indult. I had hoped that was ...*sigh*

I have no problem with the Indult strategy with the NO as far as I can tell what it is, but that was not my point either. And I know you are one of the people who sometimes defends Tradition and occasionally SSPX but look at this Thread. It is a SSPX hit piece and you wonder why I am defending SSPX and criticizing you. You put yourself in this conversation just like I did. I'm taking my hits from the usual suspects so don't be shocked if I defend SSPX from you as well. You must admit your post have not been very pro-SSPX today. If your posts in this thread reflect you POV, fine stand by them but don't complain if I object.

To explain your question about "they will be coming for you" was a reflection of my belief your Indult will go away at the first opportunity. Maybe not this Pope, or not your present Bishop but someday and most likely in your lifetime.

The "your welcome" was sarcasm for crying out loud.

[Mark in the Old South]

Re: "Would you be surprised to see another new Mass before the decade is out?"

I think they may be working toward the same thing the Episcopalian Church is rumored to be doing as we speak. Before I converted I was on websites that was heavily involved in dealing with the cesspool that is the ECUSA.

Several of them were complaining about a new Book of Common Prayer that was to be on CD. It was to have dozens of liturgies, such as a feminist Communion and services, gay services, liberation theology etc etc etc. It was rumored to have unlimited "possibilities".

I thought the idea outlandish and unlikely to get off the ground. Silly moi, that was before I heard about clown Mass, Bali style Liturgical dance, cookie Mass, picnic Mass, and on and on.

I mean really, how far is the Catholic Church from this right now? Why go through the political bloodbath of changing the rite when they are permitting most anything now. And with nary a word of discouragement, they save that for SSPX.

Getting back to the subject of the Thread: If these wayward SSPX priests want reconciliation with the RC as it is right now, I say they should go ahead and do it. I am sure the Indult people would love to have them if they want them but that isn't good enough for these few priests. They want to drag everyone one with them, even those who have moral objections. It makes one wonder what their real agenda really is.

[BlackElk]

Rome does not speak for you. You do not speak for Rome or for the Roman Catholic Church which has expelled your heroes and bishops and declared those adhering to their SSPX as wallowing in schism.

Talk to your co-religionists in the cult of Marcell. I am no more likely to become a Marcellian schismatic than I am likely to become a resident of the planet Pluto. Actual Catholics have no reason to be interested in your self-serving schismatic propaganda. You have no more credibility than does the See-BS Network or Dan Blather.

Funny how, on a conservative website, we see so little of the Marcel cult on the political threads.

[BlackElk]

Rome does not speak for you. You do not speak for Rome or for the Roman Catholic Church which has expelled your heroes and bishops and declared those adhering to their SSPX as wallowing in schism.

Talk to your co-religionists in the cult of Marcell. I am no more likely to become a Marcellian schismatic than I am likely to become a resident of the planet Pluto. Actual Catholics have no reason to be interested in your self-serving schismatic propaganda. You have no more credibility than does the See-BS Network or Dan Blather.

Funny how, on a conservative website, we see so little of the Marcel cult on the political threads.

[Mershon]

<"To explain your question about "they will be coming for you" was a reflection of my belief your Indult will go away at the first opportunity. Maybe not this Pope, or not your present Bishop but someday and most likely in your lifetime.">

Perhaps you have not been reading what Cardinal Hoyos has been saying. Perhaps you do not trust him or the Pope.

If I walked around thinking like this all the time, people would say I am even more pessimistic than they already do.

The indult is NOT going away because it is growing and we are helping form young men who want to say the Mass. If we have the priests, we'll have the Mass--even if nobody wants to go to it.

By the way, we have a third indult location (by FSSP) being added to the li'l ole diocese of Charleston in the old South with a 3 percent Catholic population. Three of them. Looks like the trend is toward more, not less.

[BlackElk]

The judgment of the pope gthat SSPX is in schism and its bishops excommunicated will suffice as a foundation for anyone actually Catholic to agree. What outsiders declared in schism or excommunicated may imagine need not trouble the actually faithful.

[Grey Ghost II]

Funny how, on a conservative website, we see so little of the Marcel cult on the political threads.

Funny how your last 20 posts have been on this thread.

p.s. I'm not tugging at your sleeve, I'm just accusing you of being a hypocrite.

[BlackElk]

That will be between you and God. You are unwilling to distinguish between defense of the schism and adhering to it which gives rise to the obvious inference that you adhere to the schism. The Faith is not the schism per JP II. The schism is not the Roman Catholic Church or any part of it, per JP II. Like it or lump it.

At the very least, for one who defends the schism, attendance at SSPX Masses (meritorious as a Mass but perfectly replaceable by any Indult Mass or Novus Ordo Mass) would also seem to be a near occasion of sin. God gave you free will to use or abuse as you see fit with rewards and consequences. Have a party.

The answer to your question would therefore seem to be no.

[Mark in the Old South]

Re: "Perhaps you do not trust him or the Pope."

Well I guess you could say that, I really do not know for sure. I will tell you this, the days when you could be passive about theology and trust your priest, bishop or pope to watch the fort is over. At least for the time being. This is true in more Churches than the RC. We have to use our discernment. The SSPX position is the laity must view with a jaundiced eye everyone and every paper including their own. I agree with them.

My point was not to suggest the Indult was not growing, all the Traditional groups are growing. But your Indult can be taken away from you with the stroke of a pen. My SSPX Mass will take a bit more than that to make it go away.

Please don't take this too hard but I think you might be reading more into my post than are there. Example Indult growth was never in question by me.

[BlackElk]

I originally posed to another a request for documentation as to the facts of the actual life of the first century young girl with the fractured skull who is, on apparently dubious evidence, supposed to be Philomena and further supposed to have a specific history leading to martyrdom. I did not deny that such evidence might exist. I asked one of her apparent partisans (not you initially) to provide the facts and documentation. You decided to enter that conversation. Fine. I posed the same question to you, as I recall.

For all of this, I receive your complaint that I am talking to more than one person.

If I ping others, that is not your business. No one died and left you in charge of determining which other people (other than you since I do have manners) I should ping. We seem to be in anarchy on FR for the time being even as to whether we may effectively insist on not being pinged by others.

You have refused my now withdrawn offer to cease conversation by way of pinging each other. If you are complaining that I pinged someone else (not you) to whom I posed the question of Philomena, you have no standing to make such a complaint.

I also note that you prvide nothing in the way of the reuested material to back the claims that this girl was someone named Philomena, much less any documentable facts of her life to underlie the claim of her sainthood based on her life. You reference only that, about eighteen hundred years after the death of her whose remains have been found, Church officials saw to her canonization. I knew that but not why.

I had not known that she had been withdrawn from the Church calendar in about 1970. Has she also been withdrawn from the honors of the altar? As a non-person? As one not provable? I actually have no idea. Facts? Documentation? Usable links?

[BlackElk]

You think I support "bugger priests?" Now certainly you can bring up one teensy little post of mine in support of them? No???? Then keep your libels to yourself, Frankieboy!

[BlackElk]

Fifthmark: Do you think the damned arrive in hell by accident or do you think they wind up there through the willed (however disappointed) justice of Almighty God, based upon His objective knowledge of their behavior in life and unrepented mortal sins????

[Maximilian]

The indult is NOT going away because it is growing and we are helping form young men who want to say the Mass. If we have the priests, we'll have the Mass--even if nobody wants to go to it. By the way, we have a third indult location (by FSSP) being added to the li'l ole diocese of Charleston in the old South with a 3 percent Catholic population. Three of them. Looks like the trend is toward more, not less.

I think you may be missing the point which is not whether the indult is growing but whether adherence to Catholic Tradition is growing. Everyone here who supports Catholic Tradition is glad to see more indult locations, and hopefully they are also glad to see more SSPX locations, since in both cases opportunities are offered to the faithful to practice the traditional Catholic faith and attend the traditional Catholic Mass. We need more of every kind of traditional Catholic.

If there are issues from the SSPX point of view regarding the FSSP and other indult situations, they would consist of questions regarding:
1. Do they truly adhere to Catholic tradition or do they merely say the 1962 Mass? I've heard the priest at an indult Mass tell the congregation in his sermon that they shouldn't bother having so many children now that the pope has recommended NFP.
2. Is it a wise move to split traditional forces which are already so small in comparison to the numbers of those who are promoting the revolution? The indult succeeded in creating divisions within the traditional movement, which is a bad thing, although it also succeeded in making the traditional Catholic Mass more widely available, which is a good thing. It is a legitimate question to wonder which will prove more significant in the long run, the good effects or the bad effects. We can all hope together that the good effects will outweigh the bad, even if we deplore the bad effects of division and infighting within the traditional movement such as what is described in the article that started this post.

[BlackElk]

Fifthmark: I have no idea of whether Frankwild is a schismatic but he sure does have an overly active and overly malignant fiction gland if he thinks I support "bugger priests."

[BlackElk]

See bornacatholic's #215 which, though aimed elsewhere, is the answer to your old schismatic argument. You believe you owe obedience when you or the now dead and excommunicated archscismatic of your group pleased or pleases. Catholics KNOW you owe obedience to the Pontiff. So did dead Marcel and so do all of his excommunicated bishops and all of his schismatic sycophants, whether they like it or not. The priests of the swchism are violating their vow of obedience and well do they know it.

[BlackElk]

This Fr. Peter Scott, then, would he be a member of the schismatic-American community and the man who would be an American anti-pope?

The schismatic Fr. Scott sounds like the faux Teddy Roosevelt character in Arsenic and Old Lace, bounding up and down the staircase blowing his bugle and imagining his sisters' home to be San Juan Hill.

Sincere thanks for your posts.

[BlackElk]

You have a very good working definition of your little sulfurous schism there in the second sentence. The rest, per usual, is bilge.