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Just received this newsflash from Inside the Vatican magazine:Extraordinary news came on the afternoon of January 24, with the removal of the excommunications of four bishops from the Society of St. Pius X. In a document signed by the Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops in the Holy See, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re dated January 21, 2009 (see text below).        Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Alfonso de Galaretta and Richard Williamson (two Frenchmen, a Spaniard, an Italian, and an Englishman) were consecrated bishops on June 30, 1988, by the Society's late founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and his...

The Vatican has, in the past few weeks, been involved in two different exercises of fence-mending. One front was that opened with traditionalist Catholics after Vatican II. The other front was the very recent breach with Israel. The latter seems to be the easier one. It was nothing more than "a storm in a teacup", said the Apostolic Nuncio to Israel, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, when describing Israel's recent diplomatic incident with the Holy See. These comments refer to July's conflict that arose when representatives of Israel's government publicly accused Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI for not having condemned...

A Visit to Ecône After the Credo Holy Year Pilgrimage I returned to Ecône with the seminarians, travelling on the all-night train from Rome and arriving on the morning of Tuesday, 27 May. The account which follows is my personal impression of Ecône. It will, I hope, convey however inadequately something of the spirit of the Seminary. The train in which we were travelling continued on to France with large numbers of French pilgrims on board. Tuesday, 27 May. The train stops at about 10:00 a. m. The whole platform is soon full of seminarians in their long black soutanes....

I must begin my introduction with an explanation of the title of this book. Many of those who read it will know little or nothing about Archbishop Lefebvre when they begin. If they are Catholics they will have gathered from the official Catholic press that he is a French bishop who refuses to use the new rite of Mass and has a seminary in Switzerland where he trains priests in defiance of the Vatican. He will have been presented to them as an anachronism, a man completely out of step with the mainstream of contemporary Catholic thought, a man who...