Letter to Our Fellow (Neo-SSPX) Priests

Letter to Our Fellow (Neo-SSPX) Priests

The is an English translation provided by the Recusant of a letter to priests still in the nSSPX prepared by a French Resistance priest.

Letter to Our Fellow Priests

No.5 – Spring, 2015

French Original: http://www.lasapiniere.info/archives/2153#_ftn13

In April 2013, Bishop Fellay claimed that the Society had not changed except for some “superficial changes,” “some elderly priests,” “more houses in a greater number of countries,” in sum “a normal development … We used to have four bishops and now we have three. That’s also a change. But in and of itself, it’s nothing fundamental, nothing essential.” [1]

At the end of January 2014 Fr de Caqueray hoped: “that the split,” between Bishop Fellay and the signatories of the ‘Address to the Faithful’ “might be resolved,” and before leaving the district, he confided:

“I hope with all my heart that, given that there is no current plan for the Society to try anything with the sort of Pope I’ve just been talking about; well, I hope that some of these priests and these faithful will consider that, after some moments of difficulty, the Society is remaining faithful to the line which is its own, and recognising as much, that we from our side will be understanding enough to accept back amongst us again, without saying anything, the priests who have left. On their side, of course, I know them, they’re brothers-in-arms, valiant priests who have not been found wanting in their apostolate during all these year, and thus it’s sad to have seen them leave, and I hope that, if the whole thing was nothing more than a mistake between the Society and them, that this mistake will be really sorted out, that’s what I hope with all my heart.” [2]

Faced with such testimony, one might be tempted to conclude that what the three bishops noted in 2012, in their letter to the General Council, recognising “in the Society symptoms of a lessening in its confession of the Faith” was false and alarmist.

Everything’s going really well?

And yet, on 23rd September, following the meeting between Cardinal Muller and Bishop Fellay, the Vatican published a communique saying:

“It was decided to proceed gradually and over a reasonable period of time in order to overcome difficulties and with a view to the envisioned full reconciliation.”

Thus, the discussions are going ahead in “a broader and less formal way than three years previously” [3] even though in Bishop Fellay’s own words, “the discussions have shown a profound disagreement on almost all the points discussed.”[4]..? In his 5th conference at Flavigny [December 2013], Fr. Pfluger declared explicitly that, given the doctrinal mismatch with Rome: “We must now intensify the contact in membris.” (E.g. faithful, parishes, conservative clergy…)

In 2007, Fr. de la Motte called a meeting of the priests under him in the priory (one of whom was Fr. Salenave) to let them know some news which he thought worth celebrating, though confidential… Menzingen had given its permission for the priory of Gavrus [in Normandy] to become a test-case priory, entering into a close relationship with the local diocese and bishop. When the prior was transferred the experiment came to an end, but today the number of such visits is growing at Menzingen’s request: Angers, Montpelier and Chateauroux are all due to receive a visit from their local bishop.

In 2015, two dangerous Apostles of Religious Liberty, Cardinal Brandmuller Bishop Schneider, visited the seminaries of Zaitskofen, Flavigny and Winona and taught there. The former compares: “The Society of St. Pius X and the Old Catholics who rejected Vatican I’s teaching on Papal Infaliibility [and] who have in common their rejection of legitimate developments of the life and doctrine of the Church.” [5] For the latter, dubbed “Benedict XVI’s best pupil” by the magazine l’Homme Nouveau, “Ecumenism is necessary in order to be in contact with our separated brethren, to love them. In the midst of the challenge of the new paganism, we can and have to collaborate with serious non-Catholics to defend the revealed Divine truth and the natural law, created by God.”[6]

“I can hear them say: ‘You exaggerate! There are more and more good bishops who pray, who have the faith and are edifying!’ – Can they be saints when they admit false Religious Liberty and therefore the secular state? When they accept false ecumenism and therefore the admission that there are many paths leading to salvation? When they accept the liturgical reform and therefore the practical denial of the Sacrifice of the Mass? … Are they not rather officially cooperating with the revolution within the Church and its destruction? … This new religion is not the Catholic religion.” [7]

Integration means our disintegration…

The words of Fr. de Journa – “Integration will mean our disintegration … In the Church it is the truth which makes you free, not diplomacy.” [8] – were evidence for the majority of members of the Society in 2001. Today, thanks to the subversive action of its head, things have been reversed. No one is unaware that subversion more often comes from an unbelieving elite than from a grass-roots in revolt.

How many of our priestly confreres have read the book by Fr. Lelong entitled: “For the Necessary Reconciliation”? There one learns that from 1992 (Fr. Aulagnier) and above all since 1997 (Fr. Lorans), the head of the SSPX is working towards a sell-out. The fight for the Faith quickly gave place to the desire for recognition. We do still have some words spoken to the right, but the head is acting more often to the left. And this way of acting is not without consequences:

“It is therefore natural, obvious and historically certain that, once you start negotiating with Rome and the bishops and you ask for certain favours, you yourself end up being obliged to soften or completely drop your opposition to the liturgical reform, toDignitatis Humanae and to the Council, lest you find yourself in an untenable psychological position. That is the only true cause of your doctrinal evolution: the moral weight of your counterparts and your own desire to be left with something tangible to show for some difficult negotiations where you were largely in the minority. Such a situation forces you into making at least verbal concessions. […] Having arrived at this stage of your evolution, you think it both possible and necessary to temper certain oppositions in order to obtain results […] Negotiations and agreements with Rome and the diocesan bishops necessarily end, sooner or later, in the abandonment of the principles which Tradition has always held to…” [9]

Few of us have also found time to read the interview of the First Assistant in a magazine of the SSPX. The text, translated into French by FranceFidele.org, was published on La Porte Latine, but only stayed up there for 24 hours. There we read:

“In Tokyo I had to say mass with my shoes off, in Fiji I was received with a Traditional drink which is foul and which, what’s worse, destroys the liver. Are we not tempted to label “modernist”, “liberal”, “Masonic” anything that does not conform to the routine of the 19th and 20th centuries? A traditional thus erroneously conceived is not attractive, and cannot convince anyone, any more than we can build-up the Church according to the image we have of it in the 1950s or according to the arguments which came to the fore in the 1970s. […] No conspiracy theories, no apocalypse, but hoping against hope. That’s what is Catholic.” [10]

Like all liberals and conciliar Catholics, Fr. Pfluger no longer understands the crucial importance of doctrine. And he expresses officially his implicit disdain for the great anti-liberal, anti-masonic and anti-modernist documents from 1831 (Mirari Vos) to 1950 (Humani Generis), and he didn’t provoke any kind of effective reaction. Fr. Pfluger seems not to know that preaching Christ crucified “in a convincing way” is “scandal for the Jews and madness for the Pagans.” What’s more, in dening the globalist plot against God, he pours contempt upon the teaching of the Church about the fight between two cities, and he denies a reality noticed even by non-believers – which cannot make the Faith attractive… Finally, by setting up hope in opposition to apocalypse, he shows a radical ineptitude for any sensible politics, for the book of Apocalypse tells us: “And it was given unto the beast to make war with the Saints and to overcome them. And power was given him over every tribe and people and tongue and nation.” (Apoc. 13,7). Fr. Pfluger flees the cross and does not understand that Christian Hope does not consist of expecting the new Christendom in our apostate world, but awaiting, with a great desire, the glorious return of the Sovereign Judge.

Useless Reactions?

In 2014, Fr. Gaudray went to see Bishop Fellay, to demand an explanation for what Fr. Pfluger was getting up to. A nice smile and some beautiful words made all his demands vanish. Fr. Gaudray also refused to participate in the stage-managed visit of Bishop Schneider to Flavigny. Bishop Fellay gave him a severe and unjust telling off for it. Our poor confere therefore wrote a brief and tortured article entitled: “Obedience to Fallible Superiors” …So as to satisfy his conscience, he would write once more to the faithful: “The new religion founded by Vatican II is founded upon the principles of the Revolution. …The conciliar church never ceases proclaiming its attachment to the “values” of the Revolution… Between them and us, the opposition is radical, the positions irreconcilable… God will always forgive the weak, but He rejects those who do not want the light. Priests who no longer pray or no longer study are, by necessity, engaged in betrayal.” [11]

That’s nice, but it’s not enough to protect the SSPX faithful. We attack Vatican II but not its penetration into the Society. It is not about favouring “anarchy and contempt for authority” as Fr. Gaudray thinks. “Doing penance to obtain good superiors from God”, “remaining humble”, is something necessary, but it does not dispense one from the priestly duty of naming the wolf, even when that wolf is called Fellay, Pfluger, Simoulin… Fr. Laguerie, at a meeting in Flavigny (Feb. 2015) was quite right in telling Fr. Bouchacourt, in front of the other priors, that Bishop Fellay was dishonest. Why not say so publicly?

From Internal Reaction…

At Flavigny we saw Fr. Troadec, when talking about the visit of Bishop Schneider, heckled by the disgruntled priors. We saw Fr. Bouchacourt go pale, realising that he could not control his district. Some people think that we won a battle there… It’s an illusion! This war is already lost. Fr. de Caqueray told Fr. Rioult in confidence, at the Chartres Pilgrimage in 2012, that: “Bishop Fellay [was] prepared to walk over more than one corpse.” Fr. de Caqueray, who was resisting the General House, indicated in 2013 that: “the book composed by Fr. Pivert has not been banned from being distributed by the General House. That is a baseless rumour […]. The reality is that our superiors have not asked me to withdraw this book from circulation.” [12] Today one can but smile at such subtlety, it shows the limits of this type of resistance.

Fr. Rousseau, in October 2013, reacted against the ‘canonisations’ of John XXIII and John-Paul II, writing: “Non Possumus! We cannot! […] This Pope of Assisi will, following a false beatification, be placed on the altars. Let’s be very clear about this: these altars are not Catholic and we cannot recognise this simulated ceremony. It is mimicry.” Today he is no longer a prior… For Fr. Pfluger, his transfer is due to his “serious faults”. [13] Fr. Delagneau forbade Fr. Deren from quoting Archbishop Lefebvre so that he wouldn’t stand out from the preaching of the other priests in the priory… Fr. Beauvais received an outrageous letter from Bishop Fellay accusing him of being unworthy of any position of responsibility, which would justify his departure from St. Nicolas du Chardonnet…

The liberals are in charge of the Society and are persecuting those who oppose their will. Punishments and transfers will serve the inevitable ‘purification’ which is going on. Dear confreres, let us re-read Fr. Pfluger’s conferecnes given to the Society Brothers at Flavigny in January 2014. In the 7th conference, we can read: “All these departures will be a purification for the Society and must be seen as a blessing.” Let’s not have any illusions, Satan’s masterstroke is happening all over again: the destruction of the social body through obedience. And: “Woe to him who does not consent. He can be stamped on, calumniated and deprived of all means of susbsistence.” [14]

…to External Survival

The letter from one prior addresses to three bishops, two assistants, Fr. de Caqueray and three members of Fr. Pinaud’s tribunal, contains a good summary of the situation in our Society:

“At St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, 8th November last [2013], Fr. Nely told us that unity had to be restored. On this point he really has his work cut out, and what he’s talking about would be a real resurrection, because alas, whether it be an issue of doctrinal unity, or the bond of charity, in either case we can only note their complete disappearance. How could we have a doctrinal unity when we see at the top a division between two contradictory manners of speaking? This Doctrinal Declaration [of 2012] is not dead because it was only withdrawn for extrinsic reasons, because it was dividing us, or because it was misunderstood. Thus the text may be withdrawn, but not the thinking which underpins it and which is still alive, a thinking which is expressed elsewhere in other texts which have not been withdrawn at all. It is this thinking which is dividing us, and it will continue to divide us as long as we do not return to examine it. That is what accounts for Fr. Rioult’s attitude, the trial of Fr. Pinaud and the departure of quite a few zealous if sometimes excessive confreres. How man more of them are we going to lose, and for how many priests will you have to render an account to Almighty God? […] As far as the bond of Charity is concerned, I can only note that might as well no longer exist at all. We have entered into a logic of war, and a civil war at that. […] A Society without Fraternal Charity nor doctrinal unity, we will soon be a corpse without a soul […]. Such a unity cannot last long.”

Indeed, this prior systematically opens the mail of that sister to check what’s written there… This brother keeps watch on those priests in his priory so that he can warn the General House about any behaviour which ‘deviates’ from the official line… The headmaster of a school fires one of his female teachers for having skirts that are too long [in other words modest], because it bothers her work colleagues who themselves wear simply immodest skirts… etc.

Conclusion

A canon lawyer of the SSPX recently admitted: “The New Code of Canon Law is not there only so as to sort out problems with priests, but also so as to build bridges with the official Church.” Thus the Society is already ruled by the New Code and by the Roman Congregations. The main superiors of the SSPX are today sold-out in their own minds to an agreement, without there even having been any signature. The SSPX is mortally wounded, we can’t save it. And how many of our confreres are currently being destroyed on the inside because they refuse to see this reality which makes them suffer?

Only one bishop, Bishop Williamson, and just one member of the General Chapter, Fr. Faure, have denounced the subversion which is taking place. Not one District superior or seminary rector has acted publicly and effectively against the corruption of our leaders. Fr. de Caqueray said that he was ready to make a move but that he was waiting for a bishop. What a useless pretext for doing nothing, since he himself said in confidence: “Bishop de Galarreta is too attached to his own comfort” and he knew that if Bishop Tissier saw things clearly intellectually, he was humanly paralysed: his goal, so he wrote to a confrere, being: “To help Bishop Fellay recover his honour.”
If we continue to do nothing we will be left with nothing but our eyes with which to weep for not having had the courage to cry wolf. For Bishop Fellay is not a father who makes mistakes, but a ravening wolf who deceives us. Re-read his letter to Benedict XVI (17th June, 2012) and ponder well the full implications of this odious sentence: “Unfortunately, with the way the Society is at the moment, the new declaration will not get past.” [Malheureusement, dans le contexte actuel de la Fraternité, la nouvelle déclaration ne passera pas.] Too many of us are awaiting a future agreement before we react, whereas Bishop Fellay has already betrayed us because he has sided with the enemy.

Of course, we don’t have a strict duty to leave the Society, but we do have the duty to “publicly oppose errors and the proponenets of error, whoever they may be” [15] even and especially if they are close to home. How many are doing that? Will our next transfer, which will mean being shunted into a siding, be a sufficient and clear reason to react? Are we going to continue to obey a subversive leader who abuses his power in achieving ends which we condemn? [16]

Archbishop Lefebvre, who had respect for authority, was dumbfounded that the monks of Le Barroux: “Don’t take the initiative by leaving or founding another monastery or demanding that Dom Gerard resign. No. Nothing. We’re obedient.” [17] Archbishop Lefebvre who had respect for authority, wanted to visit the Generals imprisoned at Tulle for having mutinied in Algeria. One of “these heroes whose prison I could see from the bishop’s palace” [18] recounts this fact: “The prison governor knew that we (Cdr. Camelin and Lt. Guillaume) knew that we were ringleaders, but was unaware of how far we could go. One day, at a meeting, he said to me: ‘You others, you officers, you ought to set an example of discipline in prison.’ In prison, setting an example of discipline in servitude, that’s the limit!” [19]

Let us imitate the conduct of Fr. Altamira, in Colombia. Having stayed in place as prior long enough to give the faithful sound instruction about the treason taking place, on the day of his transfer/purification (for Bishop Fellay never tells us face-to-face the reason why he’s smashing us), he was able to say “Non Possumus!” and to leave with the majority of the faithful, to start again nearby. We cannot abandon the faithful any more than we can allow our superiors to speak and act against the truth in our name. Priestly colleagues who wish to coordinate their efforts can get in touch with Bishop Faure at cjmfaure@gmail.com, fortunately consecrated on 19th March, 2015, by bishop Williamson in Santa Cruz.

Let us not flee the combat for fear of sharing in the solitude of Christ in His agony:

“The fear of being ridiculed, of having problems in our apostolic activity, of being doomed to material insecurity. Everywhere the fear of losing one’s social standing. All too rare are those who, because of Our Lord and His name, laugh in the face of the isolation of today and the incertitude of tomorrow.” (Fr. Calmel, Itineraire No.148)

[1] The Angelus, 20th April 2013 – DICI 07/06/2013

[2] 12th August 2014 audio file on LaPorteLatine.org

[3] DICI No.302, 10th October 2014

[4] Bishop Fellay, Cor Unum, March 2012

[5] Walter Brandmüller, “Le chiavi di Benedetto XVI per interpretare il Vaticano II”, Sienna, Cantagalli, 2012.

[6] Interview with the Latin Mass Society: www.lms.org.uk/news-and-events/interview-with-bishop-athanasius-schneider

[7] Archbishop Lefebvre, foreword to Spiritual journey [translation ours]

[8] Fr. de Journa’s words taken from “Il Bolletino delle parrochie dell’isola”, 15th May 2001, DICI No.9, pp.12-15

[9] Fr. Celier: “L’Eglise déchirée, Appel aux catholiques Ecclesia Dei” [‘The Church torn asunder : an appeal to Ecclesia Dei Catholics’], Gricha publishing house, 1994, pp.81-86

[10] http://dergeradeweg.com/2014/12/31/glaubige-eiferer-vs-eifrige-glaubige/ “Seven Questions for Fr. Pfluger”

[11] Fr. Gaudray “Carillon du Nord” newsletter, February 2015

[12] French District internal newsletter for priests, July 2013, No.251

[13] His crime was all the more intolerable because he appended to his text the drawing that Archbishop Lefebvre had had done in 1986, in which Our Lord rejects John-Paul II and sends him to hell. Fr. Pfluger on the other hand, replied to a Society Brother who was troubled by the canonisations: “Don’t be scandalised. They have a different concept of sanctity to us. But it’s always been like that in the Church, each Pope beatified his predecessor.” (Flavigny, Jan. 2014)

[14] Archbishop Lefebvre, “Satan’s Masterstroke”, 13/10/1974

[15] 25th Anniversary Declaration by three bishops, 27th June, 2013

[16] “Unless one lives as one thinks, one will end up thinking as one lives…”

[17] Conference at Econe, 8th October 1988

[18] Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, [p.286 in the French edition]

[19] Memoires of Pierre Guillaume, Plon, 2006, p.321

Resistance: Brand New Watered Down Position of SSPX