SSPX Crisis: Back to Square One?
At particularly delicate times for the “ralliement” process of the absorption of the SSPX into conciliarism (i.e., times when revolt within the SSPX threatens to break through any containment or suppression effort), Bishop Fellay tells the world that all negotiation has fallen flat, in order to try and dissipate the outrage, and regroup.
In the summer of 2012, we had the “Letter of the Three Bishops” to Bishop Fellay and the General Counsel (and the scandalous response of the latter), shortly before a General Chapter which threatened to displace the Vatican’s man inside the SSPX (for, as Rome has said of him, “Bishop Fellay is a man we can deal with”).
Consequently, in order to salvage the capture of the SSPX, Rome backed off the accord, and Bishop Fellay announced:
“There has been a lot of back and forth, exchanges, letters and protests, but we are back to square one.”
-Bishop Fellay (Ordination Sermon, Econe, 6/29/12)
Since the 2012 “square one” ploy, we
learned that the SSPX had gained jurisdiction to try its own priests in
some instances; jurisdiction to hear confessions; approval to ordain
priests; lost one bishop and two district superiors and several formerly
allied religious communities; gained endorsements from modernist
conciliar bishops and cardinals (e.g., Schneider and Brandmuller); met
with the Pope personally in Rome; endorsed the sellout accord which has
been on the table for years; tried to calm the nerves of parishioners
and laity by claiming that such a gesture could not possibly be a trap;
etc., etc.
And for the most part, the suckers (clereical and lay) have swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker.
Now comes the latest crisis over diocesan
regulated marriages in SSPX chapels (which subject both clergy and laity
to diocesan control and influence). In France, marriages are rejected
by some SSPX priests when couples reject the diocesan delegation;
Menzingen has had to go quietly over the heads of the local pastors to
avoid opposition, and obtain these delegations for all these marriages
at the District level (which is how your SSPX pastor can look you in the
eye, and tell you he “has received no instruction in this regard from
his superiors:” They are being circumvented).
Yet, discord continued to grow, so Bishop Fellay went back to his favorite ordinations day speech:
“It is like in the Game of the Goose.
We were almost at the end and then we landed on the ‘go back to start’
square. Everything has fallen to the ground, it is necessary to begin
again from square one.”
-Bishop Fellay (After ordination luncheon, Econe, 6/29/17)
When Bishop Fellay says we are back to
square one, you had better hold onto your hat: It means either that the
deal is almost completed (and it is, if only Bishop Fellay could betray
enough of Tradition to modernist Rome to convince them to accept his
signature), or, that a deluge of “progress” is about to decapitate those
who have dared to stick their necks out.
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
Bishop Williamson has observed that the crisis in the SSPX resembles in all aspects the crisis in the Church after Vatican II.
One aspect in that analogy which ought not be lost sight of is this:
If it was said of the Church after the
council that it was betrayed by those who should have defended it, then
surely the same thing applies to the fate of the SSPX (and all those who
believe we are “back to square one”).
But as I read somewhere recently (I cannot
recall the citation, but the observation is not my own), we are only
back to square one when Menzingen rejects ordinary jurisdiction for
confession; rejects the pastoral guidelines for marriages; repeals the
2012 General Chapter Declaration; reaffirms there can be no accord with
Rome before it returns to the Faith; reinstates Bishop Williamson and
all those it expelled; etc. etc. etc.
If you really believe the SSPX is back to square one in the ralliement process, you are a sucker.
Just as the crisis in the Church cannot be
healed until Rome surrenders the false doctrines of Vatican II, and
recovers its tradition, neither can the crisis in the SSPX be overcome
until it retraces its steps, jettisons all its compromised positions,
and re-embraces the tradition it has jettisoned.
But anyone should be able to see that this
is nowhere near happening, and quite the contrary, all the momentum in
Menzingen is heading in the opposite direction.
Back to square one?
They have a word for people who allow themselves to believe such fairy tales.
