superior general
letter N� 57 TO friends AND BENEFACTORS
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
It is already a year since we had the great joy of blessing
the magnificent new chapel of the Seminary in Econe, Everybody admires it, and
it is the pride and joy of our seminarians, obviously. It is a success from
all points of view, but above all it favours prayer. While the great transept
capable of seating 120 seminarians resounds to the joyful praise of God and
wraps the chant in its warm stone arches, the nave accommodating up to 300
faithful strengthens their faith and deepens their charity especially by the
magnificent ceremonies, whose clouds of incense and majestic movements by the
ministers at the altar inspire the respect and adoration due to the ineffable
greatness of God. Ah, how we would like to see you all at least occasionally
partaking of that happiness which is a foretaste of Heaven! A spacious crypt,
where Archbishop Lefebvre's mortal remains will lie, hosts the early morning
faithful who choose to attend "the 6 o'clock Mass" before beginning work, thus
sanctifying the rest of their day and edifying, as they are edified by, the
seminarians. We shall not cease thanking Divine Providence for giving us such
a beautiful church.
However, in order to finish the building as quickly as
possible, we had to take on some heavy debts, and these are being paid down
all too slowly for our liking. This delay is a drain upon the resources of the
General House, and in particular it gets in the way of our helping the mission
countries which are almost entirely dependent on the support of Menzingen.
This is because up until now the General House has taken in hand the building
of the Econe Seminary church and now that about half the-total cost still
remains to be paid the General House has also had to take on-the construction
costs of our new seminary chapel in the Argentine. The zeal and enthusiasm of
the architect there look like providing us with another such jewel as will
leave our Argentinian colleagues little reason to envy the church built for
the cradle of the Society in Econe. The Argentine's seminary Chapel is due to
be blessed on December 8, 2000.
However that beauty which our patron Pius X wished to be the
setting for prayer, has its price. No doubt you agree with our desire to
reduce as soon as possible the high rate of interest which for the moment we
are having to pay to the banks. Either gifts or loans on your part would be a
great help to us. We thank you in advance for your generosity which in all
these years has never failed us, and we promise you our special prayers for
all your intentions.
Once more we entrust to your tender care these building
projects, which are highly practical signs of a religious vitality astonishing
everybody, especially those who love predicting our death or imminent
extinction!
Please God, next year our Society will number well over 400
priests, more than 180 seminarians, 120 sisters, 65 oblates and 55 brothers.
And yet the requests reaching us from over 60 countries can only be satisfied
a tiny bit at a time. The Traditional movement is obviously growing throughout
the world, despite the catastrophic collapse of the Faith and the worrying
revival of the modern world's practical atheism; souls are still coming our
way, no fewer in number. May the number of seminarians and priests grow in
proportion! For several years now God has been granting us a relatively
peaceful growth while the wholesale demolition of Church and Christian values
has redoubled on the eve of the new millennium.
In face of the scandal of Assisi being renewed this time in
the Vatican (end of October), we cannot help protesting, and we ask you to
join us in making reparation for such an affront to the Sovereign Majesty of
Almighty God. The First Commandment is again being violated, head on, only
this time in full view of the Basilica of St. Peter! How many martyrs must be
turning in their graves as they have to look on in silence at scenes
discrediting the heroic acts by which they themselves entered into the glory
of the Lord. The memory of Saints Peter and Paul is being outraged by such
wretched happenings. Worst of all, by their recurrence they are becoming a way
of life that we could all get used to. Such acts of idolatry are an
abomination in the full sense of the word, but the attempt is being made to
give them by their repetition a sort of legitimacy. Daily exposure to scandal
no longer shocks, charity grows cold, the Faith disappears in a sort of mushy
confusion of more or less religious feeling towards some kind of godhead
supposed by people to be the true God or even Jesus Christ: indifferentism
becomes the law, and woe to anyone daring to state that it is the strict duty
of all men to render the one true worship to the one true God.
It baffles all understanding how the Vatican can give up
fighting the age-old enemy, embrace brethren that it no longer wishes to call
separated, look kindly on pagans in whom it pretends to have discovered a
sudden beauty, and turn all its guns and use all its penalties on its own
children who wish to remain Catholic! Yet that is what it is doing!
After pushing aside our Society of St. Pius X, Rome is now
thundering against those who wish to celebrate only the old liturgy. The
priests of St. Peter's Fraternity are now bitterly learning how naively they
put their trust in the churchmen who promised them the moon back in 1988 if
only they would abandon the house of their father, Archbishop Lefebvre, and
enter into a process of "reconciliation"... Despite their defection then,
these priests are being blamed now for not integrating with their faithful
into the "reality" of the Church. So they have been in a dream all this time?
Clearly what upsets this Rome is the exclusive celebration of the Tridentine
rite. Rome made many moves this last summer, all of them heading in the same
direction. The lively reaction of the "Ecclesia Dei" faithful,
especially in the USA, seems to be forcing the Roman authorities to modify the
changes they were demanding. However, even if for now uncertainty hangs over
the decisions to be taken concerning the "Ecclesia Dei" communities,
Rome has clearly shown what direction it means to take: sooner or later, these
Communities having enjoyed up till now the "protection" of the "Ecclesia
DeF Commission, will have to get in line; the Conciliar Church's rite is
the new rite, and anyone professing allegiance to that Church will
correspondingly have to celebrate its rite. No exceptions will be allowed. To
be able to continue celebrating the old rite, one will have to give Rome
tangible proof; in more than just words, that one accepts the new Mass. This
condition was already laid down in the 1984 Indult, and it is of course upheld
as a principle: no permission to celebrate the old rite for anyone refusing
the new rite.
We cannot help thinking that Rome would have treated us the
same way had Archbishop Lefebvre followed through with the May 5 Protocol of
1988. From conversations between leaders of St. Peter's Fraternity and certain
cardinals, it appears that Rome does not feel bound by the terms of that
protocol on which St. Peter's Fraternity was nevertheless founded!
Here we are touching on a very important point: for 30 years
now we have been fighting to preserve the old rite. In its defence we have
endured penalties and condemnations from Rome and the bishops rather than
celebrate Paul VI's Mass. The reasons for refusing the New Mass are firstly
that as a rite it is bad and dangerous for the Faith, secondly that it was put
together with the avowed purpose of bringing Catholics into line with
Protestants, supposedly to bring us all together again — ecumenism. Slowly,
without realizing it, laity and priests using the new rite lose their sense of
the Catholic Faith. The fruits are there, clear to see for anyone willing to
open his eyes. The emptying out, as soon as the New Mass was introduced —
especially in First and Second World countries where religion had flourished
up till then — of churches, seminaries and religious houses alike, must be
mainly attributed to the radical change of what lies at the centre of Catholic
life, its source, nourishment and soul: the Mass. Besides, countless people
testify to just that: the faithful walked away, gave up practising their
religion because they no longer found in the new rite what they were looking
for; God, the strengthening of their Faith, the forgiveness of their sins,
supernatural consolation and support in their trials, fervour to love God
above all.
It is not a question of feelings or culture, but of a
supernatural reality that has been torn out of the life of the Church. The
simple fact that throughout the world souls young or old, with or without
culture, look out for and want the Mass of all time speaks out against those
false arguments. If such souls have felt not at home in the new ceremonies,
that is to be attributed firstly to their sense of the Faith and not to any
reaction on the natural level. They have sensed, without always being able to
explain it theologically, that their Catholic Faith was something to which the
new rite had become alien. When the elders of an Amazon tribe asked a
missionary priest to celebrate the old Mass : "because that's where the
mystery is", they said with amazing simplicity all that needs to be said. The
New Mass, by its intent to desacralize, to take the mystery out of it, to make
everything understandable, has been emptied of its substance: the mystery.
When dealing with the Paul VI Mass it is difficult to speak of "celebrating
the Holy Mysteries".
Therefore, dear faithful we must keep up the good fight
without tiring. We are at present entering on a new stage of the battle. Does
the Vatican mean to shut down the old Mass before the present Pope dies?
Possibly. Yet the only true solution for Rome is to return to the tried and
true means of sanctifying souls and to stop all the experimenting so harmful
to souls. Catholics have a right to Catholic nourishment which has not been
watered down with ecumenism. The Church's past Tradition is the key to her
future progress. Undertaking to build outside of Tradition means heading for
disaster such as we can sense coming now, barren of fruit, deadly in
effect.
May Our Lady of the Rosary in this her month of October,
deign to obtain for us much strength and patience to continue unshakeably
faithful to our Catholic life in the service of Holy Mother Church. And may
God fill you with His grace and blessing for your great generosity.————-
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+ Bernard Fellay Buenos Aires, 17 October
1999
PrintPost Approved PP243600/00006
