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Sunday, January 9, 2011
The
conference of the Society of St. Pius X organized in Paris
by Le Courrier de Rome has just ended. And the last
words pronounced were those of Bishop Fellay, General
Superior of the Society. That is where I would like to begin
to describe for you what happened during these past days.
Bishop Fellay is a man with astounding oratorical gifts, but
above all he is a man of authentic faith. What is the
Priestly Society of St. Pius X? What is its charism? His
Excellency, citing St. Paul’s expression, “fides ex
auditu” [“faith comes from hearing,” Romans 10:17],
explained the meaning of faith in the Incarnate Word
transmitted through the presence of the Incarnate Word, His
“epiphany” or manifestation in the world. Man returns to God
through God. And the Society’s charism consists of
“restoring” Catholicism, discovering the faith hidden by
the incrustations and errors of modernity so as to lead
souls back to God. A charism, therefore, that is
concentrated on faith and the salvation of souls. But that
means being authentically Catholic!
And here
I would like to make the first point that struck me
immediately during those three days in Paris: the life of
the Society that is somewhat disdainfully called
“Lefebvrite” does not depend on the memory of its
charismatic founder or on devotion to him. Archbishop
Lefebvre is remembered lovingly, passionately, but not with
the obsessive and profuse veneration that is typical of
various Catholic movements and organizations. And of course
Bishop Fellay is not the object of a cult of personality
either. One finds among the thousands of lay people and the
many priests of the SSPX the filial respect that is due to
one’s own Bishop, yet the Society is nothing but an
authentic Catholic community. There is no need for other
adjectives. Not even the adjective “traditionalist”, because
the distinctive features of the Society are its ties to the
Church and its identification with her, and the Church is
essentially Tradition. The Council is a moment of the
Church, an important moment, certainly, but a debatable one.
And in the name of the debatable character of the Council,
the Society of St. Pius X resolved to preserve in its
entirety, even at the cost of very great sacrifices, the
theology, liturgy, ecclesiology and morality that constitute
the essence of Catholicism. In this sense it is worth noting
a detail that came to light during the talk by Bishop Fellay:
one important factor that prompted Archbishop Lefebvre to
ordain four bishops in 1988 was the meeting in Assisi that
had taken place two years earlier.
Consequently Bishop Fellay was not able to hide his
concern about the event in Assisi scheduled for 2011,
which Pope Benedict announced several days ago: “I felt a
shiver run down my spine. Then they try to deny what
happened the first time.” He went on to say that the
first time Catholic churches were made available for the
cultic practices of other religions, which went so far as
the sacrilegious act of placing a Buddha on a tabernacle!
This time it appears that there is a plan to make available
several rooms in the Friary, after removing the crucifixes
as a matter of principle! Bishop Fellay commented, “That
is madness! In that way they are eliminating the means by
which mankind was redeemed!” Bishop Fellay was struck in
particular by one word in the talk that Pope Benedict XVI
gave to announce the 2011 Meeting. It is the word “faith”.
The word itself, of course, is not perplexing, but rather
its context. Indeed, during his Angelus message on January
1, 2011, the Pope said that he will go to Assisi “to
commemorate the historical action desired by my Predecessor
and to solemnly renew the commitment of believers of every
religion to live their own religious faith as a
service to the cause of peace.”
Is it
possible to speak about other “religious faiths”? Faith in
fact is a theological virtue which a Catholic receives at
baptism through the grace of God. But can “the same term be
used for different circumstances”? Only a Catholic has
faith. The non-Catholic believes in his own divinity but one
cannot use the term faith to describe his adherence to his
own religion: “One thereby runs the risk of confusing
completely different things.” For Bishop Fellay, Assisi
is “a symbol” and “even if one corrects it [this symbol],
one does not eliminate it.” Its evocative force would
therefore remain. How then could Assisi have a Catholic
meaning? “The Vicar of Christ would have to say: ‘There is
only one God, and that is Jesus Christ; convert!’ Then
Assisi would go well!” And with a bemused smile, perhaps
aware that that will never happen, Bishop Fellay went on to
describe what the Society of St. Pius X can do for the
Church today. And he did so with specific reference to
Italy, a nation in which there has never been a strong
presence of “traditionalists” but which today is remarkably
interested in the revival of Tradition. Bishop Fellay sees
the risk of an excessive concentration on ritual, on the
ancient liturgy which—in my opinion—leads only to an empty
aestheticism that damages “traditional Catholicism”, which
is not just ritual observance but authentic Catholic life.
Therefore he decided to tell about a meeting with around
thirty Italian diocesan priests who have contacted the
Society. Yes, thirty diocesan priests—the number itself is
big news!
Bishop
Fellay asked them the question: What do you expect from the
Society of St. Pius X? Aside from a few who asked “to learn
to celebrate the old rite”, the majority replied, “We are
looking for DOCTRINE.” That brought him to the
representative case of an Italian Vicar General who said to
one of the members of the SSPX, “I began to read the
catechism of St. Pius X; well, I admit that I would not be
able to answer those questions … because no one ever taught
me to do so!” Bishop Fellay added that these admissions by
the priests are sad: “They didn’t teach us anything!” It is
as though many of them, despite their university degrees and
years of study, had been equipped with useless doctrinal
tools, with containers but not with Catholic content. That
is why all of them, almost instinctively, crave the teaching
of St. Thomas!
And at
that point Fellay added a comment that he had already made
to me personally the previous day as we were chatting about
sacred art. I told His Excellency that the faithful
immediately recognize something beautiful and Catholic and
love it right away, even after decades during which they
became accustomed to what is ugly and shapeless. And he said
to me, “But that comes from Baptism. It is in Baptism that
our Lord gives us the Faith; we become Catholics, and even
years later, without ever having seen the old Mass, even
after having seen ugly works of art, when we see beautiful
ones that are in keeping with Tradition, when we attend that
old Mass, it is as though a light suddenly goes on and we
recognize it: now this is Catholic.” So it is with the Mass.
Priests who learn to celebrate the Mass of all ages undergo
a spiritual renewal. Through the rite the doubts of their
souls begin to be cleared up, and they begin “to put their
lives in order again and to put in order also their
relations with the faithful” Bishop Fellay describes this as
“the work of Grace on the priest through the Mass”. Thus the
liturgy leads to doctrine and doctrine to morality, because
“faith without works is dead.” And thereby the priest
discovers a new yet ancient way of being faithful to his own
ministry. And he does so above all by rediscovering
“objectivity and realism”. The most serious problem of our
era, which is also the problem of the crisis of the Church,
is the loss of realism, which Fellay traces back to the
revolution of German rationalist thought beginning with
Kant: “The world of thought is what has evicted reality.”
That is why “there is no longer any coherence between being
and appearing,” and “such great importance is ascribed to
the subject that the object is no longer important.” But
everything “falls into place again thanks to objectivity”.
We must therefore “adapt our minds to what is real”. In that
way the priest who has regained objectivity will be capable
of working in truth for the salvation of souls; he will not
waste his efforts in empty activism, in that cycle of
events, initiatives and deliberations that never cease and
always need something external. The priest returns to the
center. This happens through the recovery of a traditional
Catholicism, through the Mass and doctrine: “This is the
treasure of the Church, and the important thing is not that
it is ours, but that it belongs to everyone!”
Finally
Bishop Fellay spoke about the faithful. “The faithful
represent not the living tradition, but livable tradition.”
The error of the “spirit of the Council” was to try to run
after the world: “You see that the world is going away, and
so we have to have an aggiornamento (updating).” Now
“this method extolled by the Council was too human.” However
it is only “by putting into practice the eternal methods
which the Church has always extolled that the faithful
realize that Christian life is possible today.” “The world
of today does all that it can to make us believe that it is
too difficult, indeed impossible” to live as Catholics. Yet
“it is feasible!” And this is because “you, the faithful,
are the ones who build up the Mystical Body!” Then with a
prayer to Our Lady of Fatima the Tenth Theological Congress
of Le Courrier de Rome concluded.
No doubt after this article of mine is published I will be branded for
life as a “Lefebvrite”. So I hasten to send, to all those who are indignant, offended or
scandalized, whatever their background may be
(neo-conservative, theo-conservative, progressive,
two-faced, etc.), a solemn raspberry! If all of you had been
in the Church of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet this morning,
with around five thousand persons of all ages, you would
have seen that Tradition is not made up of aristocratic
snobs, nor of four excommunicated fanatics. Tradition is
something moving that makes you weep, that brings the joy of
hope and the sorrow of loss. Tradition is pulsating life:
hundreds of eyes, hearts, and heads that hand on their own
faith and live it out uncompromisingly, even at the cost of
marginalization by the progressive, updated Church.
Tradition also includes the sincere smiles of Bishop
Fellay, his calm, his prudence, his love for the Church.
And it includes the fraternity of his priests, the familial
way in which they carry out their own priestly ministry, the
way in which they are embraced by the faithful who love and
care about how the Church has always taught them to act,
with consistency and conviction.
Therefore
allow me to say: Long live the Society of St. Pius X! |
