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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 favors
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 6am 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 Argentinean 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 St. 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 (at the end of October, 1999), 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 Ss. 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 feelings 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 the Fraternity of St. Peter 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 Dei 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 the Fraternity
of St. Peter and certain cardinals, it appears that Rome does not feel bound by
the terms of that protocol on which the Fraternity of St. Peter 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 defense we have endured penalties and condemnations from Rome and
the bishops rather than celebrate Pope 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 center of
Catholic life, its source, nourishment and soul: the Mass. Besides, countless
people testify to just that: the faithful walked away, gave up practicing 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, fervor 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 not felt 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 eliminate its other-worldliness,
to make everything understandable, has been emptied out 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
unshakably 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.
+Bishop Fellay
Superior General
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