Dear Friends and Benefactors,
On the occasion of All Saints’ Day,
anniversary of the founding of our Society of St. Pius X, we had the joy of
seeing a magnificent church in the heart of Brussels restored to Catholic
worship. This church, with an area of some 25,000 square feet, built in the
middle of the 19th century, was for a long time Belgium’s national
shrine dedicate to St. Joseph. Kept by the Redemptorists, it was the religious
edifice in which the traditional Mass was celebrated officially for the longest
time in Belgium’s capital city, well after 1969. We were able to acquire it from
a Syriac group which worshipped there for some fifteen years.
Acquiring this church seems to us highly
symbolical. As it were, it sums up where we are and what we are doing —restoring Catholic Tradition as best we can within the Church.
That may seem presumptuous, and, no doubt, if
it were something we were trying to do by ourselves, we could hardly avoid the
accusation of presumption. But the facts are there: we remain faithfully and
steadily attached to Catholic Tradition, in particular to the Tridentine Rite of
Mass, bearing abundant spiritual fruit. And now that the crisis in the Church is
becoming more obvious by the great lack of priests in eastern and western
hemispheres, and by the immense emptiness at the heart of the faith as it is
being handed down to future generations, the Tridentine Rite is becoming like a
statement pointing out how to put a massive end to the crisis in the Church, and
to bring about a lasting restoration.
Already, a considerable number of priests
especially young ones, and even some bishops are looking with favor, in most
cases without yet making themselves heard, upon our work. We represent an
encouragement for them and a glimmer of hope, because many of them feel
overwhelmed by discouragement, not to say despair, at seeing the indescribable
obstinacy of so many bishops in preventing all rescue attempts, be it in the
teaching of the catechism, in introducing of a little more respect in the
receiving of holy Communion or in the celebration of the Mass.
For thirty years now all over the world, we
have been watching how the least recovery attempt is met by an often savage
opposition on the part of those who anonymously but efficaciously wield power.
Stop anything that looks like turning the clock back: all too often, the
authorities watch out for nothing else. If only that was not the case! But very
few of them stand up to the all-round pressure of the reforms and their
aftermath.
Even in Rome, if any of the churchmen become
aware of the disaster, they hasten to state that there is no turning back, as
regards for instance the Mass or ecumenism. It is a little as though a baker
were to complain or the low nutritional value of some new bread, only to declare
that there is no going back to making the old kind of bread. Why not?
Why should the ecumenism being practiced
today be irreversible? Why should general freedom for the so-called Mass of
St. Pius V be refused when its grandeur, beauty and all-round fruitfulness are
known to all? The reason we are given is that that would be to devalue the new
rite of Mass. That is a poor reason, coming from suicidal reformers who would
rather cling to the reforms they brought about than get out of their misery.
Well, for our part we are resolved to be just
as obstinate, for the sake of the Church, the Roman Catholic Church which we
love because she gave us the Faith, the life of grace, the sacraments,
supernatural life, the pledge of eternity. In one word, because she is our
Mother. We wish her to be like Our Lord wishes her to be, stainless, without
spot or wrinkle (Eph. V, 5), but we also know that such a beauty comes at
a price. We know that the restoration of the Church will not happen without
suffering, without the Cross, as we follow in Our Lord’s own footsteps:
For unto this you are called: because Christ also suffered
for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. "Who did not
sin, neither was guile found in His mouth". Who when he was reviled, did not
revile: when he suffered, he threatened not: but delivered himself to him that
judged him unjustly. Who his own self bore our sins in his body on the tree:
that we, being dead to sins, should live to justice: by whose stripes you were
healed. (I Pet. II,
21-24).
We are not looking for an easy or highly
visible success. Ours is an undertaking that calls for souls ready to give
everything, including life; souls ready to sacrifice and suffer. Our Lord gave
us no other way to follow, no other remedy. And all Church history is full of
such heroes, such victories "in reverse". We seek no other way than this one,
because it is Our Lord’s way. "Regnavit a ligno Deus". God reigned from the
Cross. "We preach Christ, and Christ crucified, such is the line taken by the
Apostle of the Gentiles. For I judged not myself to know any thing among you,
but Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (I Cor. II, 2).
However, Brussels is not the only place where
the Church’s restoration is symbolically expressed: we rejoice in a number of
church blessings and consecrations this year. Let us take just the most typical:
in Denver, Colorado, a magnificent neo-Romanesque church was built with the help
of some 300 Denver Catholics, and was consecrated on August 18; the seminary
church in La Reja in the Argentine, a neo-Colonial jewel, will be consecrated
next December 8; also in the Argentine, Mendoza is getting a new priory and a
splendid church; in Switzerland, Fribourg now boasts of a beautiful chapel, as
does Veneta in the USA, while in Mexico the transformation of our church in the
capital city is being completed, and in France, three handsome buildings will
soon be ready for purposes of worshipping God: in Toulon, Saintes, and St. Malo.
So, here and there all over the world are rising up beautiful buildings for our
priests and people the more easily to lift up to God their worship through the
prayer of the Liturgy. It is most consoling to see scattered across all
continents the same fervor, the same zeal to honor God as properly as possible.
The numerous buildings are clear testimony to your admirable generosity.
However, we rejoice far more yet in the
building up of your souls. In all ages Mother Church has seen in the building of
a church a symbol of herself. The souls are stones cut to fit one another,
resting firmly on the Rock, Peter, laid by Our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter, on whom
the Redeemer built His Church, describes this mystery in his first epistle:
Unto whom coming, as to a living stone, rejected indeed by
men, but chosen and made honorable by God: Be you also as living stones built
up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices... (I Pet. II,
4-5).
So even if times are hard, God is granting
us many consolations, such as conversions, the education of our children, the
opening of their hearts towards their Heavenly Father; Christian families set
upon living according to God’s commandments without holding back, at the cost of
great sacrifice; abundant fruit also in the various religious congregations
close to us; all this is a consolation to us because it consoles the Heart of
God.
So, let us continue, dear friends, let us
continue to do as much good as possible, especially good to souls... our own
souls, those of our relatives and of many others too. The day will come when
what we are witnessing to will be recognized. May Our Lady hasten that day!
With my blessing,
+Bernard Fellay,
Superior General
