SSPX RESISTANCE DECLARATION ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE EPISCOPAL CONSECRATIONS
Vienna, VA, U.S.A. - June 29, 2013
Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Archbishop Lefebvre’s heroic decision in 1988 to consecrate truly Catholic bishops for the defense of the Catholic Faith and for the preservation of valid Sacraments from the devastation of the Church wrought by the disastrous Second Vatican Council, a group of priests express their alarm at the same devastation now being wrought upon the Archbishop’s Society of St. Pius X, and they resolve together to do what they can to protect the Church and Society against this newly developed peril.
For just as the churchmen of Rome have used the last 50 years to attempt to reconcile the Church with the world, and in particular by the religious liberty and ecumenism of Vatican II, so the Society’s Superior General over the last 15 years has done everything he could to promote the wicked dream of reconciling Catholic Tradition with Conciliar Rome. For example, the Declaration of June 27, 2013 once more leaves the door open to reopening negotiations with Conciliar Rome. (cf. No. 11)
The result of this attempt to reconcile things irreconcilable within the Society of St Pius X has been the disabling of many good priests, the progressive undoing of the Archbishop’s work and the endangering of the eternal salvation of souls without number. This is because the Society of St Pius X was for many years an anchor in the true Faith for the entire Church, and now that anchor has snapped. And so just as the authorities of Vatican II lost the confidence of many faithful Catholics by their ambiguities, duplicities, and lies, so now the liberal authorities of the Society of St Pius X are losing all trust of many Traditional Catholics by their betrayal of Tradition.
Now what can a small and scattered group of priests do to save the situation? God will save His Church by converting the Pope when His Mother obtains at last the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. Nevertheless, truth is not a question of numbers and so we set for ourselves the Archbishop’s program:
“The Holy Virgin will have the victory. She will triumph over the great apostasy, the fruit of Liberalism. One more reason not to twiddle our thumbs! We have to fight more than ever for the social Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In this battle, we are not alone; we have with us all the popes up through Pius XII inclusively. All of them combatted Liberalism in order to deliver the Church from it. God did not grant that they succeed, but this is not reason to lay down our weapons! We have to hold on. We have to build, while the others are demolishing. The crumbled citadels have to be rebuilt, the bastions of the Faith to be reconstructed: firstly the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass of all times, which forms saints; then our chapels, which are our true parishes; our monasteries; our large families, our enterprises faithful to the social doctrine of the Church; our politicians determined to make the politics of Jesus Christ – this a whole tissue of Christian social life, Christian customs, Christian reflexes, which we have to restore, on the scale that God wants, at the time God wills. All that I know, the Faith teaches us, it is that Our Lord Jesus Christ must reign here below, now, and not only at the end of the world, as the Liberals would have it!
While they are destroying, we have the contentment of rebuilding. A still greater happiness: generations of young priests are participating with zeal in this task of reconstruction of the Church for the salvation of souls.” (They Have Uncrowned Him; chapter XXXIV)
H.E. Bp. Richard Williamson SSPX
Fr. Joseph Pfeiffer SSPX
Fr. Tomas de Aquino O.S.B.
Fr. Jahir FBMV
Fr. Jean-Michel Faure SSPX
Fr. Ronald Ringrose
Fr. Juan Carlos Ortiz SSPX
Fr. Hugo Ruiz SSPX
Fr. Ernesto Cardozo SSPX
Fr. Joaquim FBMV
Fr. Richard Voigt SSPX
Fr. David Hewko SSPX
Fr. François Chazal SSPX
Fr. Valan Rajakumar SSPX
Fr. Patrick Girouard SSPX
Fr. René Trincado SSPX
Fr. Olivier Rioult SSPX
Fr. Edgardo Suelo SSPX
Br. Placide OSB
Br. André OSB
Sunday, June 30, 2013
25th Anniversary of SSPX Episcopal Consecrations
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Open Letter To Priests of the SOCIETY of ST PIUS X.
A letter from Bishop Richard Williamson
28 March 2013
OPEN LETTER TO PRIESTS of the SOCIETY of ST PIUS X.
Reverend and dear Fathers,
The recent publication of the Doctrinal Declaration, addressed by the General Council of the Society of St Pius X to the Church authorities in Rome on April 15 last year, confirms our worst fears. We waited for nearly a year to know what it contains. It proves once and for all that the present leadership of the Society of St Pius X means to lead it away from the direction set for it by Archbishop Lefebvre, and towards the ideas and ideals of the Second Vatican Council.
However busy you may be with the daily ministry, this is bound to concern you because it means that the souls under your care are, through you, coming under Superiors meaning to lead them and yourselves towards, even into, the great apostasy of modern times. We recall that it is Superiors who mould their subjects and not the other way around – have we not observed a number of good Society priests, one after another, giving up the fight for the Faith as we know Archbishop Lefebvre led it, and instead going with the flow, with the strong and very different current flowing for some years now from the top of the Society downwards ?
Detailed analysis will confirm the danger of each of the Declaration’s ten paragraphs, as outlined only briefly below:--
I Fidelity promised to the “Catholic Church” and to the “Roman Pontiff” can easily be misdirected today towards the Conciliar Church as such, and to the Conciliar Pontiffs. Distinctions are needed to avoid confusion.
II Acceptance of teachings of the Magisterium in accordance with Lumen Gentium # 25 can easily be understood, especially in conjunction with Rome’s 1989 Profession of Faith which is mentioned in a footnote of the Declaration, as requiring acceptance of Vatican II doctrines.
III,1 Acceptance of Vatican II teaching on the College of Bishops as contained in Lumen Gentium, chapter III, is, despite the “Nota Praevia”, a significant step towards accepting Conciliar collegiality and the democratisation of the Church.
III,2 Recognition of the Magisterium as sole authentic interpreter of Revelation runs a grave risk of submitting Tradition to the Council, especially when the interpretation of any break between them is automatically to be rejected (cf. III,5 below).
III,3 The definition of Tradition as “the living transmission of Revelation” is highly ambiguous, and its ambiguity is only confirmed by the vague words about the Church, and by the quotation from the equally ambiguous Dei Verbum #8, which follow.
III,4 The proposition that Vatican II should “throw light” on Tradition by “deepening” it and “making it more explicit”, is thoroughly Hegelian (since when did contradictories explain and not exclude one another ?), and it risks falsifying Tradition by twisting it to fit the multiple falsehoods of the Council.
III,5 The statement that the novelties of Vatican II must be interpreted in the light of Tradition, but that no interpretation implying any break between the two is acceptable, is madness (All shirts are to be blue, but any non-blue shirt must be taken to be blue !). This madness is none other than that of Benedict XVI’s “Hermeneutic of continuity”.
III,6 Giving credit to the novelties of Vatican II as being legitimate matter of theological debate is gravely to underestimate their harmfulness. They are fit only to be condemned.
III,7 The judgment that the new sacramental Rites were legitimately promulgated is gravely misleading. The New Order of Mass especially is much too harmful to the common good of the Church to be a true law.
III,8 The “promise to respect” as Church law the New Code of Canon Law is to respect a number of supposed laws directly contrary to Church doctrine.
Reverend Fathers, whoever studies these ten paragraphs in the original text can only conclude that their author or authors have given up the Archbishop’s fight for Tradition, and have gone over in their minds to Vatican II. Do you wish yourself and your flock to be moulded by such Superiors ?
Nor let it be said that the first two and last three of the ten paragraphs are broadly taken from the Archbishop’s own Protocol of May 5, 1988, so that the Declaration is faithful to him. It is well known that on May 6 he repudiated that Protocol because he himself recognized that it made too many concessions for the Society to be able to continue defending Tradition.
Another error is to say that the danger is over because the Declaration has been “withdrawn” by the Superior General. The Declaration is the poisoned fruit of what has become a liberal mind-set at the top of the Society, and that mind-set has not been recognized, let alone retracted.
A third misconception is to say that since no agreement has been signed with the apostates of Rome, then there is no further problem. The problem is less the agreement than the desire of any agreement that will grant to the Society official recognition, and that desire is still very much there. Following the whole modern world and the Conciliar Church, the Society’s leadership seems to have lost its grip on the primacy of truth, especially Catholic Truth.
Reverend Fathers, “What cannot be cured must be endured.” Blind leaders are a punishment from God. However, the least that you can do about this disastrous Declaration is to study it for yourselves with everything that led up to it, otherwise you will lose your Society without realizing it, just as the mass of Catholics lost their Church with Vatican II, and did not realize it. Then having made the disaster clear in your own mind, you must tell the truth to your Society flock, namely the danger in which your Superiors are placing their faith and therewith their eternal salvation.
To all of us in that Society which Archbishop Lefebvre made into a worldwide fortress of the Faith, Our Lord is now putting the question of John, VI, 67 : “Will you also leave me ?”
To any and all of you I gladly impart the episcopal blessing of your servant in Christ,
+Richard Williamson, Nova Friburgo, Maundy Thursday, 2013.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Various “Churches”
The weekly Eleison Comments of Bishop Richard Williamson.
Number CCLXXXI (281)
1 December 2012
VARIOUS “CHURCHES”
Much confusion reigns today over the identity of Our Lord’s true Church here on earth, and the variety of names by which it can be called. Easily most of the present confusion comes from the Church’s biggest problem of today, which is the diabolical Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Let us attempt to disentangle some of the confusion.
“Church” derives from the Old English “cirice”, deriving in turn from the Greek word “kuriakon”, meaning “of the Lord”. Thus “Doma kuriakon” meant “house of the Lord”, and from naming the building, “church” came to mean also the people that were regularly to be found in the building.
“Catholic” Church names many a building, but principally the worldwide group of people (“katholos” in Greek means “universal”) who share one Faith, one set of Sacraments and one Hierarchy, all three having been established by the Incarnate God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in his life on earth two thousand years ago. But from this original group of believers as instituted by Our Lord, other groups have regularly broken away, while still claiming to be Christ’s true Church. How then am I to know which is his true Church ?
“Christ’s Church” has four Marks, as they are called. 1 One - above all by oneness of Faith Our Lord meant to unite his Church and not to found many churches (cf. Jn. XVII, 21-23: “That they may be one”). 2Holy - Our Lord founded his Church to bring men to the All-Holy God and his holy Heaven (cf. Mt. V, 48: “Be you perfect”). 3 Catholic - Our Lord founded his Church for all men of all lands and all ages (cf. Mt. XXVIII, 19: “Going, teach ye all nations”). 4 Apostolic - Our Lord founded his Church as a monarchy, to be ruled by the Apostle Peter and his successors (cf. Mt. XVI, 18: “Thou art Peter and upon this rock (in Greek “petran”) I will found my Church”). Wherever these four Marks are, there is Christ’s true Church. Where they are lacking, there is not Christ’s Church.
“Conciliar Church” means the God-centred Catholic Church as fallen and still falling under the sway of the man-centred Second Vatican Council. Conciliarism (the distilled error of Vatican II) bears the same relation to the true Church of Christ as the rot of a rotten apple bears to the apple which it is rotting. Just as rot occupies the apple, depends on the apple, cannot exist without the apple, yet is quite different from the apple (as uneatable is different from eatable), so man-centred Conciliarism so occupies Christ’s Church that little of the Church is not more or less rotten, yet Conciliarism is so different from Catholicism that one can truly say that the Conciliar Church is not the Catholic Church. But the Catholic Church is visible. Isn’t the Conciliar Church also visible ?
“Visible Church” means all the buildings, officials and people of the Church that we can see with our eyes. But to say that the Catholic Church is visible, therefore the visible Church is the Catholic Church, is as foolish as to say that all lions are animals so all animals are lions. That part alone of the visible Church is Catholic which is one, holy, universal and apostolic. The rest is various sorts of rot.
“Official Church” means the Church as led by, and following, its visible officials. Since these today are largely Conciliar, so the “official Church” is largely Conciliar and not Catholic, according to the four Marks. Similarly “Mainstream Church” means today’s official Church as opposed to the “Traditionalist” remnant. However, let nobody say there is nothing one, holy, universal or apostolic left in the mainstream Church, any more than everything in the “Traditionalist” remnant shows forth the four Marks. Wheat and chaff are always mixed in Christ’s Church (cf. Mt. XIII, 24-30).
Kyrie eleison
