I will not be surprised if Bishop Fellay takes the deal, but would be if he rejects it.  The Vatican knows what it is doing and will obviously submit a docuмent for Fellay's decision that he cannot justify rejecting; and, in true NO fashion, it will mot likely contain a few phrases that entirely compromise the SSPX position, popular phrases that allow them to ruthlessly rub their victory in the faces of the SSPX bishops while maintaining a gentle smile appropriate for an art gala.  Of course, accepting this docuмent would be incredibly short-sighted, if the official talking points are any indication :  Already John Zhulsdorf's blog and the news story that gives quotations from Jean-Marie Guenois show that the SSPX position on religious liberty will be warmly embraced by the NO establishment... as a private and legitimate theological opinion.  This docuмent will therefore define the doctrines of the Church as not doctrines at all, only opinions.  The SSPX will be left alone for a while, and in one more generation, Rome has the precedent to tighten its grip.  The SSPX cause will lose steam and the only real Catholics twenty years from now will be sedevacantists or those loyal to Bishop Williamson's group that will surely be started after the deal is made.  He will be called schismatic and is now isolated by the Judaeo-Masonic media and European governments, who will persecute him (and perhaps us ?), etc., Rome wins the diplomatic chess game and Bishop Fellay will prove himself to be a great fool and a liberal, though he will be heralded as a generous and heroic son of the Church.

Here is an example about how crafty Rome is that I think will be instructive. This was told to me by my fiancée who heard it from French non-una cuм priest who left the SSPX. He said that Bishop Fellay and Menzingen have long desired to expel Bishop Williamson from the SSPX but that Rome gave them specific instructions not to do so. This is genius on the part of Rome, and it is clear why. First -- and perhaps this has not been considered as the Romans' intentions by Menzingen, not that this point would be spoken of by either Rome or Menzingen, which increases its impression, -- it puts more pressure on Menzingen in order to save their window of opportunity to (i) save their German apostolate and (ii) capitalise on the opportunity afforded them by Ratzinger's friendly disposition before he dies in the potentially near future. This pressure is efficient because it is all on Menzingen and is not mentioned. Second, Rome surely has read everything Bishop Williamson has written and knows what he cannot abide. Their deal can easily be tinted such that it will ensure Bishop Williamson leaves of his own accord, now an easy target for the label of schism and a magnet for the liberal-bourgeois world's hatred. He will bring all of those unwilling to coöperate with him, and they will quickly become irrelevant in NO establishment circles. Done deal; Rome achieves a coup from the inside, nullifies the momentum and vigour of the Archbishop's message, and turns his true followers into lepers who cursed themselves as untouchable by their stiff-necked decision to pursue formal schism. Meanwhile the SSPX will have been regularised in the NO establishment, as all the papers will let everybody know.

But if a false agreement were reached, +W would be forced in conscience to act, and not go along with it. That's when the masks would come off and he'd be kicked out, encouraged to quit, etc.

This infamous affair that has been developing for the past several years shows, at the very least, that Bishop Fellay is a brilliant administrator, since he has subjugated and ostracised those priests who are faithful to the Archbishop's cause by demoting them and framing the language he uses publicly and privately to get them to leave the Society on their own or else compromise themselves.  Meanwhile, he has posted French priests docile to his programme all over, especially in the US, which, ironically, is of all places the land of rigorism (I use that word very lightly here, since I am perhaps am one of the most appropriate targets for that meaningless epithet).  Otherwise, in France, for instance, there has been a generational drift towards liberalism that has been solidified by the belief that one must act in a way that is politically attractive or else become irrelevant.

On the other hand, Bishop Fellay is entirely inept as a diplomat, bumblingly allowing himself to become utterly checkmated by Rome.  Or is he ?  Given what we know of his subtlety as an administrator, as well as his execrable public declarations ("antisemitism," "Jєωs our elder brothers," "extremist," etc.), it seems that we cannot suppose this to be the case.  On the contrary, it seems far more likely, given who he associates with (the Zionist bourgeois-liberal calumniator Krah and the other calumniator, Fr Pfluger), that this deal or something like it is what he wants.  I am reminded of what a friar told me about a letter from Pope St Leo the Great to one Priscillus, who wanted to Christianise astrology and spent his time, therefore, speaking to pagan astrologers in order to better understand their teachings.  Pope Leo cut to the chase, he said (and I paraphrase), "You keep talking with these people; it must be because you believe as they do."

On September 14, 2011, at the office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a meeting was held between His Eminence, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of this Congregation and President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, His Excellency, Archbishop Luis Ladaria, S.J., Secretary of this Congregation, and Monsignor Guido Pozzo, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, and His Excellency, Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, and Fathers Niklaus Pfluger et Alain-Marc Nély, General Assistants of the Fraternity


Following the petition addressed on December 15, 2008, by the Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, the Holy Father had taken the decision of lifting the excommunication of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and to open at the same time doctrinal conversations with the Fraternity, aiming to overcome the difficulties and the problems of a doctrinal nature, and to achieve a reduction of the existing rupture.


Obedient to the will of the Holy Father, a mixed study commission, composed of experts of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X and of experts of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, assembled eight times for meetings that took place in Rome between the month of October 2009 and the month of April 2011. These conversations, whose objective was that of presenting and examining the major doctrinal difficulties on controversial themes, achieved their goal, which was that of clarifying the respective positions and their motivations.


Given the concerns and explanations presented by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X regarding the integrity of the Catholic faith considering the hermeneutic of rupture of the Second Vatican Council in respect of Tradition - hermeneutic mentioned by Pope Benedict XVI in his Address to the Roman Curia of December 22, 2005 -, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith takes as a fundamental basis for a full reconciliation with the Apostolic See the acceptance of the Doctrinal Preamble which was delivered in the course of the meeting of September 14, 2011. This preamble enunciates some of the doctrinal principles and criteria of interpretation of Catholic doctrine necessary for ensuring fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church and to the sentire cuм Ecclesia, while leaving open to legitimate discussion the study and theological explanation of particular expressions and formulations present in the texts of the Second Vatican Council and of the Magisterium that followed it.


In the course of the same meeting, some elements were proposed regarding a canonical solution for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, which would follow the eventual and hoped-for reconciliation.


[Original Text: French]