A Visit from Fr. Wegner
This past Sunday, we at IHM Chapel in St. Paul, MN received a visit from Fr. Jurgen Wegner (US District Superior). The occassion for the visit was the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the parish school, IHM Academy, in the nearby town of Oak Grove.
I would like to comment on a number of strange circuмstances surrounding this visit:
Firstly, part of the festivities included visits from the former pastors of the IHM Chapel since the foundation of the Academy, with three notable exceptions. Absent from this list of visiting former pastors was Fr. Brendan Dardis (Resistance priest located in Missouri) and Fr. Jean Morel (Resistance priest of two chapels in Lousiana). Their absences were expected, given their current affiliations.
However, also absent from the list of former IHM Chapel pastors was Fr. Stephen Webber. He was transferred from IHM in the summer of 2013 for his militant anti-Vatican II sermons. Coming as they did at a time when Bishop Fellay and the branded SSPX were moving in the opposite direction, Fr. Webber's sermons were viewed by some as opposition to the new orientations in Menzingen. That the IHM Chapel had a strong Resistance presence at that time probably did not help his case, and likely confirmed for the District under Fr. Rostand that he was "poorly managing" the Resistance problem (or even encouraging it) in St. Paul.
Nevertheless, Fr. Webber is currently an SSPX priest in good standing, but for reasons I will not guess at, his absence was conspicuous.
Then there was the matter of the sermon delivered by Fr. Wegner himself, which was remarkable on three counts:
1) The appeal to blind obedience;
2) The comparison of "The Nine" with the Resistance;
3) His comments on "sheep stealing"
With regard to the appeal to blind obedience (words which he explicitly used), there was no surprise here, except to marvel at the ignorance among the faithful in the pews, who no doubt were completely comfortable with the idea, even amidst a crisis in which appeals to obedience and authority have been the primary means by which the Revolution has advanced. Apparently it does not occur to Fr. Wegner that such an appeal ought to be repugnant to any well disposed and informed Catholic in the wake of Bishop de Galarreta's predictions at the 2011 Albano meeting of SSPX superiors, which correctly predicted that continuing to move towards a practical accord with Rome in the wake of the failed doctrinal discussions would cause a loss of moral authority and credibility. But alas, these faithful have traded combat for security and comfort (one has even admitted this to me), and left the path of Archbishop Lefebvre long ago. What they now require is reinforcement from the pulpit for their decision, and the benevolent superior was not slow in supplying it.
Also revealed within this sermon was what appears to be yet another new strategy to keep the parishioners plugged into the Matrix: A comparison of "The Nine" with the Resistance. Fr. Wegner spoke of people who have been in battle mode for so long, they just don't know how or when to stop fighting. They fight against even those who try to help them. The suggestion is that on the one hand, there have always been "splits" within the SSPX (like "The Nine"), so don't get too worried about this one, and on the other hand, the Resistance just can't help themselves, and have come to identify battle with Catholicism. Not a bad strategy for parishioners seeking arguments to pacify any lingering unease about having sided with a Menzingen openly contradicting Archbishop Lefebvre's position: Downplay and demonize the Resistance by associating it with sedevacantism, yet condescend them in a seemingly compassionate manner, by explaining that these people just can't help themselves. However transparent you and I might think this tactic to be, I can assure you it was quite welcomed by all (but two) in attendance.
And finally we come to the most interesting part of the sermon: Fr. Wegner referenced "The Nine" in conjunction with "sheep stealing," and spoke about how the Society had to endure 4 years of legal battles to regain the chapel. He then proceeded to direct his attention to the Resistance (an obvious attempt to link the latter with the infamy of the former), and in the course of explaining how he would never think to second guess his superior, and how, should he be faced with an order or position he could not comply with, would never think he knew better than his superior, and lead his sheep down another path, but rather he would ask his superior to find a better shepherd than himself.
Obviously in normal times, this is a perfectly Catholic position. But what the anesthetized parishioners will certainly desire to miss, is that the same rationale would have had them approving of the entire Vatican II revolution, and had they taken that advice they would never have ended up in the pews of an SSPX chapel. By this unjustifiably exalted conception of (false) obedience, was not Archbishop Lefebvre a "sheep stealer?"
But the supreme irony of this condemnation of Resistance "sheep stealing" is that only back in October 2014, the same Fr. Wegner sent a letter to all the Tertiaries of the Avrille Dominicans in the US District, announcing to them that we should no longer support Avrille, and instead turn to the new bogus Steffeshausen foundation of Menzingen sponsored Dominicans! What is this but a blatant example of sheep stealing?
Quick: More soma!
I can guarantee that not a man in the pews picked up on this self-serving exhortation, masquerading under the guise of piety; neither did any of them pick up on the obvious contradiction between Fr. Wegner's words and his actions.
Meanwhile, at the conclusion of the Mass began the second of an ongoing series of 3rd Order meetings. Not just meetings for SSPX 3rd Order members or aspirants, but for ALL 3rd Order members and aspirants. At least with respect to Avrille, this initiative is not approved, and attendance at these meetings "not required." Note that while this initiative is offered on the pretext of simply helping the various 3rd Order members hold to their obligations, and to offer counsel (i.e., as would perhaps have been the case in the relationship between 3rd Order members and their pastor in former days), the timing for the inception of this initiative, springing just a couple months after the letter of Fr. Wegner to 3rd Order members, is interesting. And for those informed regarding the attempts of Menzingen over the last several years to arrogate to itself a jurisdiction over even the exempt religious orders, the timing of this 3rd Order initiative will represent something more than mere coincidence.
Most interesting (and disheartening) in all this is that these events should transpire on Good Shepherd Sunday, when the parishioners will be most disposed to hear these anesthetizing words. For my own part, I see little more here than a thinly veiled attempt for the SSPX District Superior to attempt to secure his own ground and bullet-proof his parishioners against waking up tp the truth of Menzingen's "Operation ѕυιcιdє."
Rather, I would have hoped the true sons of Archbishop Lefebvre would have presented a sermon something along the lines of these words which follow, written just one year ago, against all the shenanigans, sophisms, and contradictions designed to reintegrate the clergy and faithful into the Conciliar religion:
A Charitable Response to Fr. Simoulin
http://archbishoplefebvrecontramundum.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-charitable-response-to-fr-simoulin.html Greetings Fr. Simoulin-
I was distressed to have come across your article, “Avoiding a False Spirit of Resistance” recently posted on the SSPX.org website, insofar as it reads like a condemnation and indictment of the SSPX mission and apostolate for the last 25+ years.
Several disturbing themes emerge in this reconciliationist apologetic, and I wanted to comment on some of them, in the hopes that perhaps I have misunderstood your arguments, and invite you to respond if such is the case.
First is your suggestion that, if perhaps Rome is ultimately responsible for the wreckage in the Church today, nevertheless this damage is not intentional, and we should not therefore accuse Rome of wanting to destroy the Church. While you and I could cite many of the Fathers of Vatican II in their own words as intending to do precisely that (e.g., “we must raze the bastions;” etc), the issue is essentially moot, insofar as the intention of the Romans is irrelevant to the grave general/public spiritual necessity in which their teachings and acts are placing the faithful. What matters most is not what Rome intends. What matters is what the consequences of their acts are to the integrity of the Faith, and the souls of the faithful. Surely you would not dispute this?
Second is your contention that it is not realistic to wait for Rome’s conversion, as this might not happen for many generations. Forgive me if I observe suggestions of despair, naturalist thinking, and scruples implicit in such a contrived concern. Despair, because to raise timeframes as an issue for regularization seems to imply that justified resistance to Roman (and worldwide) modernism is only legitimate for a certain and unspecified window of time, and you worry that such time is passing; the implicit thought being that a resolution to the “modernism versus Catholicism” conflict must for some unstated reasons transpire within our lifetimes. What is your source for this concern? Where do you find this idea in any of the manuals of moral theology and treatises on the doctrine of necessity? Resistance must persist so long as necessity remains! And from this despair of seeing the resolution to these problems in our lifetimes, you (along with the General Counsel in Menzingen) pass quickly to human prudence and solutions for a practical accord along naturalist lines; you push the pace ahead of providence, which only 2 years ago rebuked the last effort to submit to Rome.
And I mention the issue of scruples, because you seem to fear the development of a schismatic and sedevacantist spirit, should our “recognize and resist” position continue much longer. In discussing this point, you write very much from the perspective of the Ecclesia Dei communities; you use the very arguments they for so many years used against us. But perhaps it is I who should become scrupulous, since if today you are implicitly admitting they were right (i.e., by using their arguments against the position advocated by the SSPX for the last 25 years), it means that yesterday the SSPX was wrong. The inevitable logic of your line of argumentation heavily implies that conclusion. And in that case, the SSPX would be guilty of a monstrous self-serving deception of the faithful. Is that really the argument you want to make?
Thirdly, is the troubling equivocation so prevalent in this article: On the one hand, you assert we cannot go the way of the Ecclesia Dei communities, but on the other hand, you assert that “the only thing we can hope for is the freedom to discuss Vatican II” (i.e., the same deal given to the Institute of the Good Shepherd, which was later predictably revoked). You appear to have embraced the writing style of the modernists (which is not to accuse you of being a modernist), who love to include phrases which appear to hold the line, only to negate them in the next sentence with a contradictory proposition.
How is it that you would go to Rome as a beggar, not a chooser? Surely, your duty to keep the faith (a theological virtue) trumps your duty to obedience (a merely moral virtue) when the two are in (apparent) conflict? What right do you have to beg and negotiate for your duty to remain Catholic? How can you accept to descend from your current freedom to be integrally Catholic, to a degraded position of permission to discuss it?
And of course, from whence arises the bare assertion that a practical accord with anti-Catholic Rome will result in a “new youth for the Church?” What naivety! Do you yourself even believe this, or do you simply recognize in this empty slogan (once again, first tested on the faithful after Vatican II, with the chimerical “new springtime of the Church.”) the slick marketing value and impact you hope it to have on the smells-n-bells masses in the pews?
You state that we must place “tradition back in the hands of the Pope as soon as possible.” That would be nice indeed, but what makes you think he is interested in receiving it? Do you think the man who places a beach ball on the altar (!) has any interest in rolling back the clock; that the man who mocks Rosaries offered for his intentions is anything but hostile to tradition?
“O senseless Galations, who hath bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth?” (Gal 3:1).
You say that for Rome to allow you to discuss Vatican II is already the conversion of Rome? Really? How does it come to pass then, that they allowed the Institute of the Good Shepherd to “constructively criticize” Vatican II before reversing on them, and compelling them to accept it in totality? Which is the same thing as saying that a Rome converted back to tradition is still persecuting tradition, which is absurd! And while the destroyed and fragmented IBP is running from Rome and working to act independent of them once again (but not until having been depleted to 50% strength), you are passing them on the way back into the same trap?
And please excuse a frank observation: If already the SSPX has muzzled itself with regard to Vatican II (via the branding campaign) in anticipation of an accord, how likely is it that you will increase and maintain your opposition to Vatican II post-accord? You appear to have forgotten the lesson of Campos, per the wise observation of Fr. (now Cardinal) Cottier after his conquest: “Reconciliation carries within itself its own internal dynamism (i.e., self-censorship).” And again referencing his trophy in Campos: “Eventually, we must expect other steps…like concelebration.”
You make an attempt to harmonize the General Chapters of 2006 (which said no practical accord before the doctrinal issues are resolved), and 2012 (which lays out in 6 conditions the steps to a practical accord)! This evinces a mind becoming unhitched from reality in pursuit of a desperate goal. That is no ad hominem, Fr. Just an objective observation, which leads into my next observation.
Earlier, I mentioned a hint of scruples implicit in your attempt to craft by human prudence, an accord with a Rome bent on destroying you. You lament an imagined fear that we will lose the desire to return to Rome, and in fact have already lost it. From this, you regret that we have become accustomed to living in an abnormal situation of separation from modernist Rome. And naturally, from this phantom, jump to the conclusion that we risk becoming practical sedevacantists and schismatics if a deal is not struck soon.
But what does not occur to you is that, like you we await the time to place ourselves back under truly Catholic authorities who will not endanger our faith. But unlike you, we recognize that now is not the time; that if the “recognize and resist” position was ever correct, it is correct today, under the worst Pope perhaps in the history of the Church.
But what madness has you lamenting that the “Pope and bishops have no influence on concrete life?” If we have come to the SSPX all these years, it was PRECISELY to shelter ourselves from this damnable influence! And if we do not recognize, therefore, the voice of the Good Shepherd in your advice to follow the “wise and prudent direction of the leaders God has given us” (like Pope Francis or Cardinal Mahoney?) for desiring to bring us into Operation ѕυιcιdє, must we be blamed for desiring to survive with our faith intact?
“Am I then become thine enemy, because I tell thee the truth?” (Gal. 4:16)
In truth, I wish it not.
But if forced to choose, “we must obey God rather than man.” (Acts. 5:29)
With the danger to souls so palpably evident, we cannot follow you down this path you propose, without ourselves incurring culpability.
Therefore, we choose to adhere to the prudential path bequeathed to us by Archbishop Lefebvre until such a time as Rome returns to tradition, when our obedience will be safeguarded by their faith.
In Caritate,
Sean Johnson
4-3-14
http://archbishoplefebvrecontramundum.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-visit-from-fr-wegner.html
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