I’m afraid it’s game-over folks. I note with bitter amusement that a number of CI forum members seem to be dropping out of the Rome vs. SSPX discussions. Over the years, millions of words have been expended about the SSPX, and its proposed regularization with fallen Mother Church. Society clerics meet endlessly with Roman officials behind closed doors. Docuмents, letters and declarations pass back and forth between the negotiating parties. Frequent statements to the press are released, some hopeful and encouraging, followed usually by others contrarily discouraging and non-hopeful.
Meanwhile, numbers of the faithful seem less and less interested. They’re tuning out. I’ve lost interest totally myself. The idea of a “personal prelature,” or chances of some other kind of “practical accord,” appear more remote than ever. A realization of the utter futility in all this negotiating frenzy may be finally dawning upon many.
The good bishop implies that the apostolate, which his mentor ABL began and built, is practically DOA. But he never quite takes his finger off the checker piece. H.E. holds out hope, perhaps, that the Society can still survive and produce good fruits. But, IMO, the SSPX has all but stopped breathing.
We heard recently of yet another horror story coming out of Immaculate Conception Church in Post Falls. Reportedly, a large, well respected family in that chapel just experienced a tragic break up. Add to that about five or six other such family break ups, (that we know of presonally), and other major scandals which surfaced in recent times.
And Fellay & Co.? What do they do? Hardly anything to our knowledge. +Fellay seems to be too busy traveling back and forth to Rome to give these minor in-house matters much attention. Oh yeah, last year he dispatched his US District Superior to ICC. Fr. Wegner spent all of a day there talking to aggrieved parents in private sessions. Next day he flew out, feeling confident apparently, that the whole matter had been taken care of. Whatever pressing issues might have awaited him at headquarters, he did not find time to ceremoniously cleanse and reconsecrate the chapel.
The Society did accept the resignation of then prior Paul Vassal in July of last year. Father acknowledged in writing that he had not handled adequately “certain grave problems regarding impurity.” So what does Bp. Fellay do with him? He sends this priest back to the new seminary in Virginia to teach, (gasp!) moral theology.
But that’s not the end of the story. No. From there Fellay, apparently, decides that Fr. Vassal should become the chief priest at the Society’s largest church, St. Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris, taking the place of a highly respected former prior whose behavior, so we’re told, deviated from company policy.
The French SSPX faithful were waiting for Fr. Vassal's arrival. Father’s reputation had evidently preceded him. They protested vehemently. Vassal did not last two weeks at St. Nicolas. So back to Virginia he goes, where, according to the latest report, he has resumed his role as a teacher of (gulp!) moral theology.
To illustrate how seemingly soft-headed many “trads” at ICC have become, we are told that at least half the congregation still loves Fr. Vassal, and wish that he were back with them. One female teacher at ICA, it is reported, still calls him regularly. Furthermore, though the report can be scarcely believed, this same teacher has her students pen letters of affection to the former prior.
Folks, when will the SSPX finally, mercifully, be put out of its misery? When can we ever go on from it all?
As for the visible, instititutional Church, it is as if Our Lord Jesus Christ had been hung from the Cross once again. He has suffered and died once again. They have laid him away in the Tomb once again. But the practically Christless New Church of Bergoglio continues to deal with the practically Christless New Society of St. Pius X. Good. They deserve one another.