Quote from: Neil Obstat

If anyone has a copy of the erstwhile "approved by +Fellay" letter, could you
post it here so others can get a look too? It sounds like something that would
be good to have on hand, just in case.

Too much can get lost with all this confusion going on.

Renewing the Assisi Scandal

Quote

Renewing the Assisi Scandal
Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicuм
   

Fr. Regis de Cacqueray

9-13-2011

With the approval of the SSPX's Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, this text of Fr. Regis de Cacqueray (District Superior of France) was first published in French on laportelatine.org on September 12. We thank the French District for allowing sspx.org to publish a translation of this important commentary.  read more here about Assisi III >

What is going to happen this October 27, 2011? A simple friendly encounter among men and women of good will? Desultory discourse on the divinity of Christ and of His Church? No—the renewal by the reigning pope, Benedict XVI, of the unprecedented scandal perpetrated by his predecessor, John Paul II, on October 27, 1986.

What will occur this October 27, 2011? A call for conversion to the Catholic faith? The Pope’s declarations clearly indicate what this day will be: the meeting of representatives of all the false religions, called by the Pope personally to join in a day of reflection where all are invited to pray for peace.1

Certainly, unlike the first Assisi meeting, the prayer is to be silent, though intense. But to what god will these representatives of all the false religions be praying in silence? To what god will they be praying, if not their false gods, since the Pope has invited them explicitly to live more deeply “their own religious faith”?2 To whom will the Muslims be turning, if not the god of Mohammed? To whom will the animists address themselves, if not their idols? How is it conceivable that a pope should call upon the representatives of false religions in their official capacity to participate in a day of personal prayer? This act of the sovereign pontiff constitutes ipso facto a dreadful blasphemy toward God as well as an occasion of scandal for all on earth.

An Offense against God Triune and Incarnate

How else should we characterize this religious fair, which gravely offends against the First Commandment: “The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve.”3 How can anyone entertain the thought that God will be pleased with the Jєωs who are faithful to their fathers, who crucified the Son of God and deny the Triune God? How could He give ear to prayers addressed to Allah, whose disciples relentlessly persecute Christians? How could He accept the suffrages of all the heretics, schismatics, and apostates who have repudiated His Church, which came from His Son’s open side? How could He be honored by the worship offered to idols by all the animists, pantheists, and other idolaters? How could He hear these prayers when His Son has clearly told us the contrary: “No man comes to the Father but by me”?4

That souls in good faith pray to God while still heretics or unbelievers is one thing; God will recognize His own and will guide them to the one true Church. But to invite these men to pray as representatives of the false religions, according to “their own religious faith,” surely signals that they are being invited to pray according to the spirit and in the manner of their false religions.

How can we fail to see in this a supreme insult to God thrice holy? How can we fail to be profoundly indignant at the sight of such a scandal? How can silence be anything but complicity?

The Peace of Christ Denatured

This exceedingly grave sin equally offends the peace of Jesus Christ. The Pope is calling for prayer for peace. But what is the nature of the peace the Pope seeks? Is it the cessation of the conflicts that bloody the world? But are we really to believe that prayer to false gods will merit for us, not chastisement, but the blessing of peace among men? Has the primeval Flood been forgotten? Has remembrance been lost of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose crime was less grave than that of incredulity?5 Has the record of the gory destruction of Jerusalem, the wages of the sins of His people, been stricken from the Gospels and from history?

Moreover, of what use would it be to us to purchase temporal peace were we to lose our soul? “Be not afraid of them who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do….Fear ye him who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell”.6 In another connection, how can we fail to see in this prayer for peace a doubtlessly unconscious yet perfidious diversion, for ecuмenical ends, of the legitimate aspiration of humanity for civil peace? No, the peace brought by Christ cannot be a worldly peace, the Masonic peace sealed with freedom of conscience.

For in reality the peace for which the current pontiff prays is not merely temporal peace; it is especially religious freedom,7 the liberty of conscience so often condemned by the popes.8 This is the prayer intention given by the Pope; this is the peace the Pope prays for: temporal peace obtained by freedom of conscience.

Is this the peace of Jesus Christ? of the One who died on the cross to affirm His divinity? The peace of Christ is quite different, as far removed from this Masonic idea of peace as charity is from fraternity. The peace of Christ is peace with God, fruit of the redemption of souls by the Blood of His Son and men’s rejection of sin. As for the civil peace communicated by Christ, it is nothing else than the fruit of Christian civilization, molded by Catholic faith and charity.

An Odious Humiliation of the Church

But if the Triune God and the Sacred Humanity of Christ are gravely offended by this invitation to sin, the immaculate Spouse of Christ, His one Catholic Church, is humiliated publicly. Mocked is the teaching of the Apostles, Popes, Fathers of the Church, the saints, the martyrs, and Catholic princes and heroes. Mocked is the teaching of the Psalmist according to whom “all the gods of the gentiles are devils”;9 mocked, the formal order of St. John not to greet heretics;10 mocked, the teaching of a Gregory XVI or a Pius IX,11 for whom freedom of conscience is a “delirium”; mocked, the formal prohibition by Popes Leo XIII12 and Pius XI13 to organize or participate in interreligious congresses; mocked, the martyrdom of a Polyeuctus refusing to sacrifice to idols; mocked, the example of a St. Francis de Sales, writing his Controversies to convert Protestant heretics; mocked, the thousands of missionaries who gave up everything for the salvation of the souls of infidels; mocked, the heroic deed of a Charles Martel, halting Islam at Poitiers, or of a Godefroy de Bouillon, forcing his way by lance and sword into Jerusalem; mocked, a St. Louis of France, who punished blasphemy.

How can a Catholic imbued with the spirit of Assisi still subscribe to the dogma “Outside the Church no salvation”? How can he see in the Catholic Church the one ark of salvation? What’s more, this scandal comes from the highest sacred authority on earth, from the Vicar of Jesus Christ himself, as if the gravity of such a gathering were not enough. Does this not make of the Pope, presiding over this meeting, not the head of the Catholic Church but the head of a “Church” of the United Nations, the primus inter pares of a religion of all the religions, essentially identical with the Masonic cult of the Great Architect of the Universe? Is this not a satanic perversion of the mission of Peter? Whereas Christ solemnly commanded Peter to “confirm his brethren in the faith” and to feed His sheep, the successor of Peter is in fact going to confirm his brethren in indifferentism and relativism.

An Immense Scandal

For, beyond the terrible blasphemy, this personal decision of the Pope will engender an immense scandal in the souls of both Catholics and non-Catholics. Before the image of a Pope uniting the representatives of all the false religions, the reaction of the majority of men will be to relativize truth and religion still more. What individual, little acquainted with the Catholic religion, will not be tempted to be reassured about the fate of non-Catholics when he sees the Pope inviting them to pray for freedom of conscience? What non-Christian will see in the Catholic religion the one true religion to the exclusion of all others when he learns that the head of the Catholic Church has convoked a pantheon of religions? How will he interpret the Pope’s exhortation not to yield to relativism if not by thinking that it is a matter, not of holding to the truth, but of being sincere?

How could he not interpret in a relativist sense14 the Pope’s explicit invitation to practice one’s own religion as well as possible:

    I shall go as a pilgrim to the town of St. Francis, inviting my Christian brethren of various denominations, the exponents of the world’s religious traditions to join this Pilgrimage and ideally all men and women of good will… [in order] to solemnly renew the commitment of believers of every religion to live their own religious faith as a service to the cause of peace.15

In 1986, a journalist published this telling conclusion:

    The Pope is inventing and presiding over a United Nations of Religions: those who believe in the Eternal, those who believe in a thousand gods, those who believe in no particular god. An amazing sight! John Paul II spectacularly admits the relativity of the Christian faith, which is now but one among the others.16

How can it be imagined that this judgment is not shared by many on the eve of October 27, 2011?

That is why it seems to us singularly strange to excuse the Pope from such a sin on the grounds that Assisi 2011 is different from Assisi 1986. To the contrary, everything concurs to convince us of the surprising continuity between the Assisi meeting in 1986 and that of 2011:

The nature of the gathering: an invitation to the representatives of the false religions to get together to reflect and to pray for peace.

The motive: the civic peace promoted by the United Nations. In 1986, John Paul II invited all the religions “in this year 1986, designated by the U.N. as the Year of Peace, to promote a special gathering to pray for peace in the city of Assisi.”17 During his message for peace of January 1, 2011, the date on which he announced the gathering at Assisi on October 27, 2011, Benedict XVI signed these revealing lines:

    Without this fundamental experience [of the great religions] it becomes difficult to guide societies towards universal ethical principles and to establish at the national and international level a legal order which fully recognizes and respects fundamental rights and freedoms as these are set forth in the goals—sadly still disregarded or contradicted—of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights… All this is necessary and consistent with the respect for the dignity and worth of the human person enshrined by the world’s peoples in the 1945 Charter of the United Nations…18

As Bishop Fellay wrote to John Paul II on the occasion of the second scandal of Assisi in 1999:

    The humanist, earthly and naturalist themes taken up at these meetings cause the Church to fall from its entirely divine, eternal and supernatural mission to the level of the Freemasonic ideals of world peace outside of the only Prince of Peace, Our Lord Jesus Christ.19

The date: Benedict XVI chose to undertake this initiative twenty-five years to the day after the Assisi fest:

The year 2011 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the World Day of Prayer for Peace convened in Assisi in 1986 by Pope John Paul II… The memory of that experience gives reason to hope for a future in which all believers will see themselves, and will actually be, agents of justice and peace.20

Is this not a clear sign of evident continuity? Is it not a way to make us relive the painful memory of the scandals of a Buddha on the tabernacle in St. Peter’s Church, the chickens sacrificed to the gods on St. Clare’s altar, the Vicar of Christ flanked by the Dalai Lama and an Orthodox Patriarch under the heel of the KGB? Is it necessary to commemorate the anniversary of an event if the goal is to distance oneself from it? Why proclaim Ubi et Orbi that “the memory of that experience gives reason to hope”? Only the betrayal of straight thinking can have given rise to such a flight from reality.21

The recollection of his predecessor, as if he wanted to dissipate any misunderstanding and to remind one and all of his fidelity to the spirit of the first Assisi meeting: “This year, 2011, is the 25th anniversary of the World Day of Prayer for Peace which Venerable John Paul II convoked in Assisi in 1986.”22

It is not only the stalwart defenders of the Pope who use these same arguments to attempt to justify the unjustifiable. Formerly Assisi was defended by making a subtle distinction between “being together to pray” and “praying together.” Will they now be saying that there will be no common prayer, but rather a day of prayer in common? Instead of denying the concomittance of the silent prayers, shall we say that everybody prays separately according to his own religion? As if these specious distinctions were not manufactured for the needs of the cause. As if these subtleties were immediately grasped by the majority of men, who will retain only one thing: a gathering of all the religions for everyone to pray to the divinity, abstracting from any Revelation.

Finally, and like most of the gestures of the current Pope compared to his predecessor’s, the scandal of Assisi 2011 will be substantially the same but less spectacular than Assisi 1986. That is why, to those who would accuse us once again of lacking in charity because of the vehemence of these lines, we remind them of Christ’s words: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and thy whole soul, and all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.” Do we show an ardent love of Christ when we fail to decry blasphemy or criticize those who are shocked by it? Do we love our neighbor when we fail to warn him of the looming scandal? Is this the love Christ requires of us? No, as St. Pius X recalled at a dark hour:

    But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting.23

So, then, what Church do we belong to? To the Church of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, who retorted to the heretic Marcion, who had asked him if he recognized him, “Yes, I recognize you as the devil’s elder son”?

Do we belong to the Church of St. Martin, who broke the idols and felled the sacred trees of our countryside?

Do we belong to the Church of St Bernard, who preached the crusade to our forefathers?

Do we belong to the Church of St. Pius V, who not only prayed the Rosary, but summoned the Christian princes to make war against the Mohammedans?

Do we belong to the Church of the saints and martyrs, or to the Church of the Pilates, the Cauchons, the Lamennaises, the Teilhard de Chardins, ever ready to toady to the world and to deliver Christ and His disciples to their detractors?

Will we judge Assisi with the eyes of faith, of the popes and martyrs, or with the eyes of worldlings, liberals, and modernists?

That is why we cannot keep silent, and while the Pope prepares for one of the most serious acts of his pontificate, we vigorously and publicly proclaim our indignation, hoping and beseeching Heaven that this well-prepared calamity may not take place. Lastly, how can we fail to think of these words of Archbishop. Lefebvre recalled by Bishop Fellay in 1999 in his letter to the Pope:

    Archbishop Lefebvre saw in this disastrous event of Assisi one of the “signs of the times” which permitted him to proceed legitimately with episcopal consecrations without Your consent and to write to You that “the time for an open collaboration has not yet come.”24 The time has come, however, to make reparation for this scandal, to do penance while keeping in our heart the firm hope that despite the progress of the Mystery of Iniquity, “the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.”

September 12, 2011, Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, anniversary of the victory of the Catholic armies over the Turks at Vienna, September 12, 1683.

Published with the approbation of Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X.

Footnotes

1 The agenda for the day and the Holy See’s communiqué leave no doubt about the religious dimension of the event:

…On the day of the anniversary, 27 October this year, the Holy Father intends to hold a Day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world….There will follow a period of silence for individual reflection and prayer. In the afternoon, all who are present in Assisi will make their way towards the Basilica of St. Francis. It will be a pilgrimage in which, for the final stretch, the members of the delegations will also take part; it is intended to symbolize the journey of every human being who assiduously seeks the truth and actively builds justice and peace. It will take place in silence, leaving room for personal meditation and prayer... [Emphasis added]. (Vatican Press Office, Communiqué of 2 April 2011, "Pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace": Day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world [Assisi, 27 October 2011]).

2 The purpose announced by the Pope is “to solemnly renew the commitment of believers of every religion to live their own religious faith as a service to the cause of peace.” Benedict XVI, Angelus, St. Peter’s Square, Jan. 1, 2011.

3 Deut. 6:13; Matt. 4:10.

4 John 14:16. Cf. also I Jn. 2:23: “Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.”

5 “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words: going forth out of that house or city shake off the dust from your feet. Amen I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city” (Matt. 10:14-15).

6 Luke 12, 4-5.

7

…the World Day of Peace is a favorable opportunity to reflect together on the great challenges our epoch confronts humanity with. One such is religious freedom, dramatically urgent in our day. For this reason, this year I have chosen to dedicate my Message to the theme: “Religious freedom, the path to peace”... n my Message for today’s World Day of Peace I have had the opportunity to emphasize that the great religions can constitute an important factor of unity and peace for the human family. In this regard, moreover, I recalled that this year, 2011, is the 25th anniversary of the World Day of Prayer for Peace which Venerable John Paul II convoked in Assisi in 1986. Therefore next October I shall go as a pilgrim to the town of St Francis, inviting my Christian brethren of various denominations, the exponents of the world’s religious traditions to join this Pilgrimage… (Benedict XVI, Angelus, Jan. 1, 2011)

8 “From this poisoned source of indifferentism flows that false and absurd, or rather extravagant, maxim that liberty of conscience should be established and guaranteed to each man….” Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 1832.

9 Ps 95, 5.

10 “If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him: God speed you. For he that saith unto him: God speed you, communicateth with his wicked works” (2 John 10-11).

11 Cf. the Syllabus of Errors, 1864, condemned proposition No. 79: “For it is false that the civil liberty of every cult, and likewise, the full power granted to all of manifesting openly and publicly any kind of opinions and ideas, more easily leads to the corruption of the morals and minds of the people, and to the spread of the evil of indifferentism.”

12 On the occasion of the World’s Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893.

13

For since they hold it for certain that men destitute of all religious sense are very rarely to be found, they seem to have founded on that belief a hope that the nations, although they differ among themselves in certain religious matters, will without much difficulty come to agree as brethren in professing certain doctrines, which form as it were a common basis of the spiritual life. For which reason conventions, meetings and addresses are frequently arranged by these persons, at which a large number of listeners are present, and at which all without distinction are invited to join in the discussion, both infidels of every kind, and Christians, even those who have unhappily fallen away from Christ or who with obstinacy and pertinacity deny His divine nature and mission. Certainly such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little. turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion. (Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928)

14 This can be done “without losing its own identity or assigned to forms of syncretism” Press Release of the Holy See of April 2, 2011: A day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world—“pilgrims of the truth, pilgrims of peace” (Assisi, October 27, 2011).

15 Benedict XVI, Angelus, St. Peter’s Square, Jan. 1, 2011.

16 Le Figaro magazine, October 31, 1986, p. 69.

17 L’Osservatore Romano, January 27-28, 1986.

18 Message of His Holiness Benedict XVI for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2011, Nos. 7, 12.

19 Open Letter of Bishop Bernard Fellay to Pope John Paul II solemnly protesting the renewed scandal of Assisi at Rome on October 28, 1999.

20 Message of His Holiness Benedict XVI for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 2011, Nos. 11.

21 [Seule la trahison des bien-pensants peut permettre de se voiler ainsi la face.] Cf. Bernanos, Journal d’un curé de campagne (Plon, 1936), p. 245.

22 Benedict XVI, Angelus, St. Peter’s Square, Jan. 1, 2011. See also the Vatican’s press release of April 2, 2011:

“Pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace”: Day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world, Assisi, 27 October, 2011: The image of pilgrimage therefore sums up the meaning of the event. There will be an opportunity to look back over the path already traveled from that first meeting in Assisi to the following one in January 2002, and also to look ahead to the future, with a view to continuing, in company with all men and women of good will, to walk along the path of dialogue and fraternity, in the context of a world in rapid transformation.

Already in 2007, on the occasion of the interreligious reunion at Naples, Benedict XVI dispelled any thought of a desire to repent of the first convocation at Assisi:

Today's meeting takes us back in spirit to 1986, when my venerable Predecessor John Paul II invited important Religious Representatives to the hills of St. Francis to pray for peace, stressing on that occasion the intrinsic ties that combine an authentic religious attitude with keen sensitivity to this fundamental good of humanity.…While respecting the differences of the various religions, we are all called to work for peace…. (Meeting with the Heads of the Delegations Participating in the International Encounter for Peace, October 21, 2007)

23 St. Pius X, Encyclical Our Apostolic Mandate to the French Episcopacy, August 25, 1910 [English tr. Yves Dupont (1974; Instauratio Press, 1990), §24].

24 Letter of Bishop Fellay to John Paul II to solemnly protest against the renewal of the scandal of Assisi at Rome on October 28, 1999.

Thanks, Pat, you get an A+ for service!!  :wink:

Here it is. It's a Word file so it might print a little different than this.

I said a "PDF" before but maybe it's not really PDF, okay?

If you don't like my comments in brackets, it's easy to delete them in Word.

For your convenience!! (You would need Adobe Acrobat to edit a PDF = $$$$)






                                                     Cebu. 21st  September, 2012
                                     
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Fr. Francois Chazal
WAR AIMS
Trenchant
 
 

Since that fateful month of May 2012, my specific intent has always remained the same:  “That the SSPX and the New Rome remain separate until Rome converts”.  It is what you call a victory condition.  

Now, after three months of strenuous fight from priests, bishops, monks and faithful, we are witnessing some serious backpedalling from Bishop Fellay, that are all to his credit, and that are also very reassuring in the sense that His Lordship does not believe in his own infallibility, after all.
 
In the process, some of us got shot down, much expectedly, and now comes the question: [whether] to stop openly questioning our superiors, fall back into line, dismantle this embryonic network of priests that just came out, and [thus] avoid dividing the flock and needless fighting with our confreres[?]
 
Humility is the best disposition to answer this question, but as St. Thomas says, humility is based on truth.  So which is the best, to continue to be bashed for the sake of the truth, humbly bashing remaining deceits of the Devil, or declare that the war is won, for the time being, write the promised “war won” docuмent, and leave the security of the SSPX to the SSPX big guns[?]
 
Well, two things:  we are nothing and secondly, the beast is still breathing.  What if [we] few continue to serve that purpose of exposing the prince of lies, [and] cater [to] the needs of those souls who only want to profit from our priesthood and [who] wait patiently until our last war aim is attained[?]
 
 
PART ONE
 
THE BEAST IS STILL BREATHING
 
The SSPX crisis stays on as long as its head, Bishop Fellay, teaches errors and allows errors to spread, thus dividing the flock.  Otherwise [if the crisis is over] the 20 resistance priests (as of September, 2012) are guilty of dividing the flock.
 
So let us make an SSPX headscan.  Fortunately, I was able to see Bishop Fellay on September 04th, talked to him for one and a half hours, just 72 hours before his big Econe backpedalling (priests conference, 09.07.2012).
 
For about 20 minutes or more, His Lordship rebuked me for my scandalous, destructive and revolutionary behavior and this terrible refusal to stop my activities, etc.  Then he asked me the reason for such pertinacity.

I replied:  “Because I believe that you have a new theory on Vatican II, by which its errors, keep that Council erroneous, but are surmountable.”

I was warned by Fr. Koller: Bishop Fellay is an intelligent man; one cannot accuse him of being simply in favor of Vatican II;  it is much more complicated than that.  Bishop Fellay knows his public.  

His Lordship then answered:  “Archbishop Lefebvre thought like that at some stage, and he signed the texts of the Council.”  Then I think he realized he had failed to deny the accusation and started to pound the notion that he is indeed against Vatican II, that I am just persevering making him say that he likes Vatican II when the opposite is true, that he is the one who knows best what his thoughts are. [And he is the best arbiter of when his thoughts are changing from minute to minute.]

I then showed him my small collection of eight quotes of his, called “I excuse the Council” and he replied, “This is not what I said… from start to finish we disagree with Rome on Vatican II and that is why the talks have failed.  You base your entire thing on a false assumption of what we think (about V.II).”

When he got finished I then asked candidly:  “If you are indeed truly against Vatican II, why were you, my Lordship, so silent about Assisi III?”  Referring to one phrase pronounced in St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, he said that he made his [own?] all the condemnations of the Archbishop about Assisi.  That sounded awkward, and Fr. Nely rushed to the rescue, explaining how bad Assisi III really was.  Not getting it, I reminded his Lordship of his resolute NO, when I was with him in Cebu, to my request for a strong and public stance against Assisi III.  (He said the same to the Pfeiffer brothers at the time).
 
Then I asked why there is such little difference between DICI and other Ecclesia Dei websites, or even Zenit for that matter.  There was absolutely no reply on that question. I nailed it then, mentioning the doctrinal scandals of Rome in these last three months, based on the evidence of what we read in the “Osservatore Romano”.  That paper got sifted through the pink glasses of DICI to let you know only good things about Benedict XVI this summer.  “You don’t have to know” that the Pope, as of this summer, is praising Vatican II continually, insists that Muslims stay Muslims, prepares to beatify the successor of Escriva, continues to support the Focolari and other neo-Christian movements, praises pluralism and Religious Liberty as the solution to the persecution in the Middle East, etc.

If you knew these facts, they would obscure our newfound good opinion of Benedict XVI, and [our knowledge of these facts would annihilate] our [precious] ignorance that the errors of Vatican II are still raging.

DICI is the mouthpiece of Menzingen; it is professionally run and [will prepare] the agreement with [] new Rome in the long run, through a massive use of pink paint, all the while [incorporating] today’s backpedaling.  In fact, there is no backpedaling at DICI [for the latest version is assimilated already]. On all of this, I was not able to get any clarification from His Lordship. [Who may well prefer to keep hidden any orders he has issued to DICI]
 
Then I raised the issue of the CNS interview (May 11th, 2012), and more specifically the words of Bishop Fellay about Religious Liberty and this is what he said: “On CNS I was talking to the American Catholics who raise Religious Liberty to the High Heavens.  THE FOUNDATION IS THE RECIPIENTIS (OR RECEIVER) [Cf. explained below].  This ‘very limited’ is the contrary of what you make me say. I was showing that there is a way to deal with the problem.  It came out sideways.”
(Modern philosophy bases everything on the mind of the knower, the receiving subject; while Catholic philosophy bases everything on the thing known, the “res” existing out there, whether we like it or not.)
 
I then felt I had heard enough; it came to me that I had [had] enough of what I wanted, to make sure:  That the mind of my Superior General is no longer anchored in Catholic Truth, but that his concepts are shifting on the right and on the left, on the yes and on the no.
 
When I look back on my written transcript, I see that pattern occurring all the time:
•   Things have changed in Rome BUT it doesn’t mean that everything has changed.
•   The Pope wants to recognize the SSPX, BUT his desire is blocked by V.II and modernist bishops.
•   Rome already grants us the exemption BUT there are problems for opening houses.
•   It is not going to work if we ask bishops’ permissions, BUT there are so many novus ordo bishops that are calling us.
•   We have our own apostolate BUT all bishop [sic.] has absolute power.
•   We should be treated equally with bishops BUT it is normal that the bishop should have a say (about us).
•   If Rome accepts to put its errors on the level of opinion we can attack BUT Rome is absolutizing the Council.
•   We have some more buts in the Econe conference.
•   The Pope still believes in Vatican II BUT he wants to recognize us. (same as.. )
•   The 2006 principle (no practical agreement until Rome converts) is true BUT what do we mean by “conversion of Rome”?  Something gradual or progressive???
•   The offer of Rome was worthy of notice BUT, I guarantee you, I was never interested in a deal.
 
On this last but, may I ask you to read again the April 14th letter to see if this but is genuine?
No wonder we are accused of being black and white on a regular basis… that is because the official SSPX teaching is now all grey…
 
So I felt enough was said;  there was no need to touch the rather more complex issue of the Magisterium, the question of our newfound and extensive use of the new Code of Canon Law, and other issues.  I had the time to apologize for some wrongful or disrespectful past choice of expressions, ate twice at the table of His Lordship, was allowed to say my private mass on a side altar (unlike in Manila), visited a place that has a charm of its own and was very kindly put to the train by Fr. Selegny who, as a witness, promised me to send me a detailed transcript of the conversation.  I would like to say that bishop Fellay was fair to me, a man totally opposed to his ideas and in full war against them.
 
 
Now the ideas of bishop Fellay and the unchecked spread of liberalism in the SSPX was also the purpose of my visit to another bishop, and since Fr. Couture is using that bishop against me, well, I shall recount all the details of that visit as a defense.
 
His Lordship accepted to see me on the 16th of August in Econe. For 15 minutes or so, I reeled under a powerful episcopal broadside, all my joints shaking under the cold anger of His Lordship Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais.  My attitude, he said, was completely out of place, taking upon myself a task that does not belong to me and making a show of total disobedience…
I tried to recover by saying that I had grave doctrinal difficulties with bishop Fellay, showing, as usual, my little collection of quotes called “I excuse the Council”. His Lordship answered “I know, I know;  I have 10 times more of these quotes favorable to Vatican II that you don’t know of!”

“But, my Lord, how can we be so quiet about this and the lamentable outcome of the General Chapter?”
 “The General Chapter, he answered, was a disaster;  I signed my name there, because it was a collegial action, but certainly not to say that I agreed with the contents.  Therefore trust what the generals do, take your assignment in France and be quiet for at least three months.”

“My Lord, the ship is taking [on] water;  it is torn open under the waterline.  I do admire what you and others have done to try to save her, but you know full well that error is now spreading through the official channels of the SSPX.  How can you offset the whole weight of the institution, the teachers put into position in the seminaries, the watered down sermons and publications… Our faithful stay less and less away from indult masses, mix up marriage ceremonies, practice NFP more and more without the grave reasons mandated by Pius XII, making NFP an open door to more wicked forms of contraception.  Their minds are getting infected by DICI.  It is natural for them to trust the two assistants who go even further than bishop Fellay and preach the scary good news that Rome has changed…”
 
I went on for quite some time, accepting corrections on some points like the fact that we cannot hold the Pope fully responsible for the nomination of bad bishops in the whole world.  Otherwise I told him that he can disavow me as much as he likes but that this whole silence of this summer is “contra-nature”, antinatural:  “I cannot and will not accept it, even if I get abused and thrown out.  I cannot accept this incoming massacre of souls which is prepared more by the erosion of minds than by the actual signing of an agreement with Rome.  If only your Lorships made a public stand against Menzingen I would gladly fall in line and follow the captain.  I agree that it is not my job to speak out, but if the shepherds are asleep, the dogs are the next line of resistance, as the wolves have entered the barn.

Talking about errors in general often flies above the heads of the faithful.  I do not see the tide of the battle turning in the right direction and I gave 12 years of benefit of the doubt to my superiors, writing letters and being very obedient.  With six more years, bishop Fellay has ample time to put neutral or liberal superiors into position - and [turning the ship around will then] be impossible.

You are not, my Lord, the only one to be pushed in the corner;  Fr. Peter Scott hardly said anything in March;  and after being circuмvented by Fr. Rostand, is now to be sent to Zimbabwe.  Fr. Hewko made no attack against Menzingen at Fr. Reuter’s first Mass, and he got heavily punished.  Many other priests are in the same case.  This does not augur well for the future.  If this is the way they treat priests while no deal is signed;  how will it be on the day of the deal, when everybody will be made to fall into line?
[31 For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry? (Lk xxiii. 31)]
 
What I am doing does look like a rebellion, but I am not asking everyone to do the same.  If I am wrong, the ship will not sink and I will die happy;  but if I am right to warn the passengers, there will be more left of us if the tragedy actually happens.  The problem comes from the commanding bridge of the ship;  and your resistance below deck is impressive, but it is only delaying the final outcome.  Some priests at least must do the job of exposing the source of errors”.
 
By then, His Lordship was cooled;  I had discussed about many of these facts with him when he came to the Philippines last year.  I understand that it is his love of the Society, his desire to keep a united army that motivates it, but that Society is no more united on doctrine and the liberals attack him more and more and refuse to publish his book on the errors of Benedict XVI.  In fact he is beginning to be silenced and more is to come.

I felt very sad for him because, all along, there was such truthfulness in him, even as he was rebuking me.  I don’t mind to be rebuked by such an honest man, and I believe that bishop Tissier will always preach against the Rome of today and tell us to keep out of its range.

To tell you the truth, he still does not, to this day, agree with what I am doing.  He wrote to Fr. Pivert (my spiritual director) to coerce me, repeating the same argument, in writing this time, namely that the errors of bishop Fellay are 10 times as many as they appear in public and that the General Chapter is a disaster, but that there is no reason to launch such an untimely attack against the SSPX management.
 
(Now, my Dear Reader, forgive me for being so long on bishop Tissier’s thinking.  It is because it reflects the thinking of so many of the priests I was able to meet in France, which is the Mecca of dissent with Menzingen, but also completely paralyzed. French are like that:  unless a leader emerges, takes charge and tells you to charge, nobody charges.  In the US it is the reverse:  an estimated 14 are firmly against Menzingen and maybe 50% are just personally weary of an agreement with Rome, but would follow orders;  while the rest is in favor of the deal and sometimes tell it openly.  So that is not much opposition against Menzingen, but there are proportionately more priests in open resistance (10) than in France (2).)
 
One of the most prominent of these French minds I was able to meet was Fr. Gleize, who dropped me in Morgon on August 17th. We talked for five hours;  what a great, clean and clear mind!  His main points were:
•   A new doctrine has now emerged in the SSPX; and this new doctrine is assorted with silencing, menaces and punishments.
•   The main sign of Providence pointing to that shift is the deafening silence on Assisi III, contrasting so badly with the outcry of the Archbishop, back in 1986, [against] Assisi I.
•   Also deafening is the silence that followed the May crisis and the General Chapter:  From the table at Econe to the priories across the world… no reaction from those who knew so well that things went wrong.
 
Even if the deal is off for the moment, Fr. Gleize said, the inclination to it remains:  Fr. Schmidberger told him that it is not enough to pray for the Pope by name at Mass, Benedictions and Holy Week;  or to have his picture in the Sacristy, etc… none of these things guarantees us we are not going to become sedevacantists.  The desire of agreementists is a long time desire, and it is a constant feeling to be in an inordinate, almost sinful separation from the “Church”.  I told Fr. Gleize that Fr. Laisney (who brainwashed me for three days in Manila on the agreement) clearly suffers that same kind of pain.  He was reportedly preaching for the agreement in Kuala Lumpur recently.  Bishop Fellay, when I saw him, told me that our idea of the Church is too radical, a Church that exists only on paper (cf. also his Adelaide conference).  If the deal is off, it is not because of us;  it is because Rome still does not want it, blocks it, even if the Pope wants it. Very sad. [In answer to those who say “the deal is off, so we can forget that problem,” +Fellay and the SSPX leaders still want the deal, and the Pope still wants the deal, it’s only the other officials in Rome who are blocking the deal at this time. So the problem is not gone.]
 
We talked at length about the new praxis of the SSPX regarding canonical affairs and especially the growing tendency of the SSPX to let all its difficult cases be resolved by the new Rome and in the light of the new Code of Canon Law.  Many canonical irregularities occurred at the general chapter, especially around the way bishop Williamson was dealt with.  The declaration and six conditions look like something botched up and containing a serious shift of orientation of the entire congregation.
 
Another confirmation of bishop Fellay’s change of stance is what he preaches in his regular three hours conferences: That Rome has changed.

Visiting Avrillé and Morgon, I was told by the superiors of these places that when they went with Fr. Matthew in Menzingen, bishop Fellay took two and a half hours to persuade them that Rome has changed. Their jaws dropped both at the change of tack and at the effort taken for it.  

My own parents went to a three hour conference in Brignolles in June;  same thing:  “Rome has changed”.  Still my poor parents left the conference [feeling they hadn’t] learned anything, and not understanding what it was that we were supposed to understand.  

And what is going to be said in the big Angelus “Papacy” hootenanny in October… given the recent backpedaling?  One may guess that the Papacy is going to be somewhat bad, BUT good enough to some other extent.
 
 
Therefore 20 priests or so are currently embarked in the process of [openly warning] the flock about the remaining errors of Menzingen, despite the backpedaling on the deal with Rome, on the April 15th declaration and on the issue of exemption. For if one describes new Rome in a wrong and pinky way, it is normal to fear that, six years from now, the SSPX will be six feet under the new Rome…

 
 
PART TWO
 
WHAT HAPPENED?
 
 
War on! What next… but… What happened? [“War On!” and “What Next?” were two previous letters.]
In the month of May, an internal note stated that in the case Rome accepts our latest doctrinal protocol (of April 15th), a canonical structure will be proposed to us.
 
Then on June 13th the offer of Menzingen was refused by Rome, a bit as it was refused in September 2011, and then began a backtracking process that is still going on.  The official line is now that we are back to square one, that the deal is off, and that we never looked for a deal in the first place.  On September 07th, bishop Fellay backtracked totally on the April 15th declaration and on another major mistake done in the General Chapter;  when it merely wished, as a condition, to be exempt from novus ordo dioceses.  In the meantime two things continue to happen:  doctrinal change and lack of clarity on our relationship with Rome.
 
THE GENERAL CHAPTER
At the General Chapter, everything was supposed to be perfectly clear, but the docuмents that came out of it already need clarification.

Fr. Petrucci told me that the capitulants were in a hurry to write the texts and that the intent of many of them was to create a framework that would prevent bishop Fellay [from approaching] new Rome prematurely. Most of them told us that they really fought, got the best, saved the day.  This clearly fits the new war aim of  Menzingen:  that the war is over.  
 
SECOND ARTILLERY ADJUSTMENT
I have no doubt on the intentions of the capitulants but the text that emanated from the Chapter, some product of a compromise between two positions, scared me so much that I wrote an attack against it, got it posted on the internet, got it printed and posted to all the priories and friendlies of France, and distributed it to the faithful in a paper form.  Here is the jist of it:  

Proclaimed on Bastille Day, this text is a bit sentimental at times and even if it has a quote of the Archbishop, it is a declaration much weaker than the 1974 and 1976 Declarations.  The question of the Magisterium remains ambiguous in this text because we do not have any more a mention of two opposite magisteria (two Romes (1974), two Churches (1976)), but the main trick of the text is in the tail;  in those six conditions for a canonical recognition of the SSPX.
 
A first group omits the 2006 notion that we wait for the conversion of Rome to have a deal with it.  It is the first time we give up, so officially, contrary to the rejection of the deal by the Archbishop in 1988 and his many subsequent warnings that the crisis will last long and requires Rome to be good again.  
The first condition talks about keeping our liberty to teach and our liberty to attack those teaching the errors.  The second and third are about keeping our exclusive use of traditional rites and having at least one bishop.  
 
All this sounds very brave, but the core principle of a liberal democracy is this liberty for anyone to disagree publicly on all important issues.  So we will have the liberty to teach Tradition while others will have the liberty to defend modernism, we will attack the new mass while others will attack the true mass under the same roof; same for all other issues.  One French bishop understood that very well saying: “Let them come and disagree with Vatican II (if they can), for we disagree with the twenty other Councils.”  

It never worked.  Why?  Because it never works to enter the system, as the Archbishop said:  “Had I signed the agreement we would have been finished in one year” (June 13th, 1988).  Once in the system, we will not stand against those guilty of errors of Vatican II, because those who tried before never succeeded, and we are already beginning to stop rebuking Peter when found worthy of blame (Galatians).  Again, look at DICI, while in the past we had no qualms saying openly that the Vatican was infiltrated with Freemasons and that their ideas had triumphed.  

Mixed with bad Catholic priests and faithful, our own faithful will be weakened, disoriented and divided, even more than today.  

As for the liturgy, it suffices to say that Mgr Pozzo just told the institute of Good Shepherd to fall into line five year after their deal; and as for this lonely bishop, how will he cater for the needs of 1000 or so traditional priests with their faithful?  “And if that Bishop dies?”, asked one faithful candidly in south France. Fr. Pfluger answered, “Well, Rome will appoint another one”…
 
The second group of conditions is almost scarier, these being wishable or suitable conditions, by which we ask without pressing to keep only our minor tribunals, relinquishing in advance the dealing of big cases (as we already do, because when the matter is grave or important we either leave it to Rome to deal with the case or we refuse to treat the case;  I’ve been told by canonists and seminary teachers).

Hopefully bishop Fellay backtracked verbally on the second condition, saying that of course our exemption from novus ordo diocese is an absolute necessity for us. That it didn’t appear to be so at the General Chapter is what worries me. (And since it is a matter of law, a written amendment should be placed in the final text).
Same lack of clarity for the third condition, that we merely wish to have a “majority for Tradition” and a presidency in that pontifical commission under the Pope. Other Ecclesia Dei people can claim to be also for tradition, stooges of Msgr. Mueller. That’s in the case the Pope doesn’t wish to press on his advantage and renounces to place his men directly into this commission.  

“Lord, intend to my help; make haste into succoring me.”
 
SSPX DISCALCED, OR OF STRICT SURVIVANCE
Consequently, early August, I flew to Washington DC and met Fr. Joe, who was able to cobble together a group of five priests in Vienna, Virginia, to organize what we call a “United Corps of Priests”.  We sat three days, tempers flared in perfect harmony with the gravity of the situation we were facing.  But at least we were able to plant a flag by stating our intent, electing a boss and setting up a visible base.
 
Here is the text of the Declaration;  hopefully it is short:
 
+Only She can help you +   Vienna, Virginia, Aug 10th, 2012.
 
The heart of the Faith is the Divinity of Christ and his Kingship over all nations:  “Oportet illum regnare”.  The errors of Vatican II are an indirect attack against his Divinity and a direct attack on his Social Kingship. They will for ever remain the Revolution of 1789 within the Church.
 
Today’s Vatican has only changed for the worse since the Council (more damage, more new heresies, more effective semi-Modernism), to such an extent that we can repeat the Archbishop’s words of 1974 and 1976:  “The Church that affirms such errors is at once schismatic and heretical.  This Conciliar Church is therefore not Catholic. To whatever extent Pope, bishops, priests or faithful adhere to this new church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church.”(June 29th 1976).

The Pope has allowed the True Mass, but only within the pantheon of modernist liturgies.  Further, he has made clear his espousing of the false doctrine of Religious Liberty by preaching it to be the model of how the Church and State are to relate one to another.  Lastly, the doctrine of Ecuмenism has been widely and consistently professed by the Pontiff in his visits to protestant temples, ѕуηαgσgυєs and mosques and Assisi III confirms that the spirit of Assisi is alive and well.  It was this spirit that moved the Archbishop to undertake an “Operation Survival” that is now itself in great peril.
 
Today’s SSPX clearly wants to place itself under this Conciliar Church, mitigates the poison of Vatican II, is more and more silent in face of the abuses by the conciliar hierarchy, and uses ambiguous language referring to two opposite Magisteria.  At the same time that it is ever ready to believe in a constant debate with obdurate Roman officials, it uses strong-arm tactics toward those standing against wicked reconciliation.

We must wait for Our Lady to convert the Pope and inspire him to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate heart in union with all the bishops and we must persevere in the Charity of the Truth and in the Truth of Charity, organized in a united corps of priests faithful to the position always maintained by Archbishop Lefebvre.

Fr. Joseph Pfeiffer, Fr. Ronald J. Ringrose, Fr. Richard Voigt, Fr. David Hewko, Fr. François Chazal.

 
We then elected Fr. Pfeiffer as a “boss”, for two years, because there are not enough Indians for this Indian chief.  Electing a Superior General, two assistants, general bursar and general secretary would be utterly ridiculous at this stage, for we are far away from being even fifty, but also we recognize bishop Fellay to be our legitimate superior (remember, he has not signed any deal with the new Rome), even if, just like in the case of Benedict XVI, we withdraw the exercise of obedience to him for motives of Faith until this crisis is over.  

Thus, our name remains the same, SSPX. We are just aware that today’s doctrinal slide endangers our engagements, promises and oaths, especially our antimodernist oath, as Fr. Koller said so well in his sermon.  We expect lawyers to be unleashed at some stage, but in the worse case, they might be able to retag us as sspx discalced, observants, because ours is a split within the same order, as happened many times in the course of Church History.  We are not creating a new contraption, a society of St. Pius XXIII, some vague other institute.  All this [is] to nail [down] the notion that we did not change the message, while the official line of the SSPX has changed.

Then we set up a base in “Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 1730 N Stillwell road, Boston Kentucky 40107, USA, with permanent resident priest(s).  Then we set up a banking structure to receive financial support.  We hope to start a little school there and create our own websites to complete the good work of “True Trad” and other websites.  If we can we will run a paper newsletter and walk again on the moon, but let’s not look too far!  
 
I do understand why some SSPX superiors are in hot pursuit after us;  for it really seems we are undermining while in fact we are simply organizing, faced as we were, with a clear path of expulsion.  When Bishop Fellay told me that we are going to fizzle out, I replied:  “Well, my Lord, we shall receive all the priests you shall send to us”.   It is a pity to see any priest being thrown out of his congregation for no good reason and ending in isolation.  
Thanks to the latest backpedaling, the crisis is seemingly averted, but what will happen if Menzingen backpedals on the backpedaling again, as it did many times before?  We just want to be a little iron piece that prevents the pedaler.  And what if Bishop Williamson gets expelled?  Where shall he go?  And the priests that shall follow him… shall they also end up in isolation?  It is a good thing if Bishop Williamson keeps all his options open, gets an outside help to force Menzingen to keep him in, by giving it a foretaste of what a SSPX bishop on the loose is.  For now we are just around 20 scattered, ie., hardly anything, but we know for certain that Menzingen does not want that little bud to blossom.  
In normal times, it is better if the 4 bishops [would] stay united, just as, in the case of another crisis, if the three counter the one as they did so effectively.  

As for the faithful, after warning of the situation, we shall limit ourselves to [only those] who call us for help and provide all the others with a permanent and unthrottled means of information.  First to the Jєωs, then to the Gentiles;  first we shall seek the small remnants in the SSPX crowd, and then we shall fish for all other men.  

To be well understood, our fight must be described as an analogous fight;  one battle, many angles.  It is also like an attack in echelon, because not all priests and faithful realize the evil of the day at the same time;  nor do they choose to take a public stance at the same time.  

Once again we are no saviors of the SSPX, but I hope you understand we play a little part in something wider, for the resistance to reconciliation has many prongs and shapes:  from Mother Ann-Marie Simoulin who threatens to start anew and rebukes her own brother, Fr. Simoulin, to Dom Thomas Aquinas in Brazil who is running groups of faithful, just like us, to the many good priests who resist in France, to some heroic nuns who show readiness  to undergo the persecution of their whole community, to Dr. David Allen White who will not countenance any nonsense… the list is quite long and consoling.  
If Menzingen stays on today’s backpedal, the crisis will lose some of its urgency, it will be harder for us to explain away our position to the faithful and to persuade too many priests to join our movement… but this crisis will not be over [too soon], because we have clear signs of life in the Beast.
 
TOUR DE FRANCE (RÉSISTANTE)
While Fr. Joe spent a long time in the US, successfully patching up a group of priests, I was able to spend three weeks to make a “tournée des popotes de la résistance” or a check up of the cooking habits of places resisting the doctrinal shift of the SSPX.  Most priests are aware of the change of doctrine at the top, and because the district is big, the attitude of liberal priests is easier to take notice.  Just a few examples I got from letters and conversations:  In le Pointet, the nuns praise Benedict XVI before little children, a priest in Brittany calls John Paul II a saint, luminous mysteries of the Rosary are included in a newly edited song book in one of our schools, one rector of a seminary has inserted quotes of Benedict XVI in his latest book on the family, and I just heard Fr. Toulza was forced, I believe, to put a text in Fideliter, defending Msgr. Mueller…

Those things would never have happened before.

We have just lost one priest in Corsica who went back straight to the diocese and two monks left the Benedictine monastery of Bellaigue because they are in favor of the agreement.  In Germany, out of a total of 40 priests, 10 are against an agreement while all others are in favor, in varying degrees.  Liberal faithful criticize bishop Tissier or outspoken priests like Fr. Beauvais.  Fr. de Cacqueray is harder to criticize, because he is one of these rare priests able to keep his district together, thanks to his great natural authority and piety.

As of  the 14th of August, I did not know where my new assignment was.  Fr. Toulza told me it would be Reims, a nice historical place at the heart of WW1 battlefields.  I was glad to see Fr. Toulza to sign a 2000 copies publication contract of my book on Christ the King called “La Cite Oubliee”.  That joy was short lived as three weeks later, that book on the social teaching of the Church got forbidden by bishop Fellay, not for its contents, I hope, but for the name of its author.  An independent house called DPF should print it next year.  Dr. Chojnowsky is currently translating it in the US.  (Please, note well, I am a lazy priest, that’s official now).
 
It is to be expected that the matter of my assignment is going to be put to the fore by my adversaries, despite the fact that Fr. Couture recognizes, even in writing that I always obeyed before.  Bishop Fellay thanked me for the undeniable 16 years of obedience, but not for what appears to him to be my year 2012 disobedience.  

By tampering with doctrine, bishop Fellay lost a scepter that I saw falling from my position in Manila,  and it is from where I was when the crisis began, that I shall begin to make my stand.  The question for me is, that the doctrinal shift in the SSPX is so grave that it needs to be exposed, i.e. preached against;  but it is impossible to preach the truth if one is placed into silence.  That is why I asked Fr. Girod if I would be allowed to preach against the errors of bishop Fellay from the pulpit.  His answer was, “Nobody preaches against his boss in a company,” and I replied “…unless the company is sinking”.  

Moreover, he told me that on Sunday I would be assigned to the chapel of Troyes, that counts thirty people.  In France we call it “un placard”, a cupboard.  Not only that, but this priory is a priory of three priests taking care of less than 200 faithful, because the chapel of Joinville was taken away from their responsibility.  Then I figured:  France is not my turf;  if I embark to denounce Menzingen from there, I will embarrass Fr. de Cacqueray who is so friendly to me and force him to condemn me, and the faithful hearing how bad I am from the official channels won’t be able to know for themselves.  In Asia, when the faithful hear from Fr. Couture how bad I am,  having known me for ten years, they can know for themselves that I am even 40 times [worse] than Father makes me to be.  There are also enough anti liberals in France to carry out the fight, and the Asian faithful, being more recent additions to the traditional movement and less served by an overextended Society in Asia, are more vulnerable to errors and lies.  They are more in need of help, but overall it is especially a question of impact.  I told repeatedly my French confreres;  you don’t need me here to rise to the occasion, I am still a junior and in no position whatsoever to lead you and tell you what to do.  You have your own leaders, go and fetch them, like the peasant that came to fetch La Rochejaquelein during the Vendee war.
 
RETURN TO ASIA
“Ça va foirer”, “It is going to fizzle”, Fr. Nely told me in Menzingen;  and Fr. Pfeiffer concurs entirely:  “In theory we are totally toasted, and our main obstacle is the fear (of being expelled, denied sacraments, denied schools, etc.). and the second obstacle is confusion;  they tell us, “Father, what is happening?”  They are begging what is going on; they are being told nothing by the official channels”. Barring a miracle we should fizzle out, we are just a straw fire, a priest told us.  We don’t even have the funds to travel around America to see the people who want to see us.  We were not paid before in Asia, and now we depend even more on the spontaneous generosity of the faithful.  Many people we do not know give us support, proving that it is because of the issues, and not their personal love of us.
 
Small groups have appeared everywhere, calling for help and offering help to us.  In some place we took over the entire chapel, in other places we find a little group.  It is not easy to cast us out of places that do not belong to the Society, which makes me understand better why Menzingen has been so adamant to centralize all properties in recent years.

All the while we remain under fire from the well entrenched official channels of the SSPX.  These have one war aim, our silence, and are constantly labeling us as disobedient, unsupernatural, practical sedevacantists, chaosmongers, pamphleteers, misquoters, calumniators, breakers of the peace and division causing rebels.  Priests, brothers and faithful are told to fast at our passage, people should not talk to us, brothers should not talk to us, we were expelled from the common table in Manila, I couldn’t get the permission to assemble plastic ships in the library, nor could we celebrate private masses at any time on the side altars, even at three in the morning, use the telephone, computers, copy machines, etc.  

The priests in Manila were told not to grant us absolution.  I found out by going to confession to one of them and asked him why;  “I know the penitent,” was his answer.  I then asked Fr. Couture, who told us that he cannot answer the question, while we got told by another priest: he was told that the absolution of our sins is in fact reserved to Menzingen.

We sensed that by staying longer in Manila we were piling coals on their heads.  We had made all possible public statements, including a Mass on the street;  time to move on.  

Public announcements are put on the websites of Asia and America, and are read from the pulpit.  Interesting descriptions of me are made in Japan.  Groups of people are sent to crash some parties we organize, making the debate more lively and interesting, I believe.  

Hopefully we took all these treatments dismissively and with good cheer, most of the time, but note well, my dear reader, that none of these public counterattacks went to the doctrinal bottom line.  

Therefore,
 
“Let us exit Jerusalem with Christ,
 Carrying his opprobrium.” (Heb.)


[Fr. Francois Chazal, SSPX]


[grammar, etc. in brackets ~Nl.Obs.]