Author Topic: OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIESTS OF THE SPPX (Read 1373 times)

cantatedomino · « **on:** April 12, 2014, 10:43:56 AM »

PART I:

Dear Priests of the SSPX,

Of late I have been moved by very fruitful conversations with a friend to give a deeper consideration to the notion of authority, in itself, and in the light of the new orientation in the SSPX. The question that weighs now on so many minds regards the filling up of the measure of the requisite standard of proof: When will the signs - already become manifest - that the SSPX has departed from its mission to defend and transmit the integral Catholic Faith, be determined to be so clear and convincing as to warrant the taking of action in the external forum - either by way of breaking silence or by way of departure from the organization?

The lesson I take from Vatican II is that God's enemies always abuse and exploit two fundamental virtues in their war on God and His Church: Charity and Obedience. ++ABL clearly and consistently taught that the modernists abuse the authority of their ecclesiastical offices by commanding obedience to sin - the antidote to which is true obedience to God. No student of the classical SSPX model can escape the fact that ++ABL took great pains to distinguish between true and false obedience.

Wherefore the considerations made herein point to a compelling need for vigilance, especially in light of the unmistakable shift in SSPX policy vís a vís antichrist Rome: Forewarned is forearmed. Clearly we must not swerve to the left or to the right but must hold the middle course. One extreme is to over-react or jump the gun, as some have put it. The other extreme is to ignore glaring warning signs and refuse to look at mounting evidence. For many signs now exist which predict inevitable and predetermined consequences, just as a principle will be present in each and every one of its effects:

Catholics should always distinguish between authority and authoritarianism.
Catholics are known by their profound recognition and respect for all forms of earthly authority, as coming from the Father of Lights, from Whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named. Human authority is a rich participation in the majesty of God's Perfections and Attributes, and also His Creative and Redemptive Acts. Authority, duly considered, is a catechism. As ++ABL stated in his 1977 sermon at Ecóne, the virtue of obedience should be “the profound disposition of our souls.”

But this profound recognition of God, which we express in our subjection to human authority, must be contrasted with the authoritarianism of the antichrist. For we are living out our mortal lives in the midst of a most terrible and violent marxist authoritarianist paradigm, in the rubble of a torn-down Christendom, and in a time of mass apostasy and defection.

Wherefore it seems to me that it is incuмbent upon every able Catholic to study in depth both Theology and Philosophy, so as to be able to distinguish between the marks of the virtue of true obedience, on the one hand; and of the anti-virtue of the blind, servile, and false obedience that, on the other hand, qualifies abjection under the yoke of authoritarianism. For if we do not study in order to dispose ourselves to receive from God real Catholic discernment, the Faith will be neither lived, nor preserved, nor handed down to the next generation.

In addition to all that ++ABL taught about the distinction between the virtue of obedience and the sin of blind obedience – for he did call blind obedience a sin ["One must understand the meaning of obedience and must distinguish between blind obedience and the virtue of obedience. Indiscriminate obedience is actually a sin against the virtue of obedience."] – we may obtain valuable knowledge by studying the tactics and operations of God’s enemies.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #1 on:** April 12, 2014, 10:48:36 AM »

PART II:

There are abundant telltale marks or signs by which we may discern that we are in the presence of some version of dialectical, materialist authoritarianism, rather than legitimate, divinely constituted human authority; but here I choose to focus on only one of these marks, and precisely because I detect it, in ever increasing extension, in the Catholic traditionalist movement. This is the mark of intellectual reductionism – what I would here define as a form of authoritarianism that consists in a call from those in positions of authority to ‘get in line with’ organizational policies masquerading as doctrine or truth, through the mechanism of blind obedience masquerading as humility and virtue – in other words, group think enforced by an internal thought-police force. I find this reductionism engendering effects in both the speculative and the practical orders.

In the intellectual order it operates to curtail the legitimate development of the speculative sciences of Metaphysics, Philosophy and Theology, so that they are no longer wielded by Catholics as the powerful weapons against error that God intended them to be. Why has not there by now been developed a positive, affirmative Catholic teaching on the metaphysical and theological impossibility of darwinian-einsteinian evolutionism? Metaphysics and Patristics have always been at our disposal, yet who picks them up and strikes with them anymore? With the advent of Neo-Scholasticism, the men of the schools went extinct and have been replaced by shills for the scientism establishment.

What happened to the Patristic Deposit on the inerrancy of Scripture in its literal sense; on the true Cosmology; on the Hexameron? The Church Fathers (with St. Thomas) are unanimous on these things yet they are tossed aside for novel teachings that support what St. Pius X called the "principal doctrine of the modernists," i.e., evolution. Why did the SSPX publicly declare itself, some four or five years ago, confessedly copernican, as if there exists no integral body of unanimous Patristic teaching on the absolute theological necessity of a geocentric universe; as if the papal decrees of 1616 and 1633, which authoritatively teach that heliocentrism is a heresy, do not exist; as if the perennial Magisterium of the Church could sanction such a radical departure from the clear and unequivocal sense of Sacred Scripture found throughout the entire canon; as if there does not now exist a burgeoning and ever-growing body of empirical and observational evidence that demonstrates the geocentricity of the material universe?

Modernism and the new theology - abject heresies which have succeeded in supplanting the True Religion in the very bowels of the visible Church through the mechanism called ‘implementation of the Council’ - have for their arch-principles, not religious indifferentism and ecuмenism, but copernicanism and evolutionism. The traditionalist counter-offensive has wholly failed to demolish these two vicious and pernicious arch-errors; for which I place the blame squarely at the feet of the disease of intellectual reductionism (authoritarianism) now raging through our common rational organism. Why would the SSPX do such a thing as shut down internal inquiries on this subject and declare itself corporately copernican, if not to conform itself to the rabid, gnostic, scientist copernicanism of the freemasonic false church of Vatican II, into which it seeks admission, and under which it desires subjection?

Once upon a time the members and lay supporters of the SSPX, along with all other traditionalists, were encouraged and invited by those in authority to engage in authentically Catholic intellectual speculation in order to bring about a powerful counter-offensive against the modernist-evolutionist beast that Our Lady foresaw when She decreed at La Salette: Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the antichrist.

Sadly it is now possible to detect changes in the internal operations of the SSPX that are unmistakably reductionist and authoritarian. The new orientation in the SSPX frowns on and discourages the active life of the mind; speculative inquiry; the development and refinement of ideas through research and debate; and the following of one’s conscience in matters that are related, yet collateral to, the dogmatic Faith. In the new orientation, the primacy is given to engineering an artificial unity founded on organizationally acceptable ideas and concepts (reductionism); and this is arguably the preparatory phase of the coming merger with Rome. ‘Positions’ flowing down from corporate headquarters are unilaterally imposed on the membership. Members who write books on any number of questions are ordered not to publish if their theses do not align with corporate policies. Speculative hypotheses that are in themselves open to legitimate debate, yet do not align with the thinking of the leadership, are not tolerated, and, if voiced openly, are met with multiform attempts at purgation, which include even expulsion.

Surely an argument can be made that +Joseph Pfeiffer, who followed his conscience in alerting the public to the existence of this new orientation inside the SSPX, performed, not an act of culpable disobedience, but an act of heroic virtue. He did not disobey any order to remain at his post. Indeed he had every intention of persevering in his assigned duties. Rather he disobeyed a direct order not to make his concerns public because that order radically violated his conscience. He explicitly stated that his disobedience was an act in accordance with the affirmative duties and obligations of his priesthood - which determine all of his operations - namely to warn the sheep of a real danger to their faith. He also stated that he was acting in accordance with ++Marcel Lefebvre's own teaching on the distinction between true and false obedience. He sincerely believes that he is following the highest principle of our Holy Faith: It is better to obey God than men for the salvation of souls. Because of the existence of demonstrable facts, because of the objective truth of the principles he cites, and because of his sincere belief that he has a moral obligation to disobey an illegitimate order to remain silent, it is impossible for us to judge with certitude that Fr. Pfeiffer's conduct is culpable disobedience.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #2 on:** April 12, 2014, 10:53:44 AM »

PART III:

History and experience teach that when a corporate body begins to take on the practices cited above, it is in furtherance of some agenda. In the case of the SSPX, the agenda is a merger with the non-Catholic, authoritarianist conciliar superstructure. In order to successfully merge with it, the SSPX will have to align with its ideology (modernist relativism) and mode (authoritarianism), for the sake of “unity and cohesion under one authority.” In the practical theatre, substantial changes always begin with mode and terminate in ideology. This is analogous to the lex orandi lex credendi; and is exemplified in the dismantling of Christendom, which proceeded in two phases: First, the toppling of the divinely constituted secular authority of the European Catholic monarchies and their replacement with authoritarianist, freemasonic 'republics;' and secondly, in the power vacuum that ensued, the mass public proliferation of heresies and errors destructive of Christian doctrine and morals, which culminated in the anti-Council, Vatican II.

Pursuant to Phase I of the SSPX merger operation (which I believe is well under way), the internal governance of the fraternity takes on a quality of gradually increasing authoritarianism, i.e., change of mode. Phase II will consist in the restructuring of the SSPX so that it becomes an organ for the dissemination of the false egalitarianist principles developed in Summorum Pontificuм, i.e., change of ideology. Evidence of the viability of this prognostication is found in the history of the Institute of the Good Shepherd in France - and especially what Rome did to them at the five-year mark.

The diabolical entity the SSPX seeks to merge with misrepresents itself as Catholic, and then exploits, through the mechanism of authoritarianism, the unity which is the very essence of the Church as Mystical Body of one Head. Consequently this entity will bring upon the SSPX all of the undiluted force of its naked authoritarianism, in order to stamp the SSPX with its image and likeness – the image and likeness of the beast. The pressure the entity exerts on the SSPX to conform to the authoritarianist/modernist paradigm is immeasurable, as I have heard Bishop Fellay, in person, himself describe. I have heard him lament, ad nauseum, the pressure they constantly put on him. My sense is that he has succuмbed - the inevitable result of playing with hellfire.

The principle is certain: As goes the head, so go the members. As Rome relentlessly exerts its force on Bishop Fellay, he will exert the very same force on his own subjects. This is the principle of agency/motion/change.

If we are not afraid to scrutinize the thing, we will observe that, after well over a decade of Menzingen negotiating a merger with antichrist Rome, the post-2012 SSPX is most aptly qualified as an organization that puts unremitting pressure on its priests and layfolk to think in line with neo-SSPX policies and positions, even in matters that are clearly and objectively open to discussion, debate, and development. Sadly, the militancy and the intellectual vitality that once characterized the SSPX in its fight for Tradition are gone.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #3 on:** April 12, 2014, 10:59:12 AM »

PART IV:

A true Catholic education brings about a flowering of the mind, which in turn, informs and orders the appetitive powers; whereas a reductionist indoctrination has for its end the destruction of the intellectual life of the interior, the dismantling of the rational power’s ability to detect philosophical errors in the glut of novel ideological systems, and, consequently, a headlong fall into sentimentalism and slavery to the passions. Indeed, as St. Pius X teaches:

The principles of philosophy laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas are to be religiously and inviolably observed, because they are the means of acquiring such a knowledge of creation as is most congruent with the Faith . . . [and] of refuting all the errors of all the ages . . . They also marvelously illustrate the diversity and analogy between God and His works . . . The principles of St. Thomas, considered generally and as a whole, contain nothing but what the most eminent philosophers and doctors of the Church have discovered after prolonged reflection and discussion in regard to the particular reasons determining human knowledge, the nature of God and creation, the moral order and the ultimate end to be pursued in life . . . St. Thomas perfected and augmented still further, by the almost angelic quality of his intellect, all this superb patrimony of wisdom which he inherited from his predecessors and applied it to prepare, illustrate and protect sacred doctrine in the minds of men . . . Sound reason suggests that it would be foolish to neglect it and religion will not suffer it to be in any way attenuated. And rightly, because, if Catholic doctrine is once deprived of this strong bulwark, it is useless to seek the slightest assistance for its defence in a philosophy whose principles are either common to the errors of materialism, monism, pantheism, socialism and modernism, or certainly not opposed to such systems. The reason is that the capital theses in the philosophy of St. Thomas are not to be placed in the category of opinions capable of being debated one way or another, but are to be considered as the foundations upon which the whole science of natural and divine things is based; if such principles are once removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily follow that students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the magistracy of the Church.[/u][/SIZE] (See: Doctoris Angelici, St. Pius X)

We see the terrible effects of materialist reductionist indoctrination in the public education system - elementary, secondary, and post-secondary - all over the world. We see them in novus ordo seminaries and Catholic schools, all over the world. We already see their nascence, and will soon see them in their fullness, in SSPX seminaries and schools, all over the world. Reductionist indoctrination invariably results in the creation of mere organizational rubes – outfitted only to slavishly obey the raw power of states and corporate entities - rather than Christian men and women who can think critically and fight to the death for Christ the King. I have a moral conviction that, without a profound intellectual life, Catholics cannot withstand the now torrential forces of antichrist indoctrination – coming even from traditional authority figures - to persevere in the Faith.

And if you doubt it can get that bad, consider the words of the Incarnate Wisdom: For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #4 on:** April 12, 2014, 11:02:30 AM »

PART V:

In the practical order, the telltale signs of dialectical, materialist authoritarianism show forth in a false egalitarianism masking raw dictatorial power, and in a reductionist, anti-hierarchical, beauty-hating, disorder-loving deconstructionism that makes the material world a bleak, distopic miasma of almost pure ugliness. The practical order always follows upon the speculative. False theology, false philosophy, and pseudo-science bring forth ugly architecture, ugly music, ugly art, ugly people: Ugly intelligible forms ergo ugly material bodies.

[An intellectual corollary of this false egalitarianism is found in the novus ordo's diabolical "hermeneutic of continuity," recently given development in the vicious encyclical Summorum Pontificuм, which tries, unsuccessfully, to equate the bastard rite with the True Religion.]

Authoritarianism is the principle and formal cause of the intellectual, industrial, and artistic blight we now see everywhere in this darkened world. Low-quality, poorly crafted, fall-apart-after-the-second-use Chinese merchandise is the icon for it. This power cuм ineptitude - a malicious abuse of divinely constituted human authority - is the antithesis of the Catholic City. It engenders the poison we see in the Church and in all modern institutions, in varying degrees of deformation. The corruption and the poison have been unleashed by the permission of Almighty God, in punishment for our sins; and we do well to consider that we will find their mark everywhere - even inside our precious traditional movement. For, on the practical side of traditionalism, we find the mark of reductionist authoritarianism in a truly culpable lack of missionary activity.

Wherefore it occurs to me that authoritarianism can be defined as a toxic brew made from the coupling of raw power with the grossest ignorance (intellectual order) and ineptitude (practical order). The classical Russian Communist State gives the premier example. The raw power was so mind blowing that Our Lady had to come and warn about it. Mass murder and torture on a scale theretofore thought impossible. Grinding, jack-booted oppressive force unleashed throughout all levels of society, which yet had the agency power to bring about nothing more than a truly laughable tableau of industrial, architectural, economic, and administrative inefficiency/waste. I see in this example both authoritarianism as a principle or cause, and its effects: The cause being raw power dwelling in a subject devoid of knowledge, wisdom, understanding, prudence, and art; and the effect being monsters and bastards in all realms of human activity. Authoritarianism brings forth only a ridiculous parody of human endeavor, which clearly demonstrates the absolute vapidity of any act attempted to be taken independently of Jesus Christ and His Church.

Another example of authoritarianism in act is the entire novus ordo superstructure. Infidel men in the possession of raw power - illicitly obtained through the outright theft of ecclesiastical offices, and coupled with an outrageous and scandalous ignorance of even the most rudimentary tenets of the Catholic Faith - have engineered a worldwide debacle as tasteless, garish, unnatural, inefficient, useless, and aesthetically displeasing as it is heretical, schismatic, infidel, perverse, reprobate, and damning to souls.

A third example is in the making; and that is the SSPX, which is manifestly transforming itself into an authoritarianist behemoth and a reductionist gulag. Think about the ramifications for tomorrow’s priests – as possessing real Divine power, and yet without having received a truly Catholic seminary formation. It will be nothing else than raw power dwelling in subjects devoid of real doctrine, real faith, real virtue, real militancy, real wisdom, real knowledge, real prudence, real art.

Authoritarianism in an SSPX seminary would look like this: St. Thomas is not read directly, but only commented on. Vatican II docuмents and theologians will be studied with an eye to resolving them in favor of a ‘traditional’ interpretation (egalitarianism). Intellectual reductionism, delivered through ‘spiritual direction,’ will keep seminarians from traveling down the path that leads to a profound, vital, radical, supernatural faith in the inerrancy of Holy Writ and in the Patristic teaching on Creation. External-forum oriented Catholic militancy will be demoted and re-qualified as hyper-critical, ‘angry’ prophet-of-doom-ness; it will be discouraged and even punished; it will be replaced with notions of ‘piety’ and a ‘focus on the interior spiritual life of the soul.’ This would be a sure sign of a movement away from the essential objectivity of the Faith towards the perverted subjectivity of the heresy of modernism. Make no mistake: After the merger, and in its final state, the SSPX will be known only for an intellectual and aesthetic hobbling that will make even some liberals wince. Let the examples of the bi-ritual FSSP and Campos serve as the evidence for this proposition.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #5 on:** April 12, 2014, 11:04:36 AM »

PART VI:

And that is why I am so very attracted of late to St. Augustine's saying: In things certain, unity. In things uncertain, liberty. In all things, charity. Was this not the basic foundational principle, from which little mustard seed grew up the Christian edifice of Medieval Catholic Culture, with its characteristic (and never yet to be superseded) magnificence in every realm of human endeavor, both the speculative and practical?

God made all things good. The Creature, as a whole (hierarchy of being) and in its parts, is a mysterious and profound reflection of His Power, Attributes, and Perfections: For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also, and Divinity. Metaphysical, philosophical, and theological knowledge not only aids in the contemplation of Divine mysteries, ordered as it is to a deepening of the Faith and an increase in virtue, but is indispensable for the upbuilding of the Catholic City. For from an intellect equipped with the highest and most sublime intelligible forms, comes forth works that contain the most prodigious accomplishments in human art and industry.

I think of the monks who single handedly preserved the ancient classical authors, who purified their metaphysics, and who synthesized their philosophical science with the supernatural, revealed truths of our Holy Religion. Was not this synthesis the very principle of, and did not its matter contain within it all the potency of the glorious Catholic Edifice? By the sheer force of its agency, this synthesis brought forth a great flowering in learning and the practical arts. It brought forth authentic culture and real civilization. It brought forth Christendom.

The Catholic City, by definition, cannot be built upon raw power coupled with ineptitude and ignorance, or else it will resemble the marxist-zionist kibbutz. For all rational power, which is determined to act, must be duly and decorously ordered, through the cultivation of the intellectual life and the practical arts, in order to bring forth fruit. And this because the Catholic City is founded on the clay and infirmity of human nature, which must always be amply girded and grounded in what is suitable to it - namely an authentic freedom to know, love, and serve the Almighty God.

I think often of St. Pius X's magnificent prospectus:

The City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be set up unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.

OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO!

Domitilla · « **Reply #6 on:** April 12, 2014, 11:50:24 AM »

"Sing ye to the Lord with praise ... I will sing to my God as long as I shall be. Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation ... "

Well done and beautifully written, Cantatedomino!