Read the part in bold, especially. The author really makes an important point. There is irrefutable evidence that the SSPX is becoming sectarian, and abusing their "supplied jurisdiction" and becoming a bully of Tradition, imposing their petty will upon all and sundry.
Once again, this point ALONE justifies the complete entity knows as the "Resistance" -- including priests, faithful, new Mass centers, publications, websites, the whole nine yards...
From The Recusant:
Bp. Fellay: Jurisdiction & Abuses
Page 7
threatened with or actually denied the sacraments in France, England, Poland, Mexico,
Uraguay, Argentina, Italy, etc. In France, one prior thought it fine to say to his faithful: “If
I learn of people coming to Mass here who criticise the Society all week long, I won't hes-
itate to deny them the sacraments.”
For the same reason, in June 2012 the ordinations of the Capuchins and Dominicans were
cancelled. To a priest who asked the reason for this, Bishop Fellay replied: “I felt a lack of
personal trust from these communities... and ordaining a priest is such a serious thing that
I preferred to wait...” (9th November 2012, Paris) To appreciate just how grotesque and
monstrously arbitrary this answer is, the faithful need to know that the Capuchin deacons
were already on retreat with the deacons of the Society when they were told that they
would not be being ordained. Let us now compare this reaction of Bishop Fellay towards
allied religious communities with how Archbishop Lefebvre reacted to Roman pressure:
“You know that the Nuncio came to demmand that I not proceed with the ordinations, so
of course I said to him: 'You can't just do something like that a mere ten days before the
ordinations, that's just not possible. I would say even humanly speaking. These young
priests have been working for the last five years to prepare for their ordination, and ten
days before the ordination, even though their parents are ready to come, even though the
First Masses have been announced everywhere, at that moment I am asked not to do the
ordinations. Ordinations which are legitimate. These seminarians who have done regular
studies have a natural right to have the result of the preparations that they have made.’ ”
(Cospec 32A)
Did Bishop Fellay have a right, was it moral, for him to act thus? Are priests who deny the
sacraments to the faithful or who disturb their consciences right to do so?
A Supplied Jurisdiction...
The Compendium of Moral Theology of St. Alphonsus Ligouri says (T II, § 612, p. 362) :
“Penalties cannot be applied to non-believers, nor to persons over which one does not
have jurisdiction.”
(French: « La censure ne peut être portée contre les infidèles, ni contre les personnes sur
lesquelles on n’a pas de juridiction ». (Fr. Joseph Frassinetti, prior of Sainte Sabine à
Gênes, Tomes I & II translated into French by Fr. P. Fourez STL, 1889)
But we know that the conciliar church refuses any jurisdiction to the SSPX. Bishop
Fellay's power of jurisdiction therefore does not come from the Vatican. Bishop Fellay
and his priests do not exercise any “ordinary jurisdiction” but a “supplied jurisdiction”
which is “an emergency jurisdiction given by the law to every bishop and every priest in
case of necessity, for the common good, when he has not received from the authorities the
necessary powers.” ('Sel de a Terre' 87 pp.139-140)
“However, it must be borne in mind that an authority which is supplied does not
have the same characteristics as authority which exists ordinarily in the Church. It
is exercised case-by-case, and is thus not habitual: in other words the people who
www.TheRecusant.comBp. Fellay: Jurisdiction & Abuses
Page 8
benefit from it can always withdraw from it, and the supplied authority has no
power to make them return. It is dependent on the need of the faithful, given the
state of crisis. To the extent that the faithful need these bishops or priests for the
salvation of their souls, the Church creates this link of authority between them.
All of that shows that supplied jurisdiction gives a limited authority which has to
be exercised rather delicately. The jurisdictional authority of a bishop, coming not
from a Roman nomination but from the necessity of the salvation of souls, must
be exercised with an especial delicacy.”
(Archbishop Lefebvre, note of 20th Feb. 1990, quoted in ‘Sel de la Terre’)
At the Mass in Lille, in 1976, Archbishop Lefebvre declared very clearly: “They say that
I am the leader of Tradtion. I am not the leader of anything at all.” [“On dit que je suis le
chef de file de la tradition. Je ne suis le chef de file de rien du tout.” ] To think that his
jurisdiction was ordinary when really it is only supplied jurisdiction would be: “...to
found our apostolate on a false and illusory basis.” (Extract from a letter of Archbishop
Lefebvre, quoted by Fr. Pivert in the book “Archbishop Lefebvre's Consecrations... a
Schism?” Fideliter 1988, pp.55-60).
...Become A Perverse Domination
Today everything takes place as though the General House of the Society of St. Pius X
feels it has to force all the faithful and religious communities of Tradition to align them-
selves with their personal choices.
The faithful have no obligation to approve of Bishop Fellay's quest for a personal prel-
ature. In England and Italy faithful were told (by telephone!) that, due to their being in-
volved in running websites critical of the new direction of Bishop Fellay, they would be
asked not to set foot in the chapels any longer...
Some religious asked a gentleman not to
serve Mass any longer at the convent where he had always served the Mass: his crime
was to have served the Mass of a ‘resistance’ priest. The 2014 ORDO with it’s list of
Traditional Mass Centres shows that the Benedictine Monastery of Santa Cruz (Nova
Friburgo, Brazil) has been deleted from the list. And yet since the Consecrations, the
theological position of this monastery has not changed one bit. Where will such a
tyranny end?
The good of souls is no longer the purpose of authority. The SSPX has gone beyond the
limits of supplied jurisdiction. It is usurping a role which it does not have, and this
usurpation is not of the Church: it is sectarian.An Immoral Authority
The change of course, made obvious in 2012, has placed the Society outside the limits of
its legitimate power. The repressions, exclusions and sanctions that it throws out like
confetti are evidence of a serious moral drift, and attest to a despotic, self-validating
mentality, entirely devoid of charity. In France, at a work meeting at a priory, the prior
addressed a Knight of Our Lady, an 86 year-old gentleman, with the following words:
“Fuck off!”
The man’s crime: being against an agreement with Rome...
www.TheRecusant.comBp. Fellay: Jurisdiction & Abuses
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“In controversial questions, preachers and confessors must be on their guard to
ensure that they define what is a sin, above all mortal sin, based on the authority of
moral theologians or even based on what numerous theologians say; such a decision
requires the universal consent of the authors. In the same way, a confessor could not,
without it being an injustice, refuse absolution to a penitent who has decided to act
contrary to an opinion supported by one or several theologians but contested by other
Catholic theologians.” (Frassinetti, Tome II, p.27)
“Since confessors have no authority to decide theological questions, I find along with
De Lugo and other authors quoted by St. Alphonsus, that the penitent clearly has the
right to put his opinion into practice, as long as this opinion is supported by good
theologians and that as a result it has a solid probability, at least extrinsically; and
that is so even if the penitent were the most ignorant man in the world and his
opinion seemed absolutely false to his confessor.”
(Frassinetti, Tome II, note 141 of No.148)
And yet lots of priests publicly manifest a legitimate and well-argued theological point of
view which is different to that of Bishop Fellay: Bishop Williamson (former seminary
rector and former seminary teacher of Mr. Bernard Fellay), Frs. Chazal, Pfeiffer,
Girouard, Fr. Jean OFM Cap., Fr. Pierre-Marie OP...etc.
The claim that it is for the common good that anyone whose opinions are contrary to Men-
zingen is labelled as “subversive” has no value, since the true common good can never go
contrary to the moral law, and when someone is trying quietly to change the purpose of
an organisation, it just won’t do to call “subversive” all those who justifiably resist pre-
cisely that insidious subversion. In reality, the Society wants to expand its power. And for
that reason it no longer pays much attention to the characteristics of the
jurisdiction
which it has. It thinks it has the right to decide everything that goes on inside the little
world made up of the faithful and religious congregations allied to it. Handing on the
priesthood, preserving the Holy Mass and the True Faith, bringing the sacraments - these
are goals which are no longer sufficient for a certain small number in the SSPX. Those
people are dreaming of a sort of super-diocese benefitting from Papal protection...
Here is one last fact to help make it clear just how far the vertigo of domination can go.
On 13th November 2013, after returning from his engagement Bishop Fellay decided that
the five fully professed religious of the Dominican community of Avrillé who were living
outside of their community had to ‘regroup’ in a house, so as to become a ‘second branch’
in Steffeshausen. Bishop Fellay named Bishop de Galarreta superior of this house. Letters
written to Bishop Fellay and to Bishop de Galarreta asking them to show, “how such a
procedure can be said to be in conformity with Tradition, with the laws of the religious
and even with natural law” have remained unanswered.
The attitude of these two bishops differs from that of Archbishop Lefebvre. Fr. Schmid-
berger, in his letter of 27th May 1991 addressed to the religious of Tradition, recognised
that Archbishop Lefebvre “...was more of a Father, counsellor and friend than an authority
in the juridical sense,” and that people, “had recourse to Archbishop Lefebvre as to a
supplied authority.” In 1991 it was obvious that, "each community is absolutely free to
address themselves or not to [Bishop Fellay]. Neither he nor the Society have the slightest
www.TheRecusant.comPage 10
Bp. Fellay: Jurisdiction & Abuses
intention of meddling inside other communities in any way whatsoever. Also his actions
must always be seen as the exercise of an extraordinary jurisdiction and not ordinary...”
In 1981 Archbishop Lefebvre solemnly protested that he did not want to be “the Master
General” of the order. But in October 2012, at Bellaigue, Bishop de Galarreta told the
Superior of the Dominicans of Avrillé that he had to consider Bishop Fellay as taking the
place of the Master General of the [Dominican] Order.
Bishop Fellay and Bishop de Galarreta therefore think that they have the right to
intervene directly in the life of a religious community. They can take individual
members out of their community, giving them an exclaustration without time limit -
without needing to trouble themselves about Canon Law or the constitutions of the
institute - or authorise them to stay outside the convent and have their own apostolate,
without any control and without even letting their legitimate superiors know. They can
authorise them to found a “new branch.” They can, furthermore, maintain a secret
correspondence with individual religious and encourage them to provide secret reports of
what goes on inside, and encourage them to distrust their legitimate superiors.