Bishop Williamson has provided an excellent 8-minute summary of what
GREC is, where it came from and what its goals are and who is behind it,
"on the fly" in a very conversational style as an answer to a conference
question.  

He is quite effective in his ECs but given the chance to shine in a
conference setting he shows his real genius.

The video and my post about it are found in this thread.

Minute 3 -- a question is asked about GREC and H.E. does a very good
summary of what GREC came from, what the motives were, how it grew,
what happened and why, who was involved, the subjectively legitimate
intentions and objectives, starting with 1996, into 2000, up to 2009 and
2012.  This is a bird's-eye view and it's very impressive. At minue 7 he
asks his own question:  Where is the error?  And he answers it.  He points
out that the error had been there all along, but nobody was paying any
attention to it.  Bishop Fellay was personally involved with GREC from
the early beginning but he apparently did nothing to direct it away from
this error, and we are left surmising that the reason for that is that +F had
been only thinking of an approach from the wrong direction, and that if
he had been forthright about what the proper direction would be, he
would have had nothing to do with GREC from the start!

Minute 10 -- he's still talking about it.  "The high-ups of the Society are
infected with the modern world."  And the only solid way of avoiding
that is praying the Rosary.  We are left wondering, what happens to +F
when he prays the Rosary?  Or, does he pray it?  Maybe he says the words
and cannot meditate on the mysteries?  

It seems to me that it would be rather interesting to see a transcription of
this 8-minute answer side-by-side with the ECs GREC I, II and III.

Number CCCII (302)   27 April 2013

GREC -- IV

A lady having read the first “Eleison Comments” on GREC (EC 294, March 2) wrote to complain that I misrepresented GREC, the Parisian group of Catholics founded in the late 1990’s to bring together Traditionalists and mainstream Catholics so that they could think and talk peacefully with one another for the good of Mother Church. I am happy to correct errors of fact which she pointed out. I have no problem admitting personal faults of mine which she highlighted. However on one major point I must disagree with her.

As for the errors of fact, Mr Gilbert Pérol was French Ambassador to the Italian government, and not to the Vatican. Also he was not a “lay collaborator”, but a personal friend of Fr Michel Lelong, a White Father. Also GREC was launched not “in the salons of Paris”, but in the flat of the Ambassador’s widow, Mrs. Huguette Pérol, who, I was told, takes full responsibility for having founded GREC, purely to help the Church, and with the help of people “competent and concerned to be faithful to the Gospel and to Tradition.”

As for my faults, she wrote that I was “full of myself” and “ignorant”, that I lacked modesty and diplomacy, that I showed insufficient respect for the dead, and that I wrote with a sarcastic tone befitting neither an educated person nor a priest. Madam, how happy I would be if these were the worst faults for which I shall have to answer before God. Do pray for my particular judgment.

However, as to the sarcasm, let me plead that if I mocked the nostalgia of Catholics today for the Catholicism of the 1950’s, I was thinking not of Ambassador Pérol in person, but of the multitudes of present-day Catholics, who, not realizing why God allowed Vatican II to split the mainstream Church from Catholic Tradition in the first place, wish to return to that sentimentalized faith of the previous decade which led directly to Vatican II ! Madam, the crucial point has nothing to do with subjective persons, it has everything to do with objective doctrine.

That is why I must disagree with you as to the competence of the people helping Mrs Pérol to found GREC. That a professional diplomat like Ambassador Pérol should have resorted to diplomacy to solve major problems of doctrine is misguided, but understandable. That a Conciliar priest like Fr Lelong should have encouraged such a diplomatic undertaking is graver, but still understandable, given how Vatican II undermined all doctrine by officialising subjectivism within the Church. What is much less easy to accept is the “competence and concern for the Gospel and Tradition” on the part of priests who were trained under Archbishop Lefebvre to understand the doctrinal disaster of Vatican II. Such priests should never have encouraged, let alone taken any active part in, an essentially diplomatic effort to solve an essentially doctrinal disaster, however well-intentioned that effort may have been.

And yet, even in their case the French proverb to some extent applies: “To understand everything means to forgive everything”. The Archbishop was of an earlier and saner generation. They are all children of the world shattered by two World Wars. All credit to them for resorting to his person for their priestly formation, and while he lived he raised us all up. But they never truly absorbed his doctrine, and so once he was dead they began within a few years to fall back. But he was right, and they, and GREC – forgive me, gracious lady -- are wrong. Please God they may come right.

Kyrie eleison.

Sean Johnson just sent me some important news:


The Reconquista Blog just ran this story about the de facto rebirth of GREC here:

http://cristiadatradicinalista.blogspot.com/2017/01/xiiie-congres-theologique-du-courrier.html

English Translation here:


    13th Theological Congress of the Courrier de Rome (or G.R.E.C. ?):

    A diligent reader of this blog [Reconquista] has transmitted the following remarks. The question really arises of who will meet in Paris next Saturday ...

    "On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the Courrier de Rome is organizing its 13th International Theological Congress, in partnership with the District of France of the Society Saint-Pie X and DICI (January 14-14 2017), in Paris.

    Saturday, January 14, from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm: The congress will be held under the presidency of Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, at the crypt of Our Lady of Consolation, 23 Jean-Goujon 75008 Paris.

    Agenda:

    9:00 AM: A brief history of the Courrier de Rome (Abbé Emmanuel du Chalard)
    9:30 AM: Priests to the Rescue of Tradition (Jacques-Régis du Cray)
    10:30 AM: Abbot Dulac and the law of the traditional Mass (Abbot Grégoire Celier)
    11:30 AM: The Roman Theological School and the Cœtus Internationalis Patrum (Professor Roberto de Mattei)
    3:00 PM: In the continuity of the Cœtus Internationalis Patrum (Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize)
    4:00 PM: Evocation of the combats and fighters of the Courrier de Rome (Fr. Abbot Alain Lorans)
    5:00 PM: The battle of faith continues (Bishop Bernard Fellay).

    Free entry, free participation in expenses.

    Sunday 15 January at 10.30 am: Pontifical Mass celebrated by Bishop Fellay at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet (23, rue des Bernardins 75005), Paris.

    What I would like to say, as a simple remark, is that we note that among the speakers there are in particular:

    Meeting of the GREC-Abbé Lorans- Abbé Lelong- Abbé Barthe

    -Jacques-Régis du Cray, (ex) member of the G.R.E.C.

    -Abbé Grégoire célier, (ex-) member of G.R.E.C.

    -Abbe Alain Lorans, (ex) member of the G.R.E.C.

    - Abbé Emmanuel du Chalard, of whom Father Michel Lelong (in his book "For a Necessary Reconciliation"), writes on pp. 23-24 of the Group for Reflection Between Catholics (GREC) (NEL, 2011, 162 p.):

    "In the months following the writing of the docuмent written by Gilbert Pérol, the ideas he had put forward were taken up and developed by Mme Pérol in his book "Les sans-papiers de l'Eglise." FSSPX, presenting its present situation, this book encouraged useful meetings between Catholics with different theological options. It was an opportunity for me to meet the Abbé Emmanuel du Chalard, who had been a close friend Of Archbishop Lefebvre, who welcomed me very kindly in the priory of Albano, near Rome, when Mme Pérol proposed to publish at the end of her book a free debate on the interpretation of the Council, The Abbe du Chalard accepted as willingly as I did, and in the years that followed, he never ceased to give the GREC such discreet and attentive support."

    With such a lineup, one can only suspect the orientation of this theological congress; And to say that it is not Bishop Fellay who will come to contradict the opinions of these people on Tradition, the place of the Fraternity St Pius X in the Church, or even a certain question of agreements with modernist Rome."

    Semper Idem,
    Sean Johnson