This is where to find out the state of affairs worldwide if you haven't
been paying much attention lately at your local SSPX chapel. After
a brief introduction, on page 2 The Recusant gets into the thick of it:
"What will become of our SSPX? Well, I am no prophet, but all the
indications are that current trends will continue uninterrupted. The
corruption of sound teaching, the watering-down of the doctrinal
stand; the holding back of priests who are too combative and the
promoting of priests who are unimaginative, uninspiring company
men; the slow transformation of the SSPX into a more politically
correct, ‘media-friendly image’; the promotion of top-down
corporate policy which must be followed unquestioningly and the
suppressing of any type of local initiative where the corporate HQ
feels threatened because it does not have total control; the
continued agony of silence by so many good priests who are afraid
of being “found out” or denounced, KGB-style, the majority of them
maintaining a silence in the face of injustice and error, with one or
two being thrown out every once in a while; the slow, painful and
tragic bleeding of good souls out of the SSPX, the dedicated
stalwarts, the devout, with congregations being thinned not only in
terms of numbers, but more importantly weakened in quality and
fervour - all these things will continue steadily until the SSPX has
become virtually indistinguishable from the FSSP."
All these things will continue steadily until the SSPS has become
virtually indistinguishable from the FSSP! I dare say, there will come
a day, and it might not be far off, when you won't have to do much
talking when someone asks you this question: What has become of
our SSPX? What happened? All you'll have to do is hand them a
copy of an old issue of this newsletter, and say, "I offered this to you
a year ago and you were not interested." For in a few short months,
it will have been a year already since this fledgeling print shop got
started, a real grass roots phenomenon, without lots of funding to
make a big market share media splash or anything like that.
Sometimes, the way The Recusant ends its paragraphs hits the
core message of the whole very squarely:
"But things cannot and will not continue like this forever. Sooner or
later we will discover that we have a new District Superior, a new
prior, a new priest who says Mass at our chapel, and either that we
are no longer welcome, or that we are being fed a slow, subtle poison,
and that consequently it is time for us to flee to safety."
...
"In one sense we do not want to lead Providence, yet at the same time
the sooner we start thinking about starting over, the sooner the task of
rebuilding can begin."
I don't know about you, but as a native American, the writing style
of this British Catholic is like a breath of fresh air to me. He speaks,
or rather, writes, in a manner that hearkens back to the roots of our
language, a place where we have forgotten we came from, and when
you pair that up with is staunch sensus catholicus, it is just about as
close to heaven, as you'll find picking up something to read can be.
The next paragraph nails the topic. It begins:
"And in case any of our readers baulk at the thought of totally
abandoning ship, let them consider this. Bishop Fellay has another
five remaining years in office, and by the time he retires from his post,
it is as good as certain that he will be replaced by someone equally as
bad if not worse. Apart from anything else, how many good, solid
priests will even be left in the SSPX by then, let alone on the General
Chapter? As the three French priests recently identified as being behind
‘La Sapiniere’ are well aware, “justice” at the hands of Menzingen
involves being given a trial at which Bishop Fellay serves as witness,
prosecutor, judge and jury. And there is no court of appeal. This is
the SSPX in 2013. It was a small lifeboat for many years, but we must
not be sentimental about the SSPX. It has been silently taken over
and subverted, much like the modern-day structures of the Church.
It now serves a very different aim to the one given by its founder."
Any Catholic who cares a whit about the SSPX or the state of Tradition
in the world today should find himself obligated to read The Recusant.
Topic: The Recusant - Issue 6 - April 2013 (Read 1791 times)