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From p.34:
There had been no English language website of the Franciscan Third Order in the USA, although there was one run by a tertiary in Canada, an enterprising gentleman who was already known to be on the side of the Resistance. Earlier in 2012, this website
had been praised by Fr. Emily as containing much valuable information and he recommended Franciscan tertiaries to visit it and make use of it.
In December 2012, however, Fr. Emily suddenly changed his tune. He wrote warning Third Order Franciscans to have nothing to do with the same website he had been recommending only a couple of months previously.
Why the sudden change? Had the website been altered in any way? Not at all. All that had happened was that it had come to Fr. Emily’s attention that the man who had created the website, the TOSF Prefect in Toronto, Canada, supported the resistance.
Although, as Fr. Emily was forced to admit, the website was “not [being used] to attack Bishop Fellay or our Society” (i.e. it contained no information about the Resistance and was not partisan in any way), and that on the contrary, it did contain a lot of very good and useful things, yet the fact that it was run by a man who disagreed with the new line of Menzingen was enough to justify using his position of trust to attack its owner who dared to disagree with the party line.
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At this point, I'd like to recall that at the time, in December of 2012, Fr. Emily was running a retreat at Los Gatos, in which he promoted the book of Blessed Anne de Guigné, and the reason he did so, was to encourage the retreatants to contemplate the heroic virtue of this little French girl who had IMMEDIATELY assented to God's will, the moment she had realized that it was truly God's will.
As admirable as this lesson is, in retrospect, what he was asking of the retreatants was to imitate Bl. Anne by never questioning the dictates of Menzingen. His message was, that unquestioning obedience is so pleasing to God, that it outweighs all other concerns. (He did not use those words, but this was without question the message that he endeavored to impress upon the retreatants.)
But, one might ask, what about one's concern for the Faith?
As I recall, no one asked him that question.
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There is more on this (from p.36-7):
The Resistance: “People of Such Bad Faith!”It is when we get to Fr. Emily’s most recent Third Order newsletter, however, that a real can of worms opens up. He dedicates this newsletter to the topic of - you’ve guessed it! - the Resistance! And more specifically, to telling his readers what a thoroughly bad lot we all are, not least the aforementioned Canadian gentleman, whom (for the unpardonable crime of sending around a two-line long email to some fellow Third Order members) he does not shrink from attacking by name!
“Of course, Mr. La Rosa continues to spread his venom of division among our members, like the enemy who sowed cockle in the fields of the Lord ... He goes so far as to ask for prayers that our dear Capuchin Fathers may join the Resistance... These words of Mr La Rosa clearly reveal his spirit of dividing the family of our Third Order. His spirit of division is obviously opposed to the spirit of St. Francis which is a spirit of peace, charity and union among brothers.” (TOSF newsletter No 9, Feb. 2014)
Need we comment on this?
Besides the embarrassingly condescending tone and the simplistic ‘See Spot Run’ arguments, which appear to assume that his readers have all the maturity and wisdom of a six-year-old child (“Look at him! He’s causing division! He says bad things! He’s bad! St. Francis wouldn’t like him!”), please bear the above-quoted extract in mind when you read what else he says in the same letter, and see if you can spot the gigantic dose of hypocrisy!
The embarrassingly condescending tone
and the simplistic ‘See Spot Run’ arguments,
which appear to assume that his readers
have all the maturity and wisdom of a six-year-old child
(“Look at him! He’s causing division!
He says bad things! He’s bad!
St. Francis wouldn’t like him!”)
After he has finished talking about one (named) individual spreading “venom” and being like the “enemy who sowed cockle,” Fr. Emily moves on to talking about the Resistance as a whole.
“The Resistance,” complains Fr. Emily, is: “...pitifully launching deplorable, personal attacks against our Superiors and our Society ...we do not want to judge their intentions ... people of such bad faith!” (Ibid.)
As someone else recently remarked: obviously it is hypothetically possible for someone to spread false information innocently. But no one can
innocently be
in bad faith! Thus, Fr. Emily himself here judges not only our actions but also our persons. And as Fr. Emily himself says, in the same letter:
“As long as we see our opponents [making] personal attacks... our choice between the two parties is simple.” (Ibid.)
Like his Superiors, Fr. Emily is very quick to accuse his opponents of making ‘personal attacks’. Yet when one compares any number of articles by the Resistance about the neo-SSPX with articles by the neo-SSPX about the Resistance, the one thing that stands out a mile is precisely that our side does not make gratuitous personal attacks, whereas they do!
Why would we seek to attack persons; in what way would that further our cause?
We are not concerned with the person, but with words, ideas, actions, teachings, doctrine.
If Fr. Emily had not decided to talk such a lot of nonsense and to tar us all with such an unworthy brush, had he not provided us all with such a very clear example of the way in which the Menzingen Propaganda Machine works, it is very unlikely that he would have found his name gracing the pages of this newsletter! It is not so much him as
his crusade against the Resistance that is at issue. The reader can re-read this article and look for any ’personal attack’ against him which is not in reality a disputing of his specific words which he has written and published.
In a similar vein, readers of The Recusant will recall occasions (Burghclere, to name the last such) where Bp. Fellay himself has complained about being misquoted, misrepresented, or ‘personally attacked’, but he never gives his audience the benefit of even one example. Here, Fr. Emily likewise gives
not one single example of a “deplorable” personal attack, except in the sense that
his whole letter is one big example of it, albeit not in the sense he intended it!
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Topic: The Recusant: (Read 19652 times)