Caveat:The following excerpt is taken from Stephen Heiner's True Restoration Blog.While relaying this post, let me emphatically state that I do not in any way agree with Mr. Heiner's sedevacantist position, nor his final assessment/predictions of the ongoing SSPX/Rome story.However, the following does give the reader a rare, somewhat candid snapshot of the SSPX Superior General; his background, his office and how he arrived in the present turbulent situation. [/color]---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Quo Vadis, SSPX? Part III: Ad Romam, for better or worse[...] It has become well-known to almost everybody in the Traditional Catholic world that recently there was an exchange of letters between Bishops Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Alfonso de Galarreta, and Richard Williamson and Bishop Bernard Fellay, Fr. Nely, and Fr. Pfluger. More than one reader has commented to me that he had thought that such divisions were “exaggerated” in the past and was quite disappointed that the rumors were actually true. While I was not surprised at this exchange of letters, either in content or tone, I completely understand that many faithful, blissfully “in the pew,” as more than one reader has emailed me, are disturbed. Let me try to explain.
I’ll go back to 1988. The Archbishop picked 3 candidates for episcopal consecration, mostly for the various language groups: English, Spanish, and French. Bishop Bernard Fellay was not on this original list. Perhaps it was because the then-Fr. Fellay had no real “parish” practice – he had been in the General House from the beginning and had his Mass circuit like any other SSPX priest, but he was young and did not have any “trench” experience and did not add a language not spoken by the three other bishops (who combined speak French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, English, and Italian) nor did he bring any special education or background (Bishop Tissier comes from the nobility and was the SSPX canon law expert, Bishop Williamson is extremely well educated and had been a professor in Econe and in America).
However, in a concession to a long-standing benefactor of the SSPX, who reminded the Archbishop of what a special role that Switzerland had played in the foundation of the Society, the Archbishop added Fr. Bernard Fellay, a Swiss, to those who were to be consecrated.
The Archbishop and Fr. Schmidberger, at numerous points, made the case that it was important to note that a priest should be the Superior General of the SSPX, as the Bishops did not play a particular role within the consecration of the SSPX. They were, in some ways, sacramental machines until such time as their role within the Church was formalized and they became “full” bishops: bishops with a mission. Bishop Tissier echoed this same line in a 2006 interview I conducted with him:
S.H. My lord, the General Chapter of the Society is this summer…
H.L. Ah, yes.
S.H. There is some confusion among the faithful as to whether someone who has been the General Superior may be elected again. For example, Fr. Schmidberger has been Superior General – can he be so again?
H.L. Yes, there is no limitation.
S.H. Yes, Fr. Schmidberger was Superior General after you were consecrated, so you, as a bishop, had to report to a priest. I think the feeling among the faithful was, that once Bishop Fellay was elected, that a bishop would continue on in that position, as opposed to a simple priest. Is this true? Well, let me be more specific without asking you for a prediction. Is it likely that the condition of having a bishop be the Superior General will continue?
H.L. No, it is not normal. Actually, the most normal thing would be for a simple priest to be Superior General.
S.H. Why do you say that, my lord?
H.L. Because it is in our constitutions, and because the existence of bishops within our Society is something extraordinary – not foreseen. It is not normal – so I think it would be very normal for a simple priest to be Superior General, and I would be ready to obey, to submit, to him.
Bishop Williamson also held this line.
When, in July 1994, Fr. Schmidberger’s term was at an end, there was a school of thought that postulated that a bishop should be the SG, and Bishop Fellay, who was open to having such a position, was also in the position to cultivate the contacts necessary in order to secure support. The election was very close, and against rules of the Chapter, Fr. Schmidberger and Bp. Fellay conferred privately before settling that Bp. Fellay would become SG. No significant protest was raised.
All SSPX priests, when sent to their first assignment as priors, are told not to change anything for at least 6 months. This makes sure there is continuity and so the faithful don’t get anxious. So too, the first 6 years of Bishop Fellay’s first term was very much a “listening” time. He felt out what a post-Lefebvre, post-Schmidberger Generalate was like. As his term wore on he began to make strategic appointments, cultivate and promote men who obeyed devotedly and unquestioningly, and develop his own “style” of Generalate. As the second term came on, in 2006, he became much more comfortable with his unique iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove leadership of the SSPX, a style completely camouflaged by his blinding 10,000 watt smile (a senior SSPX priest once told me that “Bishop Fellay runs the SSPX with more authority than that with which the Pope rules the Church.”). He shut down all commentary from all priests, banning blogs, interviews, articles, etc. that were not expressly vetted by him or his appointed surrogates. "He, and he alone," (we saw this same phraseology in a recent letter of US District Superior Fr. Rostand) would be the voice of the SSPX (for those who doubt this, Fr. Paul Morgan, District Superior of Ireland and England, was forced to remove his own commentary about the Albano meeting from the UK District’s website at the express command of the General House).
I want to pause here for a moment. Think about any of the great religious congregations: the Oratorians, the Redemptorists, the Jesuits, etc. Can you see St. Philip Neri telling the Oratorian Fathers that he, and he alone, would be the voice of the Oratory? St. Alphonsus with the Redemptorists? St. Ignatius Loyola wanting St. Francis Xavier to run sermons by him before they were preached or policies before they were implemented in the missions? There is a paranoia that informs such a style of leadership, but it is ego too. It is ego that will *not* be opposed.
I also want to note that for those who study Church history, politics is nothing new. Ambition does not disappear from the heart of the cleric when hands are laid upon his tonsured head. To note that Bishop Fellay is ambitious is not unjust, it is simply true. And, ambition, in and of itself, is not a sin. But where some might see the point of departure is that Bishop Fellay has always wanted to succeed where (he perceived) that the Archbishop “failed.” That, far more than any Cardinal’s-Hat-Conspiracy-Theory, is his reason. So too, when Joseph Ratzinger took the name of Benedict XVI he claimed that the major defeat of his time as Head of the ex-Holy Office was the failure of 1988, the failure of the May 5th Protocol, and that he vowed to rectify it almost immediately after “Habemus Papam” sounded out over St. Peter’s Square. These two men are willing partners, for their own personal and political reasons. To pretend that politics and ambition has nothing to do with what is going on in the SSPX right now is naiveté in the extreme and ostrich Catholicism at its worst.
[...] Bishop Fellay does not mind that his reply to the three bishops was leaked because he has so successfully waged a PR campaign that HE is the DECIDER in the SSPX that most SSPX faithful are willing to toss 3 bishops into the dustbin and follow Bishop Fellay into history and into the loving arms of the “Holy Father.” As I noted above, the dark humor is that Bishop Fellay was not part of the original 3 picked by Archbishop Lefebvre. He wasn’t even the one name the Archbishop submitted to Rome in 1988 for consecration (that name, I’ve confirmed through 3 different sources, was Fr. Richard Williamson). He was the accountant who became King. The faithful, who mostly don’t know this, and frankly don’t care anyway because they do not perceive that Bishop Fellay could *ever* be wrong about *anything,* will go along with his moves.
Bishop Fellay is such a king of PR (I once watched him take a picture on his smartphone of the audience at an Angelus conference. He is a huge advocate of technology and knows how to use it to his advantage.) that he would *never* have emailed his response to the three bishops were he not supremely confident that, even if leaked, the faithful would side with him, not the other bishops. The main cogent reasons?
Who is known best? Will faithful follow the man who has been the “face/heart/mind” of the SSPX for two decades (Fellay)? Or the bishop they don’t know, because he rarely speaks in English and deals with the religious congregations (de Galarreta), the fiery one who preaches hard-line anti-conciliar rhetoric, but is always brought into line by “obedience” to the SSPX (de Mallerais), or the one who everyone ran over in a tank, followed by 17 buses, the one abandoned by his alleged “brothers” and sons in the priesthood (Williamson)?
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Topic: Who is Bishop Fellay? (Read 14394 times)