Post 5 Tradition

Post 5 – Tradition.

“Fight for the maintenance of Tradition and fight fearlessly. Above all we must strive, we must fight. Above all we must strive to preserve the rite of our Holy Mass because it is the foundation of the Church and of Christian civilization. If there were no longer a true Mass in the Church the Church would disappear.”

"The defense of his Faith is the first duty of every Christian, more especially of every priest and bishop. Wherever an order carries with it danger of corrupting Faith and Morals, ‘disobedience’ becomes a grave duty. It is because we believe that our whole faith is endangered by the post-conciliar reforms and changes that it is our duty to ‘disobey’ and to maintain Traditions. The greatest service we can render the Catholic Church, the successor of Peter, the salvation of souls and of our own, is to say no to the reformed liberal Church, because we believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God made man, who is neither liberal nor reformable.”

Post 4 The Blessed Virgin Mary

“Mary will keep us in the Catholic Faith. She is neither Liberal, nor Modernist, nor ecumenical. She is impervious to all errors and with even greater reason to heresies and apostasy”

St Thomas evokes the great privileges of the Virgin Mary when he speaks of the sending of the Word into this world by His incarnation. (IIIa q.27 to 30).Mary holds such a place in the realization of the work of salvation of humanity by the Word Incarnate, that she merits to be evoked in a very particular manner. If Mary, by her fiat, miraculously became the Mother of God, the Mother of the Saviour, she became by the very fact the Mother of His Mystical Body, that is to say of all those who live of the life of Jesus here below and will do so for eternity. She became Queen of Angels, and the terrible enemy of the devils. Consequently, we have become her children by Baptism, and we nourish ourselves of her Son in the Eucharist. She is truly our spiritual Mother.

This divine Motherhood procured for her unique privileges and, first of all, her Immaculate Conception and fullness of grace from the instant of her conception. She is the sole human creature to be exempt from the results of original sin. Another extraordinary privilege is that she is the Mother of Jesus, and remained virgin, before, during and after her childbirth. Nothing is impossible with God, as she was told by the Angel Gabriel. The infant Jesus left the womb of the Virgin januis clauses, without destroying her hymen. She did not suffer the pains of Motherhood. How many errors do we find on this subject in modern catechisms! She was thus made exempt from the slightest sin and every sickness, for they are the consequences of original sin. Finally her body not being susceptible to corruption was raised up and assumed into heaven. This is the privilege of her glorious Assumption. She is henceforward the Queen of Heaven and earth. She is also, thanks to her divine Motherhood, the Mediatrix of all graces which we are given. Her spiritual Motherhood is universal. If Jesus is the Head of the Mystical Body, Mary is the neck, as the Fathers of the Church say. Mary, being the Mother of the Eternal Priest, exercises a particular Motherhood with respect to all those who participate in Jesus' priesthood. May the Virgin Mary deign to form us into priests in the image of her Divine Son. May devotion to Mary be honoured in every house and chapel of the Society, and in all the hearts of all its members!

"Oh Immaculate Virgin, who by the extraordinary privilege of your Immaculate Conception, dost teach us all of the fundamental truths of our faith and hast merited to be the Mother of the Eternal Priest, form is us the Priest of Jesus Christ and make us less unworthy to participate in this Divine Priesthood"

From A Spiritual Journey written by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Post 3 The Mass

Post 7 August 2009.

The Mass …
There is no apostolate without contemplation. Contemplation is not necessarily for the cloister. It is the Christian Life: a life of Faith and the realities of our Faith. The great reality to contemplate is the Holy Mass. This is what must characterize the members of the Society: contemplating Our Lord on the cross and seeing there the summit of God’s love, a love even unto supreme sacrifice. That is where Our Lord is. This is what the Church contemplates primarily…

And by this we will be missionaries: by the desire to pour out the blood of Our Lord on souls. This is the Mysterium fidei to contemplate and to work for, the priestly mission par excellence. And the faithful gather around us because of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and for nothing else.
We must have total trust in the position we have taken because it is the Church’s attitude. It is not mine, it is not that of Archbishop Lefebvre, it is that of the Church. One day or another the rest will all collapse.

Conference Dec 3 1982

POST 2 Bishop Fellay speaks

March 2009
Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the Society of Saint Pius X, has told SPIEGEL that his organization has "clearly distanced itself" from Bishop Richard Williamson. Nevertheless, he says the bishop's apology for his Holocaust denial is a step in the right direction.


SPIEGEL: Bishop, weeks ago you gave your colleague Richard Williamson a book so that he can read up on the Holocaust. Last week he published an apology which falls short of the Vatican's demand that he retract his Holocaust denial. Does Williamson's statement suffice in your opinion?

Fellay: It is definitely a first plea for forgiveness and, therefore, an important step in the right direction. One can always hope for better phrasing. At least the plea for forgiveness is honest, and the withdrawal of his words is genuine.
SPIEGEL: That hope seems unfounded. After his arrival in London, Williamson surrounded himself with people who have openly denied the Holocaust, such as the historian David Irving. Do you know why?
FROM THE MAGAZINE

Fellay: I have the impression that Bishop Williamson is being used by these people. Information was deliberately fed to the media here. We're working against that as well as we can. I am totally against these connections.

SPIEGEL: But your influence on Williamson seems to be weak.

Fellay: We are in contact, he is in a priory of the society in London for the time being. But he is also a free human being. Sure, he has a superior, but he is free in his decisions. But he has to bear the consequences for that.

SPIEGEL: Will he return to his full duties?

Fellay: That is impossible under the current circumstances. He has damaged us and hurt our reputation. We have very clearly distanced ourselves. He was not ordained as a bishop for his own personal purpose but for the common good of the church, to spread the revealed truth.

SPIEGEL: So why don't you exclude Williamson from the society?

Fellay: That will happen if he denies the Holocaust again. It is probably better for everyone if he stays quiet and stays in a corner somewhere. I want him to disappear from the public eye for a good while.

SPIEGEL: The Vatican could reinstate the excommunication because he has not made a retraction.

Fellay: I doubt that. Denial of the Holocaust, as serious as it is, isn't part of Canon Law -- so an excommunication isn't possible. It isn't just we who say that, it is canons, legal experts. The problem is that his comments have been linked to his office.

SPIEGEL: Regensburg's Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller has denied the German Pius seminary in Zaitzkofen permission to ordain more priests. Will you adhere to the ban?

Fellay: That was unnecessary and inappropriate. All these events definitely are a setback for us. It throws us back by 10 years. But ordinations will continue to happen.

SPIEGEL: In Germany politicians fear that schools run by the society don't share the values of the German constitution. Are you concerned that there will be inspections?

Fellay: I'm not worried about that at all. We are normal people. We observe the rules, and that includes the state order. Even if one voice said something wrong. It is expressly written in the epistles of the Saint Paul that we honor authority and pray for it.

SPIEGEL: So Williamson is someone who has gone astray and criticism of the society is a big misunderstanding?

Fellay: Now we're the world's scapegoat, and every wrong step immediately turns into a scandal. But mistakes that need to be corrected are made all the time and everywhere.

SPIEGEL: Why did you respond so late to Williamson's crude theses?

Fellay: I confess that I didn't take the situation seriously enough.
Interview conducted by Stefan Winter. March 2009

POST 1 The duties of a bishop - appeal to Bishop Williamson

1 July 2008

Of the necessity of hearing the word of God
The Word of God is said to be the food of the soul, because it sustains the life and strength of the soul, as bread does that of the body.

The Fathers of the Church speak of the word of God as the food of the soul. Our Lord himself says “Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God” (Matt. Iv. 4).

The profit to be derived from a sermon is proportioned to the enlightening grace of the Holy Ghost present in the hearts of the preacher and his hearers, this is why the assistance of the holy Ghost is invoked before the sermon. It is God not the preacher who speaks to the heart!

The manner in which the word of God acts upon the soul is by enlightening the understanding and inciting the will to do what is good. In the darkness of this life it shows us the path to heaven, as a lantern enablers the traveler to find his way by night. When St Augustine had attended the sermons of St Ambrose at Milan he said “That man opened my eyes”. The word of God stimulates the will to do what is good. “Are not my words as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” (Jer. xxiii 29). The word of God banishes sin. “It acts on the soul” says St Jerome, “as a plough on the soil, loosening the hardened surface, rooting up the thistles of vice.”

The word of God kindles the flame of charity in the heart of a man; like fire, it consumes the rust of sin, it promotes the growth of virtue. The preached word has more force and effect than what is read in books, the Sunday sermon is vital for spiritual health.

Just as a man who refuses to take food will surely die, so those who do not hear the word of God, which is the food of the soul, incur spiritual death. In this life we are travelers on the long and dangerous journey from time to eternity, so we shall not reach the end of the journey without the light of God’s word to illumine our mind and guide us to our final end. The word of God is the sun of the soul, without which the spiritual life will droop and fail, as nature would if deprived of the vivifying warmth of the sun.

A Catholic Bishop has a sacred duty to preach the word of God.
In the month of the Precious Blood we renew our plea for Bishop Williamson to take note, please.

We value our holy priests and Bishops, given to us under God through SSPX. How edified we were when the great Archbishop Lefebvre raised to the Episcopal dignity an Englishman. How saddened we are now, after two decades. Why? Because you have increasingly contaminated your words and writings with political emphasis, secular, negative and destructive worldly issues.

Do you not perceive that we are disedified and even scandalized in you and by you?

Do you not see that you are harming SSPX by your conduct?

Cardinal Manning wrote “The Apostles were to be “witnesses” unto Him. Witnesses give evidence they do not argue. St Paul said “Our preaching is not in the persuasive words of mere wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and in power”.

“A Catholic priest comes from Jesus as a herald. He can do what others cannot do – assert and affirm, and leave the Truth to do the work by its own evidence. The surest way to keep error out of men’s minds is to fill them with the Truth. Assertion and affirmation construct and build up, filling the mind with Truth or at least some positive and intelligent statement. Clearness is evidence. Truth looks out upon the human reason. The voice of the Church is positive, dogmatic, affirmative, touching the hearts of men and lifting their souls to Heaven.

Destructive and negative writing and preaching ruins and sweeps away, it leaves a space, a void, a bleakness of soul.”

We enter the precincts of SSPX; wherever in the world we are, craving to both receive the ‘spoken word’ and the bread of eternal life. Oh!

Why do you give us stones instead of bread when you speak?

Why do you imitate the money lenders Our Lord threw from the Temple? Your currency is negativity tainted with the world. You send us away hungry - with bleakness of soul.

Why do newly ordained priests struggle to deliver a true Catholic sermon devoid of secular input?

Why do you presume that our faith is mere superficial sentiment?

Why do you deride the multiplicity of books of devotion?

Why do you promote publication of books about the crisis in the church and the world?

Why do you presume us to be ignorant and dim witted about the iniquitous world in which we live?

Why do you do this to us who are the sheep of your flock?

We are not blind to the matters of Kennedy’s assassination, abortion 9/11 and even Jack the Ripper.

We have no need for you to speak of these things especially as you shout conspiracy at every point and your inappropriate statements are too frequently untrue.

The way you speak of the Holocaust is shaming, who can say how many died but the event itself is a matter of recorded history

Of George Orwell and 1984, all we will say is would Archbishop Lefebvre have wasted precious time on that?

Have we not endured and suffered as long as you? Have our sacrifices been less? Are we not deserving of some respect from you as the faithful of the SSPX?.

We entreat you to start using the weapons of the church and to discard the weapons of the world in this war against the powers of darkness

The writings of Archbishop Lefebvre contain all a priest and bishop need to guide him in his conduct, we quote-

“How many priests have lost all sense of their priesthood and all interest in contemplation and prayer through activism supposedly related to the apostolate”. He also spoke of winning souls for Our Lord by humility, gentleness, discretion and magnanimity”.

We see these virtues in your fellow bishops and especially in Bishop Fellay. Faithful spiritual son of Archbishop Lefebvre, who has our full confidence as Superior General of the Society.

My thanks to people who sent comments after the first submission of this appeal. I anguished for months before putting up this blog and a video on You Tube.

Our Lady pray for us all. From a loyal supporter of SSPX
Comments:
Well said. Bp Williamson needs to read and heed. And get about the business of saving souls.

Jerry
# posted by Jerry : 22 March 2008 09:41

I am happy to see that someone is speaking up for the "loyal opposition" to Bishop Williamson's odd political theories. There are many of us who are concerned but so far there has been no one willing to object publically. My only suggestion is to put Bishop Williamson's photo on instead of Bishop Fellay's. I find it confusing to have a different bishop's picture linked to this piece about Bishop Williamson.
# posted by Adrianne : 22 March 2008 11:22

Thank you for the very interesting letter. I hope and pray that Bp Williamson will listen to this public admonition.
# posted by Filius Redemptoris : 26 March 2008 04:50

Thank you on behalf of myself and other traditional Catholics who have hesitated to speak out against a traditional bishop but who see the problem. You say you agonized before writing it and I certainly can understand why but I am sure God will bless you for it. Bishop Williamson is damaging the cause of Catholic tradition with his silly theories inserted in the midst of otherwise solid doctrine. I hope you keep the pressure on. His last letter was very good. Paula
# posted by Paula : 09 April 2008 08:54