T
twf
Guest
Is there a place for a soft, neo-traditionalist like me among the SSPX?
- Status
Q
quies
Guest
A-one, a-two…
I’m a liturgical softy, and I’m proud
I used to feel alone in a crowd
Now if you look around these days
There seems to be a softy craze…
Oh I’m a softy
He’s a softy
She’s a softy
We’re a softy
Wouldn’t you like to be a softy too?
I’m a liturgical softy, and I’m proud
I used to feel alone in a crowd
Now if you look around these days
There seems to be a softy craze…
Oh I’m a softy
He’s a softy
She’s a softy
We’re a softy
Wouldn’t you like to be a softy too?
S
smead2942
Guest
Your source, outdated or not, is wrong.
The only clergy in the Franternal Society of Saint Pius X ever excommunicated by the Holy See are + Archbishop Lefebvre and the four bishops he consecrated. The excommunications of the four bishops, including the current superior general, Monsignor Fellay, were lifted in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI (though Bishop Williamson, who was expelled from the society for antisemitism and antisemitism, was re-excommunicated in 2011 I believe).
The priests, religious, and lay SSPX were NEVER excommunicated.
K
kozlosap
Guest
Here is the SPLC article. It certainly represents everything I’ve ever read on the subject.
.RADICAL POWERHOUSE
Heidi Beirich
Share on facebook Share on twitter
The Society of St. Pius X, which has chapels and schools across the United States, remains a font of anti-Semitic propaganda.
The powerhouse organization of the radical traditionalist Catholic world is a sprawling international order called the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), founded by the late French archbishop, Marcel-François Lefebvre, in 1970. Although there have been recent attempts by the Vatican to pull SSPX back into the Catholic mainstream, the organization, all of whose priests were excommunicated in the late 1980s, has continued to publish anti-Semitic materials, flirt with Holocaust denial and reject any reconciliation with the Catholic Church.
Lefebvre was always on the hard right. During World War II, he supported the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, a puppet government in the part of France not occupied by the Germans. He lamented the eventual liberation of the country, describing it as “the victory of Freemasonry against the Catholic order of Petain. It was the invasion of the barbarians without faith or law!”
Lefebvre later was on an advisory committee to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which enacted several liberalizing and modernizing reforms within the church. But the archbishop refused to sign the council’s final reports on religious liberty and the modern church, the first sign of a rebellion that would only grow in later years. In 1970, he founded SSPX as a seminary in Ecône, Switzerland.
In 1974, Lefebvre publicly denounced as heretical the Vatican II reforms and the subsequent adoption of the new Mass, celebrated in local languages instead of traditional Latin. As a result, Pope Paul VI ordered the archbishop to shut down his Swiss seminary. But Lefebvre refused to comply, leading the Vatican to suspend his right to perform priestly functions (a step short of excommunication) in 1976.
In 1988, Lefebvre took his most radical step yet, consecrating four bishops in defiance of the Vatican. Pope John Paul II responded by excommunicating Lefebvre and all SSPX priests, and declaring SSPX in formal schism with the church.
K
kozlosap
Guest
Continued…
The following year, police arrested fugitive French war criminal Paul Touvier, who had been hidden for years by the order, at an SSPX monastery in Nice, France. Touvier was later convicted of ordering the execution of seven Jews in 1944.
Also in 1989, one of Lefebvre’s “bishops,” Englishman Richard Williamson, gave a speech to a Canadian church in which he decried the alleged persecution of Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel by the Canadian government. Williams, then rector of SSPX’s main North American seminary in Winona, Minn., told his audience: “There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies.” The Canadian government reacted by banning all SSPX publications.
In the course of his struggle with the Vatican, Lefebvre became a hero to many, emerging as the world’s leading critic of church reforms ending the Latin Mass and reaching out to other religions. Already by the mid-1970s, priests ordained by the archbishop were starting chapels and seminaries in the United States. Today, SSPX’s American operation, headquartered in Kansas City, Kan., claims 103 chapels and 25 schools, in addition to Kansas City-based Angelus Press. Scholar Michael Cuneo has estimated SSPX has up to 30,000 U. S. adherents.
It is in The Angelus, published monthly by the SSPX press, and on SSPX’s website, that the radical anti-Semitism of the order is most evident today. One example now on the website is a 1997 Angelus article by SSPX priests Michael Crowdy and Kenneth Novak that calls for locking Jews into ghettos because “Jews are known to kill Christians.” It also blames Jews for the French Revolution, communism and capitalism; suggests a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy has destroyed the Catholic Church; and describes Judaism as “inimical to all nations.”
Another document reproduced on the SSPX’s current website is a 1959 letter from Lefebvre’s close friend, Bishop Gerald Sigaud, who also rejected the Vatican II reforms. “Money, the media, and international politics are for a large part in the hands of Jews,” Bishop Sigaud wrote. “Those who have revealed the atomic secrets of the USA were … all Jews. The founders of communism were Jews.”
The Angelus Press sells anti-Semitic tomes like Hilaire Beloc’s The Jews, which blames Jews for Bolshevism and corrupt financial practices, and Monsignor George Dillon’s Freemasonry Unmasked, which purports to explain a centuries-old Judeo-Masonic plot to destroy the Catholic Church. More recent SSPX publications include the 2005 pamphlet Time Bombs of the Second Vatican Council, by Franz Schmidberger, the former superior general of the SSPX. Schmidberger denounces Third World immigration into Western countries as “destroying our national identity and, furthermore, the whole of Christianity,” and accuses the Jews of deicide.
Other extremists published in the pages of The Angelus (and carried on the SSPX’s current website) include the late Father Denis Fahey; John Vennari, head of Catholic Family News; and Robert Sungenis, the particularly virulent leader of Catholic Apologetics International (see profile, p. 28).
Through it all, SSPX denies all allegations of anti-Semitism.
But even some fellow radical traditionalists have accused SSPX of that and worse. Fidelity, a magazine run by hard-liner E. Michael Jones (see Culture Wars/Fidelity Press profile), in 1992 charged a principal SSPX leader in Kansas City of Hitler worship and promoting Nazism to his students. Although the man accused by Fidelity hotly denied the charges, the students quoted by Jones stood by their allegations.
In recent months, Pope Benedict XVI has extended an olive branch to SSPX members, inviting them to return to the church. But the sect’s leaders rejected the suggestion outright. As a result, Benedict last September approved an institute for French priests who left the movement. The pope’s move marked the effective end to efforts by the Vatican to bring the SSPX sect back into the Catholic fold.
The following year, police arrested fugitive French war criminal Paul Touvier, who had been hidden for years by the order, at an SSPX monastery in Nice, France. Touvier was later convicted of ordering the execution of seven Jews in 1944.
Also in 1989, one of Lefebvre’s “bishops,” Englishman Richard Williamson, gave a speech to a Canadian church in which he decried the alleged persecution of Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel by the Canadian government. Williams, then rector of SSPX’s main North American seminary in Winona, Minn., told his audience: “There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies.” The Canadian government reacted by banning all SSPX publications.
In the course of his struggle with the Vatican, Lefebvre became a hero to many, emerging as the world’s leading critic of church reforms ending the Latin Mass and reaching out to other religions. Already by the mid-1970s, priests ordained by the archbishop were starting chapels and seminaries in the United States. Today, SSPX’s American operation, headquartered in Kansas City, Kan., claims 103 chapels and 25 schools, in addition to Kansas City-based Angelus Press. Scholar Michael Cuneo has estimated SSPX has up to 30,000 U. S. adherents.
It is in The Angelus, published monthly by the SSPX press, and on SSPX’s website, that the radical anti-Semitism of the order is most evident today. One example now on the website is a 1997 Angelus article by SSPX priests Michael Crowdy and Kenneth Novak that calls for locking Jews into ghettos because “Jews are known to kill Christians.” It also blames Jews for the French Revolution, communism and capitalism; suggests a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy has destroyed the Catholic Church; and describes Judaism as “inimical to all nations.”
Another document reproduced on the SSPX’s current website is a 1959 letter from Lefebvre’s close friend, Bishop Gerald Sigaud, who also rejected the Vatican II reforms. “Money, the media, and international politics are for a large part in the hands of Jews,” Bishop Sigaud wrote. “Those who have revealed the atomic secrets of the USA were … all Jews. The founders of communism were Jews.”
The Angelus Press sells anti-Semitic tomes like Hilaire Beloc’s The Jews, which blames Jews for Bolshevism and corrupt financial practices, and Monsignor George Dillon’s Freemasonry Unmasked, which purports to explain a centuries-old Judeo-Masonic plot to destroy the Catholic Church. More recent SSPX publications include the 2005 pamphlet Time Bombs of the Second Vatican Council, by Franz Schmidberger, the former superior general of the SSPX. Schmidberger denounces Third World immigration into Western countries as “destroying our national identity and, furthermore, the whole of Christianity,” and accuses the Jews of deicide.
Other extremists published in the pages of The Angelus (and carried on the SSPX’s current website) include the late Father Denis Fahey; John Vennari, head of Catholic Family News; and Robert Sungenis, the particularly virulent leader of Catholic Apologetics International (see profile, p. 28).
Through it all, SSPX denies all allegations of anti-Semitism.
But even some fellow radical traditionalists have accused SSPX of that and worse. Fidelity, a magazine run by hard-liner E. Michael Jones (see Culture Wars/Fidelity Press profile), in 1992 charged a principal SSPX leader in Kansas City of Hitler worship and promoting Nazism to his students. Although the man accused by Fidelity hotly denied the charges, the students quoted by Jones stood by their allegations.
In recent months, Pope Benedict XVI has extended an olive branch to SSPX members, inviting them to return to the church. But the sect’s leaders rejected the suggestion outright. As a result, Benedict last September approved an institute for French priests who left the movement. The pope’s move marked the effective end to efforts by the Vatican to bring the SSPX sect back into the Catholic fold.
J
JM3
Guest
DECREE OF EXCOMMUNICATION
From the Office of the Congregation for Bishops, 1 July 1988.
ECCLESIA DEI
(2 July 1988)
It looks to me that the decree only remitted the excommunication from the bishops.
Just saying.
B
Brendan_64
Guest
Yes. I know people who go to the SSPX regularly out of sheer frustration with what they happening in some ‘modernist’ parishes. At an SSPX Mass you are guaranteed that the Mass will be said with the utmost reverence, with no ‘adaptations’, and the homily will be orthodox and very Catholic. There also seems to be quite a big ‘crossover’ between the laity that attend FSSP Masses and also SSPX Masses. The clergy of these two societies may tend to be antagonistic towards each other, but that is not necessarily reflected in the laity, who may indeed be attending both.
I usually go to a Novus Ordo Mass (and attend TLM from time to time), but I can see the attraction of attending the SSPX, I really can. I have had to ‘shop around’ to find a good Novus Ordo parish (which I now believe that I have) because some places just make you want to cry.
C
commenter
Guest
Our actions affect others. We have to take that affect into account. You might accept Vatican II, and the current authority (not just the title) of the current pope, and your current bishop-ordinary. But the SSPX tends to lead people away from those conclusions. For instance, the local chapel might say yes, Bishop X is a valid bishop, and is the ordinary of the local diocese, but he is not their ordinary.
Those who “visit” services at the SSPX may say they intend to keep all their parish and diocesan connections, simply adding the SSPX as a kind of supplement. But as time goes on, the local bishop-ordinary’s authority is diminished in their eyes, they gradually distance their family from other Catholic stuff locally. When you attend a SSPX service, someone else sees you there, if they respect your ideas they are more inclined to come back there more - and you influence them to distance themselves from local Catholic ministries.
You don’t know, maybe the priest is having second thoughts about staying isolated from the local bishop-ordinary, and local presbyteriate. He may be leaning towards restoring full communion for himself. He may be led to disengage his children from diocesan family ministries and programs.
The local SSPX priest may have read what St Pius X wrote about regional, unified Catholic Action. Reading that does not reflect well on supporting SSPX. (In my area, people from the diocesan Latin Mass are very active in the regional - i. e. Diocesan - prolife and religious liberty campaign. People from the SSPX are isolated from all that. If you attend the SSPX chapel, you help him delay a decision that maybe shouldn’t be delayed.
P
ProVobis
Guest
Commentator, you seem to speak from a lot of experience with these things and I find your comments quite interesting and constructive to a large degree. I wonder, though, given that 75% of Catholics (more like 95% of those younger than 30) don’t attend Mass, at least not regularly, it seems as if perhaps we’re focusing too much time trying to pry the minuscule number of the faithful (we presume they are) from the chapels they now have grown up in. One can cry anti-Semitic, schismatic, disobedient, etc till the cows come home but they will only dig in their heels deeper These guys apparently have deep pockets (they won’t disclose numbers) and their business approach seems to be working. Heck they are buying buildings which the churches (some Protestant) have already sold off. They are isolated for sure, but perhaps so because of their upbringing among other things. Meanwhile there are the 75% who do need some identity or association to belong to. The Church could very much use their efforts in pro-life ministries as well as others and there are probably many just sitting on the fence waiting for some direction in their lives.
G
gracepoole
Guest
Though at the same time, there are constant rumors swirling through the SSPX that its leadership will acquiesce and subjugate itself to Rome again. In some way, then, there is a deep divide running through the Society between those who are as you’ve described and others who desire reconciliation. Of course, you’re right in noting the small number of those serviced by SSPX priests.
B
Brendan_64
Guest
You are not obliged, as a Catholic lay-person, to be loyal to the particular parish in whose geographical boundaries you reside (or in which diocese you reside). You have complete freedom to choose to attend a Catholic church in another parish or diocese anyway.
Your argument could also be applied to Catholics who choose to attend FSSP chapels as they too have congregations that are made up of people who have effectively left their local parishes (and often dioceses) and instead attend the FSSP exclusively.
As for the local ordinary not being ‘their bishop’, that argument could be applied to attending as part of the congregation of a church run by a religious order (in a Benedictine abbey perhaps). The local bishop would indeed be regarded as the legitimate diocesan bishop, but he is not their superior.
B
Brendan_64
Guest
The SSPX has never left Rome, they are subject to Rome as it is. There was an issue of disobedience which led to initial excommunications of their bishops (which has since been lifted) but they never walked away from Rome. That they have no faculties is not an action of theirs, but a decision of the Holy See. Although I believe that in certain parts of India, local diocesan bishops have granted the SSPX faculties in their dioceses (which is their right as bishop to do so) and Pope Francis has granted the SSPX faculties to hear Confession during the Year of Mercy.
The narrative that the SSPX walked away so it is up to them to walk back again is misleading and not helpful. It is probably better to view them as a brother in our family with whom we have a disagreement over an issue. Such family disputes are rarely solved by digging your heels in and insisting that the other must back down completely, admit that they were wrong and that it was all their fault.
Personally I believe that the SSPX with full faculties would be an immense blessing and help to the Church in these times when the Church and the family are under immense, targetted attack from the secular world around us. In this spiritual battle the SSPX are great warriors.
D
Don_Ruggero
Guest
The issue of disobedience didn’t begin with Marcel Lefebvre’s ordination of bishops. For the purposes here, it goes back to his foundation of the SSPX in 1970 and the seminary in Econe in 1971.
In 1976, against the command of the pope, he ordained priests although he was a retired missionary bishop whose diocese had been in Africa; he was, therefore, without a canonical jurisdiction into which these priests could be incardinated. These priests were validly but illicitly ordained and all since.
Due to this act of grave disobedience – by he who ordained and they who were ordained – Blessed Pope Paul VI immediately suspended the archbishop’s own faculties & suspended all the priests ordained, depriving the newly ordained of the exercise of ministry and faculties. At that moment, they were free to reject their disobedience to the Vicar of Christ and beg his forgiveness. They did not but rather multiplied their disobedience.
Pope Benedict makes clear the matter of the SSPX priests cannot be resolved by local bishops apart from intervention by the Holy See because the issue of these priests is in the hands of the Holy See’s dicasteries & reserved thereto.
By God’s grace, the priests who constituted the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, in the moment of the crisis which Marcel Lefebvre provoked, renounced their disloyalty to the Holy See and sought to be restored to communion with Rome. St. John Paul II benevolently regularised these priests, restored them to the ministry of which they had been deprived from the moment of their illicit ordinations, and supplied them faculties together with incardination by the erection of the FSSP.
We pray that the priests of the SSPX will follow the FSSP and return to communion with Rome and her bishop. The SSPX freely left and they willfully persist in not returning…in spite of the many generous accommodations offered them by four popes.
Pope Benedict, in a letter to the world’s bishops issued on March 10, 2009, explains the situation succinctly with emphases in bold and underline added by me, with the text to the full extent of the character limit allowed:
*An episcopal ordination lacking a pontifical mandate raises the danger of a schism, since it jeopardizes the unity of the College of Bishops with the Pope. Consequently the Church must react by employing her most severe punishment – excommunication – with the aim of calling those thus punished to repent and to return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has sadly not yet been attained. The remission of the excommunication has the same aim as that of the punishment: namely, to invite the four Bishops once more to return. This gesture was possible once the interested parties had expressed their recognition in principle of the Pope and his authority as Pastor, albeit with some reservations in the area of obedience to his doctrinal authority and to the authority of the Council. Here I return to the distinction between individuals and institutions. The remission of the excommunication was a measure taken in the field of ecclesiastical discipline: the individuals were freed from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious of ecclesiastical penalties. This disciplinary level needs to be distinguished from the doctrinal level. The fact that the Society of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons. As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.
In light of this situation, it is my intention henceforth to join the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei” – the body which has been competent since 1988 for those communities and persons who, coming from the Society of Saint Pius X or from similar groups, wish to return to full communion with the Pope – to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium of the Popes. /…/ The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 – this must be quite clear to the Society.*
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20090310_remissione-scomunica.html
G
gracepoole
Guest
You’ve misinterpreted and misrepresented my post. I didn’t claim that the SSPX had left Rome. I am well aware of its status. I simply noted how SSPX members themselves refer to their situation. Read up on those who support Bishop Fellay, those who support Bishop Williamson, those who identify themselves as part of “the resistance,” etc. Those who are unhappy with Fellay often speak of his desire to reconcile with Rome – to move the Society from an irregular standing to full communion. If you find “the narrative that the SSPX walked away so it is up to them to walk back again” to be “misleading and not helpful,” you should probably take this up with those members of the so-called resistance who believe it is within their power to walk away from Rome permanently and speak of it as such.
For the record, I pray for healing between the Vatican and the SSPX. I think many of the Society’s members have much to offer the Church.
B
Brendan_64
Guest
Bishop Willimason is no longer part of the SSPX, he was expelled from the SSPX.
If these people choose to walk away from Rome, then they will also be walking away from the SSPX, possibly joining Bishop Williamson who is already outside the SSPX. As it stands, the SSPX did not walk away from Rome, and have made no indication that they intend to do so.
In Novus Ordo parishes I have met Catholics who support gay marriage, female ordination, contraception and more. They openly criticise Church teaching on these matters (and sadly they too have the support of some clergy). Are they too not guilty of ‘walking away’? I would suggest that this problem is substantially larger than the problem at the other end of the spectrum.
As do I. The day when the SSPX is given canonical status within the Church and its priests are granted full faculties will be a great day indeed.
G
gracepoole
Guest
Correct. That does not mean, however, that he doesn’t still have supporters within the SSPX.
Correct. Again, I was noting how some within the SSPX discuss the situation.
It can definitely seem bizarre that so much time is devoted to concerns about the SSPX given the other problems facing the Church. On the other hand, I’m guessing most Catholics don’t know who or what the SSPX is.
O
Oneofthewomen
Guest
They could have this. The ball is/was/has been in their court. They chose not to play by the rules. They have only themselves to blame.
B
Brendan_64
Guest
I’m not surprised that he does have support from some of the laity that attend SSPX chapels. Then again I know of Catholics at the other end of the spectrum who regularly attend services in Anglican churches, including in some high profile evangelical Anglican churches and support the clergy there. Holding those churches up as the model that we ought to be aiming to be.
P
ProVobis
Guest
My guess is that the name of the order would be changed if this were to happen. That’s what happened with the creation of the FSSP to a smaller extent, although this left them without a bishop.
- Status