19 September 2019

SSPX

I would commend to readers' consideration of a recent interview with the 'new' Superior of the SSPX, Fr Pagliarani, on the state of the Church Militant. He traces .... I think with accuracy ... the fact that our current problems come down to us from even before that fateful moment when the Rhine flowed into the Tiber.

You may well think that those polluted waters are now infecting the Amazon. I could not possibly comment! And perhaps we had better keep the River Plate out of all this!

It must be remembered to his credit that the previous Superior, Bishop Fellay, was anxious to sign the Filial Correction. So that makes two SSPX Superiors in rapid succession bearing witness against the malaise within the Church Militant.
 
Regular readers will be aware of my feeling that there is more than one way of skinning a cat. The SSPX, inevitably and very properly, refers to the Magisterium of the pre-Conciliar popes. Indeed: who, except self-condemned heretics, dare to say that the teaching of the popes from Pius IX to Pius XI now lacks any part of the Church's authority? Others extricate from the Council and the post-Conciliar pontiffs what bears strongest testimony to the quod traditum est. After all, who dare to deny that the declaration of Benedict XVI, that the Mass of Ages had never lawfully been abrogated, and could never be abrogated, bears the authentic tones of the Petrine Magisterium?

One thing I am absolutely sure about in this current crisis: we must not fall out with each other. Internal squabbles "within Tradition" will not serve the purpose which we all share.

Personally, I welcome Father's interview. It would be a tragedy if the SSPX were to be regarded as merely a tolerated liturgical museum. That is not at all what its great Founder had in mind. And I am glad that a new voice is being added to the few which have bravely spoken out against the currently dominant Bergoglianism. I hope the interview will be read and absorbed by those who have not in the past instinctively drawn upon the witness of Marcel Lefebvre and his foundation. We need by God's grace the ability to listen.

And if there are critics of Fr Pagliarani, I think it would be good for them to pause and to count up the number of Cardinals and Bishops and Superiors who have been willing to get their heads above the parapet. That is where the truest scandal lies. Vatican II inflated the culture of Episcopacy ... and, now that the Afflicted Church cries out for the strong 'collegial' witness of these "Apostolic Men", where are they?

So collegially quiet, my Lords? Why?




11 comments:

PM said...

A great many bishops, I fear, have the mentality of the local manager of a burger franchise. If head office says that the beef burgers they have been serving all their life are out and carrot burgers are in, then carrot burgers it is and no dissent will be tolerated.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Indeed: who, except self-condemned heretics, dare to say that the teaching of the popes from Pius IX to Pius XI now lacks any part of the Church's authority?

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Nature and Mission of Theology

Nature and Mission of Theology

If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text (Gaudium et Spes) as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus. Harnack, as we know, interpreted the Syllabus of Pius IX as nothing less than a declaration of war against his generation. This is correct insofar as the Syllabus established a line of demarcation against the determining forces of the nineteenth century: against the scientific and political world view of liberalism. In the struggle against modernism this twofold delimitation was ratified and strengthened. Since then many things have changed. The new ecclesiastical policy of Pius XI produced a certain openness toward a liberal understanding of the state. (Nope) In a quiet but persistent struggle, exegesis and Church history adopted more and more the postulates of liberal science, and liberalism, too, was obliged to undergo many significant changes in the great political upheavals of the twentieth century. As a result, the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789. In fact, an attitude that was largely pre-Revolutionary continued to exist in countries with strong Catholic majorities. Hardly anyone today will deny that the Spanish and Italian Concordats strove to preserve too much of a view of the world that no longer corresponded to the facts. Hardly anyone today will deny that, in the field of education and with respect to the historico-critical method in modern science, anachronisms existed that corresponded closely to this adherence to an obsolete Church-state relationship…..
Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789.”

Dad of Six said...

Dear Father-

An internet search for a recent interview with Father Pagliarani resulted in no relevant links. Of course, with the current state of affairs in the internet world I may being deliberately blocked.

Would you in your charity post the link to the interview? God bless you and your ministry.

frjustin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
frjustin said...

In an earlier post, I referred to an interview published in August, but the text was not published there(!). The following text was published on September 17, and is more likely to be the text an up-to-date Fr Hunwicke refers to:

https://www.stas.org/en/church-its-head-50632

Pastor in Monte said...

The interview can be found here.

https://fsspx.news/en/church-its-head-50632

You will need to paste the above into your browser, as I have never discovered how to put links into a combox.

Andrew Malton said...

https://fsspx.news/en/church-its-head-50632

Sendero said...

The SSPX Superior General is correct in the diagnosis yet subtlety advises for the laity to take no action as it is futile given the present circumstances. That advice rings similar to that of Walter Duranty. The esteemed and award winning journalist who proposed that the world should excuse (appease) Communist atrocities because it was Marx that set Communism in motion, not Stalin.

Vidi_Aquam said...

@Dad of Six. The interview is on the front page of the SSPX's english language website https://sspx.org/en. Pax et bonum.

Tom Broughton said...

Yo, dad of six, go to the SSPX website. Here, I will do it for you: https://fsspx.news/en/church-its-head-50632

Tom Broughton said...

Attending an SSPX Mass is never a fulfillment of one's Sunday obligation. Just submit a dubia to your bishop and see what he says.