WISE WORDS FROM DOWN UNDER

My Dear Brethren,


As most of you will be aware I recently attended the General Chapter Meeting of the Society which took place at Econe Switzerland from 3rd to 14th July. After a five-day retreat the various Superiors of the Society were able to discuss and assess various matters, most particularly the recent relations with Rome and the question of a possible canonical normalization of the Society and its recognition by the Vatican as a Personal Prelature.

It was not that long ago, in October of last year, that we met to discuss the same question. It appears that the present Pope wanted to find a solution to the fraught relations between our Society and the Vatican and to that end presented us in September of last year with a Doctrinal Preamble which we were to accept in view of a canonical regularization. However, the Rome meeting concluded that this could not, in fact, be accepted without compromising the position which the Society has always adopted in regard to the reforms which have devastated the Church since the Second Vatican Council. However, this was not the end of the matter as Rome’s proposal was open to negotiation which was subsequently conducted between the Vatican and our Superior General and his Assistants. Unfortunately, the fact that this was conducted in secret for various diplomatic reasons gave rise to wild speculation and although details of these negotiations were not revealed the general understanding seemed to be that Rome was becoming more and more generous in our regard with the result that it was soon being affirmed that the Society would shortly be erected as a Personal Prelature.

This situation was greeted with enthusiasm by those Traditional Catholics who perceived something of a return to the Church’s traditions during the present pontificate and who looked forward to the day when the stigma of being “excommunicated”, “schismatic” and the like would be lifted and a much wider apostolate would be opened up to the Society. Others regarded this development with dismay, arguing that any return to Tradition is purely superficial, that the basic policies of the Vatican have not changed since the Council, that the general state of the Church continues to deteriorate and that it would be foolhardy and premature to entrust ourselves to the ecclesiastical authorities who have continued to persecute us. Many priests and laity in different countries became vociferous about the matter with various declarations appearing on the Internet. This confusion was compounded when it was revealed that even the four bishops of the Society were not in agreement in regard to the question.

I quite deliberately made no public observation about these matters as so much speculation made it unclear as to what was the reality of the situation, the full details of which were yet to be revealed. I also congratulate you all in being calm and patient and thus the Society in Australia was spared much useless controversy. This was well advised, as shortly before the Chapter Meeting the Vatican advised Bishop Fellay that, in substance, the conditions expressed in the Doctrinal Preamble of September were, in fact, non-negotiable and this effectively brought the whole question to an end even before the Chapter was convened.

The Chapter Meeting therefore was conducted in a manner which was far less charged with contention than might otherwise have been the case and the unity and peace of the Society has providentially been preserved. At the end of the Meeting the following declaration was released:



At the conclusion of the General Chapter of the Society of St. Pius X, gathered together at the tomb of its venerated founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and united with its Superior General, the participants, bishops, superiors, and most senior members of the Society elevate to Heaven our heartfelt thanksgiving, grateful for the 42 years of marvellous Divine protection over our work, amidst a Church in crisis and a world which distances itself farther from God and His law with each passing day.

We wish to express our gratitude to each and every member of our Society: priests, brothers, sisters, third order members; to the religious communities close to us and also to our dear faithful, for their constant dedication and for their fervent prayers on the occasion of this Chapter, marked by frank exchanges of views and by a very fruitful common work. Every sacrifice and pain accepted with generosity has contributed to overcome the difficulties which the Society has encountered in recent times. We have recovered our profound unity in its essential mission: to preserve and defend the Catholic Faith, to form good priests, and to strive towards the restoration of Christendom. We have determined and approved the necessary conditions for an eventual canonical normalization. We have decided that, in that case, an extraordinary Chapter with deliberative vote will be convened beforehand.



We must never forget that the sanctification of souls always starts within ourselves. It is the fruit of a faith which becomes vivifying and operating by the work of charity, according to the words of St. Paul: “For we can do nothing against the truth: but for the truth” (cf. II Cor., XIII, 8), and “as Christ also loved the church and delivered himself up for it… that it should be holy and without blemish” (cf. Eph. V, 25 s.).



The Chapter believes that the paramount duty of the Society, in the service which it intends to offer to the Church, is to continue, with God’s help, to profess the Catholic Faith in all its purity and integrity, with a determination matching the intensity of the constant attacks to which this very Faith is subjected nowadays.

For this reason it seems opportune that we reaffirm our faith in the Roman Catholic Church, the unique Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, outside of which there is no salvation nor possibility to find the means leading to salvation; our faith in its monarchical constitution, desired by Our Lord Himself, by which the supreme power of government over the universal Church belongs only to the Pope, Vicar of Christ on earth; our faith in the universal Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of both the natural and the supernatural orders, to Whom every man and every society must submit.



The Society continues to uphold the declarations and the teachings of the constant Magisterium of the Church in regard to all the novelties of the Second Vatican Council which remain tainted with errors, and also in regard to the reforms issued from it. We find our sure guide in this uninterrupted Magisterium which, by its teaching authority, transmits the revealed Deposit of Faith in perfect harmony with the truths that the entire Church has professed, always and everywhere.



The Society finds its guide as well in the constant Tradition of the Church, which transmits and will transmit until the end of time the teachings required to preserve the Faith and the salvation of souls, while waiting for the day when an open and serious debate will be possible which may allow the return to Tradition of the ecclesiastical authorities.



We wish to unite ourselves to the other Christians persecuted in different countries of the world who are now suffering for the Catholic Faith, some even to the extent of martyrdom. Their blood, shed in union with the Victim of our altars, is the pledge for a true renewal of the Church in capite et membris, according to the old saying sanguis martyrum semen christianorum.



“Finally, we turn our eyes to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is also jealous of the privileges of her Divine Son, jealous of His glory, of His Kingdom on earth as in Heaven. How often has she intervened for the defense, even the armed defense, of Christendom against the enemies of the Kingdom of Our Lord! We entreat her to intervene today to chase the enemies out from inside the Church who are trying to destroy it more radically than its enemies from outside. May she deign to keep in the integrity of the Faith, in the love of the Church, in devotion to the Successor of Peter, all the members of the Society of St. Pius X and all the priests and faithful who labor alongside the Society, in order that she may both keep us from schism and preserve us from heresy.



“May St. Michael the Archangel inspire us with his zeal for the glory of God and with his strength to fight the devil.



“May St. Pius X share with us a part of his wisdom, of his learning, of his sanctity, to discern the true from the false and the good from the evil in these times of confusion and lies.” (Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre; Albano, October 19, 1983).



Given at Ecône, on the 14th of July of the Year of the Lord 2012



Therefore the Society will continue its work much the same as before until God’s Providence decides that the propitious moment has come when the Church Authorities recognise the disastrous impact which the Second Vatican Council and the new liturgy have had upon the Church and our Society can be recognised and work with them for a true restoration of all things Catholic.



Various administrative changes will soon take place in the Society in Australia. Many of you are aware that the Superiors of the different countries are appointed for terms of six years. I am about to complete my second term as Superior of Australia and I will be replaced in that role by Father John Fullerton who is an American priest who has already served a term as the Superior of the United States and who is at present the Rector of St. Mary’s College Kansas. Once Father Fullerton arrives in Sydney, which may not be for several weeks yet, I will take up my new position at Hampton in Melbourne. It has been a great privilege for me to serve you during these last twelve years during which time I have become very fond of Australia. I am most grateful for all of your prayers and support and therefore I am very pleased I will be staying with you for a little while longer.



Several further changes will take place amongst the priests. As previously stated I am to go to Hampton where I will replace Fr. Doran who has been transferred to Canada. Fr. Todd Stephens will replace Fr. Taouk who in turn will go to Brisbane to replace Fr. Anderson who has been appointed to the United States. We welcome to Australia a newly ordained priest, Fr. Christopher Polley, who will come to Rockdale to take the place of Fr. Todd Stephens. It is envisaged that at the end of the year an exchange will take place between Fr. Polley and Fr. Vachon who is presently at Park Ridge.



New appointments have also been made amongst the Sisters at Rockdale. Sister Mary Gemma who has spent many years with the community here and latterly as Superior will soon leave Australia for the United States where she will become the Superior of the convent at Browerville. She will be succeeded by Sister Mary Theophane, an American, who at present is Superior of the community at Marseille in France. We welcome back to Australia our own Sister Mary Michael, the first member of the Sisters of the Society of St. Pius X who has spent the last few years at St. Mary’s Kansas. Sister Mary Joachim recently left us for America and will be replaced shortly by Sister Mary Monica from the Philippines.



Our heartfelt thanks and prayers go with the Priests and Sisters who are leaving us and we wish them every grace, strength and blessing in their new apostolate.



I am delighted to announce that our Superior General Bishop Fellay will be visiting Australia very soon from 4th until 21st August and will visit our principal churches in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne (Hampton and Tynong) Sydney and Brisbane. He will also spend several days at the seminary in Goulburn. Precise details of his visit will be announced at these different centres.

With every good wish and blessing,

Yours most sincerely in Christ,



Fr Edward Black

District Superior

We must avoid doubtful things.

A Sermon delivered by His Grace,  Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. on Sunday, May 2,1976 before an association of Catholic families in Southern France.


In these critical moments, we must remain with that which is surest. We must avoid doubtful things.

We must make our stand on things that are certain, absolutely certain, without a thousandth per cent of doubt: our Creed, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacraments, devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin. We cannot go wrong there. If we are firmly attached to these things we can work out our salvation. Our Lord willed these things for our salvation. So let us adhere to these things with all our heart.

Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Let us have respect for Our Lord, our God, Our Saviour, our Creator: for Him Who is everything for us. How should we dare to present ourselves standing before Him Who will be our Judge at the end of time? Let us kneel before Our Lord with profound devotion. Let us receive Him in our hearts as the greatest treasure that we can have here below. Let us thank God for coming into our poor bodies, into our poor souls, sinners that we are. May God deign to reside in us for some time in His Body and in His Blood—this is the most beautiful, the grandest thing that God could do. And along with this respect for Our Lord Jesus Christ, let us love Him with our whole heart. Let us serve Him. Let us consider Him truly as our Shepherd.

Let us ask this of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary— of the Most Blessed Virgin who had only one name on her lips, only one name in her heart, that of her son, Jesus. Let it be for us as it was for her. Let us have one love only here below, one genuine love, in which we love all other creatures—but all other creatures should bring us to this love and not remove us from it. Let us love Our Lord Jesus Christ with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole strength.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

 

An edifying life proves the preacher sincere

St. Spiridion – AD 348 …The bishops of Cyprus being on a certain occasion assembled together, Triphillius, Bishop of Ledri was engaged to preach a sermon; and mentioning that passage, “Take up thy bedf and walk”, he made use of a word to express the sick man’s bed, which he though more elegant and beautiful than in the original text. Spiridion, full of resentment at this false nicety, and attempt to add ghraces to what was more adorned with simplicity, arose and asked whether the preacher know better the right term than the evangelist? Our Saint defended the cause of St Athanasius In the council of Sardica in 347 and shortly after passed to eternal bliss.

Sacred learning is necessary in a minister of the Church, but sanctity is not less necessary. Nothing is so eloquent or powerfully persuasive as example. A learned man may convince, but to convert souls is chiefly the privilege of those that are pious. There have been few ages in which polite literature has been cultivated with greater ardour than the present wherein we live. How many great orators, how many elegant writers have made their appearance in it! If these were all saints, what a reformation of manner should we see among the people!

It is sanctity that possesses the art of softening the heart and subduing all the powers of the soul. An edifying life proves the preacher sincere, and is alone a sermon which obstinacy itself will find it hard to hold out against; it stops the mouth of the enemies of truth and virtue. The life, vigour, and justice of a discourse are the fruit of wit, genius and study, but unction in words is produced only by the heart. A man must be animated with the spirit of God to speak powerfully on divine things; the conversion of hearts if the work of God. Butlers lives of the saints first published in 1759, a work of thirty years.Images show the relic of St Spiridion the right hand.

Destructive and negative writing and preaching ruins and sweeps away

...


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.”

Another sermon by Fr. Archer

16th Sunday after Pentecost on Good Example
It came to pass that when Jesus went into one of the homes of the Chief of the Pharisees, on the Sabbath day to eat bread, that they watched him. Luke 6 14 V1.

As Our divine Master Christ, Jesus was ever careful to enforce by His own example the lesson which He taught. Delineated in His conduct, the distinguishing features of His true disciples, and exhibited in his own person, a perfect image of all the virtues which are to compose and finish the character of a Christian. There is not any one action of His life so minute and inconsiderable but, if we observe it with attention, and with hearts desirous of improvement, we may draw from it some useful instruction.

In the gospel of this day, He is represented entering into the house of a leading man among the Pharisees to take his meal and we read that those who were present took particular notice of His conduct. Although they watched Him with a very malevolent design, and with no other view than to find Him doing some action which they might construe into a violation of the Sabbath, yet they must have no doubt observed, they must have admired that air of ….. modesty and humility, which appeared in His countenance and in His whole comportment. They beheld the temperance which presided over His frugal repast, they caught the words of grace which fell from His lips, they heard the instruction, the heavenly conversation by which he informed the minds and inflamed the hearts of his disciples. In a word Our divine Lord set before them the example of so many virtues, on this apparently trifling occasion, that had they not beheld them through a false medium with eyes obscured by prejudice and passion, they must have become enamoured of the beauty of virtue and been efficaciously excited to now model their own lives and conduct after so excellent an original….

PUBLIC APOLOGY TO FATHER PAUL MORGAN

I unreservedly apologise for the personal comments previously made on this blog, in a post entitled reticence set aside. These have been removed. They were ill judged and utterly inappropriate, and it was wrong of me to state them in this way.
Dorothy Banks

40th anniversary of SSPX - The Society of St. Pius X is part of the Church Militant

Dear members of the Society,
On this day we have a double joy. First of all the joy of the liturgical feast that we celebrate today, All Saints’ Day. The Church wishes to gather together in one feast all her children who already enjoy eternal beatitude, the Beatific Vision. An extraordinary feast, for it is the accomplishment, the fulfillment of the Church! In it we see her reason for being, and her mission, realized. And we hope that this will be our end as well. It is indeed a great joy for us to think of heaven, and truly today the Church asks us to think of heaven, of that for which God has created us. Throughout the year we celebrate a certain number of saints, those saints that the Church wished to give us as models, since in each one of them there is something extraordinary that surpasses the habitual, ordinary human. They are sublime, perfect models, and to be imitated, although some of their exploits remain on the level of admiration: we contemplate their miracles that remain for us objects of admiration and not of imitation. But today the Church tells us: yes, there are all those models, but that is not all! There are 365 days in the martyrology, and we find a few thousand saints mentioned, but there are many more in heaven! And for us this is a source of great hope, for heaven is our homeland.
At the same time, this feast of All Saints’ Day procures for us another joy: we celebrate an anniversary, that of the foundation of our dear Priestly Society of St. Pius X 40 years ago. On this day, and it is certainly not by chance for we know well that for Divine Providence there is no such thing as chance – even if it is not always easy to see what are the intentions of the Good God, what links we can make between events, and what links we must make only from a distance. But certainly for the Good God, under His gaze, everything has its place. And there is a reason that it was on this feast of All Saints’ Day that the Society was founded. Let us try at least to catch a glimpse of it.



The Church Militant on earth is Triumphant in heaven
When one speaks of the feast of All Saints, when one speaks about the saints, one of course thinks of each of them individually, but also of the assembly to which they belong. As soon as one says “all the saints,” one thinks of a body. This company has a name: it is the Church Triumphant. The Church Triumphant, as we know, is a part of the Church. One could say that it is the definitive part, that part which is the completion of the Church here below, her culmination in heaven, her definitive perfection. There is a link between the two, we call the same Church “militant” on earth and “triumphant” in heaven. This is exactly the same Church, but that which we find here below is under another mode because she is situated in time, she operates in a different mode of conduct. Every aspect of the fight against sin and the devil, which is our condition on earth, disappears in the vision of the Good Lord who is outside of time. The saints devoted themselves entirely to the adoration of God, to joy in the perfections of God found in the vision He has of Himself, in the light of glory. But here below the Church really struggles. Her end will be found in heaven.
If there is a Church on earth, if our Lord has indeed founded His Church, it is in order to save souls, to pull them out of their pathetic state, out of their miserable state of sin. We know, and it is a teaching of the faith, that every person who enters into this world is conceived in original sin. He is deprived of the friendship of God that is grace. He is not in a natural state, but in a fallen state, in a state that makes it such that he is not able to achieve by his own efforts the end offered to him by the Good Lord. If he counts only on himself, he is lost, and his life here below will be a succession of short-lived joys, pleasures, tears, sadness, and suffering coming to an unhappy end. Therefore he must look for that method given by God to take man out of this state of misery, that is continually aggravated by the succession of personal sins, and which, if one does nothing, ends in hell, in the deprivation of God—the deprivation of that for which God has made man, namely the eternal joy of the beatific vision. This deprivation that is the sorrow of damnation is difficult to understand. It is easier to understand the sensible suffering of fire and all the other physical sufferings of hell. . . . This appalling state is one into which man rushes if he does not take the only way given by God to be saved, which is the Church He Himself founded, the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church. To take souls out of this state of misery is not just a work of charity, it is a battle.
Man has not fallen single handedly. Demons, the fallen spirits, are there. God allows them to perform certain actions. Thus they try to hinder the work of the Church which consists of bringing souls out from sin. This mission is a real combat, essentially a spiritual battle, but which can very easily extend out into the physical world. Not only does the Church have a spiritual warfare to conduct, but also she must undergo actual physical persecution. The devil’s endeavors to gain followers on earth are what we call simple “the world.” And this world, despite its charms and smiles, is an enemy, an enemy against the good of men and their salvation. This is why the Church on earth, realizing what is her end by bringing men to God, by sanctifying them, by communicating to them this grace which makes them saints, the Church must effectively devote the greatest part of her energy and her time to this battle.
One can see this combat in the defense of the faith, in the protection of the treasure of the faith. This will require the Church to issue condemnations, defenses, punishments, and excommunications. This is normal and it cannot be otherwise. We are in a real war, much more serious, much more decisive than all the human wars. It is, again, about the salvation of souls! This battle can be seen also on the moral level. We must have faith, but we also must live a life that corresponds to the commandments of God. The Church has to instruct men in the ways of the Good Lord. Daily experience shows us how reminding men of Catholic morals can start a war. Fundamentally, the battle for the faith is much more profound. However, at the level of man the battle will unfold almost always over morals. Even the suggestion of a reminder of the moral order to today’s man provokes a public outburst! The fight for the faith and the fight for morals are interrelated, but as evidence and everyday experience show, the most visible battle is being played out on the moral plane. This is why the Church on earth is called “militant.” This daily struggle can make us somewhat forgetful of the beautiful side of the Church. Or let us say more exactly that those who would like to think only of the beautiful side of the Church may well forget that which is perhaps not essential to her, but which is absolutely necessary for the battle here on earth, namely, asceticism. Our Lord aptly said: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9: 23). And so it is! But today, on this feast of All Saints, the Church asks us to raise our hearts. Without necessarily forgetting this combat, she invites us to look at this reward that the Good Lord gives to those who devote themselves to this battle, those who are dedicated to the salvation of their souls and of their neighbors: eternal beatitude.

Without Archbishop Lefebvre, no Society of Saint Pius X




How can we establish a relation between this truth and the Society? It is not so difficult really, my dear brethren. When we speak of the Society, when we look around us, what is our Society for the people of the world? It is a bunch of trouble-makers, rebels, excommunicate schismatics… in short, terrible sons of the Church… or something close to it. They are always grumbling, groaning, attacking, criticizing. That is how they see the Society. And we can say that during these 40 years of existence, we can find a good number of battles and elements of this war. That is where we see to what extent the Society is part of the Church militant, at a time when it is precisely this combative aspect of the Church that people want to forget. It is striking to note that in this age that is our own, and especially since the council, they are trying to eliminate this militant aspect. They do not want to talk about it any more, they want to present a very pleasant Church, nice to everyone, to all religions, to all men, to all sinners, as if there were only one devil who remained, the Society of Saint Pius X! Yes, with them we will stay at war! It is fairly impressive to see this contrast.
As for the cross, they do not want to talk about it any more. Or if they still talk about it, they have taken down the Christ Crucified. They leave a cross with a band in the middle, the cross of the Risen Christ, the one that serves no purpose any longer because Christ is risen. Alleluia! Everything is fine. And no one wants to talk about the value of suffering, the necessity of this struggle. Sin? Think, there are no more sinners! In any case everyone goes to heaven. It is quick. It is simple. Everyone is nice, everyone is saved. Be good protestants, be good pagans, you will go to heaven. That is approximately the message that is going around everywhere. It is hard to see what the Church militant is. When we look at the Church today, we can well wonder why it is still called militant. Because it fights for, I don’t know, the rights of women or for the poor? Is that the Church militant?
On our side, certainly the idea of the “battle for the Mass” and the “defense of the Faith” is very visible, even just in our vocabulary, for if we make a list of our sermons, very often we find these ideas of combatting, battling, warring. But we are almost the only ones to speak of that. With us, one can easily see this aspect of the Church militant. And at the same time, we know that we are not only fighting for the pleasure of fighting. We do not give the impression – I say, the impression – of disobeying for the pleasure of stating our personal opinion. We are in search for something else. We are in search for salvation. We are in search of God. If we engage in this battle, it is because we want to please God, it is because we want the glory of God and thereby our salvation.



Let us take a closer look at our Society. One thing is obvious: to speak of the Society, speak of what it does, speak of its intentions, is necessarily to speak of a person, our dear and venerated founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. If he was not there, there would be no Society, and we would not be here. This work of the Church exists because he is its founder, but not only that, all our fighting for the Church is directed by the guidelines, by a spirit that we have received from Archbishop Lefebvre. Obviously, it is so clear for us that he is a man raised up by Divine Providence for this time. The Good God gave him a striking number of talents and gifts for our time. He permitted him to, firstly, understand that there was a problem in the Church, that there was a crisis, but also to find where the problem was, what the cause of this crisis was. The Good God also allowed him to make people see what means must be applied to get out of it, what the antidote for this crisis was. And the Society, for 40 years, lives by these directions that the Archbishop gave us. And what is more extraordinary, is that those lines that he left us, either to explain what was happening in the Church, or to show us what means we had to use to get out of it, well, this vision of the Church is so profound that 40 years later you can read what he was saying 40 years ago, and you can apply it as if he was saying it today. That means that this vision was so high up that it went beyond time, in a way. Of course, it is for our time, but nevertheless it is high enough above particular and contingent elements of a certain time, to be able to show us what must be done. There is the problem and there is the solution!
The Society is a heritage. Here as well, there is a link with the Church. The Church is a tradition in the sense that, from generation to generation, what Our Lord Jesus Christ entrusted to the Apostles is handed down to future generations. It is really a tradition, the passing down of a deposit, of a treasure that we call the “revealed deposit”, which God entrusted to men for their salvation. And exactly the same thing is repeated to us in our Society, as a faithful echo, and nothing different since we are in the Church. The Archbishop told us – and this is what he wished to see written on his tombstone – “I have handed down what I have received” (I Corinthians, 11, 23). So have we received this treasure and we still live by it today. And if you are here, it is because you yourselves have received it in turn. And if we are celebrating today the 40th anniversary of the Society, it is because this transmission has continued. For what we do – the Archbishop insisted so much on this – what we do must not be anything else but what the Church does. He stressed this point when he was speaking to us about the spirit of the Society. What is the Society’s spirit? He told us, “There is none.” There is no spirit specific to the Society. The spirit specific to the Society is the Church’s spirit. Look at the Church; what governs, what moves the Church? That is the spirit that must be what animates the Society. Indeed, we do have to fight, we do have to defend the Faith. But that is not enough. That is not all. You yourselves understand well that the people who see us from the outside see the negative aspects like “defense”, “battle”, or “war”…, and often they stop there. They should look a little closer, and then they would see that those negative aspects are indeed real, but are not the purpose or the completion of things. Their completion is sanctity. It is the very purpose of the Church. It is so beautiful, so extraordinary to consider this purpose in our time, when sanctity is scorned everywhere, when all the protection that the laws offerred has been taken away in the countries that still provided a little protection for the morals and behaviour of men according to the natural law. Everything has been blown away, everything has been plunged into rot, into manure, excuse me… Well then, in this environment, in this shipwreck, it is truly extraordinary to see that this little Society in this battle where it is attacked from all sides, nevertheless manages to make the Good God’s light shine forth, the light of the faith, and succeeds in giving to men the courage to resist in the midst of all that, to live a life pleasing to God, a life of grace. Yes, it is something absolutely extraordinary coming close to a miracle. We really have something to give thanks to God for today, that is, give thanks to God for having given us an Archbishop Lefebvre.


The purpose of the Church is to make saints

In that little book which he called his last will and testament, his Spiritual Journey, the preface informs us that all his life he was haunted by the desire to transmit the principles of priestly sanctification, of Christian sanctification. That means the desire to make saints. And that is precisely the purpose of the Church: to make saints, to make holy priests so that there may be holy faithful. It is really necessary that the whole Church be sanctified. And to attain this end he did not propose his own invention off the top of his head. He simply went back to what the Church gives us, what we should all be centered on: the Mass. It is the foundation; it is the source of all grace, of all sanctification. And it is really the remedy, the remedy for this crisis. We can see it already, just beginning, something that is not very strong, a little something that is starting and that we can easily see in the Church. It is around the Mass that everything turns; it is from this starting point that, little by little, Christendom is being rebuilt, in the midst of all sorts of miseries, sorrows, and tears. But nevertheless it is germinating, it is growing slowly. It is still imperceptible, but nevertheless, we can see that there is something happening. We just see the hand of God. I remember – and we did not ask for this praise -, during the first visit of three of the Society’s bishops to Cardinal Castrillon, just after the pilgrimage in the year 2000, he declared while speaking of the Society: “The fruit is good, so the Holy Ghost is there.” What more do we want? The Holy Ghost, the Spirit that sanctifies, the Spirit that is only to be found in the Church and that sanctifies souls.
Let us ask Our Lady today, Our Lady and all the saints, and our dear Archbishop Lefebvre, the grace of fidelity to this deposit which is given to us by the Church, fidelity to the Faith, fidelity to grace. Let us ask to live ever more according to the fire of true charity that loves God above everything, and that loves one’s neighbour for the love of God. Let us ask for this grace of fidelity so that our beautiful history may not stop at our 40th anniversary, but that it may continue, for it is not difficult to understand, when we see the state of the Church, that we have not yet finished our work. Even if we have hopes on one hand, on the other there is also the clear understanding that our struggle in and for the Church is not yet finished. Therefore let us really ask the Good God for that fire, the fire of His Love that wants to see everywhere His Name hallowed, that His Kingdom has come, that His Will is done on earth as it is in Heaven. Let us ask all the saints of Heaven, and the angels to assist us, to help us, and to guide us in this battle for the glory of God, for our salvation, and the glory of the Church. Amen.

Bishop Bernard Fellay’s sermon at the Seminary of Ecône on November 1, 2010, for the 40th anniversary of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X