Welcome, dear TV viewers, for this new series “Mission Lands”, on this Sunday January 29, 4th after the Epiphany!
Thank you for joining us, Your Excellency
You have been Superior General of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X since 1994.
This Society was founded in 1970 by Archbishop [Marcel] Lefebvre in Freiburg Switzerland, your native country.
Today, the Society has 613 priests, 117 brothers, 80 oblates, and 215 seminarians.
In the Church, as we all know, every religious society has its own proper vocation, depending on the charism of its foundation:
the poverty of the sons of St. Francis, for example, or the missionary zeal of the Dominicans. What, in your opinion, is the spirituality proper of the Society of St. Pius X?
Well the spirituality proper to the Society is not to have its own proper spirituality. Let me explain.
We have a spirituality, but it is not our own. Or rather, we have taken for ourselves the spirituality of the Church. So it is much more universal.
What is it? Well, it is the salvation that comes to us through the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
So the priesthood, because Our Lord saves us through His priesthood, and through the priestly act which is the Cross, the Mass.
So that is the spirituality of the Society. We take care of priests, of forming them, sanctifying them, and then, well, we hope they will do their job for the Church.
So a spirituality centered on the priesthood and the Holy Mass
Exactly, yes.
On November 21, in his Apostolic Letter Misericordia et Misera, Pope Francis renewed for the priests of the Society of St. Pius X their powers to give sacramental absolutions validly and licitly.
At the same time, the post-synodal declaration Amoris Laetitia, that grants Holy Communion to the divorced and remarried on certain conditions, was certainly not a text to your liking. How do you interpret these two apparently contradictory actions?
I may be mistaken. I think they come from the same thing, from the Holy Father’s care for outcasts. Of all sorts.
For the peripheries.
There you go. For the peripheries. And of course, we are not directly materially in the peripheries.
We are not outcasts or in prison. But at the same time we are outcasts, rejected by, shall we say, the main current in the Church and in this sense, we are marginalized.
And I think, again, I may be wrong, that is where this comes from.
It comes from a desire to take care of, I think, people the Pope reproaches the Church as a whole for setting aside or forgetting.
Speaking of this text Amoris Laetitia that we just mentioned, some cardinals, Cardinals Burke, Brandmüller, Caffarra, and Meisner, presented to the Pope what is called in technical terms their “Dubia.”
They asked questions, several questions, asking for explanations on the document.
Nothing like that has happened in the Church for a very long time: bishops publicly questioning the Pope on an act of his Magisterium.
In 1969, the liturgical reform was also a rupture from former tradition; at the time, two Cardinals spoke out (Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci),
and then, after voicing their perplexity to the Sovereign Pontiff, returned to their places.
There does not seem to have been any organized resistance from cardinals or bishops for the last 50 years, not even on doctrinal drifts like those in the new catechisms. Do you think the times have changed?
Something is changing. It is true. And I think it is the fact that things are growing worse.
Not only on the level of principles; these principles are now bearing fruit, the consequences . . .
. I do not think we have come yet to the ultimate consequences, but it is growing serious, very serious even.
So serious that a certain number of bishops and cardinals feel obliged in good conscience to say, “Enough!”
So not many of them say it publicly; there are many more, shall we say, “in private.”
Will it grow? It is too soon to tell. I think we have to hope – and I hope – I dare to believe that it will continue.
Because really, things are bad. And they are finally beginning to say so. It will open things up for reflection, serious reflection this time around on the causes, and therefore the true remedies.
nIn your conference at the “Journées de la Tradition” on October 8, 2016 in Port Marly, you spoke of “an increasing amount of contact between the Society of St. Pius X and a certain number of priests and bishops.”
But we can’t say, at least in France, that the bishops seem very open to requests to celebrate according to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, allowed by the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.
Given what you have experienced through your travels all over the world, all over the planet, do you think this is something unique to the French?
Honestly, I do not think so. There is something, of course. The French will be French . . .
What does that mean, coming from you?
They like to discuss things . . .
Ah!
. . . and to question, and to argue, too. But you see, as far as the crisis in the Church and what is happening goes, I think this reaction is really general.
And as far as the reactions go, honestly, throughout the whole Church, it is still very minor.
But it is there.
. It is general and it is present even in France. So, sure, there are not many bishops that have contacted us, or told us, “We are with you,” but that will come. Slowly but surely.
Speaking of your relations with Rome, Pope Francis recently offered you a personal prelature for the Society of St. Pius X.
This canonical situation would allow you to remain entirely independent of the bishops.
Bishop [Athanasius] Schneider, who sat right here a few months ago and who visited your seminaries, exhorts you to accept this offer even if, or precisely because, he is aware that the situation in the Church is not yet 100% satisfactory.
Is there not a risk in the end, over the course of time, of [the Society of St. Pius X] creating a more or less independent, self-run [parallel] “Church”
if this situation of constant distance from Rome, from the Pope, from the Curia, from the bishops, were to continue?
Are you waiting until a Pius XIII appears on the Chair of Peter to sign a proposition from Rome? We all look forward to that day, but it is still nothing more than a hypothesis
No, I do not think we have to wait for everything to be resolved in the Church, for all the problems to be solved.
But a certain number of conditions are necessary, and for us the essential condition is our survival.
So I have told Rome, very clearly, that, just as Archbishop Lefebvre used to say in his day, we have a sine qua non condition:
if this condition is not met, then we will not move.
And this condition is for us to be able to remain as we are, to keep all the principles that have kept us alive, that have kept us Catholic.
We have serious reproaches toward what has happened in the Church since the [Second Vatican] Council.
We have several including the famous issue of how ecumenism is practiced, for example; and what we call religious liberty, a rather complicated term,
but that covers on one hand the question of the relation between Church and State and on the other,
, the freedom that is or is not to be granted, or to what extent each person is to be granted the freedom to practice his religion.
Before [the Council], the Church explained that in certain circumstances, tolerance [toward non-Catholic religions] was necessary, and we can say today, when we see the situation and the confusion, that this tolerance has to be quite large;
but when we tolerate, we tolerate an evil.
We cannot say that what we tolerate is a good thing.
And there is a religion—I think that today there is no need even to say the name—we see that when it begins to spread, it becomes a form of terrorism.
Something is not right. So we really need to see all that. And I think we are making headway.
I think we are making headway here in the right direction. Rome is easing up. It is pretty recent.
Over the past two years now let’s say, Rome has been telling us that there are questions or we can even say statements put forward by the Council that are not required criteria for being Catholic.
That means that we have the right not to agree and still be considered Catholic. And these statements are precisely the ones we dispute. So that’s the first part.
The second part: Is there a risk of schism in the end, or of us setting up a parallel “Church”?
We fight against this risk, and I think, well, I spoke of this with the Pope himself, with Pope Francis, and we both agreed.
There are already several practical dispositions that make a schism, you might say, practically impossible.
What I mean is, on the practical level, in our everyday acts, we express and show to Rome our submission, that we recognize their authority, and not just at Mass, not just by saying the name of the Pope and the local bishop at the Canon of the Mass.
There are also, well, you have the example of the Pope granting us the power to hear confessions.
And there are legal acts, it is a little complicated, but sometimes a priest can commit unlawful acts, and in that case we contact Rome and they grant us or even ask us to judge these cases.
So we really have a normal relationship there.
And there is not just confession, there are all sorts.
This summer, it was confirmed that the Superior General [of the Society] can freely ordain the priests of the Society without having to ask the permission of the local bishop.
It is a text from Rome, it is not published on the rooftops, but it says that the Society can licitly ordain, “you can freely ordain.”
So you see, these are acts that are accomplished, legal acts, canonical acts, and they are already in place,
and, if you ask me, they make the possibility of a schism practically non-existent. Obviously, we always have to be careful, of course.
And so today, concretely, what is still missing?
The seal. And also the clear, straightforward statement that these guarantees will be respected.
And only the Pope can give this seal and this guarantee?
It is the Pope’s responsibility, yes.
So, to wrap up this interview and perhaps give a sign of hope, we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Fatima this year.
What do you think the impact of these events are today for the Church and for the Society of St. Pius X?
More than for the Society. For the Society, I would say, it is but a consequence.
So for Fatima, we know there is a secret, there was a message. And the Fatima message foretells difficult, perhaps terrible things.
Part of it is known, and the other part is not really known. In any case, the Blessed Virgin said, “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph,”
so she announces a Heavenly victory, the victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that will be connected to the consecration of Russia;
Russia will convert, and become Catholic once again. It will be reunited, reintegrated into the Catholic Church.
A time of peace will be granted to the Church—so we assume that the time of crisis in which we are living today will come to an end.
Of course, we do not know the details. But obviously, if we say—and we are not the only ones to say it—“there is a crisis in the Church,”
we certainly hope that at the moment of triumph this period in the Church will be over.
How much farther is this . . . this confusion going to go on, I do not know.
But we have the assurance that there will be a triumph at the end. So we hasten it by our prayers; we know very well that it is up to God, our prayers . . .
You launched a Rosary Crusade for this special occasion . . .
Yes, we did. We are asking the faithful, and all those willing, to pray the prayer that the Blessed Virgin asked of us, begging her that her requests may be fulfilled.
[We ask] that this triumph may come, that this consecration may be done as She asked, for there have already been some consecrations, and there have already been some results.
And most especially, you see, what we see—I do not wish to be too long, but . . . — the historical events (not only in the Church but even in the world) are connected.
For example, the major events of World War II are all dates dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.
And the Blessed Virgin said that the peace of nations was placed in her hands by God. God intervenes, shall we say, His government over men is real.
And so we ask God, in His goodness, to deign to govern in such a way that men may cease to demolish everything and submit to His yoke. It could only be a good thing.
Thank you ever so much, Your Excellency, for these words of hope.
For those of our spectators who wish to pursue these subjects further, allow me to suggest two books.
First of all, the biography of Archbishop Lefebvre by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais. I think it is the best book for understanding the founder of the Society of St. Pius X and at the same time the chain of events that has led to the situation we are in today.
You mentioned the Society of St. Pius X’s vocation for the Mass, you also mentioned the crisis in the Church.
At the heart of the crisis in the Church—at least many see it this way—lies the liturgical question, and in particular the question of the Mass
So allow me to point our spectators towards a book entitled A Brief Critical Study of the New Order of Mass, that we mentioned earlier.
It is a study written by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci in 1969; the book has been reedited with a preface by Cardinal Stickler (there, see: you have three cardinals for the price of one)
and the edition also includes the Bull Quo Primum by St. Pius V, who established the traditional Missal;
a comparison of the two offertories; and a text by Pius XII on the liturgy
. I think it is a good document to help understand the reservations the Society of St. Pius X has toward the liturgical “reform,” and not only the Society, but also other communities, and other religious.
Thank you ever so much, Your Excellency.
You are welcome.