11-07-2022, 11:23 AM
The following article is taken from The Recusant #59, pages 18-21. It follows a reprint of Fr. Marc Van Es's Angelus article: The Attendance at Today's Masses.
...to anyone who has read the previous article carefully and understood it, one fairly obvious question suggests itself:
The old SSPX expressed, with great clarity, why one should not go to Indult Masses. What about the present day SSPX, ought we to go to Mass there? Not surprisingly, there does not exist an article by the SSPX explaining why one should avoid the SSPX. Instead therefore, let us try to apply what the old SSPX and Archbishop Lefebvre used to say and see how it applies to the SSPX in our time.
“To attend the ‘indult’ Mass is at least to approve implicitly and to encourage the work of the destruction of Catholic Tradition undertaken by the official hierarchy.” (Fr. Van Es)
Likewise, to attend the modern SSPX Mass is at least to approve implicitly and to encourage the betrayal of Catholic Tradition and the slide into liberalism and compromise undertaken by the SSPX hierarchy.
It is also means, at least implicitly, approving the work of the modern conciliar hierarchy with whom the SSPX have been working ever more closely and whom they no longer condemn.
“[The Indult Mass is a] means and bait to attract the traditional Catholics now considered as schismatics because they are no longer considered as “being in communion” with the present-day Rome, of liberal and modernist tendency.” (Fr. Van Es)
In our own time, the modernist infiltrators who are destroying the Church no longer consider the compromised SSPX as being “schismatic” or off-limits. Even the arch-modernist Pope Francis has decided to announce that he now provides jurisdiction for their confessions; their ordinations are also done with the approval of modernist Rome. Even SSPX marriages are performed by modernist Novus Ordo priests. SSPX leaders, for their part have said all sorts of flattering and obsequious things regarding the modernist authorities against whom the SSPX used to be fighting. To all intents and purposes, they can now be considered as being “in communion” once again by the present-day Rome of liberal and modernist tendencies, albeit still in a somewhat “canonically irregular” situation. That is how the modernist Romans consider them, and it is also how the outside world seems to see things. Small wonder then that they no longer talk about “neo-modernist” or “neo-Protestant” Rome or the “conciliar church” but rather speak about it as though it were one and the same as eternal Rome.
By the contrast, the Catholics who today are still considered as being “not in communion,” “schismatic,” “rebellious” and are the targets all the other epithets which used to be hurled at the SSPX, are undoubtedly those of what is called the Resistance. In our day, these are the Traditional Catholics who must not let themselves be baited or tempted with either Indult Masses or those of the SSPX.
“[The Indult Mass] constitutes a danger for the faith of the faithful, a danger which comes from the priests themselves who are celebrating it. Because to obtain this indult from the official hierarchy, these priests must fulfil the following conditions: ‘That it should be very clear that these priests have nothing to do with those who place in doubt... the doctrinal soundness of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI, in 1970 and that their position should be without any ambiguity and publicly known.’ ” (Fr. Van Es)
In our day, the SSPX Mass too constitutes a danger for the faith of the faithful, for the same reason. The SSPX’s change of position, from rejecting the legitimacy of the New Mass to accepting it, is a real one. It may not be as “clear and unambiguous” as the acceptance required by the Indult and one might still encounter an SSPX priest who didn’t get the memo or who is playing a game of pretending that he is still living in the year 2011. But the official corporate acceptance (“We declare that we accept…”) of the New Mass as “legitimately promulgated” by Paul VI, can be found in the April 2012 Doctrinal Declaration. It was signed, sealed and handed over to modernist Rome and can be found in the March 2013 issue of the SSPX’s
own internal bulletin, Cor Unum. What cannot be found anywhere is a corresponding repudiation, retraction, denial or rephrasing of that acceptance by a Superior General on behalf of the whole SSPX. Therefore, as the official position of the SSPX, it stands.
“In the hands of the official hierarchy, the Tridentine Mass serves therefore as a temporary means and bait to attract the traditional priests and people and to destroy at the same time the work of Catholic restoration, started by Archbishop Lefebvre, Bishop de Castro Mayer and their priests.” (Fr. Van Es)
In our own time, has not the compromised conciliar SSPX made great use of the Tridentine Mass to try to lure people away from the Resistance? How else does one explain the egregious articles and videos, noted in these pages and elsewhere, which play on the emotions of their audience, exhorting them to be grateful for their regular Tridentine Masses, etc.? Does not the unwillingness of the modern SSPX to spread itself thin, in the manner of the old SSPX, also play into this?
“Hundreds of priests, seminarians and faithful have been lured with the Tridentine Rite and now are made to forcibly return to the ranks and the spirit of the Council.” (Fr. Van Es)
With priests, some far less subtle means have been employed to stop them leaving the SSPX and joining the Resistance: threats, transfers, isolation, psychological torture, expulsion, destitution as well as the constant playing on their anxiety towards the perceived material discomfort. What is clear to any impartial observer is that all, priests, seminarians and faithful are being made “to return to the spirit of the Council.” That the SSPX can give its priests and faithful permission to take experimental “covid” injections or promote a Darwin-friendly cosmology which requires a wholly modernist interpretation of Sacred Scripture are two recent signs of this slide. That there is so little outcry or pushback visible from any SSPX priests or faithful in response to such things is itself another sign.
“This work of destruction continues by the approval of Indult Masses close to our important Mass centres... A good method to empty the latter or at least to prevent them from developing.” (Fr. Van Es)
Since this article first appeared in English in 1994, the SSPX around the world has seen many chapels close and even one of its seminaries (Goulburn, Australia). And yet in recent years it has not been the modernist Romans who are responsible for this “work of destruction” but the SSPX authorities themselves. With the approval of the General House, the British District has lost perhaps 40% of its Mass centres since the late-1990s. The SSPX priests, including the District Superior, tell the faithful of those closed chapels that they should go to the Indult Mass instead. To the modern SSPX it didn’t make sense for them to have a chapel in Portsmouth when the faithful could be sent instead to the Indult Mass said by the Franciscans in Gosport.
So the SSPX Masses and the Indult Masses are no longer the bitter rivals in competition with one another in the way they were when the Fr. Van Es article appeared; rather the SSPX see themselves as complementary, almost as another indult option to be added to the Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King and all the rest. The very small number of priests available to the Catholic Resistance prevents it from having anything like the impact that the SSPX used to have, and yet there is quite a bit of evidence that wherever the Resistance gains a foothold, both conciliar diocese and the SSPX react accordingly. Here is one example. When Resistance priests began making regular visits to a small group of faithful deep in rural Suffolk in 2016, the SSPX decided that after all they would be able to send a priest on regular trips up to that out-of-the-way part of the world, despite never having done so before, and despite the fact that it was not anywhere near any of their Mass circuits and the fact that they had just shut down their only Mass centre in the whole of East Anglia, in neighbouring Norfolk. As the years went by, the diocese likewise took more of an interest in the Traditional Mass and after a little while, the once-a-month Indult Mass was transformed into a dedicated Indult priory with daily Traditional Mass and two Masses on Sunday, located in a privately owned chapel in Suffolk. Coincidentally this very same chapel had not seen the Tridentine Mass once in all the years since the Council until the Resistance started using it in 2016. Rumour has it that the SSPX District Superior declined any interest in setting up a regular SSPX Mass there because it had already become “too closely associated with the Resistance.” Who knows if that is true, but if so it would be both very amusing and quite telling.
“To attempt to restore the Traditional Mass without considering the historical context of the crisis of the Faith is to become a blind instrument in the hands of the conciliar hierarchy.” (Fr. Van Es)
Is this not the point upon which the priests and faithful of the Resistance have been insisting since the Resistance began? Our fight is not merely about the Traditional Mass. It is about the whole crisis in the Church, it is about the Faith, and to place the Mass above the crisis of Faith
in order of importance is tantamount to betrayal. Many faithful were given the grace of understanding the crisis in the Church and the SSPX’s fight against modernism. Many faithful were given the grace of perceiving the gravity of the SSPX’s betrayal of that fight in 2012 and 2013.
And yet a significant number of those faithful, alas, chose not to openly oppose the SSPX.
Their motive for acting thus, in most cases it seems, was access to the Traditional Mass. Correspondingly, many priests who could see what had happened, but who chose not to openly oppose their superiors, seem to have had as their motive access to the chapel and the faithful who attend it. To paraphrase Fr. Van Es one last time, have they not, in effect, become blind instruments in the hands of the conciliar church?
What Conclusion Can We Draw From All This?
That the precept of attending Sunday Mass is obligatory for all Catholics who have reached the age of reason but that some may be excused particularly those who are only near Masses “of Pope Paul VI” or traditional Masses said under the “Indult” or the Masses of the present-day SSPX. Why? Firstly, because of the danger for the faith coming from the priests who celebrate or from the faithful who attend them; secondly, legitimisation is given to the new liturgy and finally an approval more or less implicit of the work of destruction of the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Tradition.
“When they affirm that they have not given up anything, it is false. They have given up the possibility of contradicting Rome. They cannot say anything now. They must remain silent because of the favours they have received, and it is now impossible for them to denounce the errors of the conciliar church. Very slowly they accept... From the point of view of ideas, they turn very gently and end up admitting the false ideas of the Second Vatican Council, because Rome has granted them some favours for Tradition. This is a very dangerous situation.” - Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
![[Image: recusant.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/1zJhydXx/recusant.png)
...to anyone who has read the previous article carefully and understood it, one fairly obvious question suggests itself:
What About SSPX Masses today?
The old SSPX expressed, with great clarity, why one should not go to Indult Masses. What about the present day SSPX, ought we to go to Mass there? Not surprisingly, there does not exist an article by the SSPX explaining why one should avoid the SSPX. Instead therefore, let us try to apply what the old SSPX and Archbishop Lefebvre used to say and see how it applies to the SSPX in our time.
“To attend the ‘indult’ Mass is at least to approve implicitly and to encourage the work of the destruction of Catholic Tradition undertaken by the official hierarchy.” (Fr. Van Es)
Likewise, to attend the modern SSPX Mass is at least to approve implicitly and to encourage the betrayal of Catholic Tradition and the slide into liberalism and compromise undertaken by the SSPX hierarchy.
It is also means, at least implicitly, approving the work of the modern conciliar hierarchy with whom the SSPX have been working ever more closely and whom they no longer condemn.
“[The Indult Mass is a] means and bait to attract the traditional Catholics now considered as schismatics because they are no longer considered as “being in communion” with the present-day Rome, of liberal and modernist tendency.” (Fr. Van Es)
In our own time, the modernist infiltrators who are destroying the Church no longer consider the compromised SSPX as being “schismatic” or off-limits. Even the arch-modernist Pope Francis has decided to announce that he now provides jurisdiction for their confessions; their ordinations are also done with the approval of modernist Rome. Even SSPX marriages are performed by modernist Novus Ordo priests. SSPX leaders, for their part have said all sorts of flattering and obsequious things regarding the modernist authorities against whom the SSPX used to be fighting. To all intents and purposes, they can now be considered as being “in communion” once again by the present-day Rome of liberal and modernist tendencies, albeit still in a somewhat “canonically irregular” situation. That is how the modernist Romans consider them, and it is also how the outside world seems to see things. Small wonder then that they no longer talk about “neo-modernist” or “neo-Protestant” Rome or the “conciliar church” but rather speak about it as though it were one and the same as eternal Rome.
By the contrast, the Catholics who today are still considered as being “not in communion,” “schismatic,” “rebellious” and are the targets all the other epithets which used to be hurled at the SSPX, are undoubtedly those of what is called the Resistance. In our day, these are the Traditional Catholics who must not let themselves be baited or tempted with either Indult Masses or those of the SSPX.
“[The Indult Mass] constitutes a danger for the faith of the faithful, a danger which comes from the priests themselves who are celebrating it. Because to obtain this indult from the official hierarchy, these priests must fulfil the following conditions: ‘That it should be very clear that these priests have nothing to do with those who place in doubt... the doctrinal soundness of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI, in 1970 and that their position should be without any ambiguity and publicly known.’ ” (Fr. Van Es)
In our day, the SSPX Mass too constitutes a danger for the faith of the faithful, for the same reason. The SSPX’s change of position, from rejecting the legitimacy of the New Mass to accepting it, is a real one. It may not be as “clear and unambiguous” as the acceptance required by the Indult and one might still encounter an SSPX priest who didn’t get the memo or who is playing a game of pretending that he is still living in the year 2011. But the official corporate acceptance (“We declare that we accept…”) of the New Mass as “legitimately promulgated” by Paul VI, can be found in the April 2012 Doctrinal Declaration. It was signed, sealed and handed over to modernist Rome and can be found in the March 2013 issue of the SSPX’s
own internal bulletin, Cor Unum. What cannot be found anywhere is a corresponding repudiation, retraction, denial or rephrasing of that acceptance by a Superior General on behalf of the whole SSPX. Therefore, as the official position of the SSPX, it stands.
“In the hands of the official hierarchy, the Tridentine Mass serves therefore as a temporary means and bait to attract the traditional priests and people and to destroy at the same time the work of Catholic restoration, started by Archbishop Lefebvre, Bishop de Castro Mayer and their priests.” (Fr. Van Es)
In our own time, has not the compromised conciliar SSPX made great use of the Tridentine Mass to try to lure people away from the Resistance? How else does one explain the egregious articles and videos, noted in these pages and elsewhere, which play on the emotions of their audience, exhorting them to be grateful for their regular Tridentine Masses, etc.? Does not the unwillingness of the modern SSPX to spread itself thin, in the manner of the old SSPX, also play into this?
“Hundreds of priests, seminarians and faithful have been lured with the Tridentine Rite and now are made to forcibly return to the ranks and the spirit of the Council.” (Fr. Van Es)
With priests, some far less subtle means have been employed to stop them leaving the SSPX and joining the Resistance: threats, transfers, isolation, psychological torture, expulsion, destitution as well as the constant playing on their anxiety towards the perceived material discomfort. What is clear to any impartial observer is that all, priests, seminarians and faithful are being made “to return to the spirit of the Council.” That the SSPX can give its priests and faithful permission to take experimental “covid” injections or promote a Darwin-friendly cosmology which requires a wholly modernist interpretation of Sacred Scripture are two recent signs of this slide. That there is so little outcry or pushback visible from any SSPX priests or faithful in response to such things is itself another sign.
“This work of destruction continues by the approval of Indult Masses close to our important Mass centres... A good method to empty the latter or at least to prevent them from developing.” (Fr. Van Es)
Since this article first appeared in English in 1994, the SSPX around the world has seen many chapels close and even one of its seminaries (Goulburn, Australia). And yet in recent years it has not been the modernist Romans who are responsible for this “work of destruction” but the SSPX authorities themselves. With the approval of the General House, the British District has lost perhaps 40% of its Mass centres since the late-1990s. The SSPX priests, including the District Superior, tell the faithful of those closed chapels that they should go to the Indult Mass instead. To the modern SSPX it didn’t make sense for them to have a chapel in Portsmouth when the faithful could be sent instead to the Indult Mass said by the Franciscans in Gosport.
So the SSPX Masses and the Indult Masses are no longer the bitter rivals in competition with one another in the way they were when the Fr. Van Es article appeared; rather the SSPX see themselves as complementary, almost as another indult option to be added to the Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King and all the rest. The very small number of priests available to the Catholic Resistance prevents it from having anything like the impact that the SSPX used to have, and yet there is quite a bit of evidence that wherever the Resistance gains a foothold, both conciliar diocese and the SSPX react accordingly. Here is one example. When Resistance priests began making regular visits to a small group of faithful deep in rural Suffolk in 2016, the SSPX decided that after all they would be able to send a priest on regular trips up to that out-of-the-way part of the world, despite never having done so before, and despite the fact that it was not anywhere near any of their Mass circuits and the fact that they had just shut down their only Mass centre in the whole of East Anglia, in neighbouring Norfolk. As the years went by, the diocese likewise took more of an interest in the Traditional Mass and after a little while, the once-a-month Indult Mass was transformed into a dedicated Indult priory with daily Traditional Mass and two Masses on Sunday, located in a privately owned chapel in Suffolk. Coincidentally this very same chapel had not seen the Tridentine Mass once in all the years since the Council until the Resistance started using it in 2016. Rumour has it that the SSPX District Superior declined any interest in setting up a regular SSPX Mass there because it had already become “too closely associated with the Resistance.” Who knows if that is true, but if so it would be both very amusing and quite telling.
“To attempt to restore the Traditional Mass without considering the historical context of the crisis of the Faith is to become a blind instrument in the hands of the conciliar hierarchy.” (Fr. Van Es)
Is this not the point upon which the priests and faithful of the Resistance have been insisting since the Resistance began? Our fight is not merely about the Traditional Mass. It is about the whole crisis in the Church, it is about the Faith, and to place the Mass above the crisis of Faith
in order of importance is tantamount to betrayal. Many faithful were given the grace of understanding the crisis in the Church and the SSPX’s fight against modernism. Many faithful were given the grace of perceiving the gravity of the SSPX’s betrayal of that fight in 2012 and 2013.
And yet a significant number of those faithful, alas, chose not to openly oppose the SSPX.
Their motive for acting thus, in most cases it seems, was access to the Traditional Mass. Correspondingly, many priests who could see what had happened, but who chose not to openly oppose their superiors, seem to have had as their motive access to the chapel and the faithful who attend it. To paraphrase Fr. Van Es one last time, have they not, in effect, become blind instruments in the hands of the conciliar church?
What Conclusion Can We Draw From All This?
That the precept of attending Sunday Mass is obligatory for all Catholics who have reached the age of reason but that some may be excused particularly those who are only near Masses “of Pope Paul VI” or traditional Masses said under the “Indult” or the Masses of the present-day SSPX. Why? Firstly, because of the danger for the faith coming from the priests who celebrate or from the faithful who attend them; secondly, legitimisation is given to the new liturgy and finally an approval more or less implicit of the work of destruction of the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Tradition.
“When they affirm that they have not given up anything, it is false. They have given up the possibility of contradicting Rome. They cannot say anything now. They must remain silent because of the favours they have received, and it is now impossible for them to denounce the errors of the conciliar church. Very slowly they accept... From the point of view of ideas, they turn very gently and end up admitting the false ideas of the Second Vatican Council, because Rome has granted them some favours for Tradition. This is a very dangerous situation.” - Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre