SSPX: No Problem taking CV Vaccine from Aborted Fetal Lines

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Hard to believe it's true but here it is in their own words, citing as an authority, the Conciliar Church's pronouncement from 2005 [under Benedict XVI] that Catholics can take a Covid vaccine that is derived from or contains aborted fetal cells:

sspx.org/en/news-events/news/can-catholic-good-conscience-receive-coronavirus-vaccine-62007

As one reads it- it reads exactly as a modernist hit piece: Believe what we tell you;  you have no other choice; our experts tell us its fine to take the vaccine derived from aborted fetal cells; 'the [Conciliar] Church has provided prudent guidance' on this issue, no need to look elsewhere, etc.


Here is Fr. Hewko's excellent reminder that the Church [of Tradition- not the Conciliar Church] does NOT allow for this abomination [beginning at the relevant minute mark]:

[Stone]

Here is a transcription of the article by Fr. Peter Scott Fr. Hewko references in the above sermon, taken from The Angelus, June 2000 [many thanks to the member Deus Vult for providing us with this resource!]:


Question:
Is it licit to allow one's children to be vaccinated for rubella with vaccine manufactured with the help of fetal cells from aborted babies?

Answer:
There is no doubt that it is illicit to prepare vaccinations by the use of cell cultures from aborted babies.  It certainly is a very troublesome situation if the only way of obtaining such necessary vaccines is from cultures prepared from the by-products of abortions.

The question here is whether or not it is permissible to use such vaccines if they are the only ones that are readily available.   Can the principles of double effect be applied, that is when only a good effect is directly willed, and a bad effect is simply permitted, but not directly willed in itself?  The good effect in this case is the immunization against the infectious disease.  The bad effect is the abortion, the killing of the innocent.  It is never permitted to do something evil in order that a good can come of it, that it, it is never permitted for the good effect to come from the bad effect.  However it is possible to permit an evil, that is not directly willed in itself, and this is called the indirect voluntary.

Here one could argue that the person who seeks the vaccination does not will the abortion, but simply uses the cells that are obtained as a consequence .   However, the vaccine is not just an indirect effect of the abortion.   There is in fact a direct line of causality, from the abortion, to the available fetal cells to the development of the vaccine, to the immunization.  Therefore, the immunization is a direct consequence of the abortion, and not just an indirect effect.  Consequently, it would be immoral to use a vaccine that one knew was developed in fetal cells, not matter how great the advantage to be procured.

Moreover, even if it were to be admitted that the vaccination is not a direct consequence of the abortion, for the abortion is not performed directly in order to obtain fetal cells, and those who use them might claim, as for themselves, that they do not directly will the abortion in itself, the Catholic sense tells the faithful that they can never use the by-products of abortions for any reason at all, for by so doing they promote the mass murder of the innocent which is destroying modern society and all sense of morality.  There must always be a proportionate reason to use the indirect voluntary, that is to permit something evil which is not directly willed.  Here the reasonable gain obtained by the use of the double effect (if it truly were indirectly willed only, which it is not) would not in any way be proportionate to the horrible evil of abortion and the scandal would be immense.

If  a parent is not aware of the fact that fetal cells are being used in the culture of the vaccines that he or she is giving to his/her children, then clearly there is no moral fault involved. However, if he/she is aware of this, then he/she is morally obliged to refuse such vaccinations on principle, until such time as they can be obtained from cultures which are morally licit. Furthermore, if civil law should make such vaccinations obligatory (e.g., for attendance at school), then the parent would be obliged to object in conscience to such immoral means of vaccinating their children.

Moreover, it is not permissible to remain in willful ignorance on such a question. If there is a positive reason to suspect that fetal cells are indeed involved in the production of the vaccine, then a person is morally obliged to clarify the matter, and find out if this is indeed true or not.

[Stone]

Even 'conservative' Novus Ordo bishops know that we cannot take vaccines derived from fetal lines -their strength in standing up against such vaccines shames the Conciliar SSPX who is going along with the globalist agenda:

California bishop warns Catholics not to take COVID vaccine connected in any way to aborted babies
‘If it’s using objectionable material, we can’t use it, we can’t avail ourselves of it,’ Fresno Bishop Joseph Brennan stated.

FRESNO, California, November 23, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The Catholic bishop of Fresno has reaffirmed the immorality of all vaccines, including COVID vaccines, that at any stage of production have any involvement with aborted babies, calling on Catholics to follow his lead and refuse to take such vaccines.

Bishop Joseph V. Brennan issued his message on the diocesan website via a video titled “A message on the COVID-19 Vaccine.”

Bishop Brennan prefaced the video with the words “I’m going to rain on a parade with this message, it’s the vaccine parade.” He clarified that the Church is not against vaccines per se, but that “we must always and only pursue vaccines that are ethical and morally acceptable.”

The bishop highlighted the “global effort” currently underway to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, but also noted that there are moral concerns regarding the various vaccines, which is his duty as a bishop to expose.

“As your bishop, as a teacher, as a believer in the ultimate value of life and how that forms and fashions our conscience and our choices, there are some very serious problems with a number of the vaccines, including the Pfizer vaccine,” he said.

Bishop Brennan continued, “If material has been used that is unacceptable on a moral level in any stage of the process for the development of a vaccine, that is from design … the testing … the production … any stage, anything in between, if it’s using objectionable material, we can’t use it, we can’t avail ourselves of it.”

He then clarified the phrase “objectionable material,” explaining that it referred to “some stem cell lines, derived from material from babies who’ve been aborted, whose lives were taken.”

These cell lines developed from aborted babies are involved in the vaccine process of many vaccine producers: “several of the vaccines that are being developed, a number of them are objectionable on that level at some stage, either in testing, development or production.”

Catholics have a duty to refuse availing of such “biological material,” Brennan said, as he drew on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2008 document Dignitatis Persona.

Brennan presented the text to his viewers, noting that “it needs to be stated that there is a duty to refuse to use such ‘biological material’ even when there is no close connection between the researcher and the actions of those who performed the artificial fertilization or the abortion, or when there was no prior agreement with the centers in which the artificial fertilization took place.”

The text continues, “This duty springs from the necessity to remove oneself, within the area of one’s own research, from a gravely unjust legal situation and to affirm with clarity the value of human life.”

Bishop Brennan added that this does not extend merely to researchers, but also to “all of us.”

“I won’t be able to take a vaccine,” stated the bishop, “I just won’t … and I encourage you not to, if it was developed with material from stem cells that are derived from a baby that was aborted, or material that was cast off from artificial insemination of a human embryo. It’s morally unacceptable for us.”

Bishop Brennan also criticized those who seek to legitimize use of immoral vaccines by noting a degree of separation between the user and the abortion: “There are some Catholic theologians who are saying ‘we can do this, it’s acceptable’ if for example, it’s only used in the testing phase … because it’s so far removed from the original evil act.”

Such reasoning, the bishop explained, justifying “a participation on a moral level in an abortion, in a taking of a human life unjustly, is too close for me, too close for comfort - There are some things in our moral life that are in fact black and white, they’re not gray.”

He also compared the attempted justification of immoral vaccines, due to the distance to the abortion, with the current discussion on racism, noting that “some people are literally feeling a personal responsibility somehow for things that happened in the year 1619 … and how we are responsible somehow, after 400 years.”

“How come we make that connection after 400 years, but we don’t make the connection after 40 years with babies who were deprived of life, and whose very raw material for life … has been used to perhaps benefit some other human being.”

“We can’t do it, brothers and sisters,” Brennan concluded, “we must always do the right, we must always do the just thing, we must always do the thing that promotes life.”

Dr. Helen Watt of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, England, told the Catholic Herald that the Pfizer vaccine “makes no use of a foetal cell-line in the production process itself, and no use in the design,” but that “(o)ne of the confirmatory lab tests on the vaccine did sadly involve an old foetal cell-line.” The Children of God for Life organization says the Pfizer vaccine is tested using the HEK 293 cell line, which is derived from kidney tissue taken from a healthy baby who was aborted in the Netherlands in the 1970s.

Children of God for Life also says the Moderna vaccine has been tested on a cell line of an aborted child.

Both Pfizer and Moderna’s recently announced COVID-19 vaccines use messenger RNA, a technology so novel that it has yet to be approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration.

Children’s Health Defense wrote in August that the method of delivering such vaccines into the body was particularly difficult, and relied upon “biotech ‘carrier systems’ involving lipid nanoparticles (LNPs).”

Moderna stated that “there can be no assurance that our LNPs will not have undesired effects.”

[SAguide]

Update:

Dec. 4, 2020 article on SSPX website about the vaccine issue:
https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/it-...cine-62290

Article is by Fr. Arnaud Sélégny - written like a politician.

 Already pointed out in this thread is the the deceit of the SSPX  by only referring to a 2005 SSPX article which basically defended the use of vaccines using aborted fetal cells.  The new-SSPX hides the old SSPX stance, completely ignoring the SSPX June 2000 Angelus magazine article which stated clearly the moral line Catholics must abide by. 
Nov. 10, 2020 was the article that Fr. Hewko refers to and commented on in a sermon Nov. 22:  Sermon

Followed by a conference with Fr. Hewko and Fr. Rafael:  Conference

[Stone]

Interesting article: Warning: SSPX Shock Approval For Covid-19 Vaccine – Catholics Beware…

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Taken from The Recusant - Issue 55 [Eastertide 2021]

SSPX Continues to Give Covid ‘Vaccines’ the Green Light

Readers will recall (see Issue 54, p.18 ff.) Fr. Sélégny’s disgraceful article by which the SSPX informed the faithful that: “As cooperation is only distant, and the reason given is serious
enough,” [both highly dubious premises, to put it mildly!] “it is possible in these cases to use such a vaccine.” The article was published in English on the US District website. It did not take very long to find the original in French on the French district website. But it does not end there. Let us take a look at what the SSPX elsewhere in the world has been saying.


1. Germany  

From our sources in Germany comes a recording of the following, spoken in the pulpit, at Mass:

“Our District Superior has sent out the following announcement for priests to read out to you. Over the past couple of weeks texts have been doing the rounds which have been causing great uncertainty amongst the faithful. Is there any truth in what these texts say, is what they say wrong? It is true that one can be sceptical towards new and insufficiently tested vaccines. It is however wrong that it is definitely a sin to allow oneself to be vaccinated. The statement that one is under no circumstances permitted to allow oneself to be vaccinated, even though one is going to lose one’s dwelling, one’s job or even one’s life [!?] cannot be justified from a moral theological perspective. Those who continue to make that claim are neglecting the necessary distinctions and are basing their position on unproven grounds. In other words, this means that in certain circumstances one is allowed to let oneself be vaccinated. 

Stuttgart, 12th February, 2021

Fr. Stefan Pfluger (District Superior)”

Note the equivocal language. “Yes, you are allowed to be sceptical...” - well, thanks very much for that permission! How generous! What a pity it doesn’t actually mean anything in practice! What’s the use in being “sceptical” if that isn’t allowed to affect or alter how you act? You can maintain a sceptical attitude, even as the needle goes into your arm! Great! As
for “losing one’s life,” let’s calm down a little, shall we? We’re not there yet! Though if one were offered a straight-up choice between vaccination and death, what better proof that the
medical authorities and vaccine advocates are acting in bad faith and don’t have your interests at heart? Is that what he meant? Or did he perhaps mean “If you don’t get vaccinated you’ll
die of covid!”..? That is just ridiculous.

Notice the focussing on whether or not it is a sin. This is something we really haven’t talked about because it is rather missing the point. I know that it would be a sin for me to get the socalled vaccine, but I can never be sure how much anyone else knows or understands, and since it is always possible that someone had the vaccine without realising at all that there was anything wrong, it is always possible that many people are committing no sin at all. Hence it serves no useful purpose to discuss it. If there are SSPX faithful unaware of any reason for not having the vaccine, however, then that most certainly is something which is the fault of priests like Fr. Pfluger and will count heavily against them when the time comes. Maybe if the SSPX hadn’t dropped the ball, the faithful wouldn’t need to be circulating “texts” about the “vaccines” amongst themselves? 

“In certain circumstances one is allowed to be vaccinated” might as well be “everyone can get the vaccine regardless of your circumstances,” since that is how it will be taken. We all know fallen human nature, and we all know the constant temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil. Peer pressure, societal pressure, human respect and all the rest mean (sadly) that many faithful will be looking for an excuse to do something which they suspect may be wrong but which they lack the courage to confront. If the SSPX hedges its bets and gives an equivocal permission, it doesn't matter how much umm-ing and ah-ing, how many “warnings” and “distinctions” accompany the permission. Many people will hear only the permission. The rest might as well not have been said. “In certain circumstances one is allowed” to be vaccinated, means, in effect, “You can get the vaccine.” That is all many people will hear.


2. Great Britain

The same is equally true, alas, of Fr. Robert Brucciani’s article in the Jan-Feb issue (p.16) of the British District newsletter (Ite Missa Est - “Go Away! It’s all over!”), to which we alluded last time. The article almost feels as though it was written by more than one person. It has so many negative things to say about these so-called covid “vaccines” that the conclusion seems to jar with the rest of the article. Furthermore, the basis on which the conclusion rests, that the modernist Vatican in the days of Benedict XVI (that arch-modernist purveyor of liberalism and heresy) gave aborted baby vaccines the green light in 2005 is certainly not the sort of thing one would ever have heard from the SSPX of yesteryear. Since when did the modernist-occupied Vatican become the last word in right and wrong? Furthermore, the document from the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2005, to which Fr. Brucciani refers was something spoken of as a significant move away from the anti-abortion stand of John Paul II by ‘conservative’ novus ordo Catholics at the time.

Fr. Brucciani’s article asks a series of questions as to whether certain “circumstances” pertain, the answers to which ought surely to rule out any notion of any of the faithful voluntarily receiving the jab. The “circumstances” and “additional circumstances” are as follows [our observations are in square brackets].

“1. The illness is grave. [It isn’t.]

2. There are no alternative vaccines. [But if the illness isn’t grave, then surely it doesn’t matter whether or not there are alternative vaccines available. Covid has a higher survival rate than the flu and one doesn’t have to get the flu jab every year - why does one have to have any vaccine at all? Why is the unspoken assumption here that one has to have a vaccine of some description?]

3. One has vigorously protested the use of aborted foetal cells.” [Any “protest” is going to be ineffectual at best, no matter how “vigorous”. What are people supposed to do, write a letter to the Times? The most effective “protest” is refusing to have the “vaccine”. If you take that off the table by giving people permission who might otherwise have refused, you’ve just spiked your own guns...]

 

Following on immediately from this, some “additional circumstances” are listed as:

“4. Governments, media and multinational corporates are working hard to establish a fundamentally anti-Christian New World Order with the culture of death at its heart. The global imposition of an abortion-tainted vaccine is part of this work. [Well said. Quite true. Given which, it is all the more surprising that you are about to give permission to go along with their agenda, bow to their pressure, and thus undermine resistance to their nefarious plans.] 

5. A rapid development of a vaccine increases the risk of adverse side-effects. [...but we can go ahead and get it anyway? Or only the elderly and vulnerable? Again, this doesn’t make sense. What you say is true. So why the permission at the end of the article?] 

6. There may be onerous penalties imposed on those who refuse the vaccine such as dismissal from work or even the removal of children by the authorities.” [“There may be”..? Are there, in fact, at this moment in time? And if such penalties appear in the future, how about saying that you don’t want to condemn too harshly anyone who gives in, but that you urge everyone to stand strong and do what’s right regardless of the penalties, and then leave it at that? But no.

Indeed, this all sounds a little familiar - perhaps Fr. Brucciani and Fr. Pfluger both received the same memo from Menzingen? Let us say again: if these people are prepared to go to such lengths, doesn’t that tell us something? And what kind of a wimpy spirit is this, telling people to get ready to give in, when it’s still voluntary and the penalties described above haven’t even begun yet! Why couldn’t the SSPX simply say “We urge everyone to resist the pressure to be vaccinated for as long as they are able”…?

If you think that sounds like a lot of equivocation and double-talk, you’re not wrong. The conclusion which follows is this:

“In light of these concrete circumstances, the vaccine developed from aborted foetal cells might be received without sin (a) by a member of the vulnerable group when no alternative vaccine is available and after protest or (b) if the penalty for refusing the vaccine is so onerous as to threaten personal or family livelihood and after protest.”

Notice it is about whether the vaccine can be “received without sin” - wrong focus. People can do truly awful things without sin if they are sufficiently ignorant. Whether and to what degree one commits a sin is not the question. The question ought to be “Should I, ought I to get the vaccine, Father?” And the answer is simple. “No. Do everything you can to avoid getting it. If they come after us and start persecuting us, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But at the moment it’s still voluntary, so no.” How hard is that to tell people?

As to point a), anyone who has seen friends, family, work colleagues et al getting the jab will know that “vulnerable group” is an alarmingly elastic category. Rather like “essential worker”
anyone can contrive to claim that they fall into that category. Do you visit grandma every week? Well then, you need to get the vaccine! And if it only meant elderly or very ill people
themselves, then surely that is all the more reason not to inject them with an untested new technology with potentially serious side-effects, made with the “fruits” of murder of the innocent unborn babies and which is being pushed onto us on the basis of a lie by people who want there to be fewer of us alive on the face of the earth.

As to point b), if you cause everyone to give in when there are no penalties, or only very light ones, then you in effect hasten our defeat and are helping to bring about the day when there is no longer any opposition and the “onerous penalties” can begin in earnest. As to one’s livelihood, remember that everything you have God gave you. You didn’t really earn it. You ought to be prepared to give it all back to Him. Do you really think He will let you starve? Does He really want you to participate in something you regard as wrong just so that you can keep your measly paycheck? That somehow doesn’t sound right.

The most startling thing about the Ite Missa Est take on whether you can get the jab, is that the very same article points out that it is untested and potentially harmful, and that its rollout is part of a sinister New World Order agenda being imposed on us from above - but they still say that you can have it! In some ways this is less excusable than Fr. Robinson or Fr. Pfluger telling people they can have the vaccine. If you already know how bad it is and what’s really going on and yet you still say that it’s OK for people to get the jab, there must be some
serious pressure going on behind the scenes. Who knows.

And once again, human nature is always to push the limits of what is acceptable, what we can get away with. Many faithful will be seeking an excuse to give in and get the jab; more will do so when inconveniences or penalties, however light, start to be felt. They will be looking for an excuse, looking for a perceived permission. You can dress up your permission with words like “if” and “might” and “may” and “protest” but in the end there is only one word which many people will hear: “yes”.


3. The Superior General

Dated Feb. 2021, the letter opens with the following words:

“Currently, we are living in an unusual, almost unprecedented moment in history, due to the coronavirus crisis and all its repercussions. As in such a situation, a thousand questions arise, to which there would be a thousand answers, or more. It would be utopian to pretend to provide a solution to each problem in particular, and that is not the purpose of these few considerations.”

“There’s lots of questions..” means: ‘We could give you a better understanding, but we won’t because we’re afraid of being labelled conspiracy theorists.’ Can you instinctively feel what’s coming next? 

“Rather, we would like to analyse here a danger that is more serious, in a certain sense, than all the evils that currently afflict humanity:”

More serious than having world communism imposed on us based on a lie? What could it be!? Could it be the danger of twisting Sacred Scripture to fit one’s own pet “theories” perhaps? Of course not. Think back to what Fr. Robinson was saying about covid lockdowns a few months ago, and you might get it. That’s right. That’s what’s coming. Fr. Pagliarani is about to copy Fr. Paul Robinson’s homework. Cut away the fluff and that is what he says. 

“Fears that are too human First of all, there is the fear of the epidemic, as such. … Then there is the spectre of the economic crisis. … To all this is finally added the dread of the loss of individual liberties, which men have enjoyed until now. … Let us only say that their common basis is fundamentally natural, purely human…” 

Did I imagine the state forcibly shutting the churches and forbidding the public celebration of Mass backed by force of the law? What is “purely human” supposed to mean in this context..? He continues:

“However, if we analyse this fear and the behaviour it provokes in depth, we paradoxically find subterfuges similar to those used by the pagans of ancient times to explain any phenomenon that escaped them. That ancient world, certainly cultivated, civilised and organised, but unfortunately ignorant of the Truth, resorted to monsters, gods of all kinds, and above all to crude myths, to portray what it could not understand. Today, we are witnessing similar reactions: in the face of fear, in the face of the uncertainty of the future, a whole series of explanations is born, going in all directions, systematically contradictory to each other, and intermingled to no end.”

So… let me get this straight. People who are “afraid” because of what’s going on right now (which means, one supposes, those wicked evil conspiracy theorists) are like the pre-Christian pagans? We’re just inventing imaginary monsters and crude myths, is that right? 

“Their inconsistency is evident by the fact that they are continually superseded, in the space of a few hours or a few weeks, by explanations that are more in demand, more refined, seemingly more convincing, but not necessarily truer.”

This is obviously a gross exaggeration, but let’s give it to him, for argument’s sake. Here’s a thought - perhaps if we weren’t continually being lied to by the media and government, there would be no market for these “contradictory explanations”? And obviously some of the things one sees on the internet about the covid lockdown conspiracy are just crazy. But are they all? 
 
Does that mean we should just accept the lie? Perhaps that is not what Fr. Pagliarani is trying to say, but if he’s not trying to say that we should just all accept it, then he’s doing a very bad job at presenting his thinking clearly!

“We are faced with genuine myths, where real elements are mixed with fictitious stories, without being able to grasp their limits. And we see a great yearning being born for some miraculous solution, a utopian solution, capable of suddenly dispelling the thick fog and resolving all our problems.”

Hold on a moment! Maybe this is a clever ruse. Maybe what he really means is that the covid “pandemic” is the myth? Maybe the “miraculous solution” to which he refers is the vaccine? “It is a bit like the ancient cry of confusion, anguish and despair that reappears, after two thousand years, in a humanity that has become pagan again.”

There’s that comparison again.

“And it could not be otherwise: it brings out, for those who can see, how this godless humanity is helpless and doomed to madness. Above all, it is remarkable that modern man who has lost his faith, and therefore no longer believes, is by the same token willing to believe everything without real discernment.”

Yes, one notices that quite a bit. People who like to think of themselves as intelligent “critical thinkers” and who would never believe in the Resurrection, for instance, nevertheless fall for fairy stories about billions of years just because the mainstream media and some men with fancy titles (who refer to themselves collectively as “science”) say so. It is indeed remarkable.

“But as far as we are concerned, are we sure that we are completely immune to this spirit?” 

Good point. Maybe someone should write to him about Fr. Paul Robinson? He must not be aware of what that priest has been going about teaching for the past three years.

“Of course, the three fears we have just mentioned are understandable, and even legitimate to a certain extent. What is not legitimate is to let these fears prevent and stifle any supernatural considerations, and above all compromise the possibility of benefiting from this ordeal.”

“Benefitting from the ordeal” is where this definitely begins to sound like those truly awful videos put out by the SSPX’s US district. Their message was all about how we should simply roll over and accept the New World Order because we can benefit spiritually from lockdown, etc. Now, of course, the second part is true - we can benefit spiritually from it. But the fallacy is in saying that therefore it is not an evil and we ought not to try to change the situation. 

“After all, let us never forget that we only remain in reality and in truth if we look at this situation through the eyes of our faith: Nothing escapes God and His Divine Providence. It is certain that, above and beyond the contingencies that strike us, God has a precise plan.”

True. God’s plan includes, for example, allowing the anti-Christ to rule the world for three and-a-half years, as the Fathers of the Church tell us (cf. Daniel - that he will rule “for a time and times and half a time” = a year plus two years plus half a year). That doesn’t mean that we welcome his reign or accept that it has to happen right now, or that we won’t fight against it  and try to bring about the reign of Christ the King instead. God’s plan also included allowing England to fall to the Protestant so-called “Reformation”. But look how many Saints and martyrs fought to prevent that from happening and to turn things back to the way they should be.

More concretely, what would Our Blessed Lord tell us … ‘Am I not the master of life and death? Do you think a virus can exist without Me? That governments can make laws without Me being the supreme master? Tell me: what is the worst thing that can happen to you, during this storm, if I am with you in the boat?’ ”

The worst thing that could happen to us, arguably, is that we give in to human respect, that we go along to get along and stop putting the Faith and the rights of Christ the King first. Surely the worst thing to befall us is not merely the dethroning of Christ the King, but that we are complicit in it by our silence and lack of action. What we must all object to strenuously is not so much the “Don’t worry, Jesus is still in charge” spiel, but more the fact that Fr. Pagliarani appears to be using that as an excuse for not opposing the evil before us. It is, as we have mentioned before, a charter for the indolent. 

“God is in charge, so don’t bother doing anything.” There is a fairly obvious flaw in that line of reasoning! Pray as though the outcome depends on God, but work as though the outcome depends on you, St. Augustine tells us. “...are we really looking at things through the eyes of our faith, which allow us to interpret every event of our daily life under the light of faith? … Are the eternal answers that our Catholic faith offers us sufficient? Or do we feel the need to dilute them with those continuously updated answers that we can find on the internet?”

There we have it folks! It might have been written by Fr. Paul Robinson or even Fr. Yves Le Roux in 2013. Don’t listen to those rumours and conspiracy theories on the internet, go back to sleep. Forget about what’s going on out there, just be ‘spiritual.’ Otherwise, if you insist that there’s some sort of conspiracy or something bad going on, you’re just not seeing things “through the eyes of our faith”. Imagine being the sort of person to fall for that, imagine being this lobotomised. Clearly Leo XIII who wrote an entire encyclical against Freemasonry and Pius IX who tried to get the secret masonic document “Alta Vendita” published as widely as possible, and all the other anti-masonic Popes who warned us of a well-organised long-term conspiracy to overthrow Christian civilisation, clearly they all must have been lacking faith.

Perhaps they just weren’t able to see things through the eyes of faith? Clearly the “eternal answers” weren’t sufficient for them so they had to “dilute them” with their conspiracy theories and “updates” about the activities of the lodge..! “As the months have gone by, has our confidence in Our Lord Jesus Christ increased? Or have they contributed to our self-withdrawal and our sense of hopelessness?” 

Wrong questions. Has our confidence in the SSPX increased? Is it perhaps the realisation that we can’t rely on the SSPX any longer that has contributed to the hopelessness many now feel? “So as for us, let us not lose hope, which is based neither on our efforts or abilities, nor on our analyses – however pertinent they may be – but on the infinite merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Strictly speaking, yes, our “hope” is in Our Lord. However what is being implied throughout this letter is more than just that and is in fact the fallacy of false dichotomy or bifurcation (see p.19). Finding out the truth, via the internet, about what is happening to the world right now and placing one’s hope in Our Lord are not two alternatives, they are not mutually exclusive. You can do both. It’s almost as though Fr. Pagliarani believes the fake media narrative about there being a “pandemic” or “epidemic” and wants you to believe it too...

“This is the genuine way out of the present crisis, without waiting for the end of the epidemic!”

Oh.