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JMJ
For my reference I have collected the various declarations of the SSPX.
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Declaration of the SSPX's
2012 General Chapter
As announced in the press communiqué of the Society of St. Pius X’s General House on July 14, 2012, the members of the General Chapter sent a common statement to Rome. It has been published today.During the interview published at DICI on July 16, Bishop Bernard Fellay stated that this document was “the occasion to specify the (SSPX’s) road map insisting upon the conservation of the Society’s identity, the only efficacious means to help the Church to restore Christendom”. “For,” he said, “doctrinal mutism is not the answer to this “silent apostasy”, which even John Paul II denounced already in 2003.”
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 marvelous 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 times 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.
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DECLARATION OF THE SSPX'S
2006 GENERAL CHAPTER | ||||||||||||||||||
Courtesy of SSPX.org
For the glory of God, for the salvation of souls and for the true service of the Church, on the occasion of its Third General Chapter, held at Ecône in Switzerland, from July 3 to 15, 2006, the Priestly Society of St. Pius X declares its firm resolution to continue its action, with the help of God, along the doctrinal and practical lines laid down by its venerated founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Following in his footsteps in the fight for the Catholic Faith, the Society fully endorses his criticisms of the Second Vatican Council and its reforms, as he expressed them in his conferences and sermons, and in particular in his Declaration of November 21, 1974:
Contacts held with Rome over the last few years have enabled the Society to see how right and necessary were the two pre-conditions that it laid down, since they would greatly benefit the Church by re-establishing, at least in part, her rights to her own Tradition. Not only would the treasure of graces available to the Society no longer be hidden under a bushel, but the Mystical Body would also be given the remedy it so needs to be healed.
If, upon these pre-conditions being fulfilled, the Society looks to a possible debate on doctrine, the purpose is still that of making the voice of traditional teaching sound more clearly within the Church. Likewise, the contacts made from time to time with the authorities in Rome have no other purpose than to help them embrace once again that Tradition which the Church cannot repudiate without losing her identity. The purpose is not just to benefit the Society, nor to arrive at some merely practical impossible agreement. When Tradition comes back into its own, "reconciliation will no longer be a problem, and the Church will spring back to life".
On this long road to re-conquest, the Chapter encourages all members of the Society to live, as its statutes require, ever more intensely by the grace proper to it, namely, in union with the great prayer of the High Priest, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Let them be convinced, along with their faithful, that in this striving for an ever greater sanctification in the heart of the Church is to be found the only remedy for our present misfortunes, which is the Church being restored through the restoration of the priesthood.
The new language of the Second Vatican Council is being used to convey a new theology which contradicts what the Church has always taught. The Society has sought to lay the axe to the root of today's present crisis by bringing Rome back to sound doctrine but Rome has refused. Instead Rome desires a unity of communion without a unity of doctrine, a practical agreement, which the Society has consistently refused and that is why the Society has been marginalized.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
Current assessment of the Society's relations with Rome This letter is coming to you somewhat late. We did not wish it to reach you before we could give you news as accurate as possible on the state of our relations with Rome. It seems to us that the time has now come to assess the situation. Many rumors have been circulating, a number of them false. Also we are aware of how much is at stake, and how decisive it can be for our future. We will lay out here various aspects of the question.
Society marginalized because of its doctrinal stance
For our part, we have been marginalized by the authorities in Rome, not to say rejected, because of our refusal of Vatican II and the post-conciliar reforms, for reasons of doctrine.
How the new language of Vatican II affects doctrine
When we say that we refuse the Council, we do not thereby mean that we totally reject the letter of all the Conciliar documents, consisting as they do in large part of simple repetitions of what has already been said in the past. What we are attacking is a new language, introduced in the name of the “pastoral” Council. This new language, being vague and much less precise, conveys a different philosophy and it is the basis of a new theology. It rejects any stable way of looking at the essence of things, to base itself rather on the state of their existence at any given moment, which is bound to be changing, varied, and more difficult to grasp according as it varies. As change and movement are part of the life of all living things, so change will come to the forefront and be considered a necessary part of the Church. Dogmas previously untouchable then become liable to correction and improvement… They are shut into the age in which they were pronounced as though they ceased to be binding once that age was over… To insist on understanding them in the same sense and the same way they have always been understood becomes a thing of the past. The ensuing temptation to make an absolute out of the particular, out of the human person, becomes great… finally that human person, i.e. man, gets put in the center and God is pushed to one side. A new religion is dawning. Same words, different meanings The modernist is clever enough to avoid direct confrontation between the new and the old. He presents the new as though it were the enrichment of an under-nourished way of thinking now surpassed by the new concepts. Almost all words – “redemption”, “grace”, “revelation”, “sacrament”, “mystery”, take on a new meaning.
New liturgy Is man-centered not God-centered
In the Church’s life, this process is particularly striking in the case of the new liturgy, which in its physical movements centers on man, and is no longer hierarchically directed through the priest towards God. Sacrifice is no longer mentioned, being replaced by “Eucharist”, a word that used to apply only to the consecrated host: henceforth the emphasis is on the meal. New concept of religious liberty cannot stand up to wave of secularization In these very changes we see the origin of today’s collapse of what still remained of Christendom, and the cause of the present crisis of the Catholic Church. Religious liberty is radically incapable of standing up to the wave of secularization sweeping through the modern world, a world in effect without God, making itself into God: for, the creature once having cut off its dependence on its Creator in order to establish its autonomy and liberty, it has no further basis for its intrinsic and absolute dependence on its God. So to save the human person from the totalitarianism of the modern state, the creature has sought to establish that the person and its liberty are superior, at which point it can no longer reconcile this very real liberty with the absolute dependence on God. Then, perforce, sin, as the misfortune of the creature rebelling against its Creator, is no longer understood, the creature’s responsibility becomes very vague, and the Redemption, God’s answer to that misfortune, is turned inside out.
Since man is so great there is no room for God
The whole life of man becomes much easier; God’s commandments are consigned to oblivion ; all discipline, strictness, austerity and renunciation fade away. Once the human person’s greatness is affirmed in this way, his relation with his God, which is his religion, will take on a completely different look. This new look at the person and his acts seeks to be so positive, and such an effort is made to discover “seeds of the Word” in all directions, that the idea that everybody is saved is now firmly implanted in numbers of Catholics’ minds, and all the ecumenical celebrations and inter-religious declarations merely go to corroborating this new vision of life. The effect, if not the intention, is a frightening spread of the belief that it does not matter what religion one belongs to.
Truth dismissed as being old-fashioned and out of date
Hence, on our side, our firm attachment to everything that the Church taught even recently, to everything that used to guide Christian life but is now dismissed as being old-fashioned, out-of-date, antiquated, narrow-minded. We do not deny that a certain amount of change is part of any society’s life, which therefore includes the Church, but we state that the apple-tree’s life will produce apples, and that it is absurd to expect the changes bound up in the life of the apple-tree to suddenly produce coconuts.
Rome approaches the SSPX
The Christian life of the Society of St. Pius X is producing undeniable fruits of salvation, as even Rome recognizes. That there is a grave crisis in the Church, an appalling falling off in the preaching of doctrine, a lack of interest on the part of the Christian people, Rome also recognizes. That one of the motives of the Vatican’s approach to us may lie in these two considerations, is not to be excluded; and if Rome calls upon us as firemen to help put out the fire, we will not refuse our services, but before we get involved in the blaze we do ask for the gasline which is the source of the fire to be cut off! However, deep down, the Romans were coming to us for a different reason.
Rome wants a unity of communion without a unity of doctrine
On Rome’s side, they are at present concerned above all to establish unity. All their efforts are going in that direction. One bold, shocking, scandalous act follows another in their attempt to draw together Christians disunited and torn apart. The determination to overcome doctrinal differences by liturgical acts in common very much expresses this new ecumenical thrust. One cannot help thinking they wish to give secondary importance to questions of truth in order to get on with living. Howsoever that be, there is an explicit desire to overcome doctrinal differences by joint action. Here is probably to be seen the motive for the Vatican’s approach to us last autumn. We are being offered a practical solution not to be held up by points of dispute. Rome neither denies that there are points to be disputed, nor does it refuse to deal later with such questions, but it is inviting us to “re-enter the fold” without further delay. As a sign of good-will, we are being offered a solution acceptable in itself, in fact a solution which would suit us down to the ground from a purely practical point of view.
Reasons why the Society cannot accept a practical agreement
Yet it is an offer we must refuse, for the following reasons: the whole history of the Society of St. Pius X shows how much we are a sign of contradiction, how much our existence can raise violent reactions, even hateful reactions from Catholics, especially the hierarchy. The attitude of many bishops who are open to all kinds of ecumenism on the one hand, but treat us on the other hand with a harshness that has no name, is profoundly contradictory. We suffer from this situation through the division to be found in almost all our families. But this division cannot be healed by a merely practical agreement. We embody the contradiction without meaning to do so, and a practical agreement will not change this basic situation. The solution to the problem is to be sought elsewhere. Deep down, Rome does not understand our attitude towards the New Mass and the conciliar reforms. Rome holds our attitude to be the manifestation of a rigid narrow-mindedness. Whenever we try to tackle the deep-down problem, we find ourselves every time up against a brick wall: we are not allowed to call in question the reforms of the Council; we might be allowed a certain degree of criticism, but certainly not accusations so broad and grave as we keep on raising. In other words, if we accepted Rome’s solution today, we would find ourselves up against exactly the same problems tomorrow.
Rome is missing the point
For our part, we are and we mean to remain Catholic. Our seeming separation from Rome is of minor importance compared with the major problem shaking the Church to her foundations, and of which we are despite ourselves merely an outstanding sign. For Rome’s part, to settle the question of the seeming separation is of primary importance, and takes priority over all else; doctrinal questions will be talked about later. Through this pursuit of unity, Rome has indeed changed its position towards us, it is indeed seeking for a solution, but as far as we are concerned it is missing the point. For sure, we wish to see this crisis come to an end. For sure, we wish to cease being opposed to Rome. But that calls for a different approach altogether. Rome’s failure to understand our position is such that if today we accepted their agreement, tomorrow we would have to undergo exactly the same treatment as St. Peter’s Fraternity, which is muzzled, and being led where it does not want to go, slowly but surely towards Vatican II and the liturgical reform. If St. Peter’s Fraternity and the other “Ecclesia Dei” movements still manage to survive, as best they can, they will owe it to the firmness of our stand.
Rome seeks to uphold the Council at all costs
Certainly we are grateful for everything well-meaning in Rome’s approach, but it is our judgment that things are not yet ripe for us to be able to go ahead. The reasons we were given for their refusing to grant our pre-conditions for re-establishing trust, are highly significant: “It would raise too much opposition, it would mean giving up the whole work of the Council”.
The Society desires a unity based on truth
There is always an immense amount of work on our hands, which is why we would by no means refuse a true discussion with Rome of the real questions, but we have not yet reached that point. We too have a profound desire for the Unity of the Mystical Body; Our Lord’s prayer “that all be one” is our prayer too, but while the practice of charity can greatly help to promote the cause of unity, nevertheless it is only when minds are agreed on the truth that wills can be united in seeking the common goal apprehended as such.
Citation of St. Pius X's Encyclical “Haerent Animo”
“Our eyes raised to Heaven, we often renew on behalf of all the clergy, Jesus Christ’s own entreaty: Father sanctify them. We rejoice in the thought that a very large number of faithful of all classes, taking to heart their clergy’s good and the good of the Church, join us in this prayer; it is no less agreeable to us to know that there are also many generous souls not only inside convents and monasteries but also living in the world who offer themselves unceasingly as holy victims to God for this purpose. May the Most High accept as a sweet perfume their pure and sublime prayers, and may He not disdain our own most humble entreaties; may He in His mercy and providence come to our aid, we beg Him, and may He pour out upon the clergy those treasures of grace, charity and every virtue enclosed in the most pure Heart of his dearly beloved Son”. (St. Pius X, Hærent Animo)
Prayer recommendations
We strongly recommend to your prayers what we have no doubt you have already been greatly praying for, that the Church recover her true visage, serene, eternal, shining with the holiness of God and setting the earth on fire with the love of a God who so loved us. May Our Lady who presides so clearly over the destiny of the Church at this beginning of a millennium protect you and bless you with the Child Jesus, “cum prole pia”, as the Liturgy says.
† Bernard Fellay
Feast of St. Pius V May 5, 2001
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