Swiss Bishop Bernard Fellay, Heir of Archbishop Lefebvre

This is an excerpt taken from the Recusant article:  The Four Marks and the Death of the SSPX

The attack on the Apostolicity of the SSPX began at least twenty years ago. 1994 was the year in which Bishop Fellay became Superior General. (As it happens, Archbishop Lefebvre advised against a bishop being the Superior General, not because a Bishop can’t be a Superior General – he can be – but because in our unusual situation in the crisis in the Church, there is a danger that we begin to look on that Bishop in the wrong way. There is a danger that we begin to look on him as “our Bishop”. With the benefit of hindsight, Archbishop Lefebvre was very wise, because that is exactly what happened. The Superior General is supposed to be there for the purpose of making all the boring administrative duties, rather like the CEO of a company. Because he’s a Bishop we start to think of him as the teacher of ‘our truth,’ the one who gives us jurisdiction, who gives us the right to hear confessions and do marriages, etc.)

And when Bishop Fellay became Superior General he decided “We need to look after our priests more. Too many of them are going to burn out. They need better treatment, an easier life.” It sounds superficially very plausible, like all dangerous lies there is some truth in it. But it led to undermining the spirit of the priesthood. If you look at the martyrology, with all the Saints who were not martyrs, Saints like St. Alphonsus Ligouri for example, for them it does not say: “He was a good man who ate three square meals a day, always took his medication on time and was in bed by 10pm every night no matter what. He had a good work life balance with enough leisure time... etc” No. It usually ends with something like: “...Until, worn out by his labours and exertions on behalf of souls, he fell asleep in the Lord.”

Before 1994 the SSPX was spreading all over the world, going to new countries, setting up new Mass centres, new chapels everywhere, answering the calls of the faithful. And it wasn’t necessarily very many faithful. A new Mass centre would open somewhere and it would often begin with maybe only six faithful, with the priest travelling a long way to get there. So the thinking was: ‘We need to scale back and consolidate.’ Of course, it’s true, you can burn out if you’re run ragged all the time, it’s true you do need a certain balance between external apostolate and the internal. But it created a new spirit in the SSPX, and now almost twenty years later, priests refuse to say more than one Mass on Sunday. There are now some priory chapels where you’ll see the priest say the main Mass on the main altar and another priest saying Mass on the side altar and they go to breakfast together afterwards... and in the meantime there are 5, 10, 15 chapels round about where they don’t have Mass. In Winona, the new formation which they give the priests has a shift of emphasis to the way it used to be in the SSPX: you need to take care of yourself first before you can take care of others. This attitude destroys the spirit of the priesthood.


FIVE MASSES ON SUNDAY

To take just one example, before 1994 it was well known that there were some priests in America who would say five Masses, each one in a different location, every Sunday. Those priests who were ‘lazy’ would ‘only’ be saying three Masses every Sunday. Fr. Pazat used to say his first two Masses in El Paso, Texas; then he would get on a plane and fly 600 or 800 miles to Alberqureque New Mexico and say his third Mass there; then he would get on another plane and fly another 800 miles to Denver, Colorado and say his fourth Mass; then he would get in a car and drive an hour-and-a-half North, to Fort Collins, and say the fifth Mass. Every single Sunday. Fr. Bolduc used to say his first Mass in St. Mary’s Kansas. He had a pilot who would fly him around in a little crop duster, a Cessna 172, so he would fly to Wichita and say his second Mass, and then fly to Kansas City and say the third Mass, then he would fly to St. Louis and say the fourth Mass, then he would drive to Mexico Missouri and say the fifth Mass, and then he would fly back to St. Mary’s on Monday morning. Every week.

So they said “That’s too much! It’s excessive!” And it probably was. But from ‘excessive’ we’ve gone to the other extreme.

In 1994, the year when Bishop Fellay became the Superior, there were 27 priests in the US District, and 105 chapels and 25 schools. Today, twenty years later, there are around 90 priests in the US District and 103 chapels and 22 schools. So the Apostolic has certainly diminished. But we still have newsletters which say “Opening new school!”; “Opening new chapel!”; “Building new Church!” so it looks like we’re alive and vibrant. But at the same time it’s not telling you about the ones that close, or the ones that are being cut back from Mass every week to Mass every two weeks, or from every two weeks to once a month. Our four chapels in Alaska are now down to two chapels in Alaska, four chapels in Hawaii are now down to one chapel in Hawaii, and so on.

And from that time onwards and becoming more and more evident with the years is the new focus. The idea was that the SSPX would focus a little less of its energy on Apostolic activity, visiting the faithful, traveling to say Mass, and a little more on looking after the priests. Over time this became more and more selfish. Today our building projects are more likely to be a new comfortable priory for the priests, making everything as comfortable as possible for the priests. We’re building a beautiful 50 million dollar seminary, but we don’t have the money for a church in St. Mary’s Kansas. In the old days we would be building churches and churches and churches. Now we’re getting nice rectories.

And what about the call of the faithful? We used to go off at 2am to answer sick calls, but now you get the answering machine. In the 1980s many Catholics came to the SSPX simply because when Grandma was dying, they called every Catholic Church in the phone book, and got no reply until they tried the local SSPX church and they called at 2 o’clock in the morning, the priest answered the phone and an hour later he arrives at the hospital. He comes in wearing a cassock, he says prayers in Latin, he sprinkles Holy Water, does the anointing... And in the end the family say “We want to go to your church!” There are so many cases where that used to happen. And it still happens, but less and less. There are still priests who go out and do these things, but the increase of priests who won’t is legion. There are priests now who refuse to hear confessions after Mass. Of course there are times when it’s not possible, but not all the time.

In some places the faithful say there is a special house (i.e. not the priory) for the priests to go to, which is not listed, where no one is allowed to know the address. Everybody knows priests need a break, but do they need special R&R houses? People understand, these things happen from time to time, the priest is human, they need a break too – but do they need a break every day? Do they need a break every week?