Could the SSPX improve relations with the Vatican?
Book review of "Our Lady of Good Success and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre"

We recently read a book called "Our Lady of Good Success and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre". It contains most of the arguments against the contemporary Church that we find in SSPX circles. The SSPX loves the historical Church and wants to preserve the tradition and culture of days of old.

The SSPX is settled into the position that the contemporary Magisterium lost its charism of infallibility after Pius XII. It appears the book uses 112 pages trying to support that point. So we will take a few pages to respond.

We believe the Magisterium will never lose its charism of infallibility, even with (about) 9 bad popes of history. The same is true for an ecumenical council. We just can't imagine a situation where 4000 bishops show up for an ecumenical Council and the Holy Spirit stays home, regardless of the bad actors who show up. Regardless at attempts by the devil and all his "isms" to get control of the Magisterium. The same is true for an election. The hand of Providence guides us through this mess. Cardinal Sarah said it well,

"I would add that every pope is right for his time. Providence looks after us very well, you know...I would like to remind everyone about Jesus' words to St. Peter, 'You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church' (Mt 16:18). We have the assurance that this saying of Jesus is realized in what we call the infallibility of the church. The spouse of Christ, headed by the successor of Peter, can live through crises and storms....[some Catholics] are quick to hurl anathemas at those who do not follow their line of thought... Only faith, confidence in the magisterium and its continuity down through the centuries can give us unity...The history of the church is beautiful [reducing it to a political battle] typical of a television talk show is a marketing ploy, not a search for truth."

The SSPX could change their narrative without compromising their love and defence of Tradition, and a possible reunification. Here are our suggestions:

Accusations of Freemasonry

We have separate articles on accusations of freemasonry regarding John XXIII and Bugnini. Author Michael Davies has done a tremendous disservice to the traditionalist movement with his assertions. We were able to debunk Davies assertions about Bugnini in a week of research and his assertions on John XXIII in a few days (not even Taylor Marshall would repeat the John XXIII theories). So far, in 60 years, no real evidence has been provided of either of their involvement in Freemasonry, and yet it is repeated as fact throughout the SSPX world in print and beyond. This is also true of the allusion to Freemasonry and Francis on page 101. If the SSPX is committed to Truth and fidelity to Jesus, as it says on pages 60 & 66 in the book, it should hold to a higher standard of honesty and follow traditional Catholic teaching on slander and calumny.

Accusation of communism

The book asserts that Communism got hold of the Council. The absence of a condemnation of communism is not the same as an endorsement, nor an acquiescence.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was during the opening month of the Council. Humanity lay in the balance. Confession lines at Churches were 2 blocks long because people thought the world was ending. Careful diplomacy was necessary, much like Pious XII and the Nazis during World War II. The Vatican wanted to improve relations with the Orthodox Church which was in the belly of Communist Russia and had suffered a lot. Friendships between the east/west church would improve existential threat of east/west military hostilities. It was good for the Orthodox to be at the first Council since the 1054 split. It was a delicate time.

Paul VI explicitly repudiated Communism in his 1964 encyclical Ecclesiam Suam. JPII hastened the downfall of communism. The post conciliar Vatican explicitly refuted Marxism in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and condemned liberation theology. The SSPX doesn't value cooperation with Orthodox or Protestant churches, but that is a separate issue from the communism question.

Accusation of Protestantism

The book asserts that observer status by Protestants ended up with a protestant liturgy. This baffles us. We have spent much time around all sorts of Protestant environments over the years, and nothing we've seen looks anything like the Novus Ordo. Most Evangelical services are 3 songs, a sermon and 3 more songs with a few plants on the stage. Communion is done sitting in your seat and they pass around little plastic cups. Ironically, the Anglicans (the largest Protestant group of that era) celebrate Ad Orientum like the TLM. If we want to say the Novus Ordo is banal, boring, casual, perhaps those are valid criticisms, but protestant, not really, even charismatic masses aren't protestant looking, except perhaps a couple of similar songs.

Accusation of Universalism

The Council wanted to improve relations with people from every nation and reduce knee jerk prejudice against Catholics. Catholics in Muslim countries needed safety and freedom to worship, and the Church needed to model that freedom of conscience. We have an article where we respond to a liberal who tries to argue that the Lumen Gentium changes Catholic teaching to Universalism.

On Page 66, the book mentions the "diabolical act of Assisi, Oct 27, 1986". The best even handed discussion I've found about this event is here. There were mistakes by those entrusted to organizing it, but it wasn’t like the Pachamama event under Francis which was apocalyptic.

The Residential Schools under Pius X were a complete disaster. In the long run they have hurt our Church way more than they helped her. Forcing the faith on people, removing children from families, and punishing them if they don't believe the right things just doesn't work. Jesus gave humans free will, because he loves us and he knew that forcing us to believe was not Love. People need to choose Him with free will. The Church needed to do the same. Dignitatis humanae and Nostra aetate can be read in with a hermeneutic of continuity with the tradition of the Church while understanding that the reality on the ground now is different from ages past when the state and the Church were one, and we could bring a heretical teacher into an inquisition and force them to renounce their bad teachings.

The traditional movement speaks of the 11th-13th centuries as the golden age of Christianity, when it had control of Government, and the Inquisition could reign in erring preachers... while we think we can learn a lot from the medieval rural, community, and local way of life, we don't think it was the golden age because:

It didn't last
Dramatic events lead to the Avignon Papacy
3 of the 9 worst popes in history spanned the 1100's to 1300's
Lot of disease, short lifespans, people died from preventable infections
Plenty of criminal activity (i.e., shaving the edges of precious metal coins)
Dante lived back then and his Divine Comedy was critical of society and popes of that era... Church endorses Dante
Jewish/Christian relations were poor, Jews couldn't own land
Possible hidden sexual dysfunction, like today in Africa and Muslim countries (internal spiritual deliverance from sin is better than external legal and social pressure
Many kings were assassinated, e.g. Duke of Brittany (1202), King Henry I of France (1183), King William II of England, (1100)
Witchcraft was common
The inquisition was not very successful
Henrician heresy (1146)
Church had recently divided in the east/west schism of 1054
There were many wars
Catholics didn't (ultimately) win the Crusades (1095 - 1291) ... God didn't bless us with victory.
Thousands of crusaders engaged in pogroms (killing) of local Jewish communities in Cologne, Mainz, and Worms as they left towns on their way to the middle east

Accusation of Ecumenism

The Church was looking to foster unity in Vatican II. After all Jesus prayed "that they may all be one, as you Father, are in me and I am in you." (Jn 17:21). Saint Paul said "Let us not give up meeting together... let us encourage one another." (Heb 10:25), "Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." (Mat 18:20). This Bible verse may be pertinent:

"John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. "Whoever is not against us is for us." (Mark 9:38-40)

Bishop Fulton Sheen said: "Catholics have the Truth, Protestants have the fire." There are many ways that Protestants have been better at evangelization than Catholics. I'm sure the Protestants observers at the Council were more orthodox than some of the liberal bishops. There is nothing in the Council that doesn't assert that the Catholic Church is the true Church and there is no salvation outside of Her. There are plenty of Catholic apologetics which defend against this accusation of a change in teaching. What the term "separated brethren" does do, is thaw hostilities between Catholics and Protestants and that is a good thing for Jesus' followers.

Our lady of Good Success

This is a 16th century apparition that many SSPX members say prophesies Vatican II and Archbishop Lefebvre. Our Lady of Good Success has been difficult and frustrating to research, because we can't find the original messages in their native language. Not even the diocese web site for Quito has information we could find.

However, we did come across this ebook published by a Traditional Catholic organization.

The first is that toward the end of the nineteenth century and throughout a great part of the twentieth many heresies will be propagated in these lands, which will then be a free republic....The few souls who remain faithful to grace will suffer a cruel, unspeakable and prolonged martyrdom. Many of them will descend to their graves due to the violence of suffering and will be counted among the martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the Church and the country.

Many in the SSPX say the "prelate" spoken about is Archbishop Lefebvre. However, the prophesy says "many heresies will be propagated in these lands" and "thus allowing the cursed Satan to take possession of this land", which is Ecuador.

The quote include dates of the "19th and a Great part of the 20th century". Even if the quote is accurate, a prophesy about the 1800's to 2000 which applied to Ecuador is hard to link with Vatican II which was only 3 years (4 sessions that totalled 9 months). In the world of prophesy, this is pretty oblique. More of the time window applied to the "golden" years before Vatican II than to the council and the time after.

We've spun this off to a separate article.

Rotten Fruits of VATICAN II

This period after the Council has certainly been marked with apostasy. The question is what caused it. The SSPX says its Vatican II's fault and the Church's lack of humility in admitting it. However, we think the apostasy would have been much worse in a pre-vatican II style church. 40% of all convicted priest abusers were ordained before Vatican II, including Cardinal McCarrick. The clericalism that protected abuser priests would not bode well in the age of modern communication, the internet and hostile media. The pre-vatican II priesthood was full of same sex attracted individuals who could hide from their singleness, be respected in society and have access to victims and peers who promoted each other and eventually many became bishops. Even the SSPX has had its fair share of abusing priests. Hiding and moving abusers doesn't work, but it was done for centuries and it seems it took a lot for the SSPX to come clean on the issue.

There has been lot's of nuttiness in the Vatican, and it will get worse, and the devil is, as always trying to wreak the Church from without and within. The apostasy we are witnessing is prophesied in the Bible before the end times, (2 Thes) and my personal opinion is the apocalypse is not far away. That is the cause of the apostasy, and soon the UFO deception is probably going to sweep through the world and through Christianity like a tsunami, issuing in the age of the antichrist... the pope might even have to go underground and there might be an appearance of the Vatican bending... but of course that is speculation on my part. What is not speculation is that the Magisterial documents will be protected and they can ALL be read with a hermeneutic of continuity with the tradition of the Church.

Cardinal Ratzinger prophetic 1969 radio talk on the Great Apostacy

From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity.

As the number of her adherents diminishes, so she will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more like a voluntary society, entered only by free decision.

As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. ...

It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek.

The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will have to be shed.

One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution—when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain—to the renewal of the nineteenth century.

But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.

Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty.

Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times.

The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith.

She may no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

Was Archbishop willed by God to resist the Council

The book asserts correctly that other traditional movements would not have emerged had it not been for Archbishop Lefebvre. We think it was within God's permissive will to have this stress between the liberal and traditional elements in the Church.

God also allowed the 1500's Reformation, probably because the Vatican was so nutty, corrupt and humanist in the 1500's that He had to punish it like he did to the Old Testament bad kings of Israel.

While we agree this stressful situation is allowed by God. We don't agree with the defacto "canonization" that he is given in the SSPX, when we look at some of his quotes in the book, particularly saying there is not salvation in the conciliar Church. We don't think Our Lady of Good Success is prophesizing him. We think when 4,000 bishops come together in concensus it is more likely to be God's will than when one of them dissents.

Transubstantiation outside the Traditional Latin Mass

Page 92 says

"Archbishop Lefebvre similarly proclaimed that the word was made manifest through the purity of the Eucharistic Celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass"

One can certainly see how this could lead some SSPX embers to think a Novus Ordo Mass doesn't have a valid consecration, or a more valid consecration. Was the Word not made flesh in the first 5 centuries before the TLM, including the Last Supper? How about the other 21 Rites of the Catholic Church? If this is an accurate quote, it is certainly not demonstrating the Archbishop as a saint. The Word is made flesh by the act of consecration, and this could happen in a makeshift Mass at a concentration camp.

Rapid growth of the SSPX and Traditionalism

If we are to assert that growth of the SSPX movement is a vindication that it is God's desire for the Church, then we'd have to acknowledge that Protestant mega churches are growing, and the Orthodox Church is still around 1000 years after the schism. We have to distinguish God's permissive will from his active will. Young people love to be counter cultural and the TLM movement is a perfect fit. Actually, Pope Francis probably did a great service to the traditional movement by trying to persecute them. Young men love to buck oppressive authority so the Traditional movement is an excellent place for them to have something to fight for these days. The best way to make something grow is try to suppress it. These days counter cultural traditional communities are forming and that is a good thing in these apocalyptic times. We just pray they don't pull all

Mysterious smoke confusion for John XXII election

The official responsible for arrangements outside the conclave notified the cardinals that the colour of the smoke had been misread and provided them with "smoke torches from a fireworks factory". It had nothing to do with the 1980's theory about them changing their minds. Not one Cardinal came out of there with that idea, even the most conservative, even Archbishop Lefebvre.. These are people who would die for Christ, they would not keep something like that a secret. We like this little discussion.

Mercedes Benz dispatched to wisk away Lefebvre

There is a story that an ominous black Mercedes Benz was dispatched from Rome to pick up Archbishop Lefebvre the night before the Bishop consecrations, which he didn't accept. This sounds like an urban legend. Is there ANY proof of this? It sounds like another Michael Davies pitch. We don't think this belongs in the book unless there is proof. If the Vatican wanted to murder someone or imprison them they wouldn't do something dumb like that. Its pretty hard to get serious conciliar Catholics to take the SSPX seriously with this type of accusation.

Salvation not in conciliar Church

Page 88 claims that Archbishop Lefebvre said "Salvation is in the Catholic Church and not the Conciliar Church". How can this not be taken as saying that Pope John XXIII did not have the authority to call the Council, or that 4000 bishops were wrong, including himself who signed off on all the documents, including the Sacrosanctum Concilium? We don't think this is a saintly claim. It seems more like a Martin Luther type claim.

Conclusion

If the SSPX wants to really live by its principles of Truth and Charity it needs to stop throwing "ISMS" (Communism, Universalism, Protestantism, etc...) at the Council as if something will stick. It needs to drop the urban legends, the "prophesies" about the Council and Archbishop Lefebvre, and the shrill rhetoric. If they can definitively back up a claim or an accusation they should do so, otherwise they should retract from strategies Cardinal Sarah calls "typical of a television talk show is a marketing ploy, not a search for truth". The society should pursue their claim to be indifferent protectors of the truth, and let the Lord lead. If it is of God they will succeed, if not, then... we'll see.

The SSPX is in a difficult position because they are claiming magisterial documents and an ecumenical Council is not protected by the Holy spirit. Its not unlike the situation of the Orthodox Church in 1054 when they demanded the Vatican rescind the Filoque, which they had the authority to clarify in Latin.

This schism is pretty well cemented with Archbishop Lefebvre's claim "Salvation is in the Catholic Church and not the Conciliar Church" (pg. 88) We don't see any way out of that. We hope we're wrong. We're guessing the SSPX is waiting for a "miracle" when the contemporary Church will collapse and we'll return to tradition. Such a collapse may indeed happen as part of the apocalypse. But we don't agree we'll return to an SSPX style Church, and the Church will never rescind any magisterial document. We think it will be a glorious period when the devil is chained (Rev 20) and concupiscence is suppressed and we'll all just want to do the right thing without so much pull from the devil. We won't need all kinds of clamps on our beliefs and behaviours because we'll recognize Jesus and want to serve him in his Church, in the Eucharist.

If schism occurs, we'll be at the feet of the Chair of Peter regardless of personal dysfunction of the Pope sitting there. After all, the first Pope denied Jesus 3 times and the first Cardinals (apostles) all abandoned him (except John) and one betrayed him... and yet he still loved them and used them to give us the faith we have today. We've had 2000 years of messiness.

Could the SSPX improve relations with the Vatican? Book review of "Our Lady of Good Success and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre"