The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

The Society of St Pius X,
"Americanism" and various sede groupies.

August 30th, 2006

The home of "Americanism" ?

I received the following e-mail and I found it worth replying to since it raises a number of interesting points.

I have several friends who have always felt compelled to reject anything coming from the SSPX because of a perceived anti-Americanism; not that there may also be more valid reasons but some indulters don't want to strain too many brain cells looking for them. As they see it, the SSPX position goes something like this: Your independence bankrupted our beloved France, got us our own revolution and we lost the monarchy. Now as a victim of the public school system in the USA, I know that monarchy doesn't get treated fairly as a system and is too often conflated with a perversion that had to wait for the Protestant Revolt to come in to being. It's one thing to suggest it is in inadequate for our times and quite another to lie about what it was.

Recently though, I've heard two lectures from members of the SSPV, I think one was a talk by Bishop Kelly on the founding of the US Republic. In both cases, the uncritical praise heaped upon this country using quotes from "very old Italian popes" would be enough to make a neo-con or Americanist blush.

The Heroes of the French Trads of a Particular Persuasion

Louis XVI - Murdered King of France victim of the "Revolution"

Queen Marie-Antoinette - Wife of Louis XVI
- murdered by the "Revolution"

Henri Philippe Omer PÉTAIN
(1856-1951)

A few weeks ago I was visited by a former SSPX priest, we had been at Winona together. We actually touched on this question in passing. It is not generally known (in the USA) that the Society of St Pius X has some very strange right-wing nay even Fascist leanings in Europe. I can well remember the picture post-cards of Marshal Pétain (the head of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime during the occupation of France in the Second World War) and the postcards of Louis XVI and his queen Marie-Antoinette that were sold on Sundays outside St Nicholas du Chardonnet (the SSPX Church in Paris). Not to mention the terrible scandal of the Society shielding in its priories for years a French war criminal that the government wanted for crimes committed during WWII. Paul Touvier was finally arrested in 1989 or 1990 at a Society priory in Nice and put on trial. An SSPX priest sat next to him throughout the trial acting as a sort of chaplain. I guess they thought the man was a hero. Needless to say he was convicted. The Society even had the temerity to defend their protection of this man.

The Anti-American stance of the Society does indeed date back to the split between 9 priests of the Society in the US summarily expelled by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1983. The exact nature of the split has been dealt with elsewhere, briefly it hinged on sedevacantism and a few other issues. Fr Richard Williamson, the SSPX's seminary vice-rector replaced the ousted Donald Sanborn. It seems Williamson got it into his head that the rebellion against the Archbishop had to be explained by the American upbringing of the 9 priests and so to avoid the same thing happening again, a consistent anti-American campaign was the order of the day thereafter. I heard the same things served up to me. We had to make two trips, to Boston and Washington DC to be brain-washed into how the US was founded and steeped in Freemasonry and how the American Catholic Church quite readily absorbed the Free-masonic principles of revolution that so conveniently found their welcome at Vatican II. A conspiracy is always a convenient theory to serve up to unsuspecting Americans. Americans, I have observed, seem ready prey to such things, whereas the rest of the English speaking world seem far less credulous to accept such things.

Paranoia is the order of the day in many SSPX circles, so to be systematically trained to hate your national heritage is actually a subtle undermining of the religious virtue of piety towards one's country that every Catholic must have as their duty. Let us take a parallel case: England broke with her Faith in 1545, briefly regained it under Mary Tudor and then promptly lost it again. England enacted some of the most draconian anti-Catholic laws and exported her home-grown religion to her former dominions. However, I am able to recognize that the country that gave me "birth" is profoundly wounded in her Faith, is built on a lie that the new religion is not the true religion, that the medieval churches are occupied, and that what remains of English national offices (the Monarchy particularly) are the mere shell of her former glory. Does this teach me to despise my country or to pray for her conversion ? Yes one can love one's country rightly. Oh, yes, Williamson would turn his guns on England too, but that was par for the course.

Back to the USA. We visited the US Capitol pictured above. In the great dome there is a magnificent fresco of George Washington being "assumed" by angels into heaven. This was taken to be proof conclusive of a cult to replace religion with Freemasonry. A more plausible thesis in my opinion: here was an example of an emerging nation wishing to honor her founding Father. Why should we see anything more sinister than that ? That one sometimes borrows religious imagery to express patriotic sentiment is a given in any major civilization. As I said earlier, love of country is a virtue allied to that of piety - the same virtue that orders my worship of God also directs me to honor the land of my birth in a lesser and more relative way.

The issue of a particular system of government: it is true that Monarchy has ever been considered the best system of government by the Church. St. Thomas defends this position. The reason: earthly monarchs exercise the Kingship of Christ in this world; much in the same way temporal fathers exercise and participate in the paternity of God the Father in the lives of their children. However, in an absolute sense the Church leaves up to the individual state the precise method of choosing those who will exercise the power of governance, so long as the state recognizes that the power to govern is not conceded to the ruler by the election of the people. For the Church, an election merely designates the one who will exercise the power of governance, but the power itself comes directly and immediately from God.

It was Pius XII who threw a wrench ("spanner" for the Brits reading this) in the works in his 1944 Christmas address. He positively endorsed the idea of democracy (if I'm not mistaken) for the first time - i.e. for a Pope to do so for the first time. The speech caused me no amount of consternation when I first read it back in the early 90s. Musing the last few days, it occurred to me that if Benedict XVI had written that speech he would be accused of heresy by today's Trads (more grist for Tissier's mill), interestingly enough, the speech didn't even raise a squawk (as far as my research revealed at the time as I recall) when it was delivered in the closing stages of WWII. In any case that speech was probably part of the trad selective magisterium (one they ignore - like everything else that's inconvenient).

As to the Kellyite endorsement of a more favorable reading of American history, that can be chalked up to: "well he would say that wouldn't he". The essential problem with the groupies is that they adopt a position based on what the other side says - i.e. they say the complete reverse. There was an interesting case of this last year with regards to the appalling suffering of Terri Shiavo - the Dolan / Cekada / Sanborn group adopted the "pull the plug on her" approach. Why ? You ask - simply because John Paul II had said in an allocution to medical experts in Rome in 2004 that hydration and nutrition even though supplied by artificial means must be considered ordinary means of supporting life. Since John Paul II said it, they had to oppose it on principle. Now Kelly's group took the contrary view (in effect siding with JPII) simply because Dolan / Cekada / Sanborn said "It's OK to pull the tubes". There was no principle involved, just people and politics. I suspect the Americanist issue is another such red herring for the Kelly group today - "If the SSPX says it - we oppose it on principle." (We know how that one goes !)

+TF


Louis XVI - Murdered King of France victim of the "Revolution"	Queen Marie-Antoinette - Wife of Louis XVI - murdered by the "Revolution"	Henri Philippe Omer PÉTAIN (1856-1951)