The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

Jumping Ship...but Remember Little Crosby !

July 24th 2005

Sedevacantists Jumping Ship !

On Monday of this past week I received a most welcome telephone call from a gentleman previously associated with the Mount St Michael group (from the Mount itself). It will be remembered that I was stationed there from July 1995 to July 1996, first as a Deacon and then as a Priest being named for a short time the Assistant Pastor of Mount St Michael in 1996. It seems that this fellow (a reader of these pages I might add) and his family disassociated themselves from the MSM group as of Easter of this year after being associated with the "Mounties" ever since the late 1970s.

Earlier this year two of the priests of this group (the Radecki twins) had issued another "monumental" work on the current crisis within the Church. Concerned that the group was spinning out of control (even before the death of the late Pontiff), the man in question called the chief of the MSM crew one Mark Pivarunas and asked the basis of authority by which such a work was issued. The concern was that traditionally religious books require an imprimatur before the work can be published. Allegedly, Pivarunas responded with the words: "I am the Magisterium". (Sic !) Tall words indeed !

The problem was, and finally a family had faced up to it, the inherent schismatic nature of the Traditional Movement. Here it seems Pivarunas had merely developed the logical trend of the sedevacantists - there being no "pope" (according to their ridiculous theory which we have disproved many times over before - based on real Catholic teaching) they necessarily make themselves Pope.

Funnily enough I had raised this issue with Pivarunas last year in a private letter to him. I pointed out to him that the Pope alone (and our adherence to him) is the source of our membership in the Church. Since there is no "pope" for these men, by what right do they judge another's membership in the Church ? I wrote in part:

"The Pope is the source of the common bond – our union with him, together with Baptism and the Sacramental system specifies our membership of the Church. Unless you have followed in the illustrious footsteps of “pope” Hadrian VII you are by no means qualified to make such a judgment."

(letter from Bishop Fulham to Mark Pivarunas dated October 7, 2004)

Now that I hear the claim that the "chief" said that he is the Magisterium, I must conclude that he has followed in the footsteps of Francis Schuckardt (his former superior in the 1970s and early 1980s) and become the "pope" (surely not another "mystical" coronation !)

In any case my caller had left the MSM group and saw the "light". He tells me that on a given week day at the 8 am Mass at MSM the place had only a few "old ladies" (as he put it) and the excuse from the MSM group is "the people have to work", whereas, as he went on to inform me, the nearest indult Mass is packed to the gills even at 8.00 am on weekdays so their excuse didn't hold water in my caller's opinion.

I think the writing is on the wall, generally, for sedevacantists. One formerly large sede parish in Cincinnati has taken quite a hit judging by their own publications and web sermons. Another in Detroit (whose head is certainly no stranger to these pages) has similarly imploded (but for quite different reasons). The extremist sedes have been ratcheting up their attacks on Benedict XVI and with "good" reason - their very survival depends upon besmirching the Pope. One luminary of the sede movement from Cincinnati had the perspicacity to malign Ratzinger in a recent newsletter for not believing "in very much at all". How, then, does he explain the phenomenon of the corpus of Ratzinger's writings ? Are they books filled with empty pages ? (He, of course, wouldn't know - he would never have read any of them - there's intellectual honesty for you !)

The Story of St. Mary's Little Crosby

St Mary's Little Crosby (Exterior View)

Last week I wrote about Bishop Fellay's concern about the Society of St Pius X doing a deal with Rome for the sake of doing a deal. My phone caller the other day suggested I do a similar thing. Here, now, is the other extreme. Most people in indult land are perhaps unaware of what is really afoot in Rome. I had a lady suggest to me in an e-mail a couple of months ago that I was far too enthusiastic in my reception of Benedict XVI's election and a little naive as to what the future holds.

To answer these objections I refer people to the conference on sedevacantism that I gave at the Church in Jacksonville in May in which I said words to the effect that I am not trying to white-wash these men (meaning the postconciliar popes and Benedict XVI in particular). These men are (were) modernists but Benedict XVI is the closest thing to a friend of Tradition that modern Rome now has. He is a conservative not a Traditional Catholic. This distinction is of vital importance !

In his 2003 interview for EWTN with Raymond Arroyo, in response to a question about the future of the Indult, the former Cardinal Ratzinger stated unequivocally that the Indult was by definition "temporary". In 2004, last year in a private letter to a senior German Traditionalist who is also a theologian, he re-iterated the point and urged Herr Barth to devote his energies towards a reconciliation between the traditional rite of Mass with the Novus Ordo. In rumblings since his election, Cardinal Medina, former prefect of the Congregation for Worship (and he should know what the future holds liturgically speaking) has "speculated" that the new Mass would be a mish-mash between the old and 1970 version.

This kind of thing reminds me of the story of a small hamlet I used to pass almost everyday on the train going to the University of Liverpool as I studied there for my Bachelor's degree in French and Spanish between 1986 and 1990 - the story of Little Crosby.

St Mary's Little Crosby (Interior View)

(As an aside place names in Britain can be quite amusing - wherever there is a Little "somewhere" (like Little Crosby) there usually is a Great Crosby as well (which there is). Just outside of the great Marian place of pilgrimage at Walsingham in East Anglia in England there are two little villages called Great Snoring and Little Snoring respectively - I kid you not !)

Back to Little Crosby: during and after the Reformation in England the local squire (of Norman French descent) one William Blundell, refused to submit to the new religion preferring to adhere to the Faith of his fathers - the Catholic Faith. He even endured the loss of his lands, imprisonment for the Faith, the opprobrium of the King and the villagers shared the same Faith with their squire. Whereas other parish churches were given over to the new religion, the parish Church of Little Crosby stayed firmly Catholic.

As I would pass Little Crosby in the distance each day (Sundays included since I traveled to Mass at the SSPX Church of Ss Peter and Paul in Liverpool even on the weekends) I used to muse sometimes that for all those centuries the people of that hamlet stayed faithful to the True Faith only finally to succumb to the Novus Ordo of Paul VI in 1970.

What the Anglicans couldn't do to this stalwart band for four centuries was done now to these people by members of the hierarchy in the name of Vatican II and this time a Mass, judged "Protestant" by such eminent Cardinals as Ottaviani of the Holy Office and Bacci, was so blithely accepted without a peep.

The danger I foresee is for the Indult communities (and those seeking to join them) who have been welcomed by the official hierarchy in the past now being forced to accept a new Missal which is in fact the Novus Ordo under a different name. To those entering upon such a path (or thinking of such a thing) I say: "Remember the story of Little Crosby and let not your resistance have been in vain !"

+TF