OUR LADY OF FATIMA  CATHOLIC CHURCH

The Neutering of Tradition

November 18, 2008

In an audio conference that Bishop Williamson gave last year in Warsaw, Poland, he called Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos a "wolf" and a "shark". The bishop was suggesting that Rome was out to destroy Traditionalists. Even more amazing, (according to +W), Castrillón sent word back that he was a "shark" ! In an earlier column I wrote the following:

"(C)ompromise is the order of the day for all Trads who would regularize with Rome. Compromise (as we shall see in other columns I will be publishing over the next few days) has been the order of the day for those who have regularized so far."

In this column I will make good on that promise... before doing so I would like to share with you a portion of a letter I wrote an American Bishop in the hierarchy that illustrates my thinking for the last few months on this question and accounts for the highly sporadic posting:

"In recent months the continued turmoil within the church over the reception and the implementation of the Pope’s initiative for the traditional liturgy by bishops around the world has caused me no small amount of concern. I have watched other groups of religious reconcile with the church make compromises with their theology as a result of entering into full communion with Rome." 

Let us consider 3 cases of Traditionalists who have attempted regularization.

1/ The Institute of the Good Shepherd

In 2006 a group of former SSPX clergy were regularized by Ecclesia dei whose chief Fr. Philippe Laguérie has been discussed in this column before. In the first few heady days after their regularization, grandiose plans were laid for a rapid expansion of their ministry, not just in France, but throughout the world. Two years on and rumors have it that the initial enthusiasm and exuberance have completely waned and that some of the priests are bitterly lamenting (always privately of course) the fact that they are going nowhere fast !

In Bogotá, Colombia, for example, Laguerie had made plans to open an oratory last year. Everything was going fine until the local Cardinal found out and then a decree was issued suppressing the house even before it had officially opened. You see Laguerie had found out the hard way that as a Trad outside the system (so to speak) he can do whatever he likes, inside the Church you have to play by the rules and, Rome just isn't going to go to bat for you if a Cardinal tells you to scram ! Indeed, a different Cardinal, the Archbishop of Paris to be precise, has yet to grant Fr. de Tanouarn  (another of these priests) an official ministry in Paris two years and counting since the Institute was approved and one year after the Cardinal received his red hat.

2/ The Papa Stronsay Case

Papa Stronsay is an island off the coast of Scotland. It was purchased by a group of Redemptorists some years ago for their community to build a monastery. Fr Michael Mary Sim, a New Zealander by birth, left the modern church to associate himself with Archbishop Lefebvre and "re-found" a Trad Redemptorist community. Earlier this year it was revealed that the community was negotiating with Rome and specifically with Ecclesia dei seeking regularization. Eventually three of the priests and some of the brothers were recognized by Rome. (That was the "official story".)

What actually happened is a little more complicated: Ecclesia dei lifted the suspensions on three of the priests, some of the other priests who did not agree with the regularization went to the SSPX to start another Trad Redemptorist foundation, the SSPX cut all ties with the community: they kicked out three seminarians from the SSPX Australian seminary, forbade the sale of the community newspaper in SSPX chapels in Britain, even issued letters publicly denouncing the treason on the part of the "Redemptorists".

I write "Redemptorists" because from Rome's point of view the group had to re-name itself, change its habit and was told to follow "normal channels" which meant negotiating terms for insertion into the life of the local diocese. The chancellor of the diocese stated in an interview that he expected the talks to last "a long time" ! (I.e. there was no rush on the part of the Novus ordo apparatus to do anything for them at all.) Can you see a pattern developing here ?

In any case a priest from the modern church wrote to me some months ago as follows:

I am sure that there are many traditional priests serving in ordinary diocesan parishes and ministries --like myself-- who pray each day for your communities and others like them, and are interested in following how your parish life fares and -- we hope -- your eventual fuller union with and recognition by the Holy See.  The recent events at Papa Stronsay give us all great hope that a grace-filled canonical path may be found for such worthy groups and apostolates.

I wrote in reply:

The Papa Stronsay issue doesn't seem to me to be as positive as some might think. Whilst Father Sim is a lion of a man, a simply great man of Faith, the most that his group seems to have achieved is the lifting of penalties (suspensions etc.). The actual canonical issues have yet to be addressed with the diocese and if the foot-dragging of the Archbishop of Paris is anything to go by, the Institute of the Good Shepherd are still waiting for a canonical mission there.

3/ The "Happy Days are here again" (or "Did they ever go away ?") Gals from Spokane. 

Above I wrote:

"In recent months the continued turmoil within the church over the reception and the implementation of the Pope’s initiative for the traditional liturgy by bishops around the world has caused me no small amount of concern. I have watched other groups of religious reconcile with the church make compromises with their theology as a result of entering into full communion with Rome." 

and I concluded as follows:

"I am thinking particularly of a group of religious from the community to which I was originally attached that regularized a year ago in the diocese of Spokane. They now publicly maintain that their struggle to maintain an attachment to Tradition over the last 4 decades was without merit and that in this period the crisis they thought existed in the church was only pure imagination."

Given that 4 of these religious women flew all the way to World Woodstock Day in Sydney (and that must have cost a pretty penny) - it is hard to imagine anyone coming away from there concluding that there is no crisis of Faith in the Church. I told a bishop in the official hierarchy on the telephone subsequent to sending the afore-mentioned letter, that if they think there is no crisis in the Church they must have been well and truly re-programmed. He agreed with me that the Church is indeed in deep crisis.

Over at their web-site, the SMMC sisters want us to believe everything is fine and dandy in Novus Ordo land. Happily the camera never lies. In a previous column we presented you with the graphic on the left - compare it to that on the right:

If I were to tell you that originally 17 sisters left CMRI, 15 began their year of re-programming and now there are only 10, wouldn't you (like me) begin to see a concerted effort to neuter Tradition ? That makes a third of a drop in a congregation's members in just 6 months ! Cardinal Castrillón wrote this community a letter a year ago in which he asked to be kept up to date about the development of the community. At the rate they're going there just might be no-one left to write him a reply in a couple of years...SSPX beware !!!!!

+TF

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