I've chosen to translate Andrea Tornielli's blog entry rather than his article because there is more in the blog that's pertinent and interesting...
In my opinion, Mons. Lefebvre would
have agreed by now to the Vatican preamble
Translated from
Dec. 11, 2011
In the VATICAN INSIDER, I have just posted an article dedicated to the now imminent reply from Mons. Bernard Fellay, Superior-General of the FSSPX, to the Vatican which gave the schismatic society last September a Doctrinal Preamble to sign if they agreed with it.
Fellay, who said last September that he could not acceot the Preamble as is, returned to the question in his long homily on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, in which he said, among other things:
"You have heard that there is a proposal from Rome which some claim ;we are ready to accept', but the problem is that there is always a condition. And this condition, however it is formulated, is fundamentally always the same: that we must accept the Second Vatican Council.
"In summary, the current situation is this: They are telling us, 'Yes, you can criticize the Council but on one condition: you must accept it'. But we say: 'How can we criticize it a posteriori?' I think that is an honest summary of the present situation".
[Fellay, of course, is being downright dishonest on many levels. When the FSSPX entered into doctrinal talks with the CDF, they specified the areas they disputed about Vatican-II - religious freedom, ecumenism, and collegiality. Now, it turns out that they really want to reject all of Vatican II - yet that was not what the discussions were about. Moreover, their own founder, Mons. Lefebvre, was a Council Father and had signed all the Council documents. In effect, it was only when he saw the extent of the post-Conciliar liturgical reform that he decided his society could no longer be in communion with Rome. His successors extended the objections to the other areas they discussed with the Vatican, and now they want the whole nine yards. This holier-than-thou attitude has truly become insufferable and is almost an act of contempt and disdain for Benedict XVI who has taken all the steps he can to make it easier for the FSSPX to make a graceful re-entry into the Church. How can a relative handful of snooty 'Catholics' - let us assume they have a million members all told worldwide - have the presumption to think that they alone see the light, they alone can decide what the Church Magisterium can be? It is not for them to dictate it, it is for them to follow. For all their sanctimony, they are guilty of the deadly sins of arrogance, presumption, self-centeredness and utter lack of charity. All the rosaries they ask their members to pray should be offered instead so that the Holy Spirit may enlighten them!]]
"The spirit of the world," Fellay said in his homily, "has been introduced into the Church. Therefore we must fight not only external enemies but against a non-Catholic spirit that has insinuated itself into the Church. This change, this introduction of this spirit has been clear since the Second Vatican Council. It's a great mystery - as if the devil had put his foot into a shrine. It is something that makes one shiver. It's like a disease that has entered the body".
According to the FSSPX superior-general, a point has been reached that "manifests the depth of the problem". One "must acknowledge that Rome has made a gesture towards us, but if Rome tells us to accept the Preamble in any case, we cannot do that."
He went on to say that the problem for the Church is not represented by the FSSPX's dissent but by the presence of a non-Catholic spirit within the Church.
[News flash for Mons. Fellay. That was always obvious to right-thinking Catholics since the progressivist excesses that followed Vatican-II. In fact, those responsible for that chaos have always claimed to represent 'the spirit of Vatican II' - and that is obviously the non-Catholic spirit that entered the Church. It might well be the devil - it certainly is not the Holy Spirit, whom these modern-day 'spiritualists' (to use a term that referred to the medieval Franciscan utopian-dissenters) do not seem to credit for anything. And not at all by stealth, but openly and triumphantly - at least until about seven years ago when a Pope declared 'This is the only way Vatican II can be interpreted' in a magisterial act - and since then, that 'spirit' has been in retreat. May it be exorcised completely soon!]
Fellay's words recall those pronounced by Paul VI - a Pontiff who certain;y is not loved by the Lefebvrians
[he had the misfortune or misjudgment of approving and presiding over a shockingly radical change to a rather bastardized liturgy!] - who said in a 1972 homily that "The smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God. It was thought that the Council would be followed by a time of daylight for the Church. But instead it has been a time of dark clouds, of storms, of darkness".
In a conversation with his friend, the French philosopher Jean Guitton, Paul VI said: "What strikes me, when I consider the Catholic world, is that that within Catholicism it sometimes seems as if non-Catholic thinking predominates, and it may be that tomorrow, it is this kind of thinking that will prove to be stronger. But that will never represent the thinking of the Church. It is necessary that a small flock remains, no matter how small it is".
[He certainly could not have meant a 'small flock' like the Lefebvrians! He must have meant something like the 'creative minorities' that Cardinal Ratzinger spoke about much later.]
The difference is that while Paul VI was speaking about this diabolical intromission right after the Council, during a time of dispute and the immediate post-Conciliar crisis. Fellay and his fraternity attribute very responsibility to the Council itself.
It will be some more days before the FSSPX response to the Vatican arrives. They have taken all the time to consider the Vatican offer. But it is time for them to take a stand.
I'd like to add a personal comment that is not present in my INSIDER article. Fellay has been saying - and therefore one can hypothesize that this will be his answer - that the FSSPX cannot accept Vatican II. Some of his members say that there can be no agreement because of the 'confusion' that reigns in a Church that, they claim demands obedience form the Lefebvrians but not from others. [The difference is that the other dissident Catholics have chosen to remain within the Church - though they would perhaps do better by leaving.
Personally, I think that if Fellay's response will be dilatory, or will demand changes that are unacceptable to the Holy See [at least this seems to be what Fellay's public statements and the general attitude in the Fraternity are leading up to).
He will cite the need to conserve the purity of the faith and authentic Tradition (of which the Lefebvrians think of themselves as the legitimate custodians - to the point that they dispute the Pope and his Magisterium.
But I also think that the true, real and greater difficulty is represented by the more radical positions held by many within the FSSPX itself, where a stable group has no intention at all of going back to full communion with Rome because they think that Rome is no longer in communion with Catholic tradition.
I sincerely wish that this will not be so, and that the many, repeated, important and courageous openings by Pope Benedict XVI, the hand he has extended, the willingness he has shown, may still result in a positive solution.
I have been asking myself these days what Mons. Lefebvre himself would have done at this point if he were still leading the FSSPX - after the liberalization of the Missal and the offer of a canonical structure that would allow autonomy for the FSSPX.
I am convinced - and this is absolutely a personal opinion - that he would have said Yes long ago, happy to be able to bring back the FSSPX in communion with the Pope.
Let us hope that what prevails will be nostalgia for communion with the Successor of Peter, and not the beliefs of those who think that the religion of Vatican-II, of Paul VI, of John Paul II and Benedict XVI is different from the Catholic religion professed till 1962!