Notes taken during a Conference given by Bp. Fellay on the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum

Bishop Fellay spoke about the implications of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.

These are notes jotted down by hand during His Lordship's conference, and distributed with permission of the SSPX. Of necessity certain passages would have been my sense of his words rather than a complete transcription. Nevertheless, they adhere as faithfully as possible to his words. This is not an official text of Bishop Fellay's address, and any errors etc are unintended, and of my own making.

M Ó Fearghail

Ireland

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We, in the present age of the Church, are in a very complex situation. Therefore there is no simple answer.

Incidentally – Don't trust the newspapers! I have been accredited with statements i never made. Perhaps they were always untrustworthy, but these days they are most definitely so.

When we look at the Motu Proprio with a microscope – there are many terrible things! Yet when we step back and take a broad perspective – it has many very positive things going for it. At the Council of Pistoia, it was declared that for the Church to promulgate a bad law is impossible. To assert that the Church could do this was formally condemned as a heresy. Yet here we are faced with the reality. On the one hand we have the Faith. On the other, we have the Reality before us.

We see the organised dismantling of the Faith on every side, and we cannot but ask, "How can they do this? How could God possibly allow such a thing? Why doesn't He stop it? Why doesn't He just raise His hand and make it cease?" Yes, He could do this. Of course He could. But this is not, in fact, the way God normally operates in the world. Remember the Calming of the Storm, which was not a parable but an historical incident. The apostles were on the Sea of Galilee with Jesus. They were professionals. They knew their boat and they knew the weather on the lake. The storm came and they worked their hardest to keep the boat afloat. And meanwhile – Jesus was asleep! But mark well - Jesus as Man was asleep, but Jesus as God was in total control. Of the wind; of the boat; of the exact amount of water that entered the boat. And so, after the Apostles had done their utmost, then they called upon Him, and he arose and calmed the tumult with a single word.

We learn from this that, despite all appearances, God is in control of His Church. If things become difficult for a while, God in His Wisdom will draw a Greater Good out of this crisis.

We cannot see in every detail how these two - Faith and Reality - fit together, yet our mind must hold to the Truth. It would be too easy simply to say: The Pope says it; it must be Good. And it would be too easy to say: "the Pope is supposed to be a saint – but he isn't a saint! He can't be the Pope!"

Cdl Castrillon Hoyos said two years ago: "Bp Fellay says the New Mass is Bad. It it is approved by the Pope! It is impossible that it be bad! it must be good!" Bp Fellay's reply is: "Open your eyes! When Priests dress like clowns on the altar – it is Bad! When the Pope kisses the Koran – it is Bad! When the Pope organises an Interfaith Prayer Meeting at Assisi – it is Bad!

No, we cannot explain every part of all this. But consider Our Lord's word about Jonah: He speaks of the Son of Man being "three days and three nights in the tomb" . But there is no way to get from Good Friday to first thing Easter Sunday morning, and get three days and three nights out of it. Some have tried to explain it by saying that the Darkness during the Crucifixion "counts" as one of the Nights. Yet this itself illustrates a danger. We must be very, very prudent in these things. Do not try to bend God to suit your own inclinations about what is fitting. We must not pretend that we have all the answers. Things are neither All Good nor All Bad.

One thing is incontrovertible. We are in a new situation. Now – we have a Motu Proprio. This means, a binding statement that comes directly from the Pope. Usually in the history of the Church, what happens is that the Faithful will ask the Pope to make some ruling. E.g. in the late 19th Century the Faithful asked Pope Leo XIII to introduce S. Joseph into the Canon of the Mass. One of the petitioners was the later Pope Pius X. But this time, it is the other way round. With Motu Proprio, the movement comes from the Pope down.

If you take a microscope to read that document, you will be horrified. Yet if you look from further back, it is more encouraging.

• ONE KEY PHRASE: "The Traditional Mass has never been abrogated" . In other words, this is still the Catholic Mass.

This, of course, is not new. It is not a new ruling, a new law, a new interpretation. It is a statement of what is.

In the whole history of the Church, such a thing has never, never happened. Normally, when a law is changed, the new fully replaces the old. But now the Pope has told us - it didn't happen this time.

Compare it with traffic laws! Suppose the old law was - Drive on the left. The New Law is - Drive on the right. And then parliament says, "Well actually the old law is still in force!"

We have, since 1988, spoken of "The Indult Mass" – But now, by the very fact that the Pope has said the Traditional Latin Mass was "never abrogated", it is affirmed that the Traditional Latin Mass is within the Law. You don't need permission; you don't need conditions, to follow the Law! There are NO CONDITIONS in the Motu Proprio itself. Never in the MP is there any mention of "prohibiting". Therefore, priests and bishops may not prohibit the Traditional Latin Mass. On the contrary, it states that the priest "will willingly accept" the request for the Traditional Latin Mass. And is he refuses, the layman may refer the case to the Bishop who "will willingly accept" the request.

Therefore, the MP Mass is not just a continuation of the Indult. No!

Yet on the level of Reality: there is no change. Those who thought that, if the Pope were to make such a ruling, the members of the Church would immediately do an about-face, are very much out of touch with Reality.

Yet there are very important consequences.

• The Traditional Latin Mass has not been suppressed. This gives a guarantee for the future. It is now almost impossible even to imagine the Traditional Latin Mass being suppressed in the future. That has now passed.

• What are the intentions of the Pope? This of course is much harder to answer. But we can deduce certain things.

In 2000 the SSPX said: "Before we begin serious talks, we want this: (i) Give the Traditional Latin Mass to everybody; (ii) Remove the Decree of Excommunication. And everybody said: "Bp Fellay is requesting the impossible!" Now the actual reply we got was, "We agree that the Traditional Latin Mass wasn't suppressed: Cdl Sodano, Ratzinger, Castrillon Hoyos, Medina, and many others all agree"... We said, "So why don't you do it?" and they replied, "But the Secretaries and the Under-secretaries don't agree!"

Cdl Castrillon Hoyos said, " Some Faithful, and some Bps, think that if we do this, it will be a move against Paul VI, against the Novus Ordo, against the Second Vatican Council." Bp Fellay's response is, "I thought it was the Pope who is the Boss!" And now, seven years later, the "impossible" has happened – by personal intervention of the Pope.

I say now: don't be too carried away by the imperfections of this Motu Proprio – look at the broad picture. Some conversions are instantaneous – like that of S. Paul. But very many take much longer.

Look at the history of the Church. The general rule is that every serious crisis in the Church takes seventy years to run its course! Matters deteriorate for decades, then some turning-point is reached – and the recovery proceeds for the remaining decades. There is no magical instantaneous resolution of the crisis. Now this Motu Proprio was definitely the turning-point! We're not saying the crisis is over right now, but we do say that the hour has struck for the beginning of the restoration.

We would like a forest. We want a tree. After this Summer, the seed is in the ground. If we don't plant the seed, we'll never get the tree – or the forest!

To those impatient for an instantaneous solution: Did you really think the Pope would speak and everybody would make an overnight turnaround? That is not how human nature operates!

But this is certain: Provided that equality of opportunity be accorded to both forms of the Mass, the death certificate of the New Mass has now been signed.

If we leave the choice freely to normal people, we know what they will want. The New Mass cannot, and never has, inspired the Faithful to devotion. It will wither away, and the Traditional Latin Mass will replace it, by the natural development of circumstances.

But we mustn't kid ourselves! Exactly why did the Pope issue this Motu Proprio? What is his long-term objective? Do not assume that the Pope is on our side! I'm not so sure! I fear he has another intention: based on a vision which he has explained several times in the past. His philosophy of history is Hegelian – based on that of the German Philosopher Hegel. "The Sense of History" promoted by Hegel, and accepted by the then Cdl Ratzinger, is that History evolves in the direction of Progress and never goes back. Cdl Ratzinger has several times said, "We cannot go back". He laments the present situation; he seems to recognise that we have strayed onto the wrong road. We say that if you go down the wrong road, the only way to the destination is to head back to the right road, and then follow it. But he will not draw this conclusion.

To give some examples.

(i) As Cdl Ratzinger, he wrote at length about the Liturgy. He attacks the innovation of the table, replacing the immemorial altar facing East at the end of the church! Then he asks, "What are we to do about it?" Everybody would say, "So get rid of it!" But he says, "Nooooo! Just put a Cross on the table – that will now represent the Mystical East!" (ii) He criticises Modern Philosophy for being inadequate and unable to embrace the concepts of the Faith. He asks again, "So what do we do about it?" We would immediately respond, "So get rid of it!" But he says, "Nooooo!" Instead he embraces Hegel's concept of the Dialectic [which inspired Marxism]: We have a "Thesis" – a statement of one position. Then we have an "Antithesis" – a contradiction of the Thesis. When these react against each other, we achieve the "Synthesis" – which is supposed to be superior to what had come before – the better state. And so instead of rejecting the new, inadequate philosophy, he expects some new and better Synthesis to emerge from the conflict..

Most unfortunately, this is the vision of History entertained by the Pope. He told the Fraternity of S. Peter, "You must keep the Traditional Latin Mass going as a counterweight to the New Mass. Then we will have a New New Mass! We will achieve a New Synthesis!"

When laypeople some years ago asked for the Traditional Latin Mass back, the then Cdl Ratzinger merely said, "We will have a New Mass based upon the old! A New synthesis!

Yes this is what I fear is probably his intention. We can hope it is not.

So what have been the practical consequences so far? In some countries, the situation of the Traditional Latin Mass is even more difficult than before. His opponents cannot move against the Pope directly, so they are moving against those who are trying to implement his wishes. Several Bishops' conferences have issued a decree whereby they request the priest to ask permission of the bishop before organising the TLM, even though this is expressly against the statements of the Motu Proprio.

It certainly makes for an interesting change: it is not ourselves who are in the arena! We are the spectators and it is the Pope and the bishops who are in the arena!

The German Bishops Conference have done this. The Polish Bishops conference, following the Germans, have done likewise The French and Italians, however, have been more devious. They have said in public: "Fine! we'll follow the Motu Proprio!" But then, behind the scenes, on a provincial level they have issued a document of secret instruction on how to deal with the MP and render it ineffective. How do we know this? Because a certain priest saw a copy on his Bishop's desk! He picked it up and said, "Hello, what's this?" The bishop angrily snatched it out of his hand, exclaiming, "That's not for you!" Unfortunately, however, the priest had read the contents before he picked it up...

The Pope is very conscious of his position as Pope. He realises that, if he backs down now, he will lose his authority. Will he have the strength to hold out? He very much needs our prayers.

We have now reached a very critical point in the course of events. The Novus Ordo Bishops, those who lived through Vatican II, are getting old. For them Vatican II was their baby. They cannot entertain the idea that it was all a huge mistake. The younger bishops are more unformed in the Faith, but they do not have this attachment to Vatican II.

Therefore the duration and the details of this crisis are not our concern. Our concern is that the Church get back on its tracks.

The Vatican insists that it is we who are the problem.

I said recently to Cdl Castrillon Hoyos: "Please forget about the SSPX and deal with your own problems! When you have done that, you will discover that the SSPX is no longer a problem!"

We are a thermometer of the state of the Church. A doctor ought not to get upset at his own thermometer! Cure the sickness and the thermometer will go down by itself!

We Catholics have a right to request Bishops – and the Pope – to act like Catholic Bishops, like a Catholic Pope.

Because we stick to the Faith, now it has come about that we are the reference!

They may say, "What, four bishops and 500 priests against 5,000 bishops and 400,000 priests? But the Catholic mind doesn't care about numbers – but the truth.

We are the Disturbing Element that keeps down the unchecked spread of Error. Our position is starting to influence other priests, bishops, Cardinals.

Since the issuing of the Motu Proprio, the SSPX have been asked for information. We did not force it; we said, "If anyone is interested, write and ask us for a CD". So far we have, on request, distributed 5,000 DVDs: 3,000 French, 2,000 German. The USA are not keeping records, but at least 700 have been sent out. Allowing for collaboration between priests, at least 10,000 have got in touch with the Old Mass.

At the level of doctrine it is the same. We must start at the beginning! We can't start building a house with the roof!

And this is not theory. I am telling you what we are seeing. There is a might in the Old Mass. It nurtures the Faith. Priests go back to the Traditional Latin Mass then begin to re-think their lives.

Priests have said, "By saying the Traditional Latin Mass I have understood the nature of the Priesthood."

All this requires, on our part, enormous energy, and we may say compassion, mercy, and firmness.

Last year, I requested a three-month Crusade. In response, we were given 2.5 million Rosaries offered by the Faithful. Officially, there has been no response. But we know they were moved.

Now, I am asking for a New Crusade. A Perpetual Crusade of the Rosary. Let us surround the Church with this holy chain that will protect her.

We must keep up this Crusade until the Immaculate Heart triumphs! Pray, pray, pray!

At this present time, It is the will of God that the world care for His Mother. We must defend her honour.

This is the Time of Mary!

But be aware - there will be no genuine triumph without a genuine fight!

Be faithful!

Keep your Faith! Keep to the old books, as the Saints ever recommended in times of confusion!

It will be confusing! Rome will get even more confusing before it is all over!

Remember - the battle is not yet over, but we are at the Turning of the Tide!

JMJ & P