Thoughts on Bishop Fellay and the ugliness of schism.

t pains me to have to write this, because I had great hopes for the reunion of the Soci­ety of St. Pius X (SSPX) with Rome. I had hoped, from all that I had read, that Bish­op Fel­lay was com­mit­ted to achiev­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and was dis­ap­point­ed to learn that the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith (CDF) had decid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue fur­ther nego­ta­tions. And it is impos­si­ble to lis­ten to Bp. Fel­lay’s lat­est talk of nine­ty-plus min­utes and doubt that his love for the Church is sin­cere. How­ev­er, I think that he has now done near-irrepara­ble harm to his Soci­ety’s chances for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. I pray that I am wrong [1].

I am not just talk­ing about the fact that he calls Jews the “ene­mies of the Church.” (And he says that about Masons and Mod­ernists too.) The broad­er con­text of his discussion—which I have lis­tened to, in its full, painful hour-and-a-half entirety—was a dis­cus­sion of Vat­i­can II and its so-called “nov­el­ties.” Among oth­er things, Bp. Fel­lay said that that the com­mit­ment to ecu­menism is “con­trary to tra­di­tion” and “does­n’t work,” that the con­cil­iar doc­u­ments are full of “errors,” and that the Novus Ordo is “bad” and “evil.” As an added bonus, the bish­op voiced his stern objec­tion to the move to beat­i­fy Pope Paul VI and not­ed that his (the pope’s) moth­er’s tomb is cov­ered with Mason­ic sym­bols [2].

Bp. Fel­lay is right that great harm has been done to the Church since Vat­i­can II. But—and it is very impor­tant to get this right—the source of that harm was not any­thing the Coun­cil said, but rather those who used the Coun­cil as an excuse for what­ev­er wild inno­va­tions the mis­guid­ed mind of man could dream up. Could the Church have done a bet­ter job exer­cis­ing dis­ci­pline and erad­i­cat­ing this kind of stuff? Prob­a­bly. Could it do a bet­ter job going for­ward? Almost cer­tain­ly. But a Hydra-head­ed mon­ster takes time to kill, and John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI have done a very good job in clar­i­fy­ing what the Coun­cil said and what it did not. To lay the fault at the feet of the Coun­cil itself is wrong and will always be wrong.

Hence the rea­son Fel­lay’s words last month are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly dis­ap­point­ing. He loves the Church—I don’t doubt that—and the SSPX has incred­i­ble gifts to bring to the Church. Its com­mit­ment to the Church’s tra­di­tions, and to the beau­ty of the Latin Mass, would go a long way toward restor­ing a sense of the sacred. That is why schism is ugly: It robs the Church of need­ed gifts; and God gives gifts to every­one in good mea­sure. As a life­long Protes­tant until con­vert­ing to the Catholic Church in 2011, I under­stand that many Protes­tants have extra­or­di­nary gifts in their love for the Sacred Scrip­ture and their devo­tion to sound exe­ge­sis of it. The Church can ben­e­fit from those gifts, if only Protes­tants will for­sake their attempts to go-it-on-their-own and return home. The eye can­not say to the hand, I have no need of you. I would say the same thing to the SSPX. The Novus Ordo is not evil. Schism is.

Fr. Fed­eri­co Lom­bar­di, speak­ing on behalf of the Vat­i­can, nec­es­sar­i­ly had to issue a stern rebuke of Bish­op Fel­lay’s “unac­cept­able” com­ments regard­ing Jews as “ene­mies” of the Church. For his part, the bish­op attempt­ed to clar­i­fy that he was speak­ing about the Jew­ish lead­ers, not the Jew­ish peo­ple, and that the word “ene­my” meant only that these lead­ers are opposed to the mis­sion of the Church. That strikes me as split­ting hairs extra­or­di­nar­i­ly fine. Nei­ther the Jew­ish peo­ple, nor their lead­ers, should be scape­goats for what is wrong in the Church. From Abra­ham until now, they are God’s peo­ple. And it might be well to note that, in any case, Bish­op Fel­lay does not speak for the Church. He speaks for the SSPX; and as it stands, and con­tin­ues to stand, the SSPX is not in com­mu­nion with Rome.

At the start of his talk, how­ev­er, Bish­op Fel­lay did say some­thing that I thought was exact­ly right. Here is what he said: “When you lose the trust to the author­i­ty, then you are left to your­self, then you are alone to judge.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he went on dur­ing the next nine­ty min­utes to prove how we may apply those very words to him­self.

As you pon­der all these things, I ask that you would pray the prayer of Jesus in Ges­the­mane: that we may all be one.

You can lis­ten to Bish­op Fel­lay’s remarks here. And you can read the Doc­u­ments of Vat­i­can II here. They are worth study­ing care­ful­ly.

Endnotes.

[1] Fr. Z., with his usu­al pre­ci­sion, refers to Fel­lay’s address as “ram­bling.”

[2] There are some pho­tos here that attempt to val­i­date this claim, for what they may be worth. Update: There is some good dis­cus­sion below, worth read­ing, that points out why these pho­tos prove zero.