The “new” SSPX constantly contradicts the clear, firm, Traditional Catholic principles that it used to teach.1 Bishop Fellay gave a striking example of this during an August 24, 2016 conference in New Zealand.2
Before quoting Bishop Fellay’s recent words, let us recall his words in 2004. At that time, Bishop Rangel and the Campos priests had recently made a deal with modernist Rome, despite the SSPX’s strong warnings to Campos that making a deal with conciliar Rome was a trap. Here is how Bishop Fellay described those SSPX warnings in 2004:
I’ll start with a crushing piece of recent news which illustrates so clearly what happens when you offer your finger ... your hand ... your arm to the present Rome. We have, right in our faces, a striking example of what happens to those who trust the present Rome. I speak of Campos.
When Campos was about to make the agreement with Rome, Bishop de Galarreta went to see Bishop Rangel and then I did, too. I told him, “Look at what they are doing to the Society of St. Peter.”3
Right after Bishop Fellay’s words (quoted above), he tells his audience what Bishop Rangel said to defend himself against the SSPX’s warnings that making a deal with conciliar Rome was a trap. Below, besides quoting Bishop Rangel’s 2004 defense, we also quote Bishop Fellay’s own 2016 defense of the (“new”) SSPX seeking its own deal with conciliar Rome. Read these two quotes (below) and see if you can guess which one is from Bishop Rangel and which one is Bishop Fellay.
Here is one bishop’s defense of making a deal which places his group under the practical control of modernist Rome:
[W]hat Rome offers us is so big that we cannot help but trust them. Of course, it’s a question of opinion; it’s a matter of prudence.
Here is the other bishop’s defense of placing his own group under the practical control of modernist Rome:
[Y]ou cannot imagine anything better than what is offered [to us] and such a thing you cannot think that’s a trap. It’s not a trap and if somebody is offering something like that, it can be only because he wants good to us [sic]. He wants the good of Tradition. He wants the Tradition to spread in the Church. It is impossible to think that such a thing could be invented by the enemies. The enemies have many other ways to crush us down [sic] but not that one.
Dear Readers: did you guess which “defense” came from naïve Bishop Rangel in 2004 and which one came from naïve Bishop Fellay in 2016? Answer: the first “defense” came from Bishop Rangel. Id. The second one, from Bishop Fellay in 2016.4
Because Bishop Rangel was deaf to Bishop Fellay’s 2004 warning and blind to modernist Rome’s trap, Bishop Fellay sadly left Bishop Rangel. Bishop Fellay described the situation in these words:
There was nothing more I could do. His [i.e., Bishop Rangel’s] thinking was that since Rome consented to grant them a bishop and their Tridentine life, Campos was being granted everything it wanted, so they wanted to sign an agreement.5
Now Bishop Fellay has become the same sort of agreement-seeking Pollyanna that he tried to prevent Bishop Rangel from becoming twelve years ago. Bishop Fellay has greater (objective) culpability for falling into this same trap, than did Bishop Rangel:
Because Bishop Fellay is doing harm to more people;
Because he used to know better; and
Because Bishop Fellay has the benefit of twelve additional years watching modernist Rome corrupt Campos, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and the other groups which are under its practical control.
This is like the greater (objective) culpability of Traditional Catholics who compromise now, compared to Catholics who were deceived by the conciliar church shortly after Vatican II. Unlike Catholics in the late 1960s, we Traditional Catholics have the lessons of the past fifty years to guide us more clearly than Catholics back then. We must avoid now the mistakes made earlier by those naïve Catholics, who fell into the trap as trying to work from “within”—i.e., as part of—the conciliar church.
As Archbishop Lefebvre wisely declared:
To stay inside the Church, or to put oneself inside the Church—what does that mean? Firstly, what Church are we talking about? If you mean the Conciliar Church, then we who have struggled against the Council for twenty years because we want the Catholic Church, we would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order, supposedly, to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion! It is not the subjects that make the superiors, but the superiors who make the subjects.6
In 2009, (former) Pope Benedict XVI told us plainly what happens every time a traditional group makes a deal submitting itself to the practical control of modernist Rome:
I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader [conciliar] Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity [i.e., Catholic Tradition] so that positive energies could emerge for the whole.
(Bracketed words added.)
Former Pope Benedict was correct that submitting to the practical control of modernist Rome destroys Traditional Catholic groups.
Like all other groups submitting to conciliar Rome’s practical control, Campos made many compromises after it fell into Rome’s trap. For example, so-called “Bishop” Rifan7 (the Campos superior) now concelebrates the new mass and defends this practice as “normal, correct and good” and required by the “doctrinal principles” he accepted from the conciliar church.8
Modernist Rome has the same Tradition-destroying plan for the “new” SSPX, when conciliar Rome “recognizes” the SSPX. As (former) Pope Benedict XVI said in 2009, further, steady weakening is inevitable for the groups that conciliar Rome recognizes. Rome is patient. She waited eleven years for the Society of St. Peter before requiring the clearest, most dramatic compromises. She waited 5 years for the Institute of Christ the King and for the Good Shepherd Institute. She waits as long as needed for the inevitable, sufficient weakening of each traditional society which she “recognizes”.
As the Vatican’s main negotiator (so-called “Archbishop” Di Noia) with the SSPX said in the context of one particular conciliar error: “[T]he Traditionalists will not be able to accept [Vatican II’s teachings on the Jews] immediately. Convincing them will take time, and in this respect, we will have to be patient.”