CFN Editor's note: It is with great joy we announce the last Rosary Crusade from Bishop Fellay, especially since one of the main intentions is the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is only this Consecration that will defeat the many-headed plague of evil now assaulting our society from every side. The Crusade starts today, May 1. Please use the attached grid [pdf] and join your fellow Catholics in this goal of 12 million Rosaries by march, 2010. - jv
Bishop Fellay Calls for New Rosary Crusade
•
Twelve Million Rosaries by March, 2010
- for next stage of discussions with Rome
-
for the proper Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
LETTER TO FRIENDS AND BENEFACTORS - SPRING
2009
Just as we were launching a second Rosary Crusade at our Lourdes
pilgrimage last October, we hardly expected such a swift answer from Heaven! As
for the Vicar of Christ’s Motu Proprio liberating the traditional Mass, our
second entreaty was answered even more swiftly by the Blessed Virgin, because on
the very same visit I made to Rome in January to put in the Sovereign Pontiff’s
hands our bouquet of 1,703,000 Rosaries, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos put in my own
hands the decree lifting the “excommunications” of 1988!
That is
something we had asked for back in 2001, as a sign of good will on the part of
the Vatican towards the Traditional movement. For, ever since the Council,
everything Traditional or seeking to be Traditional in the Church has been
undergoing one vexation after another, up to and including our being cast into
exile. Naturally that undermined partially or even totally, ones trust in the
Roman authorities. As long as that trust is not partially restored, as I said at
the time, the relations between Rome and ourselves will hardly exist. Trust is
not just a nice feeling, it is a fruit that grows all on its own when one can
recognize in the Roman authorities shepherds who have the interests of
everything Traditional at heart. That was the meaning of our two preliminary
requests. It is impossible to understand our present position and attitude
towards the Holy See if one does not take into account the state of crisis
prevailing in the Church, which is no superficial matter, nor just a personal
opinion. It is a reality quite independent of our way of looking at it, which is
admitted now and again by those authorities, and verified all the time by the
facts. There are numerous and varied aspects to the crisis, some profound, some
merely circumstantial, but everyone suffers from it. What strikes the faithful
above all are the updated liturgical ceremonies—very often scandalous, alas! and
the day-to-day preaching from the pulpit of positions on moral questions in
direct contradiction to the age-old teaching of the Church and the example of
the Saints. Very often parents have been grieved by their children’s losing the
Faith, after having been entrusted to Catholic schools, or by their almost
complete ignorance of Catholic doctrine, thanks to the lack of any proper
catechism. A countless number of members of religious orders, through their
Constitutions having been re-written and their minds re-trained according to
Vatican II, show that they have lost the spirit of the Gospel, in particular,
self-renunciation, poverty and sacrifice. This loss has almost immediately
resulted in such a falling off of vocations that a number of Orders and
Congregations are closing their houses one after another, or disappearing
altogether. The situation of many dioceses is just as dramatic.
All of
which forms a coherent whole that did not happen merely by chance, but arose out
of a Council setting out to reform everything, and claiming to bring even the
Church up to date. Yet we are accused of either seeing a crisis where there is
none, or of wrongly blaming the Council for a disastrous and enormously serious
situation which anyone can recognize, or again of profiting by that situation to
justify a wrongful attitude of rebellion and independence.
On the
contrary, pick up the writings of the Church Fathers, or the Magisterium, or the
Liturgy or Theology down the ages, and you find a unity of teaching and example
to which we cleave with all our heart. This unity of doctrine is in practice
heavily contradicted, thwarted and attacked by present ways of doing things. We
are not imagining things when we say there has been a break. The break is all
too real. To observe how the Bishops of certain countries treat us even after
the “excommunications” were withdrawn, is enough for one to see how deeply the
up-dated churchmen reject anything that smacks of Tradition. The only name that
can be given to such an occurrence is a break with the past.
For again,
as surprising as was the appearance of the Decree of January 21, just as
astonishing was the violence of the reaction of the progressives and leftists in
general with regard to ourselves. By Bishop Williamson’s unfortunate words they
may well have been handed a golden opportunity to smear the whole Society of St.
Pius X and to treat it as a scapegoat, but the truth of the matter is that we
were merely an instrument in a much more important struggle, the struggle of
Mother Church, truly called the Church Militant , against the evil spirits
prowling through the atmosphere, as St. Paul says. It is no presumption on our
part to say the Society has just now been playing a part in Church history, the
history of the titanic struggle for the salvation of souls, announced in the
Book of Genesis and described so dramatically in the Revelation of St. John.
Normally this struggle confines itself to the spiritual domain, but every now
and again it flows over from words and souls into the bodily domain, and then it
becomes visible, as with open persecutions.
In all that has happened
these last few months we should see a particularly intense moment of this
struggle. It is clear as clear can be that the main target being aimed at is the
Vicar of Christ as he attempts to undertake a certain restoration of the Church.
A coming together of the Head of the Church and the Traditional movement is much
feared, as is any going back on the novelties of Vatican II, so everything
possible is done to prevent it. What does the Pope truly think? What position is
he taking? Jews and progressives want to force him to choose between Vatican II
and ourselves…. to such a point that to re-assure them, the Secretariat of State
could find nothing better than to lay down as a necessary condition for our
canonical re-instatement the complete acceptance of what we consider to be the
main source of the current problems we have always been opposed to!.... Yet
those churchmen are bound, as are we all, by the Anti-modernist Oath and all the
other Church condemnations of modern novelties. Thus we refuse to approach
Vatican II from any other angle than that of the Solemn Declarations (Profession
of Faith and Anti-modernist Oath) drawn up before God and the Church. And if the
Council is incompatible with such Declarations, then it is the novelties that
must be wrong. We are relying on the up-coming doctrinal discussions to clarify
these points as much as possible.
Profiting from the new situation
arising from the withdrawal of the “excommunications” which has actually left
the canonical status of the Society unchanged, several Bishops try to square the
circle by demanding that we obey Canon Law to the letter on every point, as
though we were perfectly in order, at the same time as they declare we have no
canonical existence! One German Bishop has announced that by year’s end the
Society will once more be out of the Church… Nice of him! In fact the only
possible solution is the one we already asked for, namely an intermediary
status, necessarily incomplete and canonically imperfect, but generally accepted
as being intermediary, without our having to be constantly accused of
disobedience and rebellion, without our having ridiculous prohibitions thrown at
us. When all is said and done, one more proof that the Church finds itself in an
abnormal state, which we call a state of necessity, is the present words and
deeds of certain Bishops with regard to the Pope and Tradition.
|
So how
will things develop from here? We have no idea. We stand by our proposal to
accept our present imperfect situation as being temporary, even while we enter
into the doctrinal discussions that have been announced, in the hope that they
will bear fruit.
But on this difficult path, in the face of such violent
opposition, we ask you, dear faithful, once more to resort to prayer. It seems
to us that the moment has come to launch a major offensive, firmly anchored in
the message of Our Lady at Fatima, where she promised us success, announcing
that in the end her Immaculate Heart will triumph. This is the triumph we are
asking her for by the means she herself requested, namely the Consecration of
Russia to Her Immaculate Heart by the Supreme Pastor and all the Bishops of the
Catholic world, and the spread of the devotion to her Sorrowful and Immaculate
Heart. So for this purpose we wish to offer her by March 2010 a bouquet of 12
million Rosaries, like a crown of 12 million stars all around her, to be
accompanied by a similar quantity of daily sacrifices to be drawn above all from
the faithful accomplishment of our duty of state, while we promise to spread the
devotion to her Immaculate Heart. We are firmly convinced that if we take care
to do what she says, we will obtain much more than we could ever have hoped, and
above all we will make sure of our salvation by benefiting from the graces she
has promised us.
So we ask also of our priests a special effort to make
this devotion easier of access for our faithful, by putting the accent not only
on the Communion of Reparation of the first Saturdays of the month, but also on
living very close to Our Lady through the consecration to her Immaculate Heart.
It would also be good to know better and to deepen the spirituality of Fr.
Maximilian Kolbe, the great herald of the Immaculate.
Our Society was
consecrated to the Immaculate Heart 25 years ago this year. We wish to renew
this happy initiative of Fr. Schmidberger by wholly devoting ourselves to that
Heart and by reviving our own hearts in this spirit. Obviously we are not going
to tell Providence what it should do, but we have learned from the examples set
by the Saints and in Scripture itself that to have great desires can bring
forward the designs of the good Lord in a remarkable way. Thus today we make
bold to entrust this intention to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, by asking her to
take you all under her motherly protection. May God bless you abundantly!
On the feast of the glorious Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
Winona, Easter 2009
+Bernard Fellay
- emphasis added by Catholic Family News
See also: Audio lecture: "The Society of St. Pius X is not in Schism"
For pdf grid to keep track of Rosaries, click here
Posted
May 1, 2009
Catholic Family News
MPO Box 743 * Niagara Falls, NY
14302
905-871-6292
CFN is published once a month (12 times per year)
Subscription: $28.00 a year.
Request sample copy
Audio CDs and Cassettes * CFN Index * New DVD Offer * Subscribe on line
