44 Comments

• mreinhar2001 | Feb 15, 2013, 12:49 PM EST

  @Commonsence hist the nail right squarely on the head. "Mr. Felley does not speak for the Roman or any other Catholic Church."

• Commonsence | Jan 11, 2013, 08:40 PM EST

  Mr. Felley does not speak for the Roman or any other Catholic Church. To give his position on Jews space in an article implying he has standing in Catholicism is bad journalism. As a practicing Catholic I have always viewed the Jewish faith like an ancestor, to be respected. Our foundation is Jewish and our original leaders were Jewish, Christianity took a different path into the future, they are no better or worse for the choice of our founders, just different in their belief. Jews are our brothers and sisters, we may disagree on many things but we are still family. We may have a common foe, but Jews are not our enemy. Fellay is a fool!

• eiriamach | Jan 10, 2013, 12:56 PM EST

  Tom, I find the current tumult in Vatican politics sad because carrying out the reforms of Vatican II would have prevented many current problems. Most pitiful is that if popes had followed the Vatican II constitution to allow lay involvement in church organization, at least some of the sexual abuse cases could have been prevented and, in any case, the cover-up scandal would never have grown to the proportions it has reached. They say it takes a century to implement all of a Council's teachings. But with 50 years of rewriting Vatican II as "tradition" and "reforming the reform," reform hasn't really begun. I hope enough Catholics understand this history to see Fellay as representing the mistakes of the past that the Church should have learned to avoid. But power is so seductive and "authority" seems so essential!

• eiriamach | Jan 10, 2013, 09:33 AM EST

  eiriamach, thank you for the excellent summary. I did a refresher yesterday on Vatican I. Fascinating reading.

• eiriamach | Jan 10, 2013, 09:14 AM EST

  The context is important: Second Vatican Council was set up to change the direction of the Church after the excesses of First Vatican Council. First Vatican, 1868-70, was the Council that declared the pope may speak infallibly on questions of faith and morals. It gave him "full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church." It centralized decision-making in the Vatican. By mid-20th century, great opposition had arisen to papal supremacy. In order to win election, John F. Kennedy had rejected papal teaching against separation of church and state, and US Catholics agreed. Popes, however, don't renounce power easily in their dealings with governments. So Second Vatican Council, 1962-65, laid out ways for Catholics to have moral influence in the world without churchmen meddling directly in politics. It brought the bishops into decision-making and made the laity responsible for advocating Christian principles in secular life. It ended Catholic 'triumphalism' and emulated Protestant moral influence on politics. Aiming at restoring Christian unity, the Council apologized for past persecutions. The Church opened itself to new knowledge from science. However, since Vatican II, popes have rejected reproductive science (humane vitae) and waged culture war battles while demanding obedience from the laity to their political and social teachings. The US bishops, loyal foot soldiers in the war, demand political power in the form of control over US health policy -- in the name of "religious liberty"! And so the great debate about worldly authority over Christians (an oxymoron) continues with Fellay's critique of Benedict's refusal to reject Vatican II while following Vatican I.

• warlocks | Jan 10, 2013, 02:04 AM EST

  IF Jesus came back today he would abolish the Catholic Church as a Pagan Religion and not his teachings The church of today is in Decay

• eiriamach | Jan 09, 2013, 05:33 PM EST

  For a rundown of Fellay's speech, if you don't wish to listen to the one-hour-40-minute video, see "Calling Jews 'enemies' is 'unacceptable,' Vatican spokesman says," By Carol Glatz at the Catholic News Service.

• eiriamach | Jan 09, 2013, 05:25 PM EST

  The problem of SSPX cannot be conjured away with word play, Smyrnian. Bishop Fellay is a consecrated bishop with many consecrated Roman Catholic priests and many (see the list at the SSPX web site) churches (one in Dublin and others in Ireland) and retreat centers and a publishing house and other Roman Catholic institutions, videos on YouTube, etc., etc. As Tom Swinford points out, "SSPX bishops previously excommunicated have been reinstated," including troublesome Bishop Williamson, who does deny that the Nazis conducted a full-scale "holocaust" of Jews. Has the SSPX finally become a problem for conservative Catholics as well as liberal/reform Catholics? If the SSPX is finally in official schism, then MANY other trad Catholic priestly communities are also in schism because they share SSPX's objections to VCII. But then RC is no longer "one, holy, Catholic and apostolic" as Catholics claim it to be when they scorn Protestants for having so many differently organized churches. The Lesson: you cannot suppress calls for reform or calls for return to the past; you must allow the dialogue and the ultimate decisions to be made by people with their bishops. The Holy Spirit doesn't like censorship.

• Smyrnian | Jan 09, 2013, 05:01 PM EST

  The Pope does not recognize him. As such he is not a Roman Catholic.

• eiriamach | Jan 09, 2013, 04:25 PM EST

  Smyrnian, you're wrong. He and all the priests and bishops in SSPX are ROMAN Catholics. He is not Eastern, not Orthodox, and certainly not Anglican Catholic. He's a practicing ordained member of the Roman Catholic Church. Visit the SSPX web site; check it out.

• Smyrnian | Jan 09, 2013, 02:53 PM EST

  Eireamach - be clear please. He is not a ROMAN Catholic. There are lots of "Catholics", including Roman Catholics of which he is not.

• eiriamach | Jan 09, 2013, 02:43 PM EST

  Besides, Fellay is an ordained bishop of the Catholic Church, and his priests are all ordained Catholic priests, "priests forever." Maybe some reform-minded folks would like to see the pope try to silence Fellay just as the pope has silenced Irish and German reform priests, removed liberal Vatican II theologians from universities, and excommunicated and defrocked reformers like Fr Bourgeois. But as liberal thinkers, the reformers are inclusive, they want to reignite debate, so they will not advocate censorship of anyone, even their most strident critics on the right. If the pope does not respond to Bishop Fellay's accusations, however, Vatican hypocrisy and far-right alignment will be obvious. If he does, he will alienate some of his traditionalist allies. ~~~~The anti-Semitism noted in the article's headline is nothing new: As a trad Catholic, Fellay is keeping alive the pre-Vatican II tradition of demonizing Jews for their 'deicide.' SSPX rejects Vatican II's Nostra Aetate, which acknowledged that Jews did not kill Christ, and it warned, "in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone."

• eiriamach | Jan 09, 2013, 08:09 AM EST

  According to Fellay's speech, Benedict XVI told him, "There are three points which you [SSPX] must accept to be recognized: ... the magisterium ... second, the [Second Vatican] Council is an integral part of tradition." Then Fellay comments, "Traditional! Imagine! During 40 years they themselves have said the contrary.... The third point, you must accept that the new Mass is valid and licit.... [The pope] wants to avoid a schism.... The problem is in Rome, not in us. The problem is that you have the Modernists who would like to finish the story of the Society with the condemnation.... This situation now is really blocked.... The traditional life has been made impossible in the Church.... laymen ... have a problem of conscience.... You must bring back tradition in the Church.... You cannot in the name of the faith oblige us to deny the reality.... the new Mass is bad ... leading souls into losing the faith.... It's clear; it's a fact.... this liturgy makes the priest lose faith in the Real Presence. In the Diocese of Sydney, 78% of the priests don't believe in the Real Presence ... because of the Mass.... Thousands and millions of souls get lost.... That's why we want the Church to get back to its tradition.... Those who are really sticking to the Council are ... those who are in power now." Fellay understands Vatican II and knows the pope is discarding its teachings. It's an interesting development because the pope cannot just tell Fellay to get lost; too many traditionalists agree with Fellay about Vatican II Council, and the reformers know that Fellay is right about the popes misrepresenting and changing the Council's teachings. Very interesting!

• eiriamach | Jan 09, 2013, 07:46 AM EST

  If you listen to his speech (the video), you'll see that Fellay is as Catholic as the pope. Fellay thinks the only way to save Catholicism is to return to the Latin Mass, to reject the inter-faith dialogue that Second Vatican Council called for, and to re-embrace "tradition." The irony is that the current pope has restored much tradition and broken off ecumenical dialogue, just as Fellay wants. But the pope cannot admit that he is violating Second Vatican Council, and Fellay is too thick to read the play book and just go along with the pope's back door way of restoring "tradition." In the video, Fellay claims the Vatican lied about his talks with them and changed the wording of his letters to make the SSPX position look "acceptable." He says that he'd get a letter from the CDF saying that something he wrote was not acceptable, and then the pope's secretary or other official would phone him to say that the pope really agreed with him, but couldn't allow criticisms of VC II in the written records. Of course the pope was disingenuous in calling his rollback of Vatican II reforms a "hermeneutic of continuity." A Latinate new Missal, traditional lavish vestments, censoring reform priests and forbidding them to teach or publish, prohibiting female altar servers, opposing civil laws protecting LGBT's and women's rights while protecting predatory priests -- all of that IS a rupture with Second Vatican Council, as many have said. Fellay couldn't catch on to the duplicity, so the Vatican rejected SSPX. The consummate irony is that it's the traditionalist SSPX, papal monarchists who worship papal authority, who are now on the outside criticizing the papacy! It must be so frustrating for Fellay.

• michaelidaho | Jan 08, 2013, 08:33 PM EST

  Tom Swinford: I am not sure what is so hard to understand here. This group is NOT the RCC. It would be akin to arguing that because the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) claim they are the true Mormons, then they are part of the mainstream LDS (Mormon) church. The only path towards reconciliation is for SSPX to reconcile with Rome. In any event, my original point was to suggest that IC, in their attempts to continue their anti-Catholic tirades, mistakenly thought this group was affiliated with Rome and therefore gladly used this crackpot’s utterances to further their agenda.

• seanomelb | Jan 08, 2013, 06:59 PM EST

  Technically Williams did not deny the holocaust he denied the figures claiming 6 million jews were not gassed but a lower number.It's academic I suppose !! Nvertheless the sspx is a right wing fascist organisation and has plenty of sup[port in the Vatican.

• Thomas84 | Jan 08, 2013, 03:58 PM EST

  Those jews must be doing something right if this racist moron considers himself their enemy. Ill stand with the jewish lads in this issue and if any christian says this to me in my daily life, he is getting a box in the face for himself. Im an Irish republican by the way.

• IrelandNorth | Jan 08, 2013, 02:40 PM EST

  It's worth bearing in mind that Lutheran Protestantism (and the Anglicanism to which it gave rise) remained Catholic, just not Roman Catholics. Hence High Church Anglicanism is considered by other Protestantisms to be little different from RCism. Since both Anglican (ie Catholic Protestants) and Roman Catholics are both within the Petrine/Pauline Latin Church respectively, Eastern Orthodoxies parted company with them in the schism of the middle ages. Generically, the Jesus movement to which the Prophet Himself gave rise was suppressed by the Constantinian orthodox church, hence all orthodoxies are the morthers of all heresies. Real question is, what is "the church". The faithful, or those morbid ecclesiastical architectures which abound with sado-masochistic iconography, abusing the impressionable and imaginative minds of the children of the brainwashed across generations. The real temple is in your own heart, to which no hierarchical interloper has the key. You're supposed to work out your own salvation by imitating the Christos, not by codependently expecting Him to help you beat the rap for an offencec others projected onto you.

• IrelandNorth | Jan 08, 2013, 10:43 AM EST

  Note to michaelidaho: Your statement that SSPX is not Roman Catholic is flatly false. Of Of course SSPX is Catholic - indeed Bishop Fellay and his followers profoundly believe that they represent the true traditionalist Roman Catholic Church. The Holy See continues to recognize SSPX priests and SSPX bishops previously excommunicated have been reinstated. At this moment the Holy See and SSPX are very close to resolution of their "differences and misunderstandings." Benedict XVI is anxious to reconcile with SSPX in large part because he too, like SSPX, believes in the church as it was before Vatican II - which was convened by Pope John the 23rd in an attempt to reform the church and, in his words, "let the people see in and the church see out."

• michaelidaho | Jan 08, 2013, 09:57 AM EST

  Note to all readers and IC: THE SSPX ARE NOT ROMAN CATHOLIC Now you can go on to the next inevitable anti-Catholic IC article, read the strident anti-Catholicism and comment accordingly. BTW, I agree with Smyrnian's comments wholeheartedly, especially the most recent one. Thank you. I could not have said it better.

• eiriamach | Jan 08, 2013, 09:00 AM EST

  It doesn't "all depend." SSPX has clearly set out its objections to Second Vatican Council. ONE of their objections is to freedom of religion for Jews, Protestants, and all non-Catholics. They directly REJECT, for example, the following principle from Second Vatican Council's encyclical Dignitate Humanis (1965): "The council exhorts Catholics, and it directs a plea to all men, most carefully to consider how greatly necessary religious freedom is, especially in the present condition of the human family. All nations are coming into even closer unity. Men of different cultures and religions are being brought together in closer relationships. There is a growing consciousness of the personal responsibility that every man has. All this is evident. Consequently, in order that relationships of peace and harmony be established and maintained within the whole of mankind, it is necessary that religious freedom be everywhere provided with an effective constitutional guarantee and that respect be shown for the high duty and right of man freely to lead his religious life in society." Either Catholics embrace state-protected freedom of religion and conscience for all, or they reject the teachings of VCII and revert to Medieval crusade mentality against "infidels," "progressives," gays, etc. Which will it be? That's the crunch that Fellay puts RC in.

• IrelandNorth | Jan 08, 2013, 03:16 AM EST

  All depends on what he means by the "Jewish people". All dependes upon what he means by "the church". The Second Temple Jewish hierarchy - the Sanhedrin may have manipulated "the Jews" and Roman proconsul, but it was the imperial authorities in Judea who allegedly crucified Messiah the Jews Didn't (and don't) recognise. And many people not consider the Latin ecclesia which styles itself the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church (HRC&AC) to be "the" church. They would consider it to be Constantinanity. And one assumes the "masons" to which he refers are the Freemasons. Many unfree masons merely work only in stone. Others try to work on their metaphysical temple.

• stanJames | Jan 08, 2013, 12:52 AM EST

  Its not enough that the catholic church created the hatred of Jews that led to WWII and the holocaust, and now we see that this group is run by neo-nazis.............And in 2009 The pope UNexcommunciated Bishop Williamson, a holccaust denier.............This shows us the mentality of the german pope. Pls dont say the pope is going to "fix" this williamson person - thats just plain impossible.........Meanwhile in his recent messages the pope has said that gays marrying threatens world peace. Insane - is he threatenting to go back to a darks ages of endless war and suffering and or a new inquisition. Almost all of our catholic family except for a few old buggers have left the church. you should aLSO, dear readers.

• Smyrnian | Jan 07, 2013, 08:08 PM EST

  Eireamach - I am not a religious Catholic, not even close. What I am saying us that people may choose to leave if they don't like the Church or its teachings. By all means, go to whatever religion or non- religion aligns itself with your particular belief set. I have not been a practicing Catholic for 25 years but I will not malign the Church or its teachings. Others can do what I did but please leave the Church and its believers alone.

• eiriamach | Jan 07, 2013, 07:36 PM EST

  Smyrnian, you sound just like Bishop Fellay, who says in the video, "I told them ... especially religious liberty, ecumenism. It's very clearly the contrary.... No, it doesn't work, doesn't work." What he means is that he can't tolerate any suggestion of change, any difference at all. The institution that drives out its critics and reformers, whether the SSPX type or the Fr Roy Bourgeois type, is fast withering like the biblical fig tree. Anyway, I'm outa here.

• Smyrnian | Jan 07, 2013, 06:39 PM EST

  People who don't like Catholicism are free to leave. I notice much of the Criticism is from those who wish the Church to be something it is not, moulded to their exacting liberal beliefs. To them I say go, join some other religion or start one of your own so that it will be exactly as you want. Leave the Catholic Church alone.

• eiriamach | Jan 07, 2013, 06:15 PM EST

  Fellay says that his SSPX has more men studying for the priesthood than Ireland has: "Take Ireland: they have less than 10 seminarians for the whole island. We have more than them. This is the situation with the Church. It's dying." "In France," he says, "10% of all the ordinations are of the SSPX.... The bishops are losing control ... the average age of the priests in France is about 70.... By 2015, one third of the churches in France will be closed." He thinks modernists and Vatican II are killing Catholicism, but his lashing out at Jews, Masons, modernists and the vatican is strong evidence that the "right-wing backlash" is killing RC. The only thing I'd agree with him about is that it's impossible to change direction until there's a new pope. But even with the many new conservative cardinals raised by BXVI, there's likely to be hopeless conflict when they meet to elect a new pope. Intrigue will prevail, and I would not be surprised to hear rumors of assassination attempts. Even though Fellay's speech was more than an hour long, everyone should view the video (it's really an audio with some still photos added). It's a foreshadowing of worse to come. Cuidiú Dé ar Chriostaíocht.

• seanomelb | Jan 07, 2013, 05:31 PM EST

  Catholics hating Jews, Jews hating Catholics,Mulims hating Jews,Jews hating Muslims. Free your mind of the religious bull and become an atheist.

• Smyrnian | Jan 07, 2013, 05:08 PM EST

  Eireamach - IC will print ANYTHING it can find that will put the Catholic Church in a bad light. Anything their search engines can scrounge... It's sad to see such a blatant, discriminatory agenda but IC is relentless in pushing it. If that's not a sustained attack nothing is.

• JethroBodine | Jan 07, 2013, 05:07 PM EST

  He spoke the plain truth: Organized jewry is and always has been the enemy of Christians. It stems from their age-old hatred of non-jews, and given the religious seal of approval in their Talmud.

• eiriamach | Jan 07, 2013, 04:41 PM EST

  Oh yeah, and the "progressives" -- I shouldn't have omitted progressives. We progressives are everyone's scapegoats.

• eiriamach | Jan 07, 2013, 04:39 PM EST

  It was the bishops and priests who comprised the Second Vatican Council who worked "to bring the church into the [modern] culture." If there were any Jews or Masons at the Council, they were in the non-voting audience! A church council has higher authority than any pope. WHO, then, is trying "to subvert the true teachings/doctrine" of the Catholic Church? PBVI and his unlikely ally, Bishop Fellay. But, hey, go ahead and blame RC deterioration on the Jews and Masons. They're always convenient scapegoats. Bishop Fellay can explain that to you.

• PiperMac52 | Jan 07, 2013, 02:58 PM EST

  In context the point Bishop Fellay was making was that Jews, Masons and progressives were enemies of the church in that they are outside influences working to subvert the true teachings/doctrine so as to bring the church into the modernist culture. It seems that the proof is in the pudding. Fellay was not singling out Jews because they are Jews. Context apparently means nothing to you in your attempt to undermine any vestige of the traditional church.

• eiriamach | Jan 07, 2013, 02:47 PM EST

  Listen to the embedded video, Smyrnian & Michael. This article is not an attack by IC; it's about an attack by the SSPX on the Vatican, and it's news, the same way cannibalism is news when it happens. In the video, Bishop Fellay says, "Even before the 14th of September I got messages from people who are working in Rome and are friendly to us ... whose fingers have been burnt because they are too friendly to us.... These people told me, 'The pope is going to recognize your society ... the same way he did with the excommunication, without anything from your side.'" He says he was forbidden to speak publically about his talks about with the Vatican: "I have always from the start said to Rome... one condition: that we are accepted as we are ... that we continue to attack what is wrong, the errors.... The pope seemed to be satisfied." He also tells of the Vatican changing the words in his letters and lying to the press about progress in the talks. He says some unnamed "big state" would have opposed the acceptance, as would the German-speaking bishops and bishops' Conferences elsewhere. He says, "We definitely are opposed to these errors that we find in the [Second Vatican] Council.... I concluded that the pope was ready to downgrade, at least a little bit, the Council," but he was wrong (the pope HAS rolled back VC II reforms, but publicly supports the Council). So now Fellay is "telling all," doing an exposé to damage Vatican credibility further--if that's possible. He puts RC traditionalists between a rock and a hard place.

• Smyrnian | Jan 07, 2013, 02:02 PM EST

  Michaelidaho - you are right. They will grasp at anything to attack the Catholic church. what a very sad agenda but crystal clear.

• eiriamach | Jan 07, 2013, 12:34 PM EST

  Listening to the audio of Fellay's talk is like watching a mind slip deep into conspiracy-theory insanity. At the beginning he goes on at length about the Society being "subject to the attacks by the devil." About 1:17 you'll hear him say, "It's too dangerous, too dangerous. We have many enemies, many enemies, but look, and it's very interesting!... Who during that time was the most opposed that the [SSPX] Society be recognized in the Catholic Church? The enemies of the Church, the Jews, the Masons, the modernists, the most opposed that the Society would be recognized in the Catholic Church, the enemies of the Church! What did they say to Rome? "You must oblige these people to accept Vatican II [Council]. Isn't that interesting? .... People who are outside the Church, who during centuries are enemies of the Church, say to Rome, if you're going to accept these people, you must oblige them to accept the Council.... Interesting because it shows that Vatican II is *their* thing, not the Church's. They see-- the enemies of the Church see-- THEIR benefit in the Council." The body of Pope Paul VI's mother lies in a Masonic tomb with Masonic symbols on it, and Fellay takes this fact as evidence that the devil runs the Vatican. He tells another tale about a Moscow spy in Pius XII's Vatican, and the spy turns out later to be Pope Paul VI. "This is all documented; it's not hearsay," Fellay says. He thinks the Vatican canonizes the "modernist" popes in order to make their decisions holy. This man is not just a fanatical traditionalist; he's unhinged, like a living example of demonic possession.

• TisEyerish | Jan 07, 2013, 12:02 PM EST

  I find it sad that, in this day and age, discrimination still abounds...especially among those we consider to be educated. There is nothing worse than a closed mind. I am not a religious person myself, but as someone who is intelligent, I recognize that, had Jesus' life played out any differently, there would be no Christianity today. Think about it. Stop the hating...all it does is cause battles that become full-scale wars. The church has an overabundance of things to feel guilty about (the Crusades and the Inquisition spring immediately to mind); they have no business pointing fingers at any other religion.

• michaelidaho | Jan 07, 2013, 11:27 AM EST

  Note to IC: This article can not be included in your daily anti-Roman Catholic rant. Why? Because this organization is NOT Roman Catholic. Nice try though.

• Jerry Kelly | Jan 07, 2013, 10:45 AM EST

  An bhfuil Fellay ag caint faoi Íosa freisin? Nó nár chuala sé ghur Ghiúdach Íosa. / Is Fellay talking about Jesus, too? Or hasn't he heard that Jesus was Jewish?

• The Commentator | Jan 07, 2013, 10:43 AM EST

  What is wrong with these people? The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy sound like the Taliban or the Republican Party: if you're not with us you're against us and many, many derogatory remarks. It is time we rid the church of these unchristian elite members of the church. It is time for the faithful parishioners who believe in Christian principles and have an open mind to move the church to a truly benevolent and caring church with tolerance for others. The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy are out of touch with reality, living in the long distant past and it seems from their inane rhetoric that they want to impose their will on all people and denounce other faiths as irrelevant. Almost all faith s have the same basic principles to live by; it is the "interpretations" and self serving politics of the churches that are the difference. Someone should educate the Roman catholic Church hierarchy that the world is no longer flat. Why can`t these people just keep quiet and concentrate on the Catholic faithful in regard to their opinions. This distasteful diatribe is furthering the negative reputation that the church has acquired as a result of the pedophile priests, the denials, the cover ups, the failure to address the criminal acts and compe nsation except through lawsuits. Please SHUT UP and let us resolve the issues in the church without bringing more negative attention on a very troubled church. Every time one of the church hierarchy make a foolish comment, it affects the parishioners who have friends who are not Roman Catholic. WHY ???

• Smyrnian | Jan 07, 2013, 10:38 AM EST

  Here we go again. More IC Catholic bashing. Relentless in its anti-catholic agenda.

• Smyrnian | Jan 07, 2013, 10:26 AM EST

  Probably not, eiriamach, as there is within the Church a powerful right-wing backlash against Vatican ll and, alas, Benedict XVI is part of it.

• cillowen | Jan 07, 2013, 10:24 AM EST

  the cave-in popes are the real enemies whose revision on history to please our controlling world's master race.

• eiriamach | Jan 07, 2013, 10:03 AM EST

  Will Pope Benedict XVI, who has insisted that today's RC Church is "continuous" with Vatican II teachings, declare the SSPX officially in schism? Felley's remarks definitely call for some response from the Vatican since Fellay spoke for "the Church," not just his own historically anti-Semitic group.