Guest-post by Côme de Prévigny
The hopes that the talks that having been taking place in the past twelve years between the Apostolic See and the Society of Saint Pius X bring each month turn the heads of some anxious souls from one extreme attitude to the other. If the regularization of Abp. Lefebvre's work fails, it would be the abomination of desolation for them. Even the bravest souls would wither away through the crossing of the desert and the end times would be the only object of our hope. If, on the contrary, this canonical regularization came to pass, the darkness would disappear, the Church would find anew her primitive youth, and the Conciliar hordes would be definitively vanquished.
The terrible reality seems more complex. In a lecture given to around 250 participants at the Society's Summer Conferences last August 15, Bp. Bernard Fellay cautioned against the euphoria which could take hold of those who impatiently await the much talked-about recognition. "Imagine, he said, that Rome recognizes us all of a sudden, I have a hard time believing this, but what would happen then? Do you believe that the Progressives will change their demeanor regarding us? Not at all! On the one hand, they will continue to reject us as they have always done, or they will try to make us swallow up their venom; we will refuse it, and the conflict will restart even more strongly, do not delude yourselves. If Rome recognized us, it would be even harder than they are now."
On the one hand, the Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X makes clear his determination not to "swallow up the venom" of Liberalism and, as a consequence, to keep up the legacy of Abp. Lefebvre who, was also for a time at the helm of a regularized Society, before it was condemned. Which did not prevent him from speaking up and from ensuring the full testimony of the faith. On the other, Bp. Fellay cautions against illusions. A regularization will not transform those resolutely opposed to the Motu Proprio and to the Tridentine Catechism into "Tradition-philes". The doors that were shut before the advancing pilgrimages of the Society will not suddenly open up, with the unrolling of red carpets. Liberal bishops might pretend to be compassionate regarding those brethren whom they decreed to be "separated"; they are likely on the contrary to display an uncontrollable rejection regarding those communities now promoted and henceforth completely regularized.
A second illusion, it seems to me, comes from the fact that many souls believe, often in order to ease one's own family arguments, that all conservative forces will unite in order to transform the world. Reality once again brings us back to the ground, because these groups assemble, on one side, biritualists, for whom the new Mass is sacred, and, on the other, Traditionalists, who consider it dangerous. One man responsible for an Ecclesia Dei community told me once that he thought the Society of Saint Pius X included within it healthy members and dangerous elements... Harmony will take some time to be established, and the [opposing] paths of the Chartres's pilgrimages will keep crossing for some time.
The crisis is long and, when he assembled for the last time the French priors of his Society, its Founder had warned them: "Prepare for a drawn-out combat". The day in which his work will be fully recognized by the authority of the Church will be undoubtedly marked by an agitation of spirits within the Church, because it will not be a small community with less than 0.2% of the priests of the world that will be recognized, but the Catholic patrimony that the Society will have hitherto kept. This turnaround will not be immediate. It will have been prepared and it will go on progressively. But the struggle between Liberals and Zelanti is very old and it has never been revealed to us that we would find rest on this earth. What remains to be seen is that the evolution of the Church will lead to the inevitable endgame. Generations of Progressives will disappear, their more conservative successors will climb in the hierarchy, and the safeguarding work assured by the Society of Saint Pius X will be each day more recognized. Sooner or later, both lines will meet.
