Rorate Caeli

For the record - Fr. de Tanoüarn: what now?


From the Metablog kept by Father Guillaume de Tanoüarn, the very outspoken and very restless former member of the Society of Saint Pius X (FSSPX / SSPX) who became one of the founders of the Institute of the Good Shepherd (IBP). We post this translation here for the ongoing record of opinions. 

 [T]his interview [granted by Bp. Fellay to DICI] is not anymore about preparing the faithful to imagine the possibility of an eventuality... We have entered the concrete [level], and, without playing Madame Irma [a fictional fortune teller], I see there the sign of an imminent signature. When it arrives, what will happen? The three other bishops of the SSPX have made their deep opposition known. Above all, they have made it publicly, and collegially. Perhaps they will swallow their mitres and change their position? It is more likely that they leave the Society. At the very least, they will make known (also publicly and collegially) that the agreement does not obligate them - and a fraction of the clergy will follow their lead. They will undoubtedly need a new receiving structure, a kind of "SSPX-the historical arm" [FSSPX-canal historique, a reference to the Corsican separatist group FLNC Canal Historique]. Soon afterwards, the matter of the replacement of the missing bishops will be considered in Menzingen. [...] Dear readers, we will thus witness very soon a seismic jolt in the Traditionalist world, with aftershocks and counter-aftershocks, internal and external, in the upcoming weeks and months. 

Father de Tanoüarn is naturally quite mistaken about at least one important point: the three bishops of the Society who are not in governing positions made their collegial opposition clear in their April letter, but it was private correspondence, not a public pronouncement. But, up to this moment, there has not been a public and collegial statement by the three bishops.