09-03-2024, 08:09 AM
From the above linked Issue #62:
FROM THE DESK OF THE EDITOR:
Dear Reader,
There is a rather unpleasant topic which we need to deal with, the sort of thing which nobody likes to hear discussed. Yet this newsletter has never shied away in the past, and we will not do so now: were we to do so, there would really be no point in The Recusant continuing to exist. And besides, even unpleasant topics can have important lessons to be learnt from them. So here goes.
Shortly after Easter, on 4th April 2024, the SSPX priest Fr. Arnaud Rostand appeared in a French criminal court charged with the sexual abuse of seven children in France, Spain and Switzerland, during the years 2002 to 2018. Long-term readers of this newsletter and Resistance veterans in general will doubtless recall Fr. Rostand as one of our old opponents. He was the District Superior of the USA during the upheaval of 2012-2013. He is therefore the SSPX superior responsible for the persecution of Fr David Hewko and many other priests from that country, as well as laity who were denied the sacraments by his decision. He was also a member of the General Chapter which took place in 2012 and which let Bishop Fellay off the hook, rubber-stamped his betrayal and issued the infamous “six conditions” for surrendering to modernist Rome. There is no doubt as to his guilt, not least because he pled guilty and apologised to his victims for what he had done. Further details can be found here.
Will anyone in authority within the SSPX now take another look at some of the decisions made by Fr Rostand or by his then- Superiors, the men who kept him in place? Of course not. And the reason why they will not, is that Fr Rostand is only the tip of the iceberg. Things are worse than they at first seem. This is not just one SSPX priest or even just one SSPX superior: the rot is throughout the SSPX and goes right to the top. In the article linked above, we find the following:
Let that sink in. He told his superiors as far back as 1998 that he had a serious moral problem, a perversion, one which they knew full well ought to have meant no further public ministry. He let them know that he was a danger to children. In writing. And again, a second time. And then a third time. Incredibly, they responded by promoting him. In 1999 he was appointed headmaster of the SSPX boys school in Courbevoie, where he went on to sexually abuse minors. Bishop Fellay appointed him superior of Canada (2006) and then two years later, district superior of the USA, the second largest SSPX district in the world. What is any sane person to make of such a remarkable fact? Here are two important points for us to consider.
Firstly, let us ask ourselves: who is the more to blame, Fr Rostand or his then- superior, Bishop Fellay? The fact that Fr Rostand tried to warn his superiors about himself, four times, and in writing, does go very much in his favour; it does not make him innocent, because there remains the fact of what he did. In the end, he is still a man who knows the moral law and who possesses free will. It is quite right that he should submit to punishment for what he did.
But are not his superiors equally guilty of what he did, are they not, if anything, more guilty? Are they not responsible for the disaster through the decisions which they made regarding him? And is it not true, that the higher in a hierarchy one goes, the greater the responsibility?
Just as with the many cases of Novus Ordo bishops who moved predators and perverts from parish to parish rather than actually punishing them or removing them from harm’s way, all the while coming down hard on the victims as being the real “troublemakers,” the behaviour of the SSPX seems very little different, alas, at least in this case (and in others, as we shall see). And just as in the case of those Novus Ordo bishops, the SSPX Superiors from Bishop Fellay on down are equally guilty and in a sense more so.
The second point to consider and perhaps most shocking (to anyone but the most hardened Resistance veteran) is the question of why his superiors would respond in such an unthinkable way. On learning that Arnaud Rostand was “attracted” to children and struggled to behave himself, why did Bishop Fellay appoint him District Superior of the USA? There is only one answer, so far as I can see, which makes any kind of rational sense. Control and manipulation is the reason. People with skeletons in the proverbial closet will not cause any trouble, they are the most obedient imaginable: one does not even need explicitly to blackmail them, they
know the score, it doesn’t need to be explicitly spelled out to them. That is how the world of secular politics works and has done for many years. If a young man has ideas about being elected to Parliament (or in the US, congress) he must first seek to be adopted as the candidate for one of the “mainstream” parties, and unless they have some serious dirt on him, they won’t touch him with a barge pole. You see, the last thing they want is someone who is squeaky-clean. No. What they want is people whom they can blackmail into doing exactly as they say, however outrageous or obviously immoral; people with no principles, or at any rate,
no “principles” which they will not sacrifice at a moment’s notice when called on to do so; candidates who, once elected, can be relied on to set aside all the youthful ideals which drew them into politics to begin with, in order to do the bidding of their secret masters.
That is how one explains seemingly pro-life candidates who, once elected, vote in favour of abortion; or candidates who say that they are “America First” who once elected vote for billions in foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel; so-called “conservatives” who once elected show themselves to be social revolutionaries and moral degenerates, or “labour” but then act directly against the interests of the working man; we could go on. This is how small, hidden interests exert control over much larger organisations and even entire nations. It also explains why once in a while a piece of dirt on some politician or other makes its way out into the media: scratch the surface and you will discover that, right before the media sensation, he had stepped out of line in some way and showed a worryingly independent spirit. They had to make an example of him, so that no one else would think of stepping out of line. Most famous men will do anything to prevent their dirty laundry to coming out in the press, so it seems a relatively small matter to bend their principles and speak or vote whatever way their masters tell them. By common report, this is how the Communist party always used to operate; it is how the secret societies always used to operate; it has long been spoken of as a tactic beloved of the socalled “intelligence community” and Mossad in particular, besides who-knows-who else.
And yet here we appear to have the same thing going on inside the SSPX, and on the part of the Superior General, too. Who has the dirt on the Superior General, one wonders? Who is making sure that he does as he is told promptly and does not step out of line? Perhaps we will never know, and it ought not to matter to us too much in any case. What matters here is that in this one case, Bishop Fellay and the other SSPX superiors are seen to be guilty of:
1. Ignoring initial warnings about priests being predatory perverts;
2. When the unthinkable happened, moving predatory perverts around, not taking them permanently out of circulation and not informing the authorities;
3. Learning no lessons at all in the aftermath, continuing to behave in the same way, and certainly taking no personal responsibility;
4. Perhaps most shockingly - actually promoting such a priest, which in turn suggests that they were seeking to make use of it as a form of quasi blackmail.
In case the last point seems far-fetched, ask yourself this. Bishop Fellay knew that he was about to face a significant amount of opposition from within the SSPX due to his dealings with modernist Rome (he even said so himself!) and that he could not afford to have any local superiors wavering: ruthless decisions and cast-iron, lock-step obedience would be the order of the day. Now, who would be less likely to cause him trouble, step out of line and oppose him: a District Superior who doesn’t sexually molest children, or one who does? It really is that simple. That is what can be learned from the example of what happened to just one priest, Fr Arnaud Rostand.
Are we being unfair? Uncharitable? Well, of course it is difficult to prove this beyond any doubt. But ask yourself this. Did it really never once occur to the then- Superior General that a sexual pervert District Superior would cause him no problems and would be a loyal and zealous foot-soldier? How likely does that sound? Also ask yourself why it was that Fr Rostand was transferred to Menzingen from his exalted position of US District Superior in the summer of 2014. In Issue 19, p.29, we informed our readers about:
Little did we suspect back then what the real reason might be. But we did find it somewhat unusual. So, why was he removed from his post and “brought home” to SSPX Headquarters in Switzerland only in 2014, given that they had known about him for years at this point? And given that they had ignored all warnings previous, why transfer him at all? Why August 2014 in particular? Could it be that the initial danger of “disobedience” to the new direction, the period where there was a danger of “rebellion” by priests of the US District, had now passed, and with it the pressing need to have someone in charge of the district with a hidden reason for being extra loyal? Is such a thought really so far fetched? Still don’t agree with me? Very well. Perhaps I am wrong. But at least my theory explains the otherwise inexplicable: I am eager to hear a better explanation from anyone who wishes to propose one.
So much for the case of Fr Rostand. But there are more. A surprising amount more. I must confess that I somehow managed to avoid paying attention to the various exposés published by ‘Church Militant TV’ regarding similar such cases in the SSPX. Church Militant TV went bust in March 2024 (for reasons not related to its coverage of the SSPX, as far as I can tell), but what it published over the past four years or so can still be found online by using the internet archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20231205025426/https://www.churchmilitant.com/index.php/news/
article/sspx-complete-coverage
Be warned, it is not for the faint of heart. I already had an idea that Church Militant TV had an axe to grind and were hostile to Traditionalists generally and the SSPX in particular. What I find most shocking about their coverage of SSPX morality scandals, however, is not how one-sided they are, but how factual and unassailable. Of course there are some inconsistencies. Some parts are far too vague for my liking. And the contrived “scandal” of a layman convicted of sex abuse returning from prison and once again attending Mass (what is he supposed to do?) is less than helpful. And undoubtedly the people at Church Militant TV are (were?) no friends of Tradition. But for the most part, they seem to have tried to be objective and stick to the facts. A lot of what they say can be verified. And in the end they are either telling the truth or they are lying: has anyone accused them of lying? I am not aware of it.
So that you don’t have to wade through all the lurid details, here is a quick summary of what is contained in the various reports linked-to above. It is all rather distressing. Normally I would tell the reader not to take my word for it, “see for yourself!” - in this instance, I very much hope that you do take my word for it so as to save yourself the distress of having to see it for yourself. Whoever wishes to see for himself may visit the link above or search youtube for “SSPX Spotlight”.
Fr. Pierre de Maillard appeared in court in May 2023, charged with sexually abusing 27 children, including rape. He was found guilty and given a 20 year prison sentence, followed by a further 10 years probation and a ban from entering entire regions of the country where he had previously been stationed. At the trial it emerged that the SSPX had known for at least the previous ten years and had initially intended to keep him away from schools and children’s camps, but had somehow managed not to stick to their resolution, which had led to him abusing again. The only priest to emerge with honourable mention was Fr. de Maillard’s last superior before his arrest, his prior Fr. Laurent Ramé, who immediately went to the police on learning what had been going on.
Fr Matthew Stafki appeared before a Minnesota court (USA) in March 2023 and pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct. He had been sexually molesting his nine-year-old niece over a period of three years. At the exact same time, he had been teaching in a primary school of the SSPX. Though somewhat unclear, there is a suggestion by Church Militant TV that when the SSPX found out, they did not inform the parents of children at the school. The SSPX seem to have tried to hide the matter from the faithful and released a statement only after Church Militant TV had already published the story.
Fr. Patrick Groche was transferred out of Gabon in 2008 when the SSPX discovered that he had been abusing male children and adolescents. They did not punish him or report him to the authorities however, but reassigned him elsewhere. In 2019 Fr Groche admitted his guilt to the new Superior General, Fr Pagliarani, who then decided that he would henceforth be confined to the SSPX house in Lourdes. According to Church Militant TV, however, people have since visited that place and found that Fr Groche is not quite as confined as all that and still offers Mass, hears confessions and has social contact with faithful including children.
Fr. Damian Carlile also stationed in Gabon along side Fr Groche, in the same priory, took part in the same sort of paedophilic / pederastic abuse with him. Fr Carlisle was later moved to Wanganui, New Zealand where he was accused of having abused boys again. When this was reported to the SSPX, they then moved him to France were he stayed for five or six years, the suggestion being that he was suspended from ministry during this time, although just how “suspended” he actually was remains unclear. In 2009 he was reinstated to full public ministry and transferred to South Africa where he stayed for a couple of years. What happened after that is unclear, but he is now kept at permanently at Montgardin priory in the French Alps.
In both cases above, two other priests were stationed in the Gabon priory, at the very same time the abuse was going on over a period of years: Fr. Loic Duverger and Fr. Karl Stehlin. Questions remain about how much they knew, how many blind eyes they turned and what assistance they were in covering-up. One alleged victim claims that Fr. Stehlin would fetch boys up to the bedroom of either Fr Groche or Fr Carlile who would then abuse them. As it happens, coincidentally, Bishop Fellay went on to promote Fr Stehlin to District Superior of first Asia and then Eastern Europe, and a member of the General Chapter.
Fr. Christophe Roisnel was convicted by a French court in 2017 of raping three women, one of whom he also tortured. He was given a 19 year prison sentence. At the time, the SSPX knew and did not report him to the authorities. Instead, Bishop Fellay sent him to live with the Capuchins in Morgon for two years, and then transferred him to the SSPX boys boarding school at Chateauroux. The victims had been assured by the SSPX that he would be dealt with properly and it was only after they discovered that he had been reinstated after such a short period of time that they went to the police.
Fr. Ramon Angles was accused of having sexually abused a pupil at St Mary’s Academy, Kansas. Some years later, as an adult, Michael Gonzalez killed himself and left a suicide note in which he said that the priest had raped him. Two of his sisters also say that he was abused as a boy and they think it was Fr Angles. Fr Angles went on to be appointed District Superior of Ireland, was made a member of the General Chapter, and became legal adviser to the then Superior General, Bishop Fellay. The Kansas Bureau of investigation recently included the SSPX in its investigation of abuse in the conciliar church and wanted to question Fr Angles, who was no longer in the country. The latter issued a denial via his lawyer, Pedro Irigonegaray, a well known LGBT and “trans rights” activist who works for ACLU, and who is also the priest’s cousin. It is worth noting that many Resistance and SSPX faithful in Ireland remember the tenure of Fr Angles as District Superior and the trail of destruction which he left in his wake. Also worth noting is the way in which he appears to have remained a friend and confidant of Bishop Williamson, even after the latter’s expulsion from the SSPX.
Fr. Pierre Duverger is the brother of the Fr. Loic Duverger (who, as mentioned above, was stationed in Gabon with Frs. Groche and Carlile). While stationed in Bordeaux, France, he was accused of sexually taking advantage of a young woman in a vulnerable state, possibly mentally unsound (from the Church Militant TV report, it is not entirely clear). At any rate, he was accused of rape. He was sent suddenly and without warning to Silver City Benedictine monastery for a period of two years. Then he was promoted to personal secretary to the then US District Superior, Fr Arnaud Rostand. Then, while still at District HQ he also became part of their “communications team,” following which he was assigned to St Mary’s Kansas, where further allegations of sexual assault on the part of young women followed. As with Fr Ramon Angles, Church Militant TV say that he was subject of investigation by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Rather embarrassingly for the SSPX, a series of emails accidentally leaked by the SSPX to Church Militant TV revealed the District Superior and James Vogel, strategizing behind the scenes about how best to “deal with” questions about Fr Duverger, focusing mainly on how to limit the public exposure and damage to their own reputation, with little or no apparent concern for the victims or the objectively right thing to do. The District Superior at the time was Fr Jurgen Wegner.
“Jassy” refers to an American lady who is one of Fr Duverger’s accusers. In the meantime, Fr Duverger is still stationed at the same SSPX school and priory in Orlando, Florida.
Fr. Frédéric Abbet was accused of sexual assault at a scout camp in Switzerland in 2006, following which an internal SSPX tribunal placed a ten-year ban on him using the internet or being around children unsupervised. Bishop Fellay almost immediately (within two months!) overturned the ban and assigned him to the SSPX boarding school in Brussels, Belgium, where his room was right next to the boys dormitory. Accused once again of the sexual assault of minors (one of his victims was a nine-year-old boy, another six years old) and found guilty by a Belgian court in 2017, he was later discovered to be living free in his native Switzerland where he was arrested in June 2020 and finally brought to justice.
The SSPX cover-up involved in this case merits closer attention. Both the Brussels prior and the Belgian District Superior at that time, Fr. Jurgen Wegner and Fr. Benoit Walliez, were aware of Abbet’s past history but both did and said nothing, even after complaints about Abbet began to arise in Brussels. Abbet had confessed on tape to Fr Walliez and also to Bishop Fellay that he was “attracted to boys” but was allowed to continue his predations.
Bishop Fellay met the victims’ parents and, they now claim, lied to their faces. He also sent his personal secretary to accompany Abbet to court every day as legal counsel. All three withheld evidence from the court in an attempt to help Abbet escape conviction. The court which convicted Abbet also accused the SSPX of what it called “criminogenic” behaviour, that is, behaviour fostering or promoting criminal conduct by its members.
Curiously enough, Fr. Abbet’s name came to our ears before he ‘hit the press’ so to speak. We heard about him from across the channel as a result of our 2015 article concerning Fr. Stephen Abraham. One detail which we were told was that Fr. Abbet is the nephew of Bishop Fellay, something which, if true, appears to have escaped Church Militant TV altogether, though they do wonder out loud at why Bishop Fellay would personally go to such lengths to try to protect this priest in particular. Well, that would explain it, wouldn’t it?
Shocking and disturbing though this undoubtedly all is, it is perhaps worth taking a step back and reminding ourselves that the worst crime for a priest is not paedophilia, pederasty, and the like. It is heresy. Bad though all this is, in the end it is just yet another symptom. The cause is something else. The real problem with Bishop Fellay, Fr Rostand and all the others, the biggest problem and their worst crime, was their change of doctrine, their sacrificing of their principles on the altar of convenience and expedience, their surrendering to Vatican II. This is not to minimise the horror in any way. It is not to suggest that anyone is over-emphasising the horrific and abhorrent crime of the sexual assault of children; but it is to point out that we all tend to under-emphasise and under-appreciate just how horrific and abhorrent in the eyes of God is the crime of heresy and its lesser forms. Paedo-priests, when all's said and done, can be added to the list of symptoms detailed in our back pages in the “SSPX Watch” column these past ten years, albeit this is significantly worse than most of what goes in there. But it is in the end a symptom. For all these symptoms, the cause, the illness is the same: the fact that the SSPX has surrendered to Vatican II, sold its birthright, the one truly precious thing it possessed, its uncompromising stand for Tradition. The Faith must always come first. If we betray the Faith, if we put anything else before the Faith, then everything will unravel. Back in 2013 and 2014 we wrote here that the SSPX had come to see the SSPX as an end in itself, and we gave examples showing that. Well, this is exactly where that leads.
Caveat Lector...
Now is not the time for gloating over the downfall of an opponent, if there is ever a time for such thing - quite the contrary. Even though we sort of did tell them so, we must be careful not to come across as “I told you so,” if we end up discussing it with anti- or non-Resistance minded SSPXers of our acquaintance. But do emphasise the important point, that these evils do not suddenly just happen in a vacuum, they happen because people take decisions, make changes, and that they are a symptom of something wrong at the root.
We cannot in any case afford to gloat over the downfall of a former opponent. Remember that 99% of the people out there in the world will make no distinction between the SSPX and us. They will simply learn the wrong lesson: that Traditionalists are just as likely to be paedos as Novus Ordo liberals with no morals. We will all be tarred with the same brush in the end. And then of course there are Fr Abraham and Fr Peignot.
Fr Philippe Peignot abused multiple boys over several years. One of his victims was Vincent Lambert, who at the end of his life became a well-known hospitalised quadriplegic and the centre of a famous end-of-life debate in France, where the French courts eventually overruled the family and ordered his life-support turned off. Church Militant TV say that the young man’s drink driving car crash which landed him paralysed in hospital was itself a direct result of his abuse as a minor by Fr Peignot. They also quote from a document in which Fr Peignot admits to having sexually abused Lambert.
Two consecutive SSPX Superiors General, Fr Schmidberger and Bishop Fellay, both imposed restrictions on this priest and then relaxed them. Bishop Fellay at one point overturned a ban which the then– District Superior of France, Fr Pierre-Marie Laurencon, had placed on him. The effect was that he went on to abuse others and was moved around each time a new crime came to their attention. Finally when one of the victims wrote to Rome with evidence, the Vatican stepped in and ordered the SSPX to take firmer action. Fr. Peignot was then tried internally by the SSPX and found guilty in June 2014. He joined the Resistance almost immediately after, and in 2017 was discovered by a Swedish TV documentary crew celebrating Sunday Mass near Bordeaux, advertised on the now defunct Fake Resistance website francefidele.fr .
Fr Stephen Abraham has already featured in these pages (Issue 31, p.14). Like Fr Peignot, as well as so many of the others, it is worth noting the reluctance to act on the part of his superiors. Fr. Paul Morgan was his prior and Bishop Fellay the Superior General when he was in the Philippines and an accusation against an adolescent came to light. Eventually his superiors acted and he was moved to France where some years later he offended again. In the end the SSPX did the right thing in ensuring that he had no public ministry at all. In early 2014, with no warning being given, he was put back into circulation by Bishop Williamson.
Having two such priests in the Resistance from the early days is bad enough. The fact that it didn’t happen by accident, but that they were deliberately introduced into the Resistance by men who knew full well what they were, ought to send shivers down the spine of anyone who wonders what has really been going on. Ask yourself why. Why would anyone wish deliberately to introduce such a priest, never mind two of them, into the Resistance right at the start?
Perhaps Bishop Williamson is somehow not at the centre of a secret ring within the SSPX, and all this is a remarkable coincidence. But if we are going to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that a certain amount of evidence points that way, that the idea is not quite a crazy as it might once have seemed (there are other such priests which he protected and promoted, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, for instance). And as with Bishop Fellay being responsible for Fr Rostand, in like manner Bishop Williamson is responsible for Fr Abraham. A bishop who promotes pederasts and child molesters must be regarded as every bit as guilty, if not more so: responsibility increases with rank, that is how it works.
Not Just Fellow Travelers: A Means of Control
Is this just a story of priests with moral problems and bishops who are weak and vacillating, who are far too lenient in dealing with them? Or is there more to be said? Alas, there is more to this than meets the eye. Many people are familiar with the concept of infiltration by the enemy. The Communists, Freemasons, and others, infiltrating the Catholic Church to destroy it from within. It is not a conspiracy theory, it is a fact: they are on record as having said that they would do just this (read the Alta Vendita, for instance). Communists and Freemasons are not just fellow travellers of sodomites and pederasts, the two go hand-in-hand for more than
one reason: control. Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy. You want to infiltrate the organisation to control it from within and steer it in a new direction. Very well. Sending your agents in is the first step, but what comes next? How is your scheme ever going to succeed, unless you have rigid, cast-iron, albeit hidden, obedience? The point is not just that the obedience has to be cast-iron, it is that it must be reliably so. The one in control needs to have total confidence that these agents are reliable, that their obedience is always going to be prompt and unquestioning. If those in control even begin to doubt this, their schemes will not work.
Imagine striving to get one of your men into a key position of influence if you weren’t entirely sure that he wouldn’t change his mind once there, or even just become lukewarm and begin to pay lip-service to his secret masters. No, that would never do. Any doubts like that, and you wouldn’t feel quite so inclined to go to such great lengths to get him there in the first place.
As always, this will sound incredible to anyone not used to giving the matter the consideration that it deserves. But lest the reader be tempted to write it all off as a “wild conspiracy theory,” please consider carefully and ask yourself the following. Which is more likely, that the enemies of the Church would try to infiltrate her, or that they would leave her alone or content themselves with only external, visible attacks? And if they have been infiltrating her, what is more likely, that they would seek to blackmail and control clergy who are already psychiatrically damaged, who have a serious moral problem as a result and who are desperate to try to
hide it, or that they would leave them alone, not approach them, and would try to achieve their nefarious ends without making use of them? Finally, if they have managed to do this to the Catholic Church throughout the world, would they not try to do the same to the SSPX?
Elsewhere in this issue…
...the reader will find an article by Archbishop Lefebvre exposing Catholic Liberalism, and in a similar vein an article which usefully abridges and summarises Fr Fahey’s book, The Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism. We managed to obtain a copy of the Archbishop Lefebvre article in French, as it appeared in Fideliter back in the day, more than three decades ago. We are not aware of any English translation out there other than our own.
Fr. Denis Fahey was a contemporary of Archbishop Lefebvre and a fellow Holy Ghost Father, who wrote books in the 1940s and 50s. He lived in Dublin, but even back in those days was looked-on askance by the other clergy of Dublin Archdiocese. Clearly the rot had already set in, all was not well in the decades prior to Vatican II. Around five years ago, Fr. Hewko and I were fortunate to be taken to visit to his grave by some Irish faithful. We were by no means the first to have visited his grave: the modernist Novus Ordo nuns deliberately removed the headstones from the graveyard so that people can no longer find him!
It is remarkable to think that his books were sold at the SSPX and his articles were on their websites. It was 2009, in the wake of the Swedish TV outrage, when they scrubbed them all: a sign of things to come. Nowadays they wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot barge pole and are falling over themselves to prove how inoffensive and politically correct they are. They won’t sell Fr. Fahey but they both sell and promote My Catholic Faith, a book from the same time but stuffed full of the sort of liberalism that Fr. Fahey fought against.
And if there is one man who singlehandedly exemplifies the new, liberal SSPX, it is surely Fr. Paul Robinson. On p.38 is our response to the latest efforts by the SSPX to use this priest to propagandise the faithful into believing billions of years and the like. Remember, this is the priest who told us all that Covid lockdowns were a good thing and that we must simply be good little obedient citizens and avoid conspiracy theories at all costs. He also says that Quo Primum is not binding, that the earth is billions of years old and that the worldwide flood never happened. Compare what this unfortunate priest says and what his beloved My Catholic Faith says (our review can be found here, on p.35) with what Archbishop Lefebvre says and what Fr. Denis Fahey says. It is like night and day. One is represented by the modern SSPX, the other by the Resistance.
Where does Bishop Williamson stand in all this? Despite hundreds of Eleison Comments emails, he has said not a peep on the Creation/Evolution debate, perhaps because he is not entirely sound on the issue himself. His brand of liberalism is no remedy to the liberalism of the modern SSPX. Let us turn to Archbishop Lefebvre and to Catholic Tradition.
- The Editor
[The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita]
FROM THE DESK OF THE EDITOR:
Dear Reader,
There is a rather unpleasant topic which we need to deal with, the sort of thing which nobody likes to hear discussed. Yet this newsletter has never shied away in the past, and we will not do so now: were we to do so, there would really be no point in The Recusant continuing to exist. And besides, even unpleasant topics can have important lessons to be learnt from them. So here goes.
Shortly after Easter, on 4th April 2024, the SSPX priest Fr. Arnaud Rostand appeared in a French criminal court charged with the sexual abuse of seven children in France, Spain and Switzerland, during the years 2002 to 2018. Long-term readers of this newsletter and Resistance veterans in general will doubtless recall Fr. Rostand as one of our old opponents. He was the District Superior of the USA during the upheaval of 2012-2013. He is therefore the SSPX superior responsible for the persecution of Fr David Hewko and many other priests from that country, as well as laity who were denied the sacraments by his decision. He was also a member of the General Chapter which took place in 2012 and which let Bishop Fellay off the hook, rubber-stamped his betrayal and issued the infamous “six conditions” for surrendering to modernist Rome. There is no doubt as to his guilt, not least because he pled guilty and apologised to his victims for what he had done. Further details can be found here.
Will anyone in authority within the SSPX now take another look at some of the decisions made by Fr Rostand or by his then- Superiors, the men who kept him in place? Of course not. And the reason why they will not, is that Fr Rostand is only the tip of the iceberg. Things are worse than they at first seem. This is not just one SSPX priest or even just one SSPX superior: the rot is throughout the SSPX and goes right to the top. In the article linked above, we find the following:
Quote:“Significantly, Rostand made his SSPX superiors aware of his struggles as early as 1998, writing a letter to his superiors admitting his attraction to children. He repeated his concerns to superiors in 2000, 2006 and 2016.”
Let that sink in. He told his superiors as far back as 1998 that he had a serious moral problem, a perversion, one which they knew full well ought to have meant no further public ministry. He let them know that he was a danger to children. In writing. And again, a second time. And then a third time. Incredibly, they responded by promoting him. In 1999 he was appointed headmaster of the SSPX boys school in Courbevoie, where he went on to sexually abuse minors. Bishop Fellay appointed him superior of Canada (2006) and then two years later, district superior of the USA, the second largest SSPX district in the world. What is any sane person to make of such a remarkable fact? Here are two important points for us to consider.
Firstly, let us ask ourselves: who is the more to blame, Fr Rostand or his then- superior, Bishop Fellay? The fact that Fr Rostand tried to warn his superiors about himself, four times, and in writing, does go very much in his favour; it does not make him innocent, because there remains the fact of what he did. In the end, he is still a man who knows the moral law and who possesses free will. It is quite right that he should submit to punishment for what he did.
But are not his superiors equally guilty of what he did, are they not, if anything, more guilty? Are they not responsible for the disaster through the decisions which they made regarding him? And is it not true, that the higher in a hierarchy one goes, the greater the responsibility?
Just as with the many cases of Novus Ordo bishops who moved predators and perverts from parish to parish rather than actually punishing them or removing them from harm’s way, all the while coming down hard on the victims as being the real “troublemakers,” the behaviour of the SSPX seems very little different, alas, at least in this case (and in others, as we shall see). And just as in the case of those Novus Ordo bishops, the SSPX Superiors from Bishop Fellay on down are equally guilty and in a sense more so.
The second point to consider and perhaps most shocking (to anyone but the most hardened Resistance veteran) is the question of why his superiors would respond in such an unthinkable way. On learning that Arnaud Rostand was “attracted” to children and struggled to behave himself, why did Bishop Fellay appoint him District Superior of the USA? There is only one answer, so far as I can see, which makes any kind of rational sense. Control and manipulation is the reason. People with skeletons in the proverbial closet will not cause any trouble, they are the most obedient imaginable: one does not even need explicitly to blackmail them, they
know the score, it doesn’t need to be explicitly spelled out to them. That is how the world of secular politics works and has done for many years. If a young man has ideas about being elected to Parliament (or in the US, congress) he must first seek to be adopted as the candidate for one of the “mainstream” parties, and unless they have some serious dirt on him, they won’t touch him with a barge pole. You see, the last thing they want is someone who is squeaky-clean. No. What they want is people whom they can blackmail into doing exactly as they say, however outrageous or obviously immoral; people with no principles, or at any rate,
no “principles” which they will not sacrifice at a moment’s notice when called on to do so; candidates who, once elected, can be relied on to set aside all the youthful ideals which drew them into politics to begin with, in order to do the bidding of their secret masters.
That is how one explains seemingly pro-life candidates who, once elected, vote in favour of abortion; or candidates who say that they are “America First” who once elected vote for billions in foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel; so-called “conservatives” who once elected show themselves to be social revolutionaries and moral degenerates, or “labour” but then act directly against the interests of the working man; we could go on. This is how small, hidden interests exert control over much larger organisations and even entire nations. It also explains why once in a while a piece of dirt on some politician or other makes its way out into the media: scratch the surface and you will discover that, right before the media sensation, he had stepped out of line in some way and showed a worryingly independent spirit. They had to make an example of him, so that no one else would think of stepping out of line. Most famous men will do anything to prevent their dirty laundry to coming out in the press, so it seems a relatively small matter to bend their principles and speak or vote whatever way their masters tell them. By common report, this is how the Communist party always used to operate; it is how the secret societies always used to operate; it has long been spoken of as a tactic beloved of the socalled “intelligence community” and Mossad in particular, besides who-knows-who else.
And yet here we appear to have the same thing going on inside the SSPX, and on the part of the Superior General, too. Who has the dirt on the Superior General, one wonders? Who is making sure that he does as he is told promptly and does not step out of line? Perhaps we will never know, and it ought not to matter to us too much in any case. What matters here is that in this one case, Bishop Fellay and the other SSPX superiors are seen to be guilty of:
1. Ignoring initial warnings about priests being predatory perverts;
2. When the unthinkable happened, moving predatory perverts around, not taking them permanently out of circulation and not informing the authorities;
3. Learning no lessons at all in the aftermath, continuing to behave in the same way, and certainly taking no personal responsibility;
4. Perhaps most shockingly - actually promoting such a priest, which in turn suggests that they were seeking to make use of it as a form of quasi blackmail.
In case the last point seems far-fetched, ask yourself this. Bishop Fellay knew that he was about to face a significant amount of opposition from within the SSPX due to his dealings with modernist Rome (he even said so himself!) and that he could not afford to have any local superiors wavering: ruthless decisions and cast-iron, lock-step obedience would be the order of the day. Now, who would be less likely to cause him trouble, step out of line and oppose him: a District Superior who doesn’t sexually molest children, or one who does? It really is that simple. That is what can be learned from the example of what happened to just one priest, Fr Arnaud Rostand.
Are we being unfair? Uncharitable? Well, of course it is difficult to prove this beyond any doubt. But ask yourself this. Did it really never once occur to the then- Superior General that a sexual pervert District Superior would cause him no problems and would be a loyal and zealous foot-soldier? How likely does that sound? Also ask yourself why it was that Fr Rostand was transferred to Menzingen from his exalted position of US District Superior in the summer of 2014. In Issue 19, p.29, we informed our readers about:
“Fr. Rostand’s transfer (promotion?) to Menzingen as Commissar of Propaganda ‘Communication,’ a post which is being newly invented specially for him!”
Little did we suspect back then what the real reason might be. But we did find it somewhat unusual. So, why was he removed from his post and “brought home” to SSPX Headquarters in Switzerland only in 2014, given that they had known about him for years at this point? And given that they had ignored all warnings previous, why transfer him at all? Why August 2014 in particular? Could it be that the initial danger of “disobedience” to the new direction, the period where there was a danger of “rebellion” by priests of the US District, had now passed, and with it the pressing need to have someone in charge of the district with a hidden reason for being extra loyal? Is such a thought really so far fetched? Still don’t agree with me? Very well. Perhaps I am wrong. But at least my theory explains the otherwise inexplicable: I am eager to hear a better explanation from anyone who wishes to propose one.
So much for the case of Fr Rostand. But there are more. A surprising amount more. I must confess that I somehow managed to avoid paying attention to the various exposés published by ‘Church Militant TV’ regarding similar such cases in the SSPX. Church Militant TV went bust in March 2024 (for reasons not related to its coverage of the SSPX, as far as I can tell), but what it published over the past four years or so can still be found online by using the internet archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20231205025426/https://www.churchmilitant.com/index.php/news/
article/sspx-complete-coverage
Be warned, it is not for the faint of heart. I already had an idea that Church Militant TV had an axe to grind and were hostile to Traditionalists generally and the SSPX in particular. What I find most shocking about their coverage of SSPX morality scandals, however, is not how one-sided they are, but how factual and unassailable. Of course there are some inconsistencies. Some parts are far too vague for my liking. And the contrived “scandal” of a layman convicted of sex abuse returning from prison and once again attending Mass (what is he supposed to do?) is less than helpful. And undoubtedly the people at Church Militant TV are (were?) no friends of Tradition. But for the most part, they seem to have tried to be objective and stick to the facts. A lot of what they say can be verified. And in the end they are either telling the truth or they are lying: has anyone accused them of lying? I am not aware of it.
So that you don’t have to wade through all the lurid details, here is a quick summary of what is contained in the various reports linked-to above. It is all rather distressing. Normally I would tell the reader not to take my word for it, “see for yourself!” - in this instance, I very much hope that you do take my word for it so as to save yourself the distress of having to see it for yourself. Whoever wishes to see for himself may visit the link above or search youtube for “SSPX Spotlight”.
Fr. Pierre de Maillard appeared in court in May 2023, charged with sexually abusing 27 children, including rape. He was found guilty and given a 20 year prison sentence, followed by a further 10 years probation and a ban from entering entire regions of the country where he had previously been stationed. At the trial it emerged that the SSPX had known for at least the previous ten years and had initially intended to keep him away from schools and children’s camps, but had somehow managed not to stick to their resolution, which had led to him abusing again. The only priest to emerge with honourable mention was Fr. de Maillard’s last superior before his arrest, his prior Fr. Laurent Ramé, who immediately went to the police on learning what had been going on.
Fr Matthew Stafki appeared before a Minnesota court (USA) in March 2023 and pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct. He had been sexually molesting his nine-year-old niece over a period of three years. At the exact same time, he had been teaching in a primary school of the SSPX. Though somewhat unclear, there is a suggestion by Church Militant TV that when the SSPX found out, they did not inform the parents of children at the school. The SSPX seem to have tried to hide the matter from the faithful and released a statement only after Church Militant TV had already published the story.
Fr. Patrick Groche was transferred out of Gabon in 2008 when the SSPX discovered that he had been abusing male children and adolescents. They did not punish him or report him to the authorities however, but reassigned him elsewhere. In 2019 Fr Groche admitted his guilt to the new Superior General, Fr Pagliarani, who then decided that he would henceforth be confined to the SSPX house in Lourdes. According to Church Militant TV, however, people have since visited that place and found that Fr Groche is not quite as confined as all that and still offers Mass, hears confessions and has social contact with faithful including children.
Fr. Damian Carlile also stationed in Gabon along side Fr Groche, in the same priory, took part in the same sort of paedophilic / pederastic abuse with him. Fr Carlisle was later moved to Wanganui, New Zealand where he was accused of having abused boys again. When this was reported to the SSPX, they then moved him to France were he stayed for five or six years, the suggestion being that he was suspended from ministry during this time, although just how “suspended” he actually was remains unclear. In 2009 he was reinstated to full public ministry and transferred to South Africa where he stayed for a couple of years. What happened after that is unclear, but he is now kept at permanently at Montgardin priory in the French Alps.
In both cases above, two other priests were stationed in the Gabon priory, at the very same time the abuse was going on over a period of years: Fr. Loic Duverger and Fr. Karl Stehlin. Questions remain about how much they knew, how many blind eyes they turned and what assistance they were in covering-up. One alleged victim claims that Fr. Stehlin would fetch boys up to the bedroom of either Fr Groche or Fr Carlile who would then abuse them. As it happens, coincidentally, Bishop Fellay went on to promote Fr Stehlin to District Superior of first Asia and then Eastern Europe, and a member of the General Chapter.
Fr. Christophe Roisnel was convicted by a French court in 2017 of raping three women, one of whom he also tortured. He was given a 19 year prison sentence. At the time, the SSPX knew and did not report him to the authorities. Instead, Bishop Fellay sent him to live with the Capuchins in Morgon for two years, and then transferred him to the SSPX boys boarding school at Chateauroux. The victims had been assured by the SSPX that he would be dealt with properly and it was only after they discovered that he had been reinstated after such a short period of time that they went to the police.
Fr. Ramon Angles was accused of having sexually abused a pupil at St Mary’s Academy, Kansas. Some years later, as an adult, Michael Gonzalez killed himself and left a suicide note in which he said that the priest had raped him. Two of his sisters also say that he was abused as a boy and they think it was Fr Angles. Fr Angles went on to be appointed District Superior of Ireland, was made a member of the General Chapter, and became legal adviser to the then Superior General, Bishop Fellay. The Kansas Bureau of investigation recently included the SSPX in its investigation of abuse in the conciliar church and wanted to question Fr Angles, who was no longer in the country. The latter issued a denial via his lawyer, Pedro Irigonegaray, a well known LGBT and “trans rights” activist who works for ACLU, and who is also the priest’s cousin. It is worth noting that many Resistance and SSPX faithful in Ireland remember the tenure of Fr Angles as District Superior and the trail of destruction which he left in his wake. Also worth noting is the way in which he appears to have remained a friend and confidant of Bishop Williamson, even after the latter’s expulsion from the SSPX.
Fr. Pierre Duverger is the brother of the Fr. Loic Duverger (who, as mentioned above, was stationed in Gabon with Frs. Groche and Carlile). While stationed in Bordeaux, France, he was accused of sexually taking advantage of a young woman in a vulnerable state, possibly mentally unsound (from the Church Militant TV report, it is not entirely clear). At any rate, he was accused of rape. He was sent suddenly and without warning to Silver City Benedictine monastery for a period of two years. Then he was promoted to personal secretary to the then US District Superior, Fr Arnaud Rostand. Then, while still at District HQ he also became part of their “communications team,” following which he was assigned to St Mary’s Kansas, where further allegations of sexual assault on the part of young women followed. As with Fr Ramon Angles, Church Militant TV say that he was subject of investigation by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Rather embarrassingly for the SSPX, a series of emails accidentally leaked by the SSPX to Church Militant TV revealed the District Superior and James Vogel, strategizing behind the scenes about how best to “deal with” questions about Fr Duverger, focusing mainly on how to limit the public exposure and damage to their own reputation, with little or no apparent concern for the victims or the objectively right thing to do. The District Superior at the time was Fr Jurgen Wegner.
Quote:Mr James Vogel: “We cannot issue a blanket denunciation of the accusers and say he [Fr. Duverger] is innocent of everything. Church Militant has already dug into some of our ugly cases in France; what if they find out the history here? … We can admit he’s
been placed under restrictions, but I still think MOST people will find it bizarre he is allowed to teach/run a school under the circumstances. ”
Fr. Jurgen Wegner: “Here is it not about mollifying Church Militant. If we go down that road they will judge us as Jassy does. For them, as for Jassy, the only proper outcome would be to have him in a religious prison. … But what is the right middle between saying pretty much nothing and soothing them?”
Mr James Vogel: “It is an interesting strategy, but it is a kind of deflection … which might not be bad as an interim decision! … Whatever we say or decide: They will respond. … It will not end with Fr. Duverger; Jassy’s claims and contacts will be a
veritable ‘gold mine’ for them.” (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guAD1bsFsPM - 19:24)
“Jassy” refers to an American lady who is one of Fr Duverger’s accusers. In the meantime, Fr Duverger is still stationed at the same SSPX school and priory in Orlando, Florida.
Fr. Frédéric Abbet was accused of sexual assault at a scout camp in Switzerland in 2006, following which an internal SSPX tribunal placed a ten-year ban on him using the internet or being around children unsupervised. Bishop Fellay almost immediately (within two months!) overturned the ban and assigned him to the SSPX boarding school in Brussels, Belgium, where his room was right next to the boys dormitory. Accused once again of the sexual assault of minors (one of his victims was a nine-year-old boy, another six years old) and found guilty by a Belgian court in 2017, he was later discovered to be living free in his native Switzerland where he was arrested in June 2020 and finally brought to justice.
The SSPX cover-up involved in this case merits closer attention. Both the Brussels prior and the Belgian District Superior at that time, Fr. Jurgen Wegner and Fr. Benoit Walliez, were aware of Abbet’s past history but both did and said nothing, even after complaints about Abbet began to arise in Brussels. Abbet had confessed on tape to Fr Walliez and also to Bishop Fellay that he was “attracted to boys” but was allowed to continue his predations.
Bishop Fellay met the victims’ parents and, they now claim, lied to their faces. He also sent his personal secretary to accompany Abbet to court every day as legal counsel. All three withheld evidence from the court in an attempt to help Abbet escape conviction. The court which convicted Abbet also accused the SSPX of what it called “criminogenic” behaviour, that is, behaviour fostering or promoting criminal conduct by its members.
Curiously enough, Fr. Abbet’s name came to our ears before he ‘hit the press’ so to speak. We heard about him from across the channel as a result of our 2015 article concerning Fr. Stephen Abraham. One detail which we were told was that Fr. Abbet is the nephew of Bishop Fellay, something which, if true, appears to have escaped Church Militant TV altogether, though they do wonder out loud at why Bishop Fellay would personally go to such lengths to try to protect this priest in particular. Well, that would explain it, wouldn’t it?
Shocking and disturbing though this undoubtedly all is, it is perhaps worth taking a step back and reminding ourselves that the worst crime for a priest is not paedophilia, pederasty, and the like. It is heresy. Bad though all this is, in the end it is just yet another symptom. The cause is something else. The real problem with Bishop Fellay, Fr Rostand and all the others, the biggest problem and their worst crime, was their change of doctrine, their sacrificing of their principles on the altar of convenience and expedience, their surrendering to Vatican II. This is not to minimise the horror in any way. It is not to suggest that anyone is over-emphasising the horrific and abhorrent crime of the sexual assault of children; but it is to point out that we all tend to under-emphasise and under-appreciate just how horrific and abhorrent in the eyes of God is the crime of heresy and its lesser forms. Paedo-priests, when all's said and done, can be added to the list of symptoms detailed in our back pages in the “SSPX Watch” column these past ten years, albeit this is significantly worse than most of what goes in there. But it is in the end a symptom. For all these symptoms, the cause, the illness is the same: the fact that the SSPX has surrendered to Vatican II, sold its birthright, the one truly precious thing it possessed, its uncompromising stand for Tradition. The Faith must always come first. If we betray the Faith, if we put anything else before the Faith, then everything will unravel. Back in 2013 and 2014 we wrote here that the SSPX had come to see the SSPX as an end in itself, and we gave examples showing that. Well, this is exactly where that leads.
Caveat Lector...
Now is not the time for gloating over the downfall of an opponent, if there is ever a time for such thing - quite the contrary. Even though we sort of did tell them so, we must be careful not to come across as “I told you so,” if we end up discussing it with anti- or non-Resistance minded SSPXers of our acquaintance. But do emphasise the important point, that these evils do not suddenly just happen in a vacuum, they happen because people take decisions, make changes, and that they are a symptom of something wrong at the root.
We cannot in any case afford to gloat over the downfall of a former opponent. Remember that 99% of the people out there in the world will make no distinction between the SSPX and us. They will simply learn the wrong lesson: that Traditionalists are just as likely to be paedos as Novus Ordo liberals with no morals. We will all be tarred with the same brush in the end. And then of course there are Fr Abraham and Fr Peignot.
Fr Philippe Peignot abused multiple boys over several years. One of his victims was Vincent Lambert, who at the end of his life became a well-known hospitalised quadriplegic and the centre of a famous end-of-life debate in France, where the French courts eventually overruled the family and ordered his life-support turned off. Church Militant TV say that the young man’s drink driving car crash which landed him paralysed in hospital was itself a direct result of his abuse as a minor by Fr Peignot. They also quote from a document in which Fr Peignot admits to having sexually abused Lambert.
Two consecutive SSPX Superiors General, Fr Schmidberger and Bishop Fellay, both imposed restrictions on this priest and then relaxed them. Bishop Fellay at one point overturned a ban which the then– District Superior of France, Fr Pierre-Marie Laurencon, had placed on him. The effect was that he went on to abuse others and was moved around each time a new crime came to their attention. Finally when one of the victims wrote to Rome with evidence, the Vatican stepped in and ordered the SSPX to take firmer action. Fr. Peignot was then tried internally by the SSPX and found guilty in June 2014. He joined the Resistance almost immediately after, and in 2017 was discovered by a Swedish TV documentary crew celebrating Sunday Mass near Bordeaux, advertised on the now defunct Fake Resistance website francefidele.fr .
Fr Stephen Abraham has already featured in these pages (Issue 31, p.14). Like Fr Peignot, as well as so many of the others, it is worth noting the reluctance to act on the part of his superiors. Fr. Paul Morgan was his prior and Bishop Fellay the Superior General when he was in the Philippines and an accusation against an adolescent came to light. Eventually his superiors acted and he was moved to France where some years later he offended again. In the end the SSPX did the right thing in ensuring that he had no public ministry at all. In early 2014, with no warning being given, he was put back into circulation by Bishop Williamson.
Having two such priests in the Resistance from the early days is bad enough. The fact that it didn’t happen by accident, but that they were deliberately introduced into the Resistance by men who knew full well what they were, ought to send shivers down the spine of anyone who wonders what has really been going on. Ask yourself why. Why would anyone wish deliberately to introduce such a priest, never mind two of them, into the Resistance right at the start?
Perhaps Bishop Williamson is somehow not at the centre of a secret ring within the SSPX, and all this is a remarkable coincidence. But if we are going to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that a certain amount of evidence points that way, that the idea is not quite a crazy as it might once have seemed (there are other such priests which he protected and promoted, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, for instance). And as with Bishop Fellay being responsible for Fr Rostand, in like manner Bishop Williamson is responsible for Fr Abraham. A bishop who promotes pederasts and child molesters must be regarded as every bit as guilty, if not more so: responsibility increases with rank, that is how it works.
Not Just Fellow Travelers: A Means of Control
Is this just a story of priests with moral problems and bishops who are weak and vacillating, who are far too lenient in dealing with them? Or is there more to be said? Alas, there is more to this than meets the eye. Many people are familiar with the concept of infiltration by the enemy. The Communists, Freemasons, and others, infiltrating the Catholic Church to destroy it from within. It is not a conspiracy theory, it is a fact: they are on record as having said that they would do just this (read the Alta Vendita, for instance). Communists and Freemasons are not just fellow travellers of sodomites and pederasts, the two go hand-in-hand for more than
one reason: control. Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy. You want to infiltrate the organisation to control it from within and steer it in a new direction. Very well. Sending your agents in is the first step, but what comes next? How is your scheme ever going to succeed, unless you have rigid, cast-iron, albeit hidden, obedience? The point is not just that the obedience has to be cast-iron, it is that it must be reliably so. The one in control needs to have total confidence that these agents are reliable, that their obedience is always going to be prompt and unquestioning. If those in control even begin to doubt this, their schemes will not work.
Imagine striving to get one of your men into a key position of influence if you weren’t entirely sure that he wouldn’t change his mind once there, or even just become lukewarm and begin to pay lip-service to his secret masters. No, that would never do. Any doubts like that, and you wouldn’t feel quite so inclined to go to such great lengths to get him there in the first place.
As always, this will sound incredible to anyone not used to giving the matter the consideration that it deserves. But lest the reader be tempted to write it all off as a “wild conspiracy theory,” please consider carefully and ask yourself the following. Which is more likely, that the enemies of the Church would try to infiltrate her, or that they would leave her alone or content themselves with only external, visible attacks? And if they have been infiltrating her, what is more likely, that they would seek to blackmail and control clergy who are already psychiatrically damaged, who have a serious moral problem as a result and who are desperate to try to
hide it, or that they would leave them alone, not approach them, and would try to achieve their nefarious ends without making use of them? Finally, if they have managed to do this to the Catholic Church throughout the world, would they not try to do the same to the SSPX?
Elsewhere in this issue…
...the reader will find an article by Archbishop Lefebvre exposing Catholic Liberalism, and in a similar vein an article which usefully abridges and summarises Fr Fahey’s book, The Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism. We managed to obtain a copy of the Archbishop Lefebvre article in French, as it appeared in Fideliter back in the day, more than three decades ago. We are not aware of any English translation out there other than our own.
Fr. Denis Fahey was a contemporary of Archbishop Lefebvre and a fellow Holy Ghost Father, who wrote books in the 1940s and 50s. He lived in Dublin, but even back in those days was looked-on askance by the other clergy of Dublin Archdiocese. Clearly the rot had already set in, all was not well in the decades prior to Vatican II. Around five years ago, Fr. Hewko and I were fortunate to be taken to visit to his grave by some Irish faithful. We were by no means the first to have visited his grave: the modernist Novus Ordo nuns deliberately removed the headstones from the graveyard so that people can no longer find him!
It is remarkable to think that his books were sold at the SSPX and his articles were on their websites. It was 2009, in the wake of the Swedish TV outrage, when they scrubbed them all: a sign of things to come. Nowadays they wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot barge pole and are falling over themselves to prove how inoffensive and politically correct they are. They won’t sell Fr. Fahey but they both sell and promote My Catholic Faith, a book from the same time but stuffed full of the sort of liberalism that Fr. Fahey fought against.
And if there is one man who singlehandedly exemplifies the new, liberal SSPX, it is surely Fr. Paul Robinson. On p.38 is our response to the latest efforts by the SSPX to use this priest to propagandise the faithful into believing billions of years and the like. Remember, this is the priest who told us all that Covid lockdowns were a good thing and that we must simply be good little obedient citizens and avoid conspiracy theories at all costs. He also says that Quo Primum is not binding, that the earth is billions of years old and that the worldwide flood never happened. Compare what this unfortunate priest says and what his beloved My Catholic Faith says (our review can be found here, on p.35) with what Archbishop Lefebvre says and what Fr. Denis Fahey says. It is like night and day. One is represented by the modern SSPX, the other by the Resistance.
Where does Bishop Williamson stand in all this? Despite hundreds of Eleison Comments emails, he has said not a peep on the Creation/Evolution debate, perhaps because he is not entirely sound on the issue himself. His brand of liberalism is no remedy to the liberalism of the modern SSPX. Let us turn to Archbishop Lefebvre and to Catholic Tradition.
- The Editor
[The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita]
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre