Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter: Some Salient Problems
Q. Recently,
the Fraternity of St. Peter has started operating near to where I offer the
traditional Latin Mass every week. Fraternity priests tell people not to receive
the sacraments at my Mass center because I do not have faculties from the local
bishop, who is of course a complete modernist.
The
Fraternity’s criticisms of me aside, their operation leaves me very uneasy. I
suspect I should tell my people to steer clear, but I can’t figure out how
exactly to explain the reasons.
I
am not a sedevacantist. Do you have any reflections on the problems with the
Fraternity of St. Peter apart from the pope question?
A. Apart
from the question of John Paul II’s legitimacy, working with or supporting the
Priestly Fraternity of St, Peter (FSSP) poses a whole slew of ecclesiological,
doctrinal and moral problems. Whether an FSSP supporter is willing to admit it
or not, he implicitly accepts the orthodoxy, legitimacy and/or intrinsic
goodness of the Novus Ordo, ecumenism,
religious liberty, communion in the hand, liturgical dance, server-ettes,
patently phony annulments, the new catechism, subjection to heretical bishops,
legally-sanctioned intercommunion with eastern schismatics, etc., etc.
FSSP
priests cannot condemn any of these things; Fraternity members purchase
“official approval” with the coin of their silence. Nor, logically speaking, could FSSP condemn such things — for
while their organization is enjoying official approval in its side chapel of the Conciliar Church, John Paul is at the main
altar with the dancers for the African Synod Mass, an officially-approved
female in another chapel is popping hosts in the officially-approved way into
people’s hands, and someone else in still another chapel is running kiddy
Masses according to the officially-approved Children’s Directory.
The
traditional Mass and the traditional faith are thus reduced to nothing more
than one dish among the many officially approved for the post-Vatican II smorgasbord.
Worship and belief become nothing more than a matter of “preference” — I like
the old way, you like the new way, and we’re all one big happy post-Vatican II
family.
Lay
people sometimes are oblivious to this broader picture. They see a traditional
Mass, and presume all is well. It’s not. In reality, the Fraternity of St.
Peter is leading its lay adherents bit by bit into the high-church, nostalgia
wing of the ecumenical, post-Vatican religion.
Such
an aim, to be sure, may be far from the minds of priests and seminarians in the
FSSP. But it is difficult to discern what reason they could give for adhering
to the old Mass, other than pure, sentimental “preference.” All FSSP members
must accept the legitimacy and “doctrinal rectitude” of the Novus Ordo. Why refrain from celebrating
a valid, licit and doctrinally sound rite of Mass if the pope himself
celebrates it? It would be interesting to hear FSSP explain the theory behind
its practice.
(Sacerdotium
14, Spring 1995)