SSPX OPEN LETTER TO ARCHBISHOP FERNANDO R. CAPALLA AND ALL CATHOLICS OF GOOD WILL IN DAVAO CITY, PHILIPPINES

[Renel B. Peña]

AN OPEN LETTER TO ARCHBISHOP FERNANDO R. CAPALLA AND ALL CATHOLICS OF GOOD WILL IN DAVAO CITY

By the PRIESTS OF THE SOCIETY OF SAINT PIUS X

FIDELITY TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

A response to Archbishop Fernando Capalla's Pastoral Circulars targeting the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) and their Apostolate.

 

The Catholic Faith is founded on the very divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who came down on earth to save men from their sins and lead them to Heaven with Him. He entrusted his apostles and their successors not only the Truth He taught but also the example of holiness He gave them and the seven sacraments as means of grace. That most holy deposit has been handled down faithfully through the ages in and by the Catholic Church, and shines especially in her saints. As Pope Pius IX taught, the Holy Ghost has been promised to Peter and his successors not to teach new doctrine but to keep entirely and expose faithfully this deposit of faith. The Traditional latin mass has always been at the heart of the Church; in it the work of redemption is continued and applied to the faithful; they unite themselves to the sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ and are fed by His very Body and Blood to become one victim with him so as to be glorified with him.

To these treasures the Society of Saint Pius X has been faithful from the very beginning. It was founded perfectly canonically by the local bishop in 1970, and grew steadily ever since. But this fidelity to the Tradition of the Church did not please those who were intent in changing everything after the Second Vatican Council. Persecution came upon the Society of Saint Pius X, trying to force them to take up the novelties, especially the new mass. But is it not right of each priest and layman to remain faithful to what he received from the Church? Nay, it is his very duty! That fidelity to the Mass of all times has been vindicated by Pope Benedict XVI, when he declared in Summorum Pontificum that the Traditional Latin Mass was never abrogated: this implicitly means that those who tried to suppress it in the 1970’s were doing the wrong thing. Pope Benedict thus wrote: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of the sudden entirely forbidden or even considered as harmful. It behoves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer and to give them their proper place”. This is what The Society of Saint Pius X has been doing all those years. When one says that the canonical situation of the Society of Saint Pius X is irregular, whose fault? Not the SSPX’s but it was the fault of those trying to suppress Tradition.

Now it is a fact in many places, these riches of the Tradition of the Church had been- abusively- forbidden; priests were not allowed to offer the Traditional Latin Mass nor were the faithful allowed to assist. Many of these faithful had been wounded by the novelties, the scandals, - not only the moral scandals that have afflicted the Church after Vatican II, but the very scandals of novelties in the doctrine, priests no longer believing in the necessity of the Catholic faith for Salvation, and even sometimes not believing in The Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The way they treat the Blessed Sacrament is often a scandal. Communion in hand has led many to lose faith in that Dogma. Local Levites passed by those souls wounded by these scandals and did not cared; local priests pass by and did not care; the Society of Saint Pius X, like the Good Samaritan, came by and cared for these souls, healing them and teaching them the Faith of all times, giving them the sacraments of all times and the moral guidance of all times: that very same Faith, very same Sacrament, which you my Lord Bishop, received when you were a young boy.

 

Now what would you think of this local Levite and Priest turning around and telling the Good Samaritan, you can’t do this because you are a stranger and have no local jurisdiction? Is it not the model of the Good Samaritan that of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself? Yes, these Good Samaritan have jurisdiction, not normal one, but the one given in this time of crisis of Faith by the very principles of the Canon law, the first which is: “the supreme law is the salvation of souls”.

 

Pope Benedict XVI, conscious of this crisis of the church, is currently working for restoring a proper canonical status to the SSPX: he has given the freedom to the Traditional Mass as we had asked: he has suppressed the “excommunication” of 1988(which we always considered it invalid), in such a way that no one can say we are not in the Catholic Church; he has done the theological discussions we had asked and now offering a proper canonical status. It is certainly not time for bishops to go in the opposite direction.

 

For the Honor of God and in devotion to the immaculate Heart of Mary, a Rosary Crusade is being organized on October 7, 8 and 9 for three intentions: 1) to fulfill our lady’s request at Fatima to do reparation in honour of Her Immaculate heart
2) to pray for Pope Benedict XVI to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
and 3) to defeat the RH bill being debated in the Congress.

 

Fr. Francois Laisney, Fr. J. Timothy Pfeiffer, Fr. Joseph Pfieffer, Fr. Alexander Hora