Why I Love Fraternity
- Published
on October 22, 2024
- Bishop
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais
- 9
minutes
The "testament" of His Excellency Bishop
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais (homily in Ecône, December 9, 2012).
Dear faithful and friends,
The death of His Excellency Monsignor Bernard Tissier de
Mallerais has unquestionably left a void in the seminary of Ecône, his last
residence, but also, obviously, in the hearts of each of the members or
faithful of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X, of which he was one of the
initiators by being one of the first seminarians to address Archbishop Lefebvre
in order to ask him insistently, at the end of the 1960s, to form them for a
truly Catholic priesthood.
Often at the side of our venerable founder during his
priestly life and in the beginning of his episcopate, he followed in his
footsteps with filial devotion to the point of writing, as we all know, a
complete biography that will undoubtedly remain the reference work for knowing
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his work.
We would like to give him the floor directly, through an
excerpt from a homily he gave in Ecône, when, after several years of residence
at the Seminary of St. Pius X, he moved to the priory of Chicago.
In it, he delivers a kind of spiritual testament in which
he summarizes the work of the Society of St. Pius X and the reasons to remain
faithful to its doctrinal position and its spiritual heritage, and through it,
the means to remain faithful to the Church, to the faith that she has always
transmitted and to the means of holiness that she never ceases to offer.
Dear faithful, why do I love the Priestly Society of St.
Pius X? I love it first of all because it was approved by the Church on
the 1ster November 1970 by Bishop Charrière, Bishop of
Fribourg, as a society of common life without vows; approved by the Church and
unjustly suppressed, invalidly suppressed. It still exists canonically, this
Society of St. Pius X, whatever others say. So I love it because it has been
approved by the Church.
Archbishop Lefebvre, its founder, told us: "I would
never have done anything without the permission of a local bishop." He
received permission from the Bishop of Fribourg in Switzerland. Why
Switzerland? As a reward for the generosity of Swiss Catholics for the missions
in Dakar because the generosity of Swiss Catholics had made it possible to pay
for the mission and the Church of Fatick in Senegal. And to thank their bishop,
especially Bishop Charrière of Fribourg, Archbishop Lefebvre invited him to
come and solemnly consecrate the Church of Fatick. And since that time, they
had remained friends, Archbishop Charrière and Archbishop Lefebvre. So much so
that in 1969, when Archbishop Lefebvre presented himself to the bishopric of
Fribourg, he was welcomed with open arms by the bishop of Fribourg, who allowed
him to plant his vineyard, his seminary in Fribourg, and to plant his
Fraternity in Switzerland. There you go. The reward for the generosity of Swiss
Catholics. This is Providence. That's why I love the Fraternity. It is a reward
from God.
Secondly, because this Fraternity develops the
common life of the clergy; priests living in common. This was not ordinary
in the Church, and yet it was the best tradition of the Church. Priests must
live in common, as we do, that is to say, a common life of table, certainly, of
dormitory, if we may say so, but above all of prayer and apostolate. Three
hours of the Breviary and the daily rosary are prayed in common, and the
apostolate is exercised in common, organized together. For more holiness and
more efficiency; Archbishop Lefebvre's brilliant idea: a society of common life
without vows.
I also love the Society because it has attracted
religious life to those around it: our Oblates, the Sisters of the Society,
our Brothers and a number of other communities, religious societies that have
developed in the shadow, so to speak, of the Priestly Society of St. Pius X.
This is why I love the Society, because it loves religious life.
I love the Priestly Fraternity because it is
priestly. This is the essential, this is its definition, because the crisis
of the Church – let us say the crisis in the Church – is quite simply the
crisis of priestly identity. When the priests lost sight of what they are made
for, then they threw the cassock first to the nettles, and then they threw away
the Latin, they threw it all away, and finally they threw away their hearts,
they threw away their faith. So Archbishop Lefebvre said no, the priesthood
must be maintained in its doctrinal purity and missionary charity. The Society
of St. Pius X is priestly, dedicated to the celebration of the Sacrifice of the
Mass, to the social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, because Jesus reigned
and reigns by the wood of his cross, and consequently by the Mass, which is the
sacramental continuation of the sacrifice of Calvary. This is why I love the
Priestly Society of St. Pius X, because it is truly priestly.
I love the Society of St. Pius X, because its patron
is St. Pius X, the last canonized pope, who gave himself all his care to
his priests, to the priests of the Catholic Church, with his exhortation
Haerent animo, which is a magnificent summary of the priestly spirit; because
St. Pius X condemned modernism by announcing that it was not over, since this
heresy was within and in the veins of the Catholic Church. It would not be
possible to uproot modernism in a day. And also because St. Pius X has restored
order to the Church, and this is what we lack today. This is why I love the
Fraternity.
I love the Society of St. Pius X because its founder, Archbishop
Lefebvre, gave us a regulation, gave us statutes, constitutions, very wise
rules, which Rome approved, even praised, the sapientes normae,
by a letter from Cardinal Wright, Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy, in
1971. A praise of the Constitutions of the Society that fit in twenty pages, in
twenty pages like a tablet of priestly spirituality, where everything is said.
And we are still living from it now, without having changed anything. It's
working. Who wrote that? Archbishop Lefebvre, with a stroke of the pen in Rome.
Isn't that wonderful?
I love the Priestly Fraternity because it has found
the ideal of priestly formation in these traditional seminaries, as
it has always been done in seminaries, that is, combining doctrine and piety.
Piety solidly founded on doctrine and leading a liturgical life, very fond of
beautiful and solemn liturgical ceremonies. This is why I love the Society of
St. Pius X.
I also love the Society, dear faithful, because Archbishop
Lefebvre, with a genius idea, has established a year of spirituality at the
seminary as a novitiate to give these young people a spiritual life,
to explain to them the principles and to make them live by these principles of
the Catholic spiritual life, the principles of the Church and not the
principles of Archbishop Lefebvre. No; the principles of the Church and of Our
Lord Jesus Christ.
I also love the Society of St. Pius X because Archbishop
Lefebvre, by another brilliant idea, wanted a special course to be given –
in addition to St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa, of course – a special course in
the Acts of the Magisterium of the Church, teaching the encyclicals of all
those great popes who, from the nineteenth century until the eve of the
Council, had transmitted the Church's doctrine on modern errors, liberalism,
modernism, and socialism. And from then on, every year, seminarians receive
this teaching from the encyclicals of the popes, the true successors of Peter.
I also love the Society because Divine Providence
brought the Reverend Father Barrielle to Econe, with the Exercises of Saint
Ignatius. Since then, we love St. Ignatius and we are able to do what in
the past only Jesuits, specialists, were capable of doing. We are able to
preach the Exercises of St. Ignatius. Isn't that extraordinary, dear faithful?
And you are all invited to go often to the retirement homes where these
Exercises of Saint Ignatius are preached, which are a marvel, not only for
converting sinners, but for making saints. Go to the exercises of Saint
Ignatius, register in Enney or in France.
Finally, I love the Fraternity, dear faithful, because it was launched into the battle of faith. She has not biased, she has not feared to throw herself boldly into the danger of unjust, null condemnation in the combat of faith to which the apostle Saint Paul exhorts us. And we are still now in the battle of faith. Thank God. Thus, in spite of herself, because she was not founded to fight, she was founded to transmit the priesthood, in spite of herself, but willingly, she became a warrior. I love the Fraternity because it is warlike, because it is waging a war for Christ the King, and that is no small thing. I love the Society, so to speak, to sum it up, because it is the last bastion left to resist, to stand firm, to say no to conciliar and post-conciliar apostasy. Last precious bastion, and our first duty, therefore, is to protect it against all modernist infections. Our first duty is to keep this bastion for the future, for the Church.
Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais
SSPX Auxiliary Bishop
Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais (1945 – 2024). He was
one of the first seminarians that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre welcomed in
Fribourg in October 1969 and participated in the foundation of the Society of
St. Pius X. He has assumed important responsibilities, notably as director of
the seminary of Ecône. Consecrated on June 30, 1988, he devoted himself during
his 36 years of episcopate to his duties as auxiliary bishop of the SSPX. He
was commissioned to write the book Marcel
Lefebvre, une vie, a reference biography of the founder of the
Fraternity.
