RSSThe local superior of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) says Catholics will have to change their attitude before his group can be fully integrated into the local Church.
Father Adam Purdy spoke with UCA News on Jan. 28 in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI´s Jan. 21 decree lifting the excommunication of the society´s bishops.
“Many priests and bishops think of us as a schismatic society and refuse permission even to enter their churches,” he said at Our Lady of Victories Church, the SSPX church in Quezon City, northeast of Manila.
The 31-year-old priest maintained this situation has prevailed even though his society and its members “were never in schism with our pope.”
The American priest cited SSPX head Bishop Bernard Fellay´s declaration of fidelity to the Roman Catholic Church, which was quoted in the Vatican decree.
In it, he was quoted as saying his group is “at the service of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which is the Roman Catholic Church,” and that its members “accept her teachings in a filial spirit” and “firmly believe in the Primacy of Peter and in its prerogatives.”
The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre established SSPX in 1970 to form priests according to doctrine, morals and worship unaffected by Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) reforms. A crisis came when he ordained four bishops — Bernard Fellay, Richard Williamson, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Alfonso de Galarreta — even after the Vatican warned him he could not do so without a papal mandate.
In 1988 the Vatican declared all five excommunicated.
Father Purdy said SSPX representatives who dialogued with the Vatican had set restoration of the validity of the Latin Mass and the lifting of the excommunications as conditions for resuming full talks.
The pope´s action on the two matters allowed for “serious discussion on differences,” he said.
In Summorum Pontificum, an apostolic letter Pope Benedict issued motu proprio (on his own accord) in 2007, the pope officially declared the Latin Mass used before the Second Vatican Council, often called the Tridentine Mass, an “extraordinary universal rite,” and the vernacular Mass the “ordinary universal rite.”
In the meantime, Father Purdy said, SSPX priests “have suffered as much or more than our [excommunicated] bishops.”
He cited one confrere´s report that during a visit to Bohol diocese in the central Philippines, he was told he could no longer visit the churches there on yearly pilgrimages because his group was “schismatic.”
Bishop Leonardo Medroso of Tagbilaran, Bohol, chairman of the Philippine bishops´ Commission on Canon Law, clarified: “I did hear about their exclusion later, but I was not the one who stopped them [from entering the church].”
The bishop said he still has to review the recent decree “to see how this will affect the standing of that society here in the country.”
Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Lingayen-Dagupan, another canon lawyer, said that even if the bishops´ excommunication has been lifted, neither they nor their priests have been given permission to use their priestly faculties. He said the pope would have to announce if and when these will be restored.
Father Purdy acknowledged, “Attitudes will take a long time to change.” He cited “the way the local bishops implemented” the motu proprio, claiming they have “basically ignored it, and in many dioceses they have refused permission to priests to say Latin Masses.”
However, he also said some bishops have been open, recalling a former bishop of Bacolod diocese, in the central Philippines, who offered his group a parish. Another from the same region signed letters for the renewal of visas of their foreign priest and a third bishop, from the Manila area, asked them for 26 CDs for his priests on how to celebrate the Latin Mass.
Father Purdy says the lifting of the excommunication could have several practical effects including a possible increase in vocations to the SSPX, more interest among Filipino priests and more Catholics attending the Latin Mass.
“While waiting for my plane last week,” he recalled, “a young man approached me and said he would like to join our seminary in Australia but could not because we were excommunicated.”
SSPX, with its headquarters in Switzerland, reportedly has 454 priests in 55 countries. It has Mass centers in 11 countries in Asia, according to one of its websites.
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