So, You Think the SSPX Is “Uncharitable”? I Would Avoid Church History if I Were You

One of the hallmarks of anti-SSPX commentary is the clutching of pearls. It seems that at times Don Pagliarani could say something like, “We reject false religions, because they are false and hateful to God,” and the commentariat would find something negative to say about it.

Recently, the SSPX put out a statement wherein not Don Pagliarani but Fr. Gleize wrote the following in a response to threats from Cardinal Fernández: “Excommunicated? But by whom? By those who receive the blessing of a schismatic woman, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally? By those who authorize the blessing of Fiducia supplicans? And who kneel before Pachamama?”

Earlier this year, Don Pagliarani said,

It is sad to acknowledge, but it is a fact that, in an ordinary parish, the faithful no longer find the means necessary to ensure their eternal salvation. Missing, in particular, are both the integral preaching of Catholic truth and morality, and the worthy administration of the sacraments as the Church has always done.

Needless to say, this comment upset some people, and pearls were clutched.

Asked about the same statement in a subsequent interview, he was asked to clarify. He said, among other things:

First of all, it is not a matter of contesting that, despite all the problems and deficiencies that confront ordinary parishes, good priests and good faithful may nonetheless succeed in sanctifying themselves and in saving their souls… That said, what the Society of Saint Pius X affirms must be understood on an objective, not a subjective, level… In an ordinary parish or pastoral centre, that is, in a place where one preaches in conformity with current doctrinal orientations, is the Catholic Faith still taught in its full integrity? Is the catechism provided for children still Catholic and capable of forming them for their whole life?

Well, all I can say is that my experience completely matches the one that Don Pagliarani mentions, and I am one of umpteen zillion people who could attest to it. Nonetheless, his comments, along with those of Fr. Gleize, have sent legions of people into a tizzy.

How dare he suggest that during the most pernicious crisis the Church has, perhaps, ever seen, the faithful are at risk of not receiving the fullness of the Faith, generally, in their parishes? How dare he make such a comment when the vast majority of Catholics, practically the world over, have stopped practicing the Faith or virtually apostatized? How dare he come to such a conclusion when transvestite cosplaying “bishopettes” are giving fake, evil, and sacrilegious “blessings” to Successors of the Apostles at the Tomb of St. Peter?

How could Don Pagliarani say something so insensitive when the head of doctrine for the Church has a pesky habit of writing theological erotica? Is he out of his mind? Hasn’t he read the statistics about how many Catholics believe in the Real Presence of the Eucharist? Surely he wouldn’t say such uncharitable things if he knew about the small fraction of Catholics who believe things that are so basic that even a 7-year-old studying for his First Communion knows!

The only reasonable response to such a grotesque observation from Don Pagliarani is to clutch our pearls and demand he not tell the obvious truth! After all, it isn’t as if Christ said, “The Truth shall set you free.” Erm…wait…never mind.

If you think Don Pagliarani, and the SSPX by extension, is uncharitable, I am going to recommend that you stop reading because the following quotations from Saints, Doctors, and popes are going to offend you greatly, and we wouldn’t want objective historical facts to hurt your feelings. If you are brave enough to keep reading, I suggest you hold on tight to those pearls!

In his landmark encyclical, wherein he defined and condemned the heresy of Modernism, Pope St. Pius X wrote this at the outset:

For as We have said, they put their designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her. Moreover, they lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fires. And having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skilful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious arts…

Where are my pearls! How dare the Holy Father suggest that heresy was so widespread and pernicious in the Church that it was present, as if in the very veins of the Church! It is simply untenable that the Holy Father could notice what was happening and then tell us all about it!

Pope Pius X wrote this almost 120 years ago. Do you think those problems went away?

St. Basil, in a letter to the Bishops of Italy and Gaul during the Arian period, wrote:

It is not only one Church which is in peril, nor yet two or three which have fallen under this terrible storm. The mischief of this heresy spreads almost from the borders of Illyricum to the Thebaid. Its bad seeds were first sown by the infamous Arius; they then took deep root through the labours of many who vigorously cultivated the impiety between his time and ours. Now they have produced their deadly fruit. The doctrines of true religion are overthrown. The laws of the Church are in confusion. The ambition of men, who have no fear of God, rushes into high posts, and exalted office is now publicly known as the prize of impiety. The result is, that the worse a man blasphemes, the fitter the people think him to be a bishop. Clerical dignity is a thing of the past.

At this point, can we clutch our pearls any harder? It seems that St. Basil the Great was of the opinion that the Church, during that period, was in a state of anarchy, with heresy everywhere, and the true doctrine of the Church had been overthrown.

Can you imagine if Don Pagliarani said something like this during our Modernist period? He would be accused of alleging that the Gates of Hell had prevailed and probably been called a Protestant, or something. Oh wait, that is exactly what happens.

During a lecture in 1999, Bishop Fellay stated the following:

One of our faithful in France wrote a letter to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger describing the scandalous behaviour of a particular French bishop. On behalf of the cardinal, Msgr. Perl answered: “Yes, you’re right. The situation in the Church is anarchy. If you expect that an order from Rome regarding the above will solve the situation, you are in total illusion.”

Oh dear, at this point the pearls have been pulverized. It seems that even a devotee of the great Cardinal Ratzinger had contracted the same spiritual sickness as St. Basil the Great. It is simply beyond the pale that a Vatican official could call the situation in the Church anarchical when, of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth! Well, okay, maybe he had a point. But still, his point, which accurately describes reality, is uncharitable!

Now, if you thought St. Basil had done a number on your pearls, he doubled down:

All the while unbelievers laugh; men of weak faith are shaken; faith is uncertain; souls are drenched in ignorance, because adulterators of the word imitate the truth. The mouths of true believers are dumb, while every blasphemous tongue wags free; holy things are trodden under foot; the better laity shun the churches as schools of impiety, and lift their hands in the deserts with sighs and tears to their Lord in heaven.

I think we need to reopen the case of St. Basil because his words are too uncharitable. He is basically saying that the smart Catholics at the time stayed away from their churches (parishes) and worshipped in exile with other faithful Catholics. How can we revere someone as a saint who sounds so much like Archbishop Lefebvre?!

Gasp, St. Basil went even further! In On the Holy Spirit, he wrote: “The luminaries of the world, which God set to give light to the souls of the people, have been driven from their homes, and a darkness verily gloomy and disheartening has settled on the Churches.”

My friends, the pearls, at this point, have left the Earth, and we must conclude that the supposedly great St. Basil was infected with the same spiritual disease as the Lefebvrians! And this happened 1,500 years before Archbishop Lefebvre, which just shows how pernicious his influence was!

At present, there isn’t much support for Don Pagliarani in Rome, as there wasn’t much for Archbishop Lefebvre. How could these men think they had a point when so many bishops were against them? I mean, they sound like St. Athanasius. When the Arian bishops taunted Athanasius—“You are fighting a losing battle. Does Athanasius not know that the world is against him?”—he replied quietly: “Then Athanasius is against the world” (Athanasius contra mundum). As St. Jerome framed it, at the moment when the whole world groaned and was amazed to find itself Arian, God raised up one man to grasp and hold high the banner of orthodoxy.

I think we should reopen the case of St. Athanasius—because how can we revere a bishop as holy and saintly when he has the audacity to stand up to his brother bishops and call out their obvious heresy? The only word I can use to describe these historical facts is “uncharitable.” Sure, it may all be true, but in the Church of the New Advent, we don’t have time for “uncharitable” truth! Its presence simply ruins the vibes of the New Springtime we are all living through.

There is a quote from another Lefebvrian which is, quite frankly, egregious. It may be one of the most schismatic things I have ever heard. This terribly uncharitable and schismatic prelate wrote: “The body of Bishops failed in the confession of the faith.”

Oh, drat! It turns out that it was actually Cardinal Newman who wrote that when commenting on the Arian period. What an unfortunate turn of events to find another great, saintly prelate from Church history uttering such Lefebvrian and uncharitable things. He, like the other proto-Lefebvrians from antiquity, doubled down:

…the body of the episcopate was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism; that at one time the Pope, at other times the patriarchal, metropolitan, and other great sees, at other times general councils, said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth.

Thankfully, we don’t have to accept men like these in the Church anymore—because they were simply too “uncharitable.”