Fr. Laisney comments on SSPX strict observance

[Gerard]

While I'm sure Fr. Laisney would be the first person to tell us if Bishop Fellay "genuinely" was duplicitous or even unintentionally doing damage to the SSPX and the traditional stand in the Church, I found his attempt at a refutation less than convincing. 

I'll try to go through his basic 8 points later, but in reading his position, it seems he has no position at all except to encourage the SSPX to incorporate themselves into the FSSP and enjoy that Novus Ordo Chrism Mass and subject themselves to Protocol 1411 which will give freedom for any traditional priest to say the Novus Ordo. 



The Pseudo-Anti-Liberal Illusion

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Angelus Press
The following is written by Fr. Francois Laisney, originally appearing on http://sspxasia.com, and is published with permission.

For some time now, certain persons have been publishing the most grievous accusations against the superiors of the SSPX to an almost obsessive degree without realising that they themselves have lost contact with reality; they have fallen into errors which I will call "pseudo-anti-liberal", because they pretend to be anti-liberal, though they themselves fall into the very defect they condemn, as wrote St Paul: "Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou dost the same things which thou judgest" (Rom. 2:1).

A CANONICAL REGULARISATION – SOMETHING GOOD IN ITSELF

After having defined the notion of a liberal – someone who rejects the authority of God and of His Law – in order to conclude that the authorities of the SSPX are liberal, they logically need to prove that these authorities have rejected God and His Law. Now, not only have they failed to prove that Bishop Fellay and the authorities of the SSPX reject God and His Law, they have also failed to recognise that is precisely in order to obey the Law of God that – following the example of Archbishop Lefebvre (who always rejected sedevacantism) – these authorities are attached to the Catholic Church, as it is concretely today (sadly disfigured by modernism and liberalism as Christ was disfigured on the Cross), but remaining nonetheless the Catholic Church founded by Christ on Peter and against which the gates of Hell shall not prevail. St Thomas Aquinas explains that all law is essentially an order, ordo rationis: this submission to the Law of God therefore implies necessarily the love of order, and thus the desire to be in order within the Church of God; a canonical regularisation has no other purpose. There is therefore nothing liberal in this, on the contrary.

The rest can be viewed online
http://angeluspress.org/blog/the-pseudo-anti-liberal-illusion/

But even on the first point, if the Church is disfigured, does one view that disfigurement as "order"?   Trying to make too strong a connection between the disfigurement of Christ on the Cross as equivalent to the Crisis in the Church is beyond the pale of reason.  Christ did not masochistically disfigure himself in the way that the Popes engaged in a perverse (i.e.. disordered) "Kenosis" of the Church.

A more apt parallel is that the "Churchmen" of the day, Caiphas and Annas were the canonical center of the Church.  So, should Peter and James have gone to Caiphas as Our Lord was being crucified in search of  "Canonical regularity"  ( a good in itself) 

Here's a hatchet throw that this simple layman can see.  "A Canonical regularization" is a good thing in a healthy Church, but not always in an infected Church. Also, a rope is a good thing in itself, it can have no other purpose but to hold something fast.  Of course, when it's shaped into a noose, it does a "good job" as well, for the hangman, not so much for the hangee. 

On the matter of law, Aquinas also takes "reasonableness" into consideration.  To consider the calamity of today a "normal mode" of existence for the Church in which all laws are "reasonable" as well as the application of law, it's simply wishful thinking if not delusional.