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Pax Christi
Bulletin for the missions of the Society of St Pius X in Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia.

Dear faithful,

The changes in priests in our priory in Hampton have given me the necessary incentive to start this new publication. Already more than a year ago, I had wanted a bulletin for all the missions that we look after from Hampton but the “move” to Singapore delayed the action. Now that I have to do the bulletin for Adelaide, with the departure of our dear Fr. Becher, I am taking the bull by the horns. This bulletin intends to provide the mass times and other pertinent information about all of the Mass centres in South East Australia, and as well provide some spiritual readings about the Sunday liturgy, especially for those of you who do not have the grace of a weekly sermon. The name of the bulletin is a take on the motto of Victoria: “Peace and prosperity”, reminding us that true peace is only coming from Christ and more specifically from the order brought by Christ in the world. It is only in ordering our life in conformity to the life and law of Our Lord that we can hope to bring peace in our hearts and in our society. The efforts of the Society to bring the Mass and the sacraments all over the world are only for that purpose, so that, as St Pius X took for his motto, “all is restored in Christ.”

Fr. Jules Bélisle

Pax Christi – September 2010

My Dear Brethren,

Since all continues well in the day-to-day life of the Society and our various ongoing projects as described in my previous letter progress slowly but surely without any particular news of note, it is perhaps worthwhile to look beyond the confines of our immediate circumstances to the world around us which continues to move further and further away from Christ and His teaching. Recently I came across an article by the British doctor and journalist Theodore Dalrymple which, for me, strikingly illustrates the decline of our post Christian society and from which I quote a lengthy extract:

“In some ways, things have never been better for Europe. When my father was born, in 1909, his life expectancy was 49; if he had been born today, his life expectancy would be approaching 80. The increase in wealth and standard of living has been startling. In 1960, Sicilian peasants still slept with their farm animals, and my working-class patients remembered sharing lavatories with other households. In France, the years in which it lost its colonial empire are known as les trente glorieuses, the glorious thirty, when the French economy grew so fast that absolute poverty was eliminated and the country obtained the best infrastructure in the world. Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder after the war really was a wonder, transforming a country that US Treasury Secretary H.  Morgenthau wanted to keep forever in a state of rural pre-industrialization into the largest exporter of manufactured goods in the world.

Yet for all this success, there is a pervasive sense of doom. Prosperous and long-lived as never before, Europeans look into the future with fear, as if they have a secret sickness that has not yet made itself manifest by obvious symptoms but is nevertheless eating away in their vital parts. They are aware that, in Chinese parlance, the mandate of heaven has been withdrawn from them, and that in losing that, they have lost everything. All that is left is to preserve their remaining privileges as best they can; …

The secularization of Europe is hardly a secret. Religion’s long, melancholy, withdrawing roar, as Matthew Arnold put it, is a roar no longer, and hardly even a murmur. In France, the oldest daughter of the Church, fewer than 5 percent of the population attend Mass regularly. The English national church has long been an object of derision, and the current Archbishop of Canterbury succeeds in uniting the substance and appearance of foolishness and unworldliness not with sanctity, but with sanctimony. In Wales, where nonconformist Christianity was the dominant cultural influence, most of the chapels have been converted into residences by interior decorators……. In the Netherlands, some elements of the religious pillarization of the state remain: state-funded television channels are still allotted to Protestants and Catholics respectively. But while the shell exists, the substance is gone.

Perhaps it is Ireland that offers the most startling example of secularization because it was a late starter. Late starters, however, are often apt pupils; they catch up fast and even surpass their mentors. When I first went to Ireland, the priest was a god among men; people stood aside to let him pass. No respectable family did not count a nun among its members. As for the Archbishop of Dublin, his word was law; the politicians might propose, but he disposed.

In the historical bat of an eyelid, all that has gone, beyond any hope (or fear) of restoration. It would hardly be too much to say that the Church is now reviled in Ireland. I suspect that if you performed a word-association test using the word “priest,” it would more often than not evoke a response of “pedophile,” “child abuser,” or (at best) “hypocrite.”

The extremely low birth-rates in Spain and Italy, the lowest recorded in any modern society, suggest that the populations of these traditionally Catholic countries do not pay much attention to the teachings of their Church. Recently in Belgium, I saw an old convent where the remaining nuns were all in their eighties and would never be replaced. When they die, their convent will presumably be turned into luxury apartments for unwed professional couples with no children.
God is dead in Europe, and I do not see much chance of revival except in the wake of catastrophe. Not quite everything has been lost of the religious attitude, however. Individuals still think of themselves as being of unique importance, but without the countervailing humility of considering themselves as having duty toward the author of their being, a Being inconceivably larger than themselves. Far from inducing a more modest conception of man, the loss of religious belief has inflamed his self-importance enormously.

For the person with no transcendent religious belief, this life is all he has. He must therefore preserve and prolong it at all costs and live it to the full.  For most people, living to the full means consuming as much as possible, having as many experiences as possible, and not only many experiences, the most extreme experiences possible. But the problem with consumption is that it soon ceases to satisfy. How else can one explain the crowds that assemble in every city centre each weekend to buy what they cannot possibly need and perhaps do not want? Will another pair of shoes supply a transcendent purpose?

The same might be said of the experiences that people feel they must seek if they are to live life to the full. Sports become more extreme in their competitive urgency, holidays more exotic, films more violent, broadcasting more vulgar, the expression of emotion more crude and obvious. Compare advertisements showing people enjoying themselves 60 years ago and now. Mouths are open and screams, either of joy or pain, emerge. Quiet satisfaction is not satisfaction at all; what is not expressed grossly is not deemed to have been expressed.

Of course, there might be transcendent meaning to life apart from that provided by religion. There is scholarship, but the infinitudes of learning cannot be suited to the great majority of mankind: not only would a population of scholars soon starve to death, it would not even be pleasant while it lasted. Transcendent meaning can also be sought in politics. Marxism might have been deficient as an explanation of the world, but for a time it gave some people the feeling that they were contributing to the denouement of history, when all contradictions would be resolved, all desires fulfilled, and all human relations easy, spontaneous, and loving. It was obvious nonsense, but while Marxism was discredited for all but a few aging faithful, the impulse transferred seamlessly to other causes—environmentalism, nationalism, animal rights, feminism.

But overall, most Europeans do not believe in any large political project, whether it be that of a social class, the nation, or of Europe as a whole.. Most Europeans now mock the very idea of a European civilization and therefore cannot feel much inclination to contribute to it…   Europeans do not feel able to admit that they wish to preserve their own way of life.

So what is left for Europeans? The present being all that counts, it remains to seek the good life, the enjoyable and comfortable life, for themselves alone. Europeans are fearful of the future because they fear the past; they are desperate to hang on to what they have already got, what the French call les acquis, because it represents for them the whole of existence. So important is the standard of living that they see children not as inheritors of what they themselves inherited, but as obstructions to the enjoyment of life, a drain on resources, an obstacle to next year’s holiday in Bali.”

It is really quite remarkable that this very incisive description was composed by a man who is – you will no doubt be surprised to learn – an atheist but who nevertheless has a firm grasp of reality!  This rather depressing description is made all the more so by reason of the fact that the author himself does not believe in God and therefore shares the same sense of hopelessness as the people he describes.

Nevertheless, his exposition of the decline of Christian society in Europe over the last half century is truly startling and one which we will all readily recognise as applying equally well to Australia.  From the point of view of faith and morals this country has also changed beyond recognition and this is amply demonstrated by the figures who now dominate public life.  Who, fifty years ago, could have imagined that a political party which was firmly supported by many Catholics should have changed so far beyond recognition as to have appointed a leader who has apparently rejected all Christian values? For on becoming Prime Minister she has declined to take the traditional Christian Oath of Office as being a professed atheist, who living with her third de-facto partner, naturally condemns the Opposition Leader’s advice to his daughters to preserve their virginity before marriage.  Of course she is in favour of abortion. Somewhat surprisingly, she declares that she is not in favour of introducing same sex “marriages” but this can only be a matter of perceived political expediency and not the consequence of any moral principle. After all, as one pro-homosexual commentator quite rightly observed: “other political leaders have appealed to faith, procreation, tradition or biological differences between the sexes to justify their personal opposition to same sex marriages, but as a history-making female leader with no religion and no children none of these reasons are available to Julia Gillard.”  It can only be a matter of time. Then, as things continue to “progress” no doubt euthanasia will be introduced in a desperate attempt to neutralise the consequences of a culture without faith in its own future.

In view of all this and given the experience of other erstwhile Christian countries, the outlook for Australia is bleak, particularly as hardly anyone has the will or the courage to resist the emerging godless and self-destructive society. “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light and light for darkness”. (Is 5.20) “The prophets prophesied falsehood, and the priests clapped their hands: and my people loved such things” (Jer 5.31)

Let us not however lose hope. For us, the present world is NOT all there is. The Crucifixion followed by the Resurrection is a recurrent feature of the whole history of Man’s salvation, So, thankfully, is God’s mercy: “Fear not little flock for it has pleased your Father to give you a kingdom. (Luke 12.32). This kingdom is everlasting and always triumphs over the vicissitudes of history.   So are we promised by Him who is the First and Last and in whose hands are all things.  Therefore, “who is he that can hurt you if you be zealous of good ?… and be not afraid of their fear and be not troubled ,but sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts”.(1 Peter 3.13-15)

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Father Edward Black

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

The Church’s situation increasingly resembles a sea that is agitated in all directions.  We see waves and more waves, which seem to be about to capsize the bark of Peter and drag it into the endless abyss.  Since the Second Vatican Council, it seems that a wave has been trying to carry off everything into the deep, leaving only a heap of ruins, a spiritual desert, that the popes themselves have called an apostasy.  We do not want to describe this harsh reality again;  we have already so often done, and all of you can see that it is so.  Still, to us it seems useful to comment somewhat on the events of the past months;  I want to speak about the surprisingly violent and particularly well-orchestrated blows that have been dealt to the Church and the Supreme Pontiff.  Why such violent attacks?

To return to our metaphor, it seems that for some time now, more or less since the beginning of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, a new wave has appeared which is much more modest than the first, yet persistent enough that it is noticeable nevertheless.  Contrary to all expectations, this wave seems to be going in the opposite direction compared to the first.  The indications are sufficiently varied and numerous, that we can state that this new movement of reform or renewal is quite real.  We can see this especially with the younger generations, who are plainly frustrated by the spiritual ineffectiveness of the Vatican II reforms.  Considering the very harsh and bitter reproaches leveled by the progressives against Benedict XVI, it is certain that they see in the very person of the present pope one of the most vigorous causes of this incipient renewal.  In fact, even if we find the pope’s initiatives rather timid, they run deep and are contrary to the agenda of the revolutionary, left-leaning world, both inside and outside of the Church, and this is true at several levels. Read more

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Dear Brethren

As you are all aware, the ordinations at Goulburn were celebrated by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais on 19th December last year when Father Todd Stephens entered the ranks of the sacred priesthood. Father has been appointed to Rockdale where he has replaced his namesake, Father Jordie Stephens who has gone to Tynong.  Father Vachon has moved to Park Ridge.  All of these priests are now settled in to their new posts. Father Jordie Stephens remains the chaplain of the Third Order.  We were afraid that with the ordination of Father Stephens there would be no more Australian seminarians at Goulburn. However, the honour of our country has been saved and two ex-pupils of St.  Thomas Aquinas College, Tynong entered at the beginning of this academic year. They are cousins, Marcel and Joseph Ockerse.  Bishop Tissier was unable to visit many places during his visit but we expect that Bishop de Galarreta will be coming to Australia during the course of this year, probably in August, and will confer confirmation at various churches. The visits of both Father Niklaus Pfluger, the First Assistant of the Society and Father Nely, the Second Assistant were both successful. The former preached a retreat to the Ordinands and then passed some time in Fiji, while the latter preached a retreat to the priests of the District at Goulburn and made a brief visit to Rockdale.

Extensive building works are taking place at both of our schools at Tynong and Park Ridge.  Work is progressing on the façade of the church at Tynong which should transform its appearance from that of a farm shed to a Roman Basilica!

At the time of writing the Rosary Crusade announced by Bishop Fellay a year ago is drawing to its close. In Rome the talks between the Society and the Vatican are continuing. The question of the new liturgy has been discussed and the topic for this month is Religious Liberty. The details of these discussions have not been revealed at this stage.

Already Lent is almost over and Holy Week is fast approaching. We should all seek to attend the ceremonies of this Great Week and follow Our Lord on the way of the Cross. It is the Cross which is the sign of contradiction to this present world of materialistic pleasure seeking. As the enemies of the Cross become each day more virulent and subject the Church, Christ’s Mystical Body, to a new crucifixion, it behoves us as members of Christ’s Mystical Body to unite ourselves with Him on the Cross by dying to our sins so that we can rise with Him glorious and immortal at the end of our days.

I wish you every grace and blessing this Easter,

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Father Edward Black
District Superior

My Dear Brethren

Very soon Bishop Tissier de Malerais will be visiting Australia in order to confer the Sacred Priesthood on Mr Todd Stephens, an Australian and Mr Remi Picot, a Frenchman and I ask you to pray for these young men that God may abundantly bless their future apostolate.

I am delighted to announce that Todd Stephens, who parents are very prominent members of our congregation at Tynong and caretakers of St. Thomas Aquinas College, will be remaining here in Australia and will take up his first priestly duties here at Rockdale.  Father Jordie Stephens will then move to Tynong.  He will replace Father Richard Vachon who has spent five years at St. Thomas Aquinas College and will now move to Brisbane where he will be resident at Park Ridge with Fathers MacDonald and Arthur with responsibility for our congregations in North Queensland.

By the time you receive this letter Father Niklaus Pfluger, the First Assistant of the Society, will be in Australia and assist at the Speech Night for the end of the school year at Tynong and then preach the Retreat to the Ordinands.  Afterwards he will accompany me to Fiji where we will spend Christmas together at the Society’s house in Suva.  Unfortunately, our congregation in Fiji remains without a resident priest and is served by our priests from Hampton every two months.  When there is no Mass on Sundays they nevertheless gather at the Chapel and recite the Mass prayers.  Let us hope and pray that after waiting many years there may soon be an improvement in their situation. Read more

My dear Brethren,

The visit of Bishop Fellay which took place a few weeks ago was, as always, a great success.  It was a great pleasure to have our Superior General amongst us.  At each of the places he visited he gave a conference which was most informative in regard to the recent events since the lifting of the “excommunications” some months ago and the current situation with regard to the Vatican.

The highlight of the visit was the tenth anniversary of St. Philomena’s School at Park Ridge on Saturday 8th August.  This was a delightful occasion with Pontifical High Mass celebrated in the school grounds followed by a concert performed by the school children and an excellent lunch.  Various celebrities were present including the Mayor of Logan and a former Speaker of the Queensland Parliament.  This was also an occasion to unveil plans for the complete replacement of the present school buildings by others of a more substantial and permanent character which are to be executed in a Spanish colonial style which will be highly attractive in the woodland setting of the property.  Read more