District of Australia Newsletter – December 2008

My Dear Brethren,

As previously announced, Bishop de Galarreta will pay a brief visit to Australia shortly in order to confer the Sacrament of Holy Orders on the two deacons, Jordie Stephens and Gregory Noronha on Saturday 27th December at 9am at Holy Cross Seminary.  The Bishop will spend only five days in Australia and this will be the only public ceremony to take place during his visit.  Please pray for these young ordinands during these few days before they assume the privilege and burden of the sacred priesthood and come in large numbers to Goulburn to participate in this momentous occasion.

In January we look forward to a visit from Father Anthony Esposito who, as a young priest, spent some years in Australia in the 1980s and was resident at Rockdale.  Later he became the superior of the Society in Italy and is now working in South Africa at our house in Johannesburg.  He will preach a retreat for the priests at Goulburn and remain for a short while afterwards.  It will be a great pleasure to see him once again.

Since last writing to you I have continued my usual travelling around our various churches and schools.  Undoubtedly, the highlight of the last few months was my visit to Tynong in October in order to deliver a series of conferences on the subject of Fatherhood.  As the Holy Trinity is reflected on earth in the Holy Family, both are exemplars of every family and especially the christian family.  It should therefore go without saying that parenting is the most marvellous, sublime and enriching vocation that exists (exception made of the purely spiritual paternity of the priesthood).  The fact that this self-evident truth has become obscured and even flatly denied in our own times has resulted in the most appalling social evils as well as lifelong emotional and psychological damage to innumerable children as so many people now see their parental role as a secondary aspect of their personal fulfilment. This is particularly true with regard to the role of fathers who are the earthly image of the Divine Fatherhood made real and accessible to us.  Yet, in spite of this vocation being so crucial and fundamental to the spiritual, moral and physical well-being of mankind none has been more gravely neglected in these days.  It was therefore wonderful to have about seventy men, conscious of the sublimity of their vocations as fathers, attending a conference on this subject, preceded by Mass and followed by Benediction, every day for the space of a week.  All of the conferences have been recorded on disc in MP3 format and are available from Father Pepping, Corpus Christi Church, Granite Lane Tynong 3813 Victoria for the modest sum of $5 including postage.

It is exactly one year since I announced the project of establishing a secondary school as a “follow-on” to the primary school at St. Philomena’s School at Parkridge, Queensland.  Of course, this is not a matter which depended merely on our own volition but had to be submitted to the Minister for Education for approval.  Unfortunately, he has been unable to grant us permission to proceed mainly because we have neither the minimum number of pupils, nor a sufficient number of anticipated enrolments, to meet the Government’s criteria for the establishment of a secondary school.  This being the case, it appears that it will be several years before we can reconsider this matter.

I think that by now you will all be aware that the Rosary Crusade announced in my August letter has since been modified by Bishop Fellay who now requests that the perpetual recitation be replaced by a spiritual bouquet of one million (or more!) rosaries to be presented to the Pope after the manner of that which was given for the restoration of the traditional liturgy.  The present intention is for the lifting of the putative excommunication of the four bishops for which the rosaries are to be recited until Christmas after which the numbers will be counted and sent to Bishop Fellay for presentation to the Pope.  The bishop particularly exhorted the faithful to pray for this intention at the great pilgrimage which the Society organised to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the apparitions at Lourdes.  As very few of us were able to accompany Father Bélisle with his small group of pilgrims from Australia who were privileged to be present at Lourdes, I offer you an edited version of the account given on the website of the Society’s Mother House in Switzerland (www.dici.org) as follows:

“This was the largest pilgrimage organized by the Society of St. Pius X in its history. Nearly 300 priests, brothers and seminarians, more than 150 sisters and at least 18,000 faithful came to gather around the Grotto of Massabielle, with their four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre twenty years ago. There were the Benedictines of Bellaigue, the Capuchins from Morgon, the Dominicans of Avrillé, and the Fathers of the Transfiguration of Mérigny… Also present were the Nursing Sisters of Rafflay, the Little Sisters of St. Francis of Trévoux, the teaching Dominicans of Brignoles and Fanjeaux… and many others. There were around fifty South Americans, a hundred or so Mexicans and also all those anonymous pilgrims, who had not booked to come months in advance, but who participated on the day, drawn by the beauty of the traditional liturgy.

What could not have failed to strike the pilgrims was the profound unity in the preaching over the three days. On Saturday, the Rector of our American Seminary reminded us of the words of Our Lady to St. Bernadette: “I do not promise to make you happy in this world,” while inviting the young seer to turn her soul resolutely towards her heavenly home.

This preaching continued with the sermon on Sunday when Bishop Bernard Fellay took inspiration from the two words spoken by Our Blessed Lady, “prayer and penance”, in order to reiterate the necessity of Christian self- denial:  “The world thinks only of pleasure, the world just looks for the easy life.  Hardly anyone speaks out to remind us that the way to Heaven is through penance. It is by the Cross, the way of our Lord, and no other. We are saved by the Cross of Jesus.”

Giving thanks to Our Lady for the special protection which she extends over the entire Society of St. Pius X, the Superior General launched a new Rosary Crusade in order to obtain from the Holy Father the withdrawal of the decree of excommunication, which affects not merely the bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, but all those who work in favour of Tradition and who have had to carry this scandalous label which was intended to discredit them. He then made this request: “We invite you once more to gather together a bouquet of a million rosaries by Christmas.”

After giving a translation of his sermon in German, English, Spanish and Italian, the Superior General renewed the Consecration of the Society of St. Pius X to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, carried out by his predecessor, Fr. Franz Schmidberger in 1984.

On the Monday, the Superior of the Society in France asked the pilgrims to be ready “to leave behind everything that is useless in our lives, in order to dedicate ourselves solely to this enormous and decisive combat for the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, not only in the tabernacles and in souls, but also in families, nations and all societies.” Later he warned against the futilities and the trifles which clutter up our lives, and recommended instead the “infallible instruments” given by Mary to the soldiers of Christ: the Rosary, the Spiritual Exercises and her Immaculate Heart.

Eighteen thousand pilgrims is something that does not pass unnoticed – except in the press.  In spite of around fifty presentation dossiers addressed to Parisian and provincial editorial offices, not one journalist gave an account of the pilgrimage of Christ the King! In its Monday October 27 edition, a local newspaper only said that the attraction of the weekend to the Sanctuaries was a pilgrimage of horse breeders from Southern France. The Traditional pilgrims were mentioned only for the record: “The horse breeders of the Camargue (…) attracted many people to the Sanctuaries, which also welcomed the Society of St. Pius X pilgrimage of Christ the King and their 18,000 pilgrims.”

Before the final blessing, at the Grotto of Massabielle, the District Superior of France expressed his gratitude to all those who had made this grandiose pilgrimage such a success, including the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes for his hospitality at the Sanctuaries, but was unable to hide how much the prohibition imposed on Bishop Fellay to celebrate in the St. Pius X basilica had caused great pain to the priests and faithful.  The spontaneous applause which interrupted him showed just how much everyone felt this very deeply. Then he invited the pilgrims to return to Lourdes next year, but in the meantime… to go to their rosaries in order to gather a million roses to place at the feet of Our Lady at Christmas!”

May God grant you all every grace and blessing this Christmastide.

Yours most sincerely in Christ
Edward Black – District Superior