A Matter of Life and Death: From the District Superior’s Desk
Rev. Fr. David Sherry, District Superior, 30th October 2024
On the feast of St. Bridget of Sweden, Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais passed from this world to his eternal reward. The Society mourns a faithful pastor and has lost a part of its history. As you can read in Bishop Tissier's short biography, in 1969, before the New Mass was promulgated, 24-year-old Bernard Tissier was among the first seminarians to gather with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in Fribourg, Switzerland to begin formation to be a priest. He had been among a group of young men who had petitioned the Archbishop to help them become true Catholic priests rather than the glorified social workers being formed elsewhere; men dedicated to saving souls rather than to promoting ‘social justice’. Ordained in 1975, Fr. Tissier spent time as General Secretary of the Society and as rector of the seminary in Ecône. In 1987, he was chosen by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to be consecrated, not in a schismatic act as some pretended, but as a necessary step in the Crisis of the Church, to ensure the continuation of Tradition. Bishop Tissier de Mallerais spent the next 36 years crisscrossing the globe: consecrating one bishop, ordaining priests, deacons and other ministers and confirming many thousands to be perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus Christ. It became a byword among the priests of our Society that Bishop Tissier was a stickler once he put on his mitre, but what struck me most about him was his lack of artificiality and his tenacious devotion to the true Faith, passed down to us from Christ the King and his apostles. What his namesake, St. Bernard, wrote of another great bishop, St. Malachy, could apply equally to him:
‘He submitted himself to the rule of man, that he might attain the true love of God. Not being like those who undertake to teach others what they have never learned themselves, seeking to gather and multiply scholars, without ever having been at school, becoming blind guides of the blind. His obedience as a disciple, his love of silence, his fervor in mortification and prayer were the means and marks of his spiritual progress. From the first day of his conversion to the last of his life, he lived without personal possessions. He had neither manservants nor maidservants, there was nothing whatever assigned for his episcopal upkeep, for he had not a house of his own. He was always going about preaching the gospel and living by the gospel.’
The funeral of the apostolic man gathered many priests, seminarians and faithful. In particular, I was able to meet my predecessors, Fr. Robert Brucciani, now Bursar-General of the Society, and Fr. Jacques Emily, now prior in Minnesota. I also met our newest seminarian, Mr. Marc Crespin of Lewes in East Sussex, who has entered Séminaire Saint Curé d’Ars in Flavigny along with 27 other young men. Let us pray for their perseverance.
It has recently been announced that UK parliament will vote at the end of November on the introduction of euthanasia, that is, the deliberate killing of human beings for supposedly compassionate purposes. Many good people will recommend rejecting the introduction of euthanasia for all sorts of reasons: it is not compassionate, it will make old people to consider themselves useless, it will lead to a slippery slope, and so on. All of these are no doubt true, but the essential reason why euthanasia is evil is because it is a usurpation of the rights of the Creator. God alone is the Master of life and of death and no man has the right to take a life, even his own, unless sanctioned by the Creator. Furthermore, it encourages the commission of the mortal sin of suicide at the very moment when death will seal the soul’s judgement. If the tree fall to the south, or to the north, in what place soever it shall fall, there shall it be. Let us write to our public represent-atives to have them vote against the measure, but more than that, let us pray and do penance and have recourse to the Holy Face of Jesus to keep such an evil out of the country.
A particularly important anniversary to note is that of Archbishop Lefebvre’s declaration of 21st November 1974, which continues to scandalise not a few Pharisees to this day. In fact, it is a simple and therefore strong affirmation of the Catholic Faith against the errors of the Council and post-conciliar period.
The declaration came after Archbishop Lefebvre set up his seminary with the full approval of the Church authorities but refused to adopt the strange novelties being adopted by other seminaries and held fast to the traditional Mass: the Mass of all time. For this reason, many young Frenchmen with vocations came to him. The French bishops and Cardinal Villot plotted to take down his séminaire sauvage (‘wildcat seminary’) as they called it. Two Apostolic Visitors were appointed to inspect the seminary. They scandal-ised the Catholics there by their Modernism saying such things as ‘truth changes with the times’ and that the traditional conception of the Resurrection of Our Lord ‘is open to discussion’. After their departure, Archbishop Lefebvre penned the following lines which remain a light for our times, when Pope Francis preaches religious indifferentism and an evolving Faith.
D.S.
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