SSPX Rosary Crusade Advertised by Diocesan Priests

Courtesy of OnePeterFive.com, we provide some selections from the article: French Diocesan Priests Call Faithful to join SSPX Rosary Crusade

L’Homme Nouveau, the official distributor of the French version of the Vatican’s newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, has published a call to join the SSPX’s Rosary Crusade (to which OnePeterFive also has given its support). This new initiative – which has been already picked up by various other websites in France – now comes from diocesan priests and faithful in France who are not members of the Society of Saint Pius X themselves. The text, as published by L’Homme Nouveau’s blog on September 1, says:

A group of French priests and faithful who are not affiliated with the Society of Saint Pius X wishes to associate with and positively support the Appeal launched by Monsignor Bernard Fellay, the General Superior of the Society of Saint Pius X. These priests – mostly diocesan – come from the regions of the Rhône-Alpes, of the West, of the Auvergne, and of the South-West; they are members of the AFC [Les Associations Familiales Catholiques], Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, pilgrims of Chartres, of Compostello, engaged in their parishes, … Some are sick with cancer, others have to face professional difficulties…"

These Catholic priests and faithful also hope to gain much spiritual refreshment from the SSPX’s Rosary Crusade for their own parishes, as they say in the following:

They wish to amplify this happy initiative [of the SSPX]by adding to it a new resonance even from within the parishes, religious communities, families, … and thereby to contribute to the internal renewal of the Catholic Church. To enter into a spiritual crusade means to join Christ Who invites us: “He who does not pick up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.” (Matt. 10:38)"

For years, the District of France has been working hard to explain the SSPX's understanding of the crisis in the Church among the French clergy. Through the Lettres à nos Frères Prêtres (Letter to Our Brother Priests), the SSPX has been able to win some interest. To explain this kind of news, one has to remember the time it takes to ponder the principles, the disapperance of the priests who championed the revolution of the Council, the decline of vocations, and the increasing number of the priests ordained in the so-called "extraordinary form".

Our Comments

Here are some numbers which show that, as the crisis goes deeper in the Church, the clergy closer to the solution grow more numerous too.

In 2016, only 79 priests have been ordained in France (vs. 566 in 1966 at the end of the Second Vatican Council). Of these 79 priests, 19 have been ordained in the so-called "extraordinary form" (6 of them in the Fraternity St. Peter). Thus, almost 20% of ordinations in France happen to be with the traditional rite today.

In the Church in France, two million Catholics (of which 3% are practicing in a population of 66 million) provide four times as many priests as the the 100,000 Latin Mass faithful, which represent 5% of all those who practice regularly. One cannot deny that the Latin Mass community in its whole is much more fecund in priests: it produces today five times more priests than the "regular" one.

We can make ours the wish of Dr. Maike Hickson in OnePeterFive.

It is to be hoped that this recent French initiative will find additional imitators throughout the world. May this become a truly universal – Catholic – initiative, especially to plead to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to have mercy on our disordered world, a world in misery that cannot, it seems, adequately anymore help itself – neither within the very bosom of the Catholic Church, nor without."

Source: 1P5 - La Porte Latine - Paix Liturgique 550