Letter from the District Superior
Fr. John Fullerton
District Superior, USA
Letter from the District Superior
Dear Reader,
The title of this issue of The Angelus contains a paradox: being new to something old. When Catholics speak of Tradition, they refer to what has always been in the Catholic Church: the same beliefs, the same worship, the same structure. These things have been with us 2,000 years now, and so are quite old!
Because, however, Tradition has been kept from “modern man” in the past half-century, many Catholics have had to seek it out and find it for the first time. Pope John XXIII famously called for an aggiornamento or updating of the Church when he called the Second Vatican Council. If the updating had been about employing more modern means for spreading perennial Catholic truths or about finding effective ways of converting secular nations in a revolutionary world, then it would have been a faithful modernization of the Church. After all, Our Lord says that the wise householder of the kingdom of heaven brings forth from his treasure things new and old (Mt. 13:52).
Vatican II, however, was much more about outdating Tradition than updating it. It substituted something entirely new for Tradition; it was not a renewal but a replacement. New liturgy, new social teaching, new ecclesiology, new catechism. As Archbishop Lefebvre expressed so frequently in Open Letter to Confused Catholics, it was a “new religion” (see pp. 57, 83, 131).
This left Catholics confused and lost because Catholicism is, by its very nature, traditional. It is a handing down of what was given to the Apostles by Our Lord Jesus Christ, not a creation of something new.
By founding the Society of St. Pius X, Archbishop Lefebvre provided to the Church a haven where disoriented Catholics could find, in an integral state, what Catholicism has always been and always will be. Throughout the decades, various causes have led faithful to seek and find Tradition, such as scandalous liturgies and heterodox behavior on the part of the clergy.
The influx of Catholics into SSPX chapels, however, has been greater than ever before in the past five years. Two main causes have led them to seek Tradition: their abandonment by their shepherds in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, and the multiplication of scandals in the pontificate of Pope Francis. So many have been discovering anew the old faith with its traditional practices and are being refreshed in their souls. This old faith has a timeless vigor that gives supernatural life, including modern men of the twenty-first century. Tradition is flourishing!
This issue of The Angelus considers some of the challenges that Catholics face when moving from the Novus Ordo world to traditional Catholicism. It seeks to assist them on their way in a journey that is not always easy.
May God grant to the traditionalist movement continued growth in this crisis of the Church, so that Tradition may regain its true position, for the glory of God and the benefit of souls.