The Last Word
Fr. Yves le Roux
District Superior of Canada
The Priestly Society of St. Pius X is a work of the Holy Catholic Church. It has neither the vocation nor the ambition to supplant her. The Catholic Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ is the one and only ark of salvation and outside of her there is no way to save one’s soul. She is the Immaculate Spouse who lives from the life of her Divine Spouse. The dark times we are living through change nothing about this truth of the Faith, far from it. They rather strengthen it. The ecumenism whose ravages have reached the very heart of the Church demands that we reflect upon this beautiful truth expressed in the famous saying, outside the Church there is no salvation. In our days, heresies are proliferating in the Church, as they always have been and always will be. This allows the truth that is crucified by the heresies to shine out with an even more beautiful light, beautiful as the light of dawn that enchants the horizon and makes us see the surrounding countryside in a whole new light.
We should be careful not to speak of a crisis of the Church, but rather of a crisis in the Church. The Church cannot be in a crisis, but she does live through them, majestic and victorious. God reigns by the cross, in His Church as elsewhere. Our time is one of those crucifying times during which Christ mysteriously and painfully plants the cross in the heart of the Church and of the souls who wish to remain faithful to Him in the fight that leads to victory. In these dark hours when human intelligence no longer offers any light, we have to cling strongly to the truths of the Faith in spite of all appearances. Christ knows perfectly well the path we have to take to win the victory over Satan, and this path is that of an unshakable fidelity to the Church, despite the cries of those who proclaim that there are several different paths that lead to God. Against all of these flights of fancy, the Faith teaches us that there is only one path, the one laid out by Christ and the Church, the one that invites us to rise by setting out on the path of Calvary.
With the grace of God, we wish to remain faithful to our Holy Mother the Church. She alone possesses the words of eternal life.
Consequently, the Priestly Society of St. Pius X does not lay claim to any right to separate from Rome, the Mother and Mistress of the Truth, and refuses to do so. Its vocation is humbly to preserve the treasure of tradition so that one day Rome can recover it and make it blossom again for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. It is true that in sometimes difficult circumstances and against the apparent will of certain prelates of the Church, our priests come to the rescue of the souls begging for bread and all too often receiving only stones. But this does not create a parallel hierarchy. As sons of the Church, we have to participate in our Mother’s agony and accept to be isolated and considered as rebels. That is the price to pay for the love of God, of the Church, and of souls. As Rev. Fr. Clerissac so profoundly said, we have to know how to suffer through the Church in her authority at the hour of agony when the Immaculate Spouse is called to share in the agony of Her Spouse.
As Archbishop Lefebvre said in his perennial declaration of November 21, 1974, that still fully applies fifty years later, “We adhere with our whole heart, and with our whole soul to Catholic Rome, the Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of those traditions necessary for the maintenance of that Faith, to eternal Rome, Mistress of Wisdom and Truth.
Because of this adherence we refuse and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies, such as were clearly manifested during the Second Vatican Council, and after the Council in all the resulting reforms.”
As Catholics, we are Roman in every fiber of our being.