Econe
Part II Conference of
Father Franz Schmidberger
Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X
at Rockdale, Sydney, Australia October 16, 1990
Edited by Father Gerard Hogan and Father François Laisney
At the very beginning, Archbishop Lefebvre established in the statutes of the Society of St. Pius X that the priests of the Society must lead a life of community. The priests would be secular priests but living in community, with fixed hours for prayers and for the apostolate together.
Why did Archbishop Lefebvre have such a concept of the Society of St. Pius X? His only worry and his only thought was: "How did Our Lord Jesus Christ want His priests? What was His concept of the priest? How did He want His priests to live and work?" In order to understand what Our Lord established and installed in the Catholic priesthood, we have to look at the first disciples of Our Lord, the Apostles. How did they live?
We see that Our Lord Himself had a life of community with them: they shared the table, they had their money together (Judas was the treasurer, the bursar!); Jesus was their Superior; He trained them. This was the first seminary.
When Our Lord ascended into Heaven, the Apostles kept this life of community. Not only do we find them together on the day of Pentecost but, after that, we find St. Peter and St. John ascending "ad horam nonam—at the ninth hour" to the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to pray. Thus there were already fixed hours to pray. The "Canonical Hours" already existed in the very beginning. It was said that "all was kept together." A little after that we hear that St. John and St. Peter were sent to Samaria by the other Apostles in order to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation. So, even in their apostolate and journeys, the Apostles were usually two; for example, St. Paul accompanied by Silas, by Barnabas or by Luke; St. Peter accompanied by Mark. We see, for example, St. Paul and Silas in prison together, and at midnight they get up in order to pray, and their prayer is heard in the whole prison: so it was not mere mental prayer, but they sang the Divine Office. It is very important to see how the Apostles had taken care to establish these little communities—communities of sharing the common prayer, of sharing the table, of sharing the goods, and the worries and cares of the apostolate, the care of the souls.
Later on, the successors of the Apostles took over this concept of living together as far as possible. You see, for instance, St. Athanasius, the great defender of the Divinity of Our Lord, Bishop of Alexandria, living in community with his clergy. We see St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in the fourth and fifth century (he died in 421), living with his clergy in community. He goes so far as to say that if one of his clerics does not want to stay with him, then he will suppress him from the list of clerics in his diocese. So they share the table, they study together, they celebrate the Divine Office together and especially they spread from there in order to do missionary work, the apostolate, and attract souls to Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Altar, which was the center of their work and of their prayer: the Holy Altar and the Tabernacle was the center, and from there all flowed forth.
And so the faithful and families established themselves around this center. This was the concept. You will find a lot of other holy bishops maintaining and favoring this life of community. For example, St. Martin of Tours, St. Boniface, the great Apostle of Germany. In the eighth century, you will find a Bishop in Metz, France, who established a rule of common life for his whole clergy. This rule was more or less taken by the Emperor Charlemagne, and enforced in his whole empire. He demanded that all clerics live in community.
Why is this so important? First of all, because prayer together expresses the prayer of the whole Church.
Secondly, you must always remember that a man has a social nature. Every man is, in a certain way, oriented towards his family. If he has no natural family in a certain way he must have a supernatural family—a little community, with fellow priests with whom he can pray, with whom he can share his thoughts and problems, and study together and encourage one another for a life of virtue and of sanctity.
In the ninth century, we see practically the whole Church, more or less, established in the life of community.
But then there was an enormous decline in the ninth and tenth centuries, because the clerics began to look for wealth, for possessions, properties, houses, etc., and to search for their own freedom, it was always embarrassing to live together, under an authority, etc., and so they began to separate and isolate themselves, to the enormous damage of Christianity. It was not what Our Lord had installed, but it almost became the rule in the Church. St. Gregory VII tried to re-establish order; he succeeded to a certain extent, but essentially the situation remained the same.
Then the Council of Trent began to recall priests and remind them that they had to live a life of virtue, of Christian perfection, a life of sanctity, and thus, a well-established training should be given to them in seminaries. Every bishop should have his seminary, and should oversee his seminary. The Holy Ghost raised up some clerics and bishops at that time, holy men, to renew the Catholic priesthood.
We see especially St. Charles Borromeo in Milan, who led a life of community with his clergy, and who established houses where at least eight priests were living. He himself celebrated the Divine Office with his priests, and he was the first to establish a seminary according to the rules given by the Council of Trent.
In France, you see St. John Eudes who established his own congregation for the training of priests. You see Mr. Olier, founder of St. Sulpice. You see St. Vincent de Paul, who established the Lazarists or Vincentian Fathers, who were missionaries for the countryside and small villages.
In Italy, you find St. Philip Neri, who established the Oratory, where priests lived together, and where priests heard Confessions, and instructed in catechism. St. Philip Neri went around Rome, instructing the poor people; this was his first apostolate.
In Germany, you find a secular priest, a young man twenty-six years old. Bartolomeus Holzhauser, who was a most important reformer for the priestly life, for the Catholic priesthood according to the life of community. He was born in the year 1613 near Augsburg, in the south, and died in 1658, in Biegnen, on the Rhine River. This man established his own society of diocesan priests living in community, establishing rules which were approved by the pope, and which became a model for all rules of priests who wanted community life. These communities have brought forth a lot of fruit: they were put in charge of seminaries and established their own seminaries. They established little schools, they gave catechism, they visited the sick, they instructed the faithful. It was an absolute wonder—the communities of Bartolomeus Holzhauser.
In the nineteenth century and in the beginning of this century, we see once again efforts made in this direction. For instance, we see St. Pius X who, in his encyclical to priests, recommends very much this community life. In the Canon Law of 1917, it is said that wherever the community life exists, it should be maintained and that it has all the favors of the Church.
So the Church has always urged priests to form these little cells and to gather the faithful around these cells.
For example, Cardinal Mercier of Belgium founded a society of Jesus Christ High Priest in the beginning of this century, for priests who desired to live in community.
Thus you see how the Holy Ghost always pushed people, priests, and to research the ideal that Christ wanted for His priests. If you look at the situation in this light, I am absolutely convinced that Archbishop Lefebvre is continuing in this line and that he is also raised up by God in order to restore the Catholic priesthood. And so his idea, from the very beginning, was to form little communities of priests.
The ideal priory, he foresaw, would be a priory with three, four or even five priests, along with brothers, nearby sisters, a little school and a retreat house. Why a school and why a retreat house?
A school because it is not possible in the world in our day to form Christian personalities. In the public schools it is not possible. And it is not possible for Catholic parents to hand over the children to pagan teachers. They must give their children a Catholic education. Their children are temples of the Holy Ghost, they are baptized, they are Christians, they are members of the Mystical Body of Christ, Who is dwelling in them. And so they cannot give their children to teachers who are corrupting them, who are teaching them sex education, evolution, false ideas, false ideologies, who are corrupting them in their heads and in their hearts; it is not possible.
Schools are of a very, very great importance. If we really want to save the souls of our children and if we want to re-establish a Catholic society, we must prepare an elite by preparing Christian personalities who will later on take over in public life in different offices—of lawyer, of medical doctor, of politician, of businessman, of teacher, of whatever. We must prepare this future, this Catholic future. It is prepared today, the foundations are laid down today. You must realize that we have a very great responsibility in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the Church for this very important task.
I encourage you, especially parents, to make efforts to support the school here, not only to support it but to be completely behind the school, to help the Sisters, and to continue in your house the training the Sisters and the teachers give during the day. There should be no division between school and the home; such a division is unacceptable. There must be union, otherwise you would split your child mentally.
It is not sufficient to give the Holy Mass to the faithful, we must give them an integral Catholic training, an integral Catholic attitude; we must be Catholics from the soles of our feet to the hair of our head!
I am very glad to see that more and more schools are established in the Society and also to see the work of the Dominican Sisters, especially in France. They have a good number of schools where they are training young girls. I was just in India, visiting Father Simonot and, there also, we have a little school in the south of India.
Again, it is not possible that there be a division between the principles we are teaching in the schools and those you are giving at home. For example, it is certainly enormously embarrassing for your children and for the atmosphere in the house if you are continually watching television, which is practically speaking an instrument of corruption.
Why retreat houses? Because retreat houses maintain the fervor and the search for sanctity, for Christian perfection for the faithful. We must develop and grow up. Especially in our times, retreat houses have an even greater importance because people are living in the world, in all its noise, in all its business, in all its activities. They have no time to think, they have no silence to meditate, and coming home from work, they turn on the radio, they turn on the television—in order to silence their conscience and stop their head thinking. Even if people are coming to our Masses, a profound work of conversion is not possible, even if they are coming every Sunday. We must absolutely take people out of that worldly atmosphere and put them in silence for five days, put them in front of God, in front of their conscience, putting in front of their eyes the question: where do I come from? Where do I go? Why am I on earth? What are my responsibilities? And then studying what is the Christian life, especially studying the Holy Family at Nazareth, studying the Passion of Our Lord, then studying His glory, meditating upon His glorious Resurrection and Ascension and the descent of the Holy Ghost, His Church—to really see the aim and the content of Christian life.
Thus, these institutions are absolutely necessary. Now it is clear that not every priory can have its retreat house, but at least there should be one special retreat house in every District. I just heard from Father Lafitte, who is directing the Retreat House in the United States, that more and more people are coming in and are following the Retreats: there are many conversions from people from the Novus Ordo and even from the Protestants.
In our days, my dear friends, the corruption of the world has achieved such a state of development that a true conversion is necessary: people who are not with us now have more or less gotten the Protestant mentality, and a true conversion is necessary. This requires adult instruction, and recollections and spiritual guidance and retreats.
So the frame laid down by Archbishop Lefebvre in the Statutes of the Society is a very wise one, done with a very great insight.
This is the history of the Society, the purpose of the Society. First, the training of priests, and priestly sanctity. Once the priests are trained, we must maintain their vocation. And you know that in former days, priests were still protected in their parishes because they had their bishop behind them and, in the next parish, they could find another good priest to whom they could go to confession, and receive some counsel and speak with him. This is no longer possible in our days. It is a true danger to put our priests alone here and there.
This is why we now will strengthen our houses before founding new priories.
The faithful must understand that it is better for them to have Mass only once every fortnight rather than to see priests losing their spiritual life, especially in these times of tensions and dangers from the surrounding apostasy and moral corruption. They have, as a first mission, to preserve their own vocation, and then to care about these special Christian institutions such as schools and retreat houses.
And then we have to take other initiatives in the Society that flow from this principle. We have re-established the Eucharistic Crusade for children. This is a wonderful work that began in this century: the Jesuit Fathers, who had the children pray for peace during the First World War. When the War was over, the Fathers said to the children: "Now the war is over, but there is no peace as long as Our Lord Jesus Christ is not the King of human society!" And so they had the children pray for this intention, that Our Lord be really governing and reigning in human society, being publicly recognized. With Vatican II this wonderful work had collapsed. Fortunately, our seminarians and priests have once again restored it.
There has also been the enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the families. I think it is a very important initiative and activity. There should be no family among our faithful where the Sacred Heart is not enthroned.
We have also taken the initiative of establishing a perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament around the world. Since December 1, 1989, every day the Blessed Sacrament is adored in one of the chapels or priories of the Society by the faithful, gathered around Our Lord in the Eucharist; Our Lord, Victim of the Altar, is adored; supplication is made to Him for four intentions: 1) to overcome the enemies outside and inside the Church—and they are very numerous; 2) to pray that Rome and the bishops come back to the Tradition of the Church, that they stop all errors and false orientations; 3) to pray for the sanctification of priests; 4) to pray for priestly and monastic vocations. You must understand that these intentions are very important.
I would like to say just a word about the first and second intentions, i.e., to overcome the enemies outside and inside the Church, and for the conversion of the bishops and of Rome itself.
My dear friends, one cannot deny that things are not better, but, in fact, that that things are worse, unfortunately, every day. We are seeing that the authorities in Rome and the bishops are more and more involved with this new orientation, an ecumenical orientation, an orientation of religious liberty, of secularization of the State and human society, of separating the State from the Church and of establishing a one world religion. There are not a lot of contacts between the Church and these Liberal, atheistic governments, humanistic governments. It is ever increasing to the point where the Pope is linked with the Dalai Lama, as spiritual leaders of humanity, and on the other side the temporal order is taken over by the socialistic, humanistic, Liberal governments—as you have here in Australia and as we have in Germany.
We are ever advancing towards a one world government with a one world religion.
Take one small example: In May this year the Pope went to visit Czechoslavakia, where the new president is a true Liberal; the next week the Dalai Lama went to Czechoslovakia and was received in practically the same manner. And the Pope and the Dalai Lama met in Rome to discuss things such as peace on earth, environmental problems and how to progress in the understanding of people. This is a whole program, which is going more and more away from sound and solid doctrine. The Church is more and more destroyed.
As a consequence of this true loss of Faith, there is also a loss of morality and discipline. Just look at the example of the Archbishop of Atlanta who recently abandoned the priesthood for a woman. There are many priests in the United States now fighting against celibacy. It is almost like an order given from above, with the same ideas, the same fight, the same rebellion, the same orientation everywhere, in Switzerland, in Germany, in France, here in Australia. Also, in Asia there is inculturation, also in Africa. Unbelievable!
So, my dear friends, I think we have to pray, and to pray very earnestly. Things are not going better, but worse. And if you do not pray, God will not bless you. And you must pray for vocations here in Australia. You see there are people and groups everywhere asking for priests. I just said to Father Hogan that there are about ten countries in Asia where there are established groups who want a priory. We must pray that God raises up vocations. We cannot take the responsibility of leaving these people alone without help. It is a great sorrow for us.
Now I want to give you two examples about what the Society is and what it should be. You have probably heard that, last year, Father Gentili went to assist at the sixtieth anniversary of the priesthood of Archbishop Lefebvre in Paris. Passing through Singapore, he baptized a man who was very sick in the hospital. He had been called to the hospital to visit a lady, mother of one of our faithful. Nearby, he saw this man in grievous condition; he saw that he was not baptized, according to the medical information sheet. He asked him: "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" This man could not speak, but responded positively by a sign of the hand. He asked him: "Do you want to be baptized? I am a Catholic priest." This man shook his hand. He baptized him and enrolled him in the holy Scapular. Eight hours later he died. Later, our faithful made an investigation, and found that that man had called the nurse a few days before, requesting that she call a Catholic priest in order to be baptized. The nurse did not do it because the man's wife had forbidden her to call a Catholic priest; she did not want her husband to die as a Catholic. See the ways of God, His Divine Providence? A priest comes thousands of miles just to baptize his soul!
Another example: Mr. Lovey, one of the five men who purchased Ecône, was the Prosecutor General of the Canton of Valais. He was a very close friend of ours; not only did he buy the property, but he was always behind us; he gave us counsel; he was the driver of Archbishop Lefebvre on several occasions; he came to Mass almost every day. He had two sons and three daughters. One of the sons died in a tragic way; the other entered the seminary at Ecône, in order to become a priest. Last year, when the young Philip Lovey was sub-deacon, it was discovered that his father had cancer. Some people suggested that young Philip be ordained priest, in order that his father have the consolation of seeing his son a priest on earth. I was not very favorable to this idea—I say this openly—because I did not want to set a precedent for other cases. Now in July, the health of Mr. Lovey declined very much. New proposals were made and finally I agreed that Philip would be ordained sooner. We fixed the ordination date for August 22nd, Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I proposed that Archbishop Lefebvre himself perform the ordination, because of the very close ties between the Lovey family and the Society of St. Pius X. The Archbishop accepted but said that August 22nd would not be possible for him because he would not be at Ecône. He proposed the previous Sunday, August 20th. Now, you know that August 20th is the day of the death of St. Pius X; he died in the very early morning of August 20, 1914. So the ordination was fixed for the morning of that Sunday, at 9:30 a.m. I visited Mr. Lovey a few days before, and had a very good conversation with him; he was very happy about the news I gave him about the Society. He said: "You know, it did not cost me one second to accept my condition, not one second. It is a special grace, I admit it, but it did not cost me one second." He was a very strong man, a man of Faith, very strong Faith.
Some days later, he called the Bursar of Ecône to give him instructions for his burial; he fixed everything himself. He said to me in that conversation, "You know, one of the deepest joys of my life is to have been able to give a son to the Society of St. Pius X, and now he will be a priest."
The day of the ordination came. At 6:00 a.m. in the morning, the telephone rang at Rickenbach, in our General House; I answered it myself. It was the Rector of Ecône who said to me: "Mr. Lovey died at 5:00 a.m. this morning." Now, this was a very special ordination, I assure you. After the ordination, the young Father Philip said during his toast: "Well, our parents have literally laid down their lives for us." In an article in a newspaper it was said, "Really you could see somebody die and raise immediately afterwards; this is the case for Mr. Lovey, who has risen in his son, who is the heir of the family inheritance, and who became Father in a wider sense, Father of the faithful, Father of souls."
What we learn by this example is that grace flows forth from the Cross of Our Lord, and comes from nowhere else. That is why we have chosen the title of Holy Cross Seminary in Australia, that the Cross of Our Lord and His Sacrifice might be once again erected in the hearts of our young candidates to the priesthood.
Now you see God is blessing us in His proper way, because all these crosses—and we have a lot of them—are true blessings of God, true graces. But one of the most joyful graces for us is the fact that since August 15, 1988, every day, one of our priests, in rotation, offers the Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in order that she might protect us, help us and that she might be our general in this enormous battle against the darkness, against the Devil and all his minions, and that we might be her instruments and her servants, and that she might lead us to her glory, which is nothing other than the beatific vision of the Most Holy Trinity.
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