Part One
by Thomas A. Droleskey
Oyster Bay Cove, Long Island, New York.
Oyster Bay Cove is an incorporated village in the Town of Oyster Bay in the County Nassau on the island known as Long Island, which extends from the East River on the west and terminates one hundred eighteen miles eastward on its south fork to Montauk Point and one hundred five miles eastward on its north fork at Orient Point.
Although I am not in my fortieth year of exile from R.F.D. 234 Laurel Cove Road (which has been renumbered to 36 Laurel Cove Road) in Oyster Bay Cove, I will always consider Oyster Bay Cove as my earthly "home." It was where I spent my high school and college years before my father, the late Dr. Albert Henry Martin Droleskey, sold his veterinary practice in Queens Village, New York (see One Man's Life Changed By Doctor Droleskey), in December of 1972. I moved out as my parents were in the process of selling the old homestead in Oyster Bay Cove (part of the two wooded acres was located in the Village of Laurel Hollow, meaning that my parents had to pay property taxes to the Village of Oyster Bay Cove and the Village of Laurel Hollow and the school district tax to then named Central School District Number Six, which encompasses the hamlets of Oyster Bay and East Norwich and the villages of Cove Neck and Oyster Bay Cove and Centre Island and parts of the villages of Mill Neck, Muttontown and Upper Brookville) on Wednesday, January 10, 1973, taking my belongings in a 1972 Chevrolet Nova out to South Bend, Indiana, to commence my graduate studies in political science. I did return to visit the old homestead frequently as I became friends with the family who purchased the house from my parents in February of 1973.
My family's former residence was about four miles from the center of the hamlet of Oyster Bay, located on the property of the former Tiffany Estate that had been broken up into parcels of two acres or more after World War II. The roads in the territory of the former estate (Tiffany Road, the only road in and out of the estate, Laurel Cove Road, North Road, South Road) were narrow and winding. They became one-way roads in the winter time, save for the portion by our house that led down to the private beach on the western shore of Cold Spring Harbor that was open only to members of Laurel Cove Property Owners Association (LCPA). One had to have an "LCPA" decal on his motor vehicle to drive legally on the roads in the development that was built out of the Tiffany Estate.
That to me, is the Oyster Bay Cove I know and will long remember. I also know that being a resident of Oyster Bay Cove in the future will never happen. We have not here a permanent dwelling place.
For many who are familiar with the history of the Society of Saint Pius X, however, Oyster Bay Cove is famous for its having been the Society's North and East district headquarters. The headquarter's address was 8 Pond Place, Oyster Bay Cove, New York. The mansion in which the headquarters and Saint Pius X Church, which has been named Saint Pius V Church since 1983, was, if I am not mistaken, the place where Mrs. Ann Woodward shot her husband, William Woodward, Jr., on the evening of October 30, 1955, thinking him to be a prowler, who was found eventually by the Nassau County Police Department. It was on April 27, 1983, that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, met there with Father Clarence Kelly and eight other priests (Fathers Donald Sanborn, Daniel Dolan, Anthony Cekada, William Jenkins, Joseph Collins, Eugene Berry, Thomas Zapp and Martin Skierka, who were challenging him on various points (see
The Nine vs. Lefebvre: We Resist You to Your Face).
As is well known, Archbishop Lefebvre told "The Nine" to take their "liberty: and find another bishop, thus banishing them into the outer darkness as the two-word phrase "The Nine" became shorthand in Society of Saint Pius X circles for "rebels" and "ingrates" and "schismatics" and "disloyal" for their having "insulted" and then "broken" with the founder, whose every decision, no matter if it contradicted one that he had taken just a few moments before, had to be understood as representing the very will of God and was an unquestioned expression of immutable Catholic truth. It is the case today for many in the Society of Saint Pius X that the Archbishop carried with him something of a mantle of infallibility and that to oppose him would be to oppose God's plan for the Church Militant on earth during the postconciliar period of crisis.
We felt the sting of being stigmatized as being identified with "The Nine" when we began to enter into what one of my former colleagues at The Wanderer called the "swampland of sedevacantism." One friend of ours at the time used every emotional ploy imaginable to discredit "The Nine's" position on the state of the Church without realizing that, no matter their personal faults and that battles that some have waged on each other from 1989 onward, truth does not depend upon the "niceness" of the person advancing an argument. Truth exists. It is. Those who make arguments in its behalf may be flawed and, humanly speaking, petty and vindictive at times, prone to harbor grudges and/or to spend priestly time producing clever videos to caricature the "ennemi de la journée" or prone to conjuring up imaginary "conspiracies" to seek to defend friends of the moment while awaiting nonexistent planets to come crashing down upon the earth.. The character of a person can certainly lend credibility to an argument. However, an argument itself stands or falls on its own merits regardless of the character of the one advancing it, an essential distinction that those caught up in the Americanist world of utter emotionalism and irrationality and sentimentality seem to be utterly incapable of grasping, no less accepting.
"The Nine," however, will soon have their names and faces removed from the "Wanted" posters that have existed, figuratively speaking, of course, in the chapels and priories of the Society of Saint Pius X for the last twenty-nine years. The titanic, gargantuan battle that is shaping up between the forces of Bishop Bernard Fellay, the Superior-General of the Society of Saint Pius X, who are about to enter into a "practical agreement" with the revolutionaries of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and those of the Society's three other bishops (Richard Williamson, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais and Alfonso Galaretta), who oppose this rapprochement with the conciliar church, can be described aptly as "Oyster Bay Cove on Steroids."
The fratricidal struggles that will ensue after Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict formally agrees to receive the Society of Saint Pius X, which a report in 2006 indicated would be renamed the "Apostolic Administration of the Holy Saviour" (see SSPX to be incorporated into new Apostolic Administration "Holy Saviour")--although a "personal prelature" is supposed to be the "canonical" structure at present, into the belly of the beat of concilairism will be the stuff of articles and books with such titles as "Who Betrayed the Archbishop?", "Who Betrayed the Society of Saint Pius X?", "Who Refused Unity From Our Pope?"
When one thinks about his, the amount of ink spilled on the forthcoming split within the Society of Saint Pius X might even exceed that was spilled during the polemics of the Western Schism (1378-1417) or that spilled during the break between Fathers Daniel Dolan and Anthony Cekada on one side and Father William Jenkins on the other when the Saint Gertrude the Great Church in Sharonville, Ohio, split in two in 1989, to say nothing of more recent disputes that have had lots of people in so-called "chat rooms" do their best impressions of Ray Charles leading Stevie Wonder to pick up Jose Feliciano to listen to a lecture being given by Helen Keller. Sedevacantists will be considered veritable pacifists who engage in daily group hugs as the warfare within the factions of the Society of Saint Pius X heats up.
One can also be quite sure that, to quote Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is "loving every minute" of this as he divides and conquers the "integralists" as has been his plan all along.
Although it is most likely the case the Society's leaders have taken legal measures to protect the organization's properties from another "theft" as they believed occurred with "The Nine," there might be isolated instances of priests or members of the laity occupying various chapels along the lines of the occupation in 1977 of the Church of Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris, France, by the lay faithful, an occupation that stands to this day despite various court orders ruling it illegal. Perhaps this was the original "occupy movement." There might be a new one starting. Just think of "Occupy Our Chapels" T-shirts.
Note this and note it well. The war has begun. It began last month "privately" before "leaking" out into the public arena. The letter of "Three Bishops" (three is, after all, the square root of nine, thus making it logical that the new enemy for one faction within the Society of Saint Pius X will be "The Three," who will be tarred and feathered as having the "spirit" of "The Nine") appeared online a few days ago before it was removed, although a French website, Riposte Catholique, has posted a photographic image of the letter (see Riposte Catholique). (Since the original posting Bishop Fellay's retort can be found by clicking Communiqué from the General House of the Society of Saint Pius X. (See also Lefebvrians: The internal battle.)
I have no intention of analyzing either "side" in this dispute as, at least formally speaking, "The Three" believe that Joseph Ratzinger is "Pope" Benedict XVI, and that they can continue to "resist" him while "recognizing" him, and Bishop Fellay and those allied with him have been advancing the philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" as the means of justifying their "pope's" belief that the "Second" Vatican Council and the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes" can be "understood" in "light of Tradition." Enough time has been spent in recent articles (Just About To Complete A Long March Into Oblivion,Trying to Stop the Waltz, "Yer Durn Tootin'" , False Doctrine, Father Pfluger?, Mutual Admiration Societies, part two and Uncrossed Ts and Undotted Is?) discussing why both positions are false, although I understand that "The Three" bishops could, at some point, denounce Ratzinger as a false claimant to the Throne of Saint Peter. Bishop Fellay's "communique" challenged "The Three" bishops as to where they stand on the matter, an interesting piece of rhetoric since the position they have articulated has been the exact position of the Society of Saint Pius X from the beginning: "resist but recognize."
Yes, Bishop Fellay is correct. If Joseph Ratzinger is a legitimate Successor of Saint Peter under the name of Benedict XVI then one must submit to his authority as to contend otherwise means that he is not a true pope. There is only one little problem with Fellay's condemnation of "The Three" bishops on this point as his own logic condemns him having been a sedevacantist while he was a most vocal critic of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and concilairism. How can "The Three" bishops be tarred and feathered by Bishop Fellay for taking the same position that Archbishop Lefebvre himself took and has been up until now the principle drive of the Society of Saint Pius X's existence. Sure, the position itself is false. However, it is, after all, the one that Bishop Fellay held while he was being criticized by "conservative" Catholics for being a "closet sedevacantist." Something must happen when one shakes hands with Ratzinger/Benedict. Perhaps an immediate infusion of the illogic of the false "pope's" mentor, the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, seeps into one's veins to equip one with the intellectual gymnastic powers necessary to make assertions that contain within themselves various contradictions. We'll find out on the Last Day, I suppose.
More seriously, though, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has explained his intention to "pacify the spirits" of the Society of Saint Pius X. Given the insanity of the moment and human tendency to get lost in the trees, let me repeat yet again the proof of this "papal" intention:
Leading men and women to God, to the God Who speaks in the Bible:
this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the
Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is
that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity,
their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility
of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith - ecumenism - is part of the supreme priority.
Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in
seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey
together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of
Light - this is inter-religious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is
Love 'to the end' has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to
the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity - this is the
social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the
Encyclical 'Deus caritas est'.
"So if the arduous task of working for faith,
hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always)
the Church's real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of
reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of
extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the
opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must
accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to
meet half-way the brother who 'has something against you' and to seek
reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall
forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents - to the
extent possible - in the great currents shaping social life, and thus
avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can
it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and
narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for
the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the
return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their
interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church
enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole.
Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests,
215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level
institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands
of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the
Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed
their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have
chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements,
they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim Him and,
with Him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives
of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What
would then become of them?
"Certainly, for some time now, and once again on
this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that
community many unpleasant things - arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions,
etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a
number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an
openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to
be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of
the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas?
And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged
in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society
needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown;
which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to
approach them - in this case the Pope - he too loses any right to
tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or
restraint. (Letter
to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the remission of the
excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, March 10, 2009.)
Fr Federico Lombardi, S.J., Director of the Holy See Press Office: What do you say to those who, in France, fear that the "Motu proprio' Summorum Pontificum signals a step backwards from the great insights of the Second Vatican Council? How can you reassure them?
Benedict XVI: Their fear is unfounded, for this "Motu
Proprio' is merely an act of tolerance, with a pastoral aim, for those
people who were brought up with this liturgy, who love it, are familiar
with it and want to live with this liturgy. They form a small group,
because this presupposes a schooling in Latin, a training in a certain
culture. Yet for these people, to have the love and tolerance to let
them live with this liturgy seems to me a normal requirement of the
faith and pastoral concern of any Bishop of our Church. There is no
opposition between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and
this liturgy.
On each day [of the Council], the Council Fathers celebrated Mass in
accordance with the ancient rite and, at the same time, they conceived
of a natural development for the liturgy within the whole of this
century, for the liturgy is a living reality that develops but, in its
development, retains its identity.
Thus, there are certainly different accents, but nevertheless [there
remains] a fundamental identity that excludes a contradiction, an
opposition between the renewed liturgy and the previous liturgy.
In any case, I believe that there is an opportunity for the enrichment
of both parties. On the one hand the friends of the old liturgy can and
must know the new saints, the new prefaces of the liturgy, etc....
On the other, the new liturgy places greater emphasis on common
participation, but it is not merely an assembly of a certain community,
but rather always an act of the universal Church in communion with all
believers of all times, and an act of worship. In this sense, it seems
to me that there is a mutual enrichment, and it is clear that the
renewed liturgy is the ordinary liturgy of our time. (Interview of the Holy Father during the flight to France, September 12, 2008.)
Liturgical worship is the supreme expression of priestly and
episcopal life, just as it is of catechetical teaching. Your duty to sanctify
the faithful people, dear Brothers, is indispensable for the growth of the
Church. In the Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum”, I was led to
set out the conditions in which this duty is to be exercised, with regard to the
possibility of using the missal of Blessed John XXIII (1962) in addition to that
of Pope Paul VI (1970). Some fruits of these new arrangements have already been
seen, and I hope that, thanks be to God, the necessary pacification of spirits
is already taking place. I am aware of your difficulties, but I do not doubt
that, within a reasonable time, you can find solutions satisfactory for all,
lest the seamless tunic of Christ be further torn. Everyone has a place in the
Church. Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at home, and
never rejected. God, who loves all men and women and wishes none to be lost,
entrusts us with this mission by appointing us shepherds of his sheep. We can
only thank him for the honour and the trust that he has placed in us. Let us
therefore strive always to be servants of unity! (Meeting with the French Bishops in the Hemicycle
Sainte-Bernadette, Lourdes, 14 September 2008.)
Bishop Bernard Fellay and his chief lieutenants are living proof that "spirits" can be "pacified" just by shaking hands with the likes of a man who has engaged in sixty years of priestly apostasy. Yes, indeed, the long, long march into oblivion in almost complete.
Part two of this article will detail more of what Bishop Fellay can find in this land of oblivion.
Ah, yes, the hour is late. I have had little sleep for eight days now. The post office box has been empty for five straight days. It is time, at 1:10 a.m., Eastern Daylight Saving Time, to retire.
May we cling to the Cross of
Our Divine Redeemer, praying as many Rosaries each day in this month of
May as our state-in-life permits. The sufferings of this present life
will pass. Christ the King will triumph over His enemies in our world of naturalism and in the the
counterfeit church of conciliarism. Every extra moment
we spend in prayer before Our King in the Most Blessed Sacrament and
every extra set of mysteries of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary that we pray
will help us to be more and more conformed to the likeness of Our
Divine Redeemer, Who endured the Cross, heedless of Its shame, to redeem
us and to make us members of His Catholic Church.
We must always remember that this is the time that
God has appointed from all eternity for us to live and thus to sanctify
and to save our immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church. The
graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's
Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flows into
our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix
of All Graces, are sufficient for us to handle whatever
crosses--personal, social and ecclesiastical--that we are asked to
carry. We must give thanks to God at all times for each of our crosses
as we seek to serve Him through Our Lady in this time of apostasy and
betrayal, remember the words in the sky that were seen by the son of Saint Helena, the Emperor Constantine: In hoc signo vinces, in this sign, you shall conquer.
Yes, in the Sign of the Cross we shall conquer as the consecrated slaves of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Queen of Heaven and of Earth.
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us now and the hour of our deaths. Amen.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Saints Nereus, Achilleus, Pancras, and Domitilla, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
