09-08-2025, 08:51 AM
The following is taken from pages 54-55 of this issue of The Recusant [slightly adapted and reformatted]:
Bishop de Galarreta: poor health - according to a very brief report from April 2025, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta had to be admitted to hospital for surgery forcing the SSPX to cancel its Easter ordinations to the subdeaconate. Confirmations, also due to have taken place in April, were also postponed. In the weeks and months since then, word comes to us on the grapevine that he is still out of action and will be so for the foreseeable future due to poor health, meaning that he is effectively retired and the SSPX is effectively down to just one bishop from the original four.
Fr. Michel Simoulin RIP - in May 2025, the French District website reported the death of Fr. Michel Simoulin. One of the older SSPX priests who had known and worked with Archbishop Lefebvre, he later became a cheerleader for compromise with modernist in Rome and will be remembered by many for his disgraceful article in Le Seignadou, in May 2012, titled: ‘We cannot be 88-ers’. We will quote some extracts here but it is worth re-reading the whole thing (here) because it is a monument, an archetype of the 2012 SSPX internal revolution. It is all there: the misleading references to “the Church” without any distinction of the conciliar church, the appeals to authority and blind trust, the shameless discarding of Archbishop Lefebvre as being from a different era and therefore no longer relevant to us today.
“It is not an exaggeration,” he wrote, “to say that Bishop Fellay has achieved more than Archbishop Lefebvre asked for…” And he continued:
Just bear in mind that the author of those words lived right through the pontificate of Pope Francis and yet it made not the slightest difference to him. Fr. Simoulin was far from being the only SSPX superior to tell everyone that Rome was far closer to Tradition than it had been in 1988, that things were getting better, and so forth. They all lived long enough to see their naïve ideas proved wrong a thousand times over - an honest man would have admitted as much, but none of them ever did. Quite the contrary, in January 2022 the very same Fr. Michel Simoulin wrote an article for the Indultist/Ecclesia Dei –alligned website Renaissance Catholique, entitled “What We Need in the Crisis in the Church is a bit of the true Roman spirit” [“Dans la crise de l’Église, un peu de romanité. La vraie.”], in which he repeated the same line about not being in 1988 any more and accused those of us who don’t see eye-to-eye with him of Manicheism. And of course, it goes without saying, he was never punished, much less expelled for publicly expressing his own view on the SSPX/Rome question and so forth. No, that only happens to a priest if he is against making friends with the modernists.
SSPX’s Pilgrimage to Rome - Advertised on the Vatican’s own Holy Year website - here: https://www.iubilaeum2025.va/it/pellegri...n-pio.html - can you for one moment imagine something like this when Archbishop Lefebvre was still alive? It is unthinkable. Go on, tell me again how nothing has changed...
Doesn’t rather confirm what we have long maintained, that the reconciliation of the SSPX with modern Rome took place, but in secret, with no big announcement and is being revealed slowly, a bit at a time, to minimise the reaction against it? How much more obvious does it need to be? Here, for instance, is the FAQ page of the SSPX chapel in Arcadia, California (https://fsspx.today/chapel/ca-arcadia/fsspx-faqs/). In answer to the question about what makes them different, they say: “We are a Catholic chapel in union with Rome.” No further distinctions, nothing, for instance, about being against the Council or the New Mass. They say that they are “in union with Rome” and then talk about how the Mass is in Latin and not facing the people. A conservative Novus Ordo parish wouldn’t say anything different. Consider: if the SSPX say they are “in union with” modern Rome, and if even the modern Vatican advertises their pilgrimage, what right has anyone to say that no agreement was ever reached?
No More Conditional Confirmations? - Holy Orders aren’t the only Novus Ordo Sacrament the SSPX are now trying to get us all to accept without question. In the May/June 2025 District Newsletter Ite Missa Est, Redemptorist Fr. Nicholas Mary pours scorn on the idea of faithful from the Novus Ordo seeking conditional confirmation from the SSPX. He takes the same line as Fr. Paul Robinson: unless you happened to spot something amiss during the ceremony itself, you are duty-bound to regard it as certain and it would be wrong to re-do it conditionally. What about the intention, what does a priest or bishop who doesn’t believe in the sacrament of confirmation actually think he’s doing? Fr. Nicholas doesn’t address this.
What about the fact that they can’t be relied on to use olive oil, the correct matter? “The use of chrism not made of olive oil is doubtless a rarity in Britain at least…” he says. “Doubtless”..! How can he be so sure? And even if it were a rarity, that still means it might have happened in any given case, you cannot be certain, hence positive doubt. “Be at peace,” the article concludes, “and accept that there are many things that God does not expect you to know with dogmatic certainty in this life.” In the old days, a significant number of the confirmations done by the SSPX were conditional. Those days, it seems, are now over.
Doubtful Priests Multiplying - don’t be tempted to think that this is an America-only problem. There are two Novus Ordo priests helping the SSPX in Germany, that we know of, neither of whom was conditionally ordained. Now, it seems, a Fr. Michael O’Reilly, ordained in the Novus Ordo in 1995, is joining the SSPX in Ireland. It is now happening everywhere.
SSPX Watch
Bishop de Galarreta: poor health - according to a very brief report from April 2025, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta had to be admitted to hospital for surgery forcing the SSPX to cancel its Easter ordinations to the subdeaconate. Confirmations, also due to have taken place in April, were also postponed. In the weeks and months since then, word comes to us on the grapevine that he is still out of action and will be so for the foreseeable future due to poor health, meaning that he is effectively retired and the SSPX is effectively down to just one bishop from the original four.
Fr. Michel Simoulin RIP - in May 2025, the French District website reported the death of Fr. Michel Simoulin. One of the older SSPX priests who had known and worked with Archbishop Lefebvre, he later became a cheerleader for compromise with modernist in Rome and will be remembered by many for his disgraceful article in Le Seignadou, in May 2012, titled: ‘We cannot be 88-ers’. We will quote some extracts here but it is worth re-reading the whole thing (here) because it is a monument, an archetype of the 2012 SSPX internal revolution. It is all there: the misleading references to “the Church” without any distinction of the conciliar church, the appeals to authority and blind trust, the shameless discarding of Archbishop Lefebvre as being from a different era and therefore no longer relevant to us today.
“It is not an exaggeration,” he wrote, “to say that Bishop Fellay has achieved more than Archbishop Lefebvre asked for…” And he continued:
Quote:“Whatever the state of Rome may be, of all that still remains that is disturbing in Rome, plain common sense and honesty should lead us to consider the current situation with different eyes than those of 1988! Recalling the saying of one of our bishops, we cannot be ‘eighty-eighters’! … let it not be said that the state of things is the same as in 1988, or worse. This is contrary to the reality and to the truth, and it cannot but be the effect of a more or less secret refusal of any reconciliation with Rome, perhaps of a lack of faith in the holiness of the Church … Only Bishop Fellay and his assistants, who by definition hold all the cards, can most accurately judge the current situation. The question everyone must instead ask himself is our benevolence toward authority and, above all, our trust in it.”
Just bear in mind that the author of those words lived right through the pontificate of Pope Francis and yet it made not the slightest difference to him. Fr. Simoulin was far from being the only SSPX superior to tell everyone that Rome was far closer to Tradition than it had been in 1988, that things were getting better, and so forth. They all lived long enough to see their naïve ideas proved wrong a thousand times over - an honest man would have admitted as much, but none of them ever did. Quite the contrary, in January 2022 the very same Fr. Michel Simoulin wrote an article for the Indultist/Ecclesia Dei –alligned website Renaissance Catholique, entitled “What We Need in the Crisis in the Church is a bit of the true Roman spirit” [“Dans la crise de l’Église, un peu de romanité. La vraie.”], in which he repeated the same line about not being in 1988 any more and accused those of us who don’t see eye-to-eye with him of Manicheism. And of course, it goes without saying, he was never punished, much less expelled for publicly expressing his own view on the SSPX/Rome question and so forth. No, that only happens to a priest if he is against making friends with the modernists.
SSPX’s Pilgrimage to Rome - Advertised on the Vatican’s own Holy Year website - here: https://www.iubilaeum2025.va/it/pellegri...n-pio.html - can you for one moment imagine something like this when Archbishop Lefebvre was still alive? It is unthinkable. Go on, tell me again how nothing has changed...
Doesn’t rather confirm what we have long maintained, that the reconciliation of the SSPX with modern Rome took place, but in secret, with no big announcement and is being revealed slowly, a bit at a time, to minimise the reaction against it? How much more obvious does it need to be? Here, for instance, is the FAQ page of the SSPX chapel in Arcadia, California (https://fsspx.today/chapel/ca-arcadia/fsspx-faqs/). In answer to the question about what makes them different, they say: “We are a Catholic chapel in union with Rome.” No further distinctions, nothing, for instance, about being against the Council or the New Mass. They say that they are “in union with Rome” and then talk about how the Mass is in Latin and not facing the people. A conservative Novus Ordo parish wouldn’t say anything different. Consider: if the SSPX say they are “in union with” modern Rome, and if even the modern Vatican advertises their pilgrimage, what right has anyone to say that no agreement was ever reached?
No More Conditional Confirmations? - Holy Orders aren’t the only Novus Ordo Sacrament the SSPX are now trying to get us all to accept without question. In the May/June 2025 District Newsletter Ite Missa Est, Redemptorist Fr. Nicholas Mary pours scorn on the idea of faithful from the Novus Ordo seeking conditional confirmation from the SSPX. He takes the same line as Fr. Paul Robinson: unless you happened to spot something amiss during the ceremony itself, you are duty-bound to regard it as certain and it would be wrong to re-do it conditionally. What about the intention, what does a priest or bishop who doesn’t believe in the sacrament of confirmation actually think he’s doing? Fr. Nicholas doesn’t address this.
What about the fact that they can’t be relied on to use olive oil, the correct matter? “The use of chrism not made of olive oil is doubtless a rarity in Britain at least…” he says. “Doubtless”..! How can he be so sure? And even if it were a rarity, that still means it might have happened in any given case, you cannot be certain, hence positive doubt. “Be at peace,” the article concludes, “and accept that there are many things that God does not expect you to know with dogmatic certainty in this life.” In the old days, a significant number of the confirmations done by the SSPX were conditional. Those days, it seems, are now over.
Doubtful Priests Multiplying - don’t be tempted to think that this is an America-only problem. There are two Novus Ordo priests helping the SSPX in Germany, that we know of, neither of whom was conditionally ordained. Now, it seems, a Fr. Michael O’Reilly, ordained in the Novus Ordo in 1995, is joining the SSPX in Ireland. It is now happening everywhere.
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre