would be abundant. He arguedthat the next twenty-five yearsmust see an end to themadness in the Church andthe official approval oncemore of the Society.

Fr. Göttler concluded byemphasizing the need forprayer in order that weremain loyal. Prayer to theSaints, to Our Lady and toChrist the High Priest, theidol of the Priesthood. Ω

Thursday, November 1 was a doublecelebration this year at the Seminary.Not only was it the annual feast of All

Saints but it also marked the twenty-fifthanniversary of the founding of the Society ofSt. Pius X as an official congregation of theCatholic Church. At St. Thomas AquinasSeminary, as at the mother house in Econe, itwas a time of great joy and festivity as well asa time for thanksgiving. But it is worth amoment to reflect on what those 25 years havemeant in the history of the Church.

The Society was founded just after theintroduction of the Novus Ordo in 1969. TheNew Rite spread rapidly throughout theChurch and the Vatican tried to stamp out theTridentine Rite. Without the Archbishop it isdoubtful whether the Mass that we hold sodear would have survived at all except for afew isolated priests. Certainly, St.Peter’sSociety and the Indult Mass were merelyRome’s attempt to block the successful spreadof the Society. Likewise in the realm of“doctrine” the conciliar church has“pr ogressed” beyond what could have beenimagined in 1970. One could detail manylandmarks: communion in the hand; altargirls; guitar masses etc; but clearly, theecumenical meeting at Assisi in 1986 markeda complete break with Tradition in anall too visible way.

Thus, when one considers thelast 25 years in the ConciliarChurch, the vital importance ofthe Society in general and ofArchbishop Lefebvre in particulartakes on a new significance. Thedanger is real that the Faithcould have been lost to many

more Catholics. The Archbishop always saidthat he was simply handing down what hadbeen given to him—simple sounding wordsbut the achievement of the last 25 years isthat the faith is being passed down. The 1988Episcopal consecrations and the continuingpriestly ordinations are merely the logicalresult of this stance. The whole Society isgeared to the preservation of the Faith untilsaner times return to the Church.

It is an interesting question to ponderwhether without the Archbishop there stillwould be the Catholic Faith? Will the Son ofMan still find faith when He returns? (Luke,18,8) The role of the Society has been doublyimportant when one considers the nature ofour times. The warnings of Fatima are goingunheeded, indeed they are being side-lined bythe modernists: the Third Secret has not beenpublished; Russia has not been consecratedto the Immaculate Heart and consequentlyhas spread her errors throughout the world;atheistic materialism is world-wide. All

around us society is collapsing andthe Ten Commandments arebeing broken without check.But the Society is givingwitness to the Truth and thusthe celebration of twenty-fiveyears in which the Society

has grown, by God’sgrace, is important. Ω

ISSUE No. 60

Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary

Stockton Hill

WINTER, 1996

Winona, Minnesota

55987 U.S.A.

The Society of Saint Pius XCelebrates 25 Years

November 1 atthe Seminary

Fr. Göttler, vice rector at the Seminary,preached the sermon at the Solemn High Masson Nov. 1st to celebrate All Saint’s Day.

Naturally, he used the opportunity to mark thetwenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of theSociety. The sermon fell into two clear halves.

In the first half he posed the question, “Wherewould we be now but for Archbishop Lefebvre andthe Society of St. Pius X?” He made it clear that, butfor Archbishop Lefebvre there would not only be noSociety but most probably no accessible TridentineMass. “Would we even still have the faith?” Fr.Göttler highlighted perhaps the key aspect ofArchbishop Lefebvre’s spirituality which accountsfor the blessings of God and thereby the success ofthe Society; that is, his complete trust in God’sprovidence. He never preceded it nor followed hisown will but rather waited for God to show him thecourse of action. This can be applied especially to

1970 and 1988. Having paid

tribute to theArchbishop andthe society, Fr.Göttler warnedthat the nexttwenty-five yearswould bring theirtrials and crosses;however, if weremain loyal,spiritual joys andGod’s blessings

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Fr. Wolfgang Göttler, theSeminary’s Vice-Rector

ITATIRACSVMIDIDERCSONTE

1970 1975 198071 726968 73 74 76 77 78 79 81 82

25 Years a

• 1969 A new order of the Mass is implemented by theApostolic Constitution Missale Romanum. ArchbishopLefebvre collects a group of twelve theologians toexamine it. Their study is commonly known as the“Ottaviani Intervention”.

• 1973 American seminaryopens in Armada, Michigan.

• 1974 The Society opens a housein Albano outside of Rome.

• Nov. 11, 1974 Two Apostolic visitorsarrive at the seminary in Ecône. Becauseof the unorthodoxies they uttered pub-licly, the Archbishop publishes thefamous Declaration of November 21.

• October, 1974 The Sisters of the Societyof St. Pius X are founded.

• May 6, 1975 Cardinal Villotbrings about the illicit “suppres-sion” of the Society.

• May 22, 1980ArchbishopLefebvre visits St.Vincent de Paulchurch in KansasCity.

1981•Cardinal Seper dies. Cardinal Joseph

Ratzinger replaces him as personal delegateto the Pope to mediate between the Society

and His Holiness John Paul II.

• Easpries

• July 23, 1976 Because of the refusal of His Grace to

celebrate the New Mass, and his work ofcontinuing to ordain priests, he is given asuspensio a divinis.Ironically the suspen-

sion applies to the New Mass, which herefuses to say in any case.

• February, 1977 The Miracle ofSt. Nicolas du Chardonnet, in Paris,whereby the Society obtains use ofa beautiful, historic, government-owned church.

• 1978The Society buys the former Jesuit College in St. Mary’s, Kansas.

1979 •The United States Seminary

moves to Ridgefield,Connecticut.

1981 •The seminary in La Reja,

Argentina is occupied by the Society.

• Sept. 23, 1979 In Paris, the Archbishop celebrates the 50th anniversary ofhis ordination to the priesthood.

• 1978 German Seminary in Zaitzkofen is bought.

• Feb. 18, 1971 The Society is approved andencouraged by the Prefect for the SacredCongregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Wright.

• June 10, 1971 Because of the silence of the Vatican, His Grace says to theseminarians: “. . . How can I accept to abandon the Mass of all ages or to admitto place it on the same level as the Novus Ordo, created byAnnibal Bugnini, with the participation of Protestants to make ofit an equivocal supper that eliminates totally the Offertory, andtouches the very words of the Consecration?”

• April 11, 1968 Five Swiss laymen buy theproperty of Ecône.

• 1968 General Chapter of the Holy Ghost Fathers.Due to its revisions Archbishop Lefebvre protests toRome, and eventually resigns.

D

Putti the jour

September 1982 •The first General Chapter of the Society

takes place in Ecône. Father Schmidberger iselected Vicar General with right of immediate

succession as Superior General.

• Nov. 1, 1970 Official foundation of the International

Society of St. Pius X. BishopCharrière of Lausanne, Geneva andFribourg officially approves theStatutes of the Society.

• 1968 Seminarians who turned to the Archbishop fora true priestly formation are directed to St. JohnBosco House in Fribourg, Switzerland.

1985 1990 199583 84 86 87 88 89 91 92 93 94 96 97

at a Glance

• March 1, 1983 FatherLudovic-Marie Barrielle dies.

As the first spiritual direc-tor of Ecône, he had taughtseminarians the preachingof the Spiritual Exercisesof St. Ignatius of Loyola.

• 1983 The New Code of Canon Law is promulgated.

• December 8, 1984 TheSociety is consecrated to theImmaculate Heart of Mary.

• June 1984Monsignor Ducard-Bourget, whoresembled the Curéof Ars, dies in Paris.He was instrumentalin “The Miracle of St.Nicholas duChardonnet”.

ster, 1982 Twenty-fivests of the diocese of Campos,

Brazil, givetheir famousreasons why inconscience, theNew Mass isunacceptable.

• Oct. 3, 1984 Indult Mass permission is granted for cele-bration of the Tridentine Mass.Dec. 21, 1984 •

Don Francescodies. He founded

rnal SI SI NO NO.

• Nov. 11, 1987 Cardinal Gagnon visits Ecône andwrites a testimony of admirationconcerning the work done there.

May 13, 1992 •Fr. Schmidberger blesses the new U.S.

District Headquarters, the Regina CoeliHouse in Kansas City, Missouri.

August, 1986 •The Sisters of the Society of St. Pius Xfound a novitiate at Armada, Michigan.

• 1986Re-establishment of the

Eucharistic Crusade for children.

• September, 1986The Seminary at Flavigny is opened in France.

• May 21, 1993 Fr. Henri La Praz, ayoung SSPX priest,

after multipleoperations, dies.His story can beread in the book,

“Todo–Nada”.

• June, 1988 Operation Survival. ArchbishopLefebvre in order to protect the true Priesthood,consecrates four priests to the Episcopate.

• July, 1994 The second GeneralChapter of the Society. BishopBernard Fellay is elected GeneralSuperior with former GeneralSuperior Fr. Schmidberger as FirstAssistant and Fr. Paul Aulagnier asSecond Assistant.

• August, 1992The Society makesa foundation in thePhillipines

July 28, 1991 • Three of the four new

bishops consecrate Fr. LicinioRangel to the Episcopate for the

traditional priests of Campos,Brazil.

• January, 1987

Mother Mary Gabriel, co-foundress and FirstGeneral Superior of theSisters of the SSPX dies.She was the sister ofArchbishop Lefebvre.

• March 19, 1988Holy Cross Seminary isfounded in Australia.

• April, 1993 The general house of the Society istransferred to Menzingen, Switzerland.

Jan. 25, 1995 •Fr. Urban Snyder dies. Hewas a former Trappistmonk at the Abbey ofGethsemani, and later aprofessor at Ecône in itsearly years.

• Nov. 1, 1995The Society completes 25 years. The laying ofthe cornerstone forEcône’s new church,the Immaculate Heartof Mary.

• March 25, 1991 The Archbishop goesto his eternal reward.One month later, tothe day, Bishop deCastro Mayer dies.

Besides the inevitable, prolonged visit of coldweather which every autumn seems to grantsuch a northerly part of the country as

Winona, Minnesota, a more welcome visit wasmade to the seminary in the person of ProfessorDavid A. White, a teacher of literature at the UnitedStates Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.This was not his first visit to Winona. Indeed he has

visited nearly everysemester in recent years toimpart to the seminarianssome of his knowledge ofand enthusiasm for Englishliterature. This semester sawthe good doctor speaking tous about Shakespeare’s play“A Winter’s Tale”. It is oneof the Bard’s last plays, notas well known as famousworks such as “Macbeth”,“Hamlet”, or “King Lear”.Nevertheless, like many of his plays, great issues liebeneath the elegant and musical lines of his verse.

This play is unusual in that it combines twoforms, the tragedy and the comedy, and by the endwe have entered into what might be termed amystery play with the statue of a queen everyonetook to be dead coming to life. The story begins inSicily where the King of Bohemia is concluding avisit with his boyhood friend the King of Sicily. TheSicilian king has tried unsucessfully to convince hisfriend to stay longer and has then turned to his wife,Queen Hermione, to try to accomplish this. Shemanages it but at that moment her royal husbandbecomes a victim to a mad jealousy and accuses herof adultery with his friend. This is royal tragedy.The King of Bohemia flees for his life, the Queen isimprisoned, and then when she is delivered of child,the baby, a daughter, is given to a nobleman to betaken away from the realm and to be abandoned tothe elements, for the king refuses to believe it is hisown. The son of this unfortunate king, seeing hismother in such humiliation, grows sicker each day.The tyrant, seeking to justify his suspicions, appealsto the oracle of Apollo and proceeds to try theQueen for her crimes. The messengers return andthe message of the oracle is read: the Queen isinnocent. The king refuses to believe it and at thatmoment his son dies. The Queen, hearing this news,dies as well. The king then repents and years ofpenance begin for him.

However, the daughter does not die, but isfound by a shepherd, and the plot goes to Bohemiawhere the baby was left exposed. She grows up abeautiful, innocent girl and falls in love with the sonof the King of Bohemia. The play ends with theprince and young lady who does not know she is thedaughter of the King of Sicily fleeing from thewrath of the prince’s father to Sicily and there it isdiscovered who she is. Not only that, but a statue ofthe dead Queen Hermione comes to life and all endshappily.

Within this play, there are many themes asProfessor White pointed out to the seminarians. One

of these is the loss of innocence. As the Sicilianking increases his injustice against his Queen, sotheir son, a symbol of innocence in the play,weakens daily. At last he dies, and this fact is notreversed at the end of the play. He does not comeback to life as his mother does. Innocence is lostand never recovered. Another is the theme ofwomanhood. This is a play with three very differentheroines who each portray an ideal of woman.There is the Queen who is patient under her trib-ulations, suffering bravely with calm inner strength.There is her daughter, Perdita, who at 16 years ofage is an image of purity and virtue. Lastly there isthe noblewoman Paulina, a very strong outspokenwoman whose tongue proclaims the truth even inthe face of the king. A third theme of this play islove and this is personified in the love of Perditaand the Prince of Bohemia. The wrath of his fatherin discovering that the prince is contemplatingmarriage to what seems a daughter of a shepherdessdoes nothing to turn aside his love. He will be faith-ful though he lose the crown in the process. It is a

love both noble andinnocent, and Shakespearecontrasts this with the lossof innocence in the firstpart of the play.

One interesting thingpointed out to the sem-inarians by the professorwas the Catholic elementin this and other plays ofShakespeare. Thisgreatest of English play-wrights was raised aCatholic, and though heentered a period of doubtafter he left Stratford forthe metropolis of London,his later plays includemany Catholic elements.In this play one might

point to several such elements: a marriage caseappealed to the priests of Apollo at Delphos, theinnocent Queen involved...the time of Henry VIIIappealing to Rome against Catherine of Aragon wasnot that far past. There is the shepherd bemoaningthe fact that he would have no priest to put earth inhis grave, a very pre-Reformation custom inEngland. And there is the king himself who rejectsall exterior authority and clings to his mad belief inthe Queen’s guilt. This is the spirit that Shakespearewas seeing all around him in an England that hadrejected Rome for an English Church. From theprotestant revolt was to come our modern denial ofany external authority. The professor described thisspirit thus: “I define the world, I define God, Idefine my own church, I define everything....faith iswhat I say it is...I’m my own priest, I’m my ownchurch, I’m my own world, I’m everything.” Thisattitude is only the germinating of the seed plantedby the protestant reformers. Shakespeare portrays

this perversion of the human spirit in the King of Sicily.

And so, after two days at the seminary,Professor White returned to his post at Annapolis,leaving the seminarians hoping for his return. AWinter’s tale was told at Winona where Winter hasa bad habit of overstaying her welcome, but once itwas told, the seminarians look forward to the returnof Professor White to speak again of the classics heloves so well. Ω

A Winter’s TaleProfessor David Allen White Enthralls All Again

This document was placed in the corner-stone ofthe future Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary,

at Ecône Switzerland. Following is a translation.

For an Everlasting MemoryIn the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and

ninety-five, on the first day of November, on thesolemnity of the feast of All Saints, being theeighteenth year of the Pontificate of John Paul II,with His Excellency Norbert Brunner being theBishop of Sion, and by decision of His ExcellencyBernard Fellay, Bishop and Superior General of theSacerdotal Society of St. Pius X, Fr. MichelSimoulin being Rector of the Seminary of St. PiusX, this first stone of the Church of the sameseminary was solemnly blessed by his ExcellencyBernard Fellay in the presence of many priests andclerics of the Society, with a great gathering offaithful.

This church was desired by His ExcellencyMarcel Lefebvre, Archbishop-bishop of Tulle,Founder and first Superior General of the aforemen-tioned Society, and hoped for from the year 1974.But only after long expectation was the final permis-sion for its construction given by the civil author-ities of Valais in the beginning of this year 1995.

This temple of the Lord, which is to be built byMr. Felix Porcellana, will be dedicated to theBlessed Virgin Mary under the title of herImmaculate Heart, according to the will of theFounder of the Society, of pious memory. Thissacred edifice will serve for the celebration of theCatholic liturgy and especially for the sacredfunctions of the Seminary of St. Pius X and thesolemn celebration of the most holy Sacrifice of theMass, fount of all graces acquired by Our LordJesus Christ on the altar of the Cross.

A WARRIOR LEAVES USPictured amongst Winona professors, third from the right, in the fall of 1993 is Monsignor

Charles P. Donahue from Arcadia, California, who died there on Dec. 23, 1995.From the earliest days of the Society of St. Pius X, Monsignor Donahue was a devoted friend

of Archbishop Lefebvre and of his work in the United States. He so refused any compromise inthe defense of the Faith that for a few years in the 1980’s he wondered if the Society would keepthe Faith, but in the 1990’s he again became a real friend and supporter of the Society and itsSeminary in Winona. Please pray with us for the repose of his soul.

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