NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

a weekly magazine in France, has announced it is publishing an interview with Mons. Fellay in its February 7 issue, conducted by two journalists including Gerald LeClerc, editor of

who has only ever written good things about Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

LeClerc and Samuel Pruvot, who travelled to Switzerland for the interview have posted their 'diary' leading to and up to the encounter online, with their last entry on the day of the interview, Jan. 31, giving their impressions of Mons. Fellay and some quotations of what he says in the full interview.

It gives a very different picture - in a positive way - of Fellay than the impression I have gathered about him over the past 4 years from his occasional statements and interviews.

I will try to post a translation of the Jan. 31 entry as soon as I can. as well as LeClerc's editorial in France Catholique about the entire FSSPX 'affair' for the same issue.

[Sorry, I got a bit confused earlier over Famille Chretienne and France Catholique.]


Here, then, is the translation of the account about the interview, and I must say that LeClerc's concluding paragraphs confirm the high regard I have for everything I have read so far that he has written.

It's a very welcome and fresh reflection on the concept of internal unity within the Church, especially considering the storm of meaningless words that has been worked up about the Pope's decision, and I am deeply moved by it.

I decided to post it here rather than in NOTABLES, because it is very germane to an appreciation of the Pope's decision. I am convinced Benedict XVI took the measure of Bernard Fellay when he met him in Castel Gandolfo in August 2005, in complete privacy and under no media scrutiny. And that what he saw in the man cpnvinced him there was a good chance of healing the schism with someone like Fellay.



MEETING WITH MONS. FELLAY
by Gerard LeClerc
Translated from

Posted Feb. 2, 2009



January 31

The appointment was for 9:30. A monk came to pick us up. He would later take us back to the station at Zug.

Abbe Thouvenot allowed us first to make a tour of the property with a photographer from AFP who had joined us. Unfortunately, the fog obscured the greater landscape, but it is a little paradise.

Soon we came to a castle built a century ago by a rich bourgeois. It is now the residence for some teaching nuns who have their mother-house in Menzingen.

Mons. Fellay came into the parlor, smiling, holding our written questionnaire.

Here, I must give my impressions. Necessarily subjective. In short, Samuel and I were very favorably impressed.

We were not in front of a fanatic. Our interlocutor was at peace, he expressed himself in a very reflective manner, and welcomed our objections, answering with care.

I had occasion to speak to him twice before, in Paris. Now I felt that the man had matured, doubtless under the weight of his responsibilities and as someone who feels accountable to God for the weight of the legacy that was left him, and also by the gravity of a situation of exclusion for someone who has always been faithful to the Church he was born into.

He readily agreed when we asked him if he regretted being outside the universal Church. And I understood then that Mons. Bernard Fellay has embarked on reconciliation with Rome, perhaps as an avant-garde with respect to the rest of his troops, but with the certainty that such an exclusion cannot last much longer. Because he would not lay any claims before the perennial Church if he thought the present Church was clothed in illusion.

In the salon, a photograph of Benedict XVI is opposite that of Mons. Lefebvre's.

But make no mistake: the successor to the rebel bishop does not intend to give up any demands for reassurance that the Church will not surrender to the world. Thus, he has his questions and his doubts which he is ready to discuss with Rome.

But these 'dubia', in order to heard, must be carefully rethought. With Benedict XVI, one does not play with words. One must argue one's case.

Bernard Fellay does not share the spirit of some of his priests and faithful who are aggressive because they feel themselves to be under siege or treated like the plague.

One grasps that he has acquired interiorly a contemplative space where he finds the necessary resources for resisting the temptation to be aggressive.

We had the huge intention of revisiting Vatican-II with him in its great themes, but we were obliged to moderate ourselves. Nonetheless, we looked at the most litigious questions.

Our host reiterated his now well-known formulation: With regard to Vatican-II, the Fraternity has reservations but it does not reject the Council totally.

Does he still think that behind the elaboration of the principal texts of Vatican-II, there was a culture uniformly impregnated by 'modernism', thus rejecting the enormous investments made by so many eminent servants of the Church, in exegesis, in Patristics, in liturgy?

No, he says. He is not putting everything in one category, let alone just modernism, but everything must be evaluated with discernment in order to clear away any equivocations.

He said that he adheres completely to Benedict XVI's address on the hermeneutic of Vatican II that the Council should be understood in continuity with Tradition and not as a rupture with the past. (Address to the Roman Curia, December 22, 2005)

He observes with a smile that hardly anyone talks about the partisans of rupture who nonetheless persist in their entrenched opinions.

When we specified some of the 'bloodiest' FSSPX objections to Vatican II, he was equally alert.

Ecumenism? Of course, there are riches to be found among our separated Christian brothers who share the same evangelical heritage, but the Church should not come under the umbrella of a so-called world federation of churches. {Which I don't think the Vatican has ever considered, since even the Reformed Churches themselves are under a variety of federations, and envisions full communion, not syncretism or mere social fellowship.] "We want true unity, which presumes acceptance of one Tradition."

I am not saying there is little to be discussed. But the good will is there, to try and discern the problem areas, to find language which is not open to confusion and misunderstanding.

We had anticipated dealing with questions about the Jews [in the written questionnaire sent earlier] but certainly, not in the polemical climate which was to develop over it.

We wanted to review Nostra aetate and the relationship between the two Alliances (Old and New) and St. Paul's statements in the Letter to the Romans [which was the Scriptural basis for Benedict XVI's reformulation of the Good Friday prayer].

Of course, he insists that in relations with other religions, the announcement of Christ should never be placed within parentheses [as Benedict XVi said in his letter to Marcello Pera], but he also wished to directly confront the current controversy. So we let him express himself.

Once again, I will give my impressions and interpretation, which are my personal views. I had the immediate impression that the controversy has deeply affected him, as it has the entire FSSPX community.

He would tell us, after the interview, how much he was shocked by the reaction, because he had thought that the Pope's action would inaugurate a climate of peace, instead of which he felt he had fallen into a terrifying situation - to be associated with a such a major offense, to be denounced by the entire world as an accomplice to a lie. It has all tested the limits of his tolerance.

The controversy can only constrain Bernard Fellay and his flock to the most serious reflection. The FSSPX has never been tempted, as they have been accused, to 'recover' a political or ideological tradition.

They have since looked back at the pronouncements of the Roman Church before and during the Second World War about anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews. And they have cited the statement by the Holy Office condemning anti-Semitism in very precise terms. They have also cited Pius XI's famous statement that "Spiritually we are all Semitic". {In fact, Fellay was a bit inexact in his citation, but his formulation was felicitou: "At heart, we are all Semitic".)

He also confided, but not to be reported, what he plans to do about Bishop Williamson. Parenthetically, one must consider the rather baroque psychology of a man who writes the Vatican to apologize for his 'imprudent remarks' and cites the Book of Job to say that those who have misbehaved must be 'cast into the waters'.

I know quite well that the great suspicion that has always surrounded the FSSPX on the scourge of anti-Semitism will not go away quickly. As for me, I don't see why I should doubt the words of a man who says that killing an innocent person - let alone, killing an entire people - is 'an abomination and a crime that cries out to heaven'.

Other topics were discussed, including inevitably, religious freedom, which was the origin of Mons. Lefebvre's greatest disagreement with Vatican II. We discussed this for several minutes.

Mons. Fellay does not deny that history brings different circumstances, and that there are different ways in which Church and State may relate. But what he rejects with all his strength is any change that would lead the Church to an alien concept that would make it renounce the reign of Christ even over temporal realities. [No danger of that wwith Benedict XVI.]

He has the merit of a certain obstinacy in adhering to the teaching of Pius XI on this matter. Of course, in its concrete application, there are too many complexities which are also principally philosophical in character.

So there, I have described how I experienced this interview. I found the reasons for a certain strangeness that, in fact, subsists about the FSSPX but which must be elucidated well.

I am in no position to say whether Benedict XVI will succeed in the undertaking he has begun. Nor do I know if Bernard Fellay will succeed in his, which is, I think, 'prophetic' with respect to those he leads.

So I will end with a thought that came to me, thanks to [Hans Urs von] Balthasar. In the apostolic foursome which he describes in his book Le complexe anti-romain, Mons. Fellay's Swiss compatriot looks at the figure of James in relation to Peter, Paul and John - and sees that he represents tradition, a rather obstinate tradition.

Of course, with James, a cousin of the Lord, it had to do with Jewish tradition. But there is, with Fellay, a kinship in their faithfulness to the tradition they received. Their references are different, but the paradox may be fecund.

Why can there not be a place for this tradition within the framework of an undivided Church? It would be to recognize all possible charisms - that of the institution with Peter, that of mission with Paul, that of mysticism with John, and that of a certain obstinacy of tradition with James.

That is the grace which we wish for.