Winona, Minn., Jun 26, 2008 / 15:30 pm
Bishop Bernard Fellay, the leader of the Society of St. Pius X, has rejected the terms offered by the Vatican for rejoining the Catholic Church. During a homily at one of his society’s seminaries on June 20, the schismatic bishop said that the five conditions for return were a message to “shut up.”
The reaction from Fellay came after Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the head of the commission which oversees the reintroduction of the Latin Mass, sent a letter to the schismatic bishop outlining five conditions for the breakaway society to enter back into communion with Rome.
The Society of St. Pius X claims to be the true Catholic Church and says that the Catholic Church broke from the true faith with the reforms launched by Vatican II. In 1988 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four traditionalist bishops ignoring a warning from Pope John Paul II. The five prelates were subsequently excommunicated, and among them was Bishop Fellay.
"Rome is telling us, okay, we are ready to lift the excommunications, but you cannot continue this way," Bishop Fellay said in a sermon last Friday at an SSPX seminary in Winona, Minnesota. "So we have no choice... we are continuing what we've done," the Bishop Fellay said in English. "They just say 'shut up' ... we are not going ... to shut up."