Traditio's Historical Amnesia on the SSPX

One of the most blatant and frequent errors that the Traditio site espouses concerns the Society of St. Pius X. Traditio paints a picture of the SSPX's founder, Marcel Lefebvre, as a "saintly" man who ceaselessly defended Catholic tradition against the New Order. When confronted with the SSPX's constant capitulations to the same New Order today, Traditio blames it on the SSPX's current Superior General, Bernard Fellay.

However, Fellay is not out of line with the SSPX's historic positions or its founder at all! In fact, it is Lefebvre's "ambivalence" toward the New Order that many of his followers left his organization in the 1970s and 80s.

A revealing post was made in Traditio's Commentaries for November 2007. There, the November 22 entry accuses Fellay of "selling out" the SSPX to the Novus Ordo Church.

In this entry, Traditio makes eight claims against Fellay, accusing him of implementing eight elements of the New Order Religion inside the Society. All eight of these claims are false, of course -- the SSPX held all of these positions long before Fellay ever became Superior General. But Traditio paints Lefebvre as someone who rejected the Novus Ordo. He voted for it, never repealed that, and he insisted to the end that (a) the New Order sacraments were valid and (b) the papal claimants of the Conciliar Church were valid. He never once suggested that the New Order liturgy or the papal claimants who implemented them were invalid. In fact, he ejected anyone from his Society who held either of these claims. It is not news that the SSPX uses men who were not ordained priests -- they did that from the beginning! On many occasions Lefebvre took in men ordained "priests" in the new rite of Paul VI and did not bother to re-ordain them conditionally in the old. This was, in fact, one reason for the highly publicized ejection of the nine priests who formed the SSPV. Richard Williamson, by his own admission, was responsible for this ejection.

So while Traditio is quick to show the many errors and heretical practices of today's SSPX, they purposefully make believe that these errors and practices were not also perpetrated by Lefebvre.

The reason that Traditio propogates this subtle error? It could be so that Catholics might continue to support the SSPX and push for its "conservative" wing, unaware that the SSPX has held these positions since its inception. If the SSPX's founder was a saintly hero, perhaps there is some good somewhere in the SSPX. But if the SSPX's founder was a sly and scheming heretic, it is a bad tree that is incapable of bearing good fruit. It is this fact, we contend, that Traditio does not want Catholics to know.