The Society of St Pius X And Its History Essay

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OLMC: A Non-Profit in KY

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Seminary is a non-profit organization located in Boston, Kentucky, that specializes in teaching and training young seminarians in the methods and styles of the Traditions of the Catholic Church. It is not your average Catholic seminary, however: it is not part of the local diocese and is not overseen by the local Bishop. It has not received permission from Rome to open its doors to young seminarians. In fact, the priests who established this seminary operate it illicitly as far as the authorities in Rome are concerned. Having opened its doors to international students in 2012, the seminary has been training young men from all over the world -- Brazil, Argentina, Africa, England, Asia, and America. Its aim is to produce priests and teachers who can go out into the world and spread Traditional Catholic doctrine. To understand what this means, it is important to go back into the history of the Catholic Church and examine what happened in the 1960s and 1970s -- the events the took place at and after the Second Vatican Council, which serves as a definitive turning point in the history of the Church, according to the founders of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (OLMC). This paper will discuss the history of this non-profit organization, its structure, and who it serves to show how it is a unique non-profit with a unique agenda in today's world.

The information regarding OLMC comes from first-hand interviews that this writer has conducted with the priests and seminarians at the organization's headquarters in Boston, Kentucky. This writer was granted access to the headquarters because of his friendship with the founders, who had a national and international exposure prior to their founding of the organization. Thus, this writer was familiar with them and their activities and their aims even before they opened their seminary in 2012.

Prior to founding OLMC, the main priests involved worked with the Society of St. Pius X, an international organization that has headquarters in several countries around the world. The two head founders of OLMC had been a part of the Society of St. Pius X for more than 20 years. Fr. Pfeiffer had served parishes in the U.S. as well as in India and in the Philippines. Fr. Hewko had worked mainly in the U.S. The Society of St. Pius X was also a Traditional Catholic organization, with over 500 member priests around the world. It provided the same service that OLMC aimed to provide in 2012, but something happened around that time that made Frs. Pfeiffer and Hewko feel that it was necessary to establish their own organization and part ways with the Society of St. Pius X. To understand what happened, it is necessary to understand why the Society of St. Pius X was formed.

The Society of St. Pius X was formed in the early 1970s after the Second Vatican Council had ended in Rome and a new set of orders were issued by the Roman Pontiff suggested that priests and bishops of the Church update their teachings so as to better meet the needs of modern man. What was meant by this was that the leaders of the Church should stop harping on sin and what was needed for salvation and adapt to the times: attitudes about sexuality, birth control, working on Sunday, going to Mass, the Mass itself, ideas about God and Transubstantiation -- all of this was changing, and instead of resisting change, the leaders should go with the modern flow. Many churchmen accepted this suggestion and as a result, the Mass was changed from being said in Latin everywhere around the world to be said in regional languages. The rubrics of the Mass were changed so that it no longer resembled a Catholic Mass of the past and instead resembled more a Protestant supper service. This change was done so that the Church could say that it was now less offensive to Protestants (an admitted aim of the Second Vatican Council). Ideas about sexuality changed in the Church's official catechism and children were no longer taught to be the primary aim of marriage -- instead the teaching now was that a man and woman's primary focus in marriage should be on each other and making one another happy. Children were an apparent afterthought -- and this was a teaching that was the complete opposite of what the Church had taught for hundreds of years. Therefore, some traditionally minded churchmen refused to change with the times and set about continuing to do what they perceived the Church as having always done. The continued to teach Traditional Catholic doctrine and continued to say the Mass in Latin and continued to teach families about the traditional values that the Church had always expressed.

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It maintained the dogmas concerning God and Transubstantiation and condemned the direction of the post-Vatican II Church as being modernist and full of error. One of these men was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who actually took place in the Second Vatican Council and did his utmost to try to get other priests and bishops to see the harm that the Church would cause if it passed the schemas that were being discussed at the time. Some listened but many did not.

So following the passing of the revolutionary schemas, Lefebvre started his own organization at the insistence of a few seminarians who wanted to learn in the old manner because the saw the new methods as being harmful to their faith (Mallerais 202). Lefebvre was given permission from the local bishop to do so in the 1970s and he began attracting many people to his organization -- both seminarians and teachers. As the Church became more and more revolutionary throughout this decade, his stature grew and grew as a bulwark against modernism within the Church. He very quickly had followers all over the world.

However, the authorities in Rome did not like the success that he was having, as communities in several different countries throughout the world called for his services and his priests: they wanted Traditional Catholic teaching, sacraments, Latin Mass, etc. -- things the new Church was no longer providing them (Lefebvre 13). Thus the new Church began to crack down on Lefebvre and his Society. It refused to grant it permission to continue unless Lefebvre promised to celebrate the new Mass. Lefebvre refused and instead consecrated four bishops without the Pope's permission. For this action, Lefebvre was excommunicated along with the four new bishops that he consecrated. However, in Lefebvre's defense he saw this move as necessary for the continuation of the Society as he himself was old and the demand for the work that he and his group was doing necessitated it. In other words, he felt that if he did not consecrate new bishops, the faith of the old Church was in danger of being lost.

Nonetheless, a very obvious and public rift opened up between the authorities in Rome and the Society of St. Pius X, which was now deemed a renegade organization going around the world offering Traditional Catholic sacraments and teaching to people wherever it was called for. It was almost like the A-Team of the Catholic Church, consisting of priests were disavowed and wanted by the authorities, who had to essentially act "underground" and go only where they were called by people who wanted their services. It was in this organization that Frs. Pfeiffer and Hewko grew up. They became priests in this Society and vowed to always teach Traditional education to their parishes and communities where they served.

However, by the year 2000 the Society's own leaders under one of the bishops consecrated by Lefebvre -- Bp. Fellay -- was beginning to move closer to the authorities in Rome ("Bishop Confirms"). They wanted to patch up their differences and be officially approved by the Roman authorities once more (Lelong). They began agreeing to certain statements made by the authorities -- statements that suggested that the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council were really not all that bad, that few people really understood the Council, and other things like this. Immediately, one of the other bishops that Lefebvre had consecrated -- Bp. Williamson -- spoke out against these statements and suggested that the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X step down as they were clearly no longer fit to lead the Traditional Catholic organization. This inflamed the leaders and Bp. Fellay ordered Bp. Williamson to be silenced. Bp. Williamson refused to stop speaking out and eventually he was kicked out of the organization by Bp. Fellay. This was a shocking turn of events to many people who had relied upon the Society and its services for many years. They expected nothing but harmony and unity from the Society and now they were seeing very dangerous signs of rupture and disunity. Some people were admirers of Bp. Williamson, who was viewed as a hard-liner while others were….....

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