The “consecrations” of new bishops in the Priestly Society of Saint Pius In the period preceding them, the essential reason to justify them was given by the Superior General of the Fraternity, last February: “The supreme law is the salvation of souls. »
It is necessary for them to “consecrate” bishops who will consecrate priests whose priority priestly function will be, by celebrating “the holy sacrifice of the Mass”, to save as many souls as possible, to help them reach heaven.
Take away from hell
In March, he confirmed: “The fundamental principle is the salvation of our souls; this is why we are on earth. If God gives us sixty, seventy, or a hundred years here on earth, it is to save our souls. » “The Church (…) is there to lead souls to heaven, to tear them away from hell, to tear them away from sin. »
In the Declaration of Catholic Faith of the same superior general, communicated to Pope Leo
This Christianity, religion of the antidote to sin, of a man guilty from birth, would claim to be the religion of a reparation satisfying a flouted divine love. The blood of Jesus and his “expiatory” and “propitiatory” sacrifice would be the counterweight.
Evolving with Pope Leo
Can we still consider today that saving one’s soul and preparing one’s eternal salvation, under the threat of sanctions, can be the primary motive of Christian revelation? In his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, “Magnificent humanity”, published on May 15, Leo XIV speaks of “the understanding of the truth, as a gift to be shared and not as a possession to be claimed”.
He adds that this “liberates the Church from the temptation to regret forms of presence based on power”. Then he specifies that “Saint John Paul II invited us to take a sincere look at the times when we gave in to “methods of intolerance and even violence in the service of truth”. » (25)
Citing the example of “the delay with which the Church and society condemned the scourge of slavery” Leo XIV expresses that: “This constitutes a clear example of the evolution of the Church’s understanding of the eternal truths of Revelation of which she is the guardian. » (176)
Further he expresses that: “The dignity that the Holy Spirit sculpts in each of us is also recognized in the capacity to reflect critically…” (233) These are two affirmations which can only aim at what is affirmed, with obstinacy and obsession, by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X: the only salvation of souls.
Understanding differently with Vatican II
Vatican II opened a way out of this restrictive, intransigent, integralist theology/soteriology. Humankind wonders with anguish, says Vatican II, not only about the ultimate destiny of souls but “about the ultimate destiny of things and of humanity”.
“It is in fact man who must be saved, human society which must be renewed. It is therefore man, man considered in his unity and totality, man, body and soul, heart and conscience, thought and will, which will constitute the axis of our entire presentation,” affirms the pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes on the Church in the world of this time (3,1-2).
For the Council, salvation concerns the world as a whole: “Christ’s work of redemption, which essentially concerns the salvation of men, also embraces the renewal of the entire temporal order”; “Also God himself wants, in Christ, to reassume the entire world, to make it a new creature, starting from this earth and giving it its fullness on the last day,” underlines Apostolicam actuositatem, the decree on the apostolate of the laity.
Molting with the Moulin de Vézelay
Our generation faces a crisis of growth and understanding of salvation. It is a question of leaving behind the changes of a religious childhood, of leaving behind the garments that have become too tight of the understanding of a salvation rigidified in anguished practices, in order to move on to a mature and adult understanding of the faith, of what man can become today: a “Magnifica humanitas”.
At the school of Vatican II, “it is up to the entire People of God (…) to scrutinize, discern and interpret the multiple languages of our time and to judge them in the light of the divine word, so that the revealed truth can be constantly better perceived, better understood and presented in a more appropriate form” (Gaudium et spes, 44-2).
The Mystic Mill, one of the most famous capitals of the Vézelay basilica, could be the emblematic figure of this passage, of this conversion (1): we are invited to pass, with the grains of wheat, from a salvation imposed by terror distilled from hell, to the harvest of a flour/salvation, enhancing the authentic hungers and Christic ends of man.
(1) At the Moulin school, Robert Pirault, Hélène Ramin. Franciscan Editions 2015.
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