(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Bernard Fellay of the traditional priestly Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) denounced the Vatican’s rejection of Mary’s titles of Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces as an “insult to God.”
Asked how the faithful should interpret the recently issued doctrinal note Mater Populi Fidelis, Bishop Fellay said in an interview with Kenya’s Immaculata TV, “I would dare to use the word ‘pitiful.’ It is an insult to God.”
“It’s only God who produces grace in us. But God wants his creatures to collaborate and cooperate in his work. Precisely because He made us free, He wants us to make use of that freedom. And more than that He wants us to merit, He wants us to work.”
“Our Lady at Fatima said there are so many souls who fall into hell because no one prays and makes sacrifices for them,” he continued. “Which means if you pray and make sacrifices you can really save souls. If that’s true for any souls, how much more for the Blessed Virgin Mary? She had been chosen by God to be His mother.”
Bishop Fellay pointed out that popes had used the terms Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix to refer to the Blessed Mother, and he believes “almost all” of the popes have spoken of her in terms of these roles, whether they used these particular terms or not.
He believes that ecumenism has inspired Mater Populi Fidelis, something he pointed out has permeated the Church hierarchy since the Second Vatican Council. The attitude that we must ignore the Blessed Mother is a Protestant one, he added. “There is a Protestant spirit in the Church.”
Bishop Fellay went on to encourage the faithful to ask the Blessed Mother for graces because, as she pointed out in her apparition inscribed on the Miraculous Medal, there are so many graces waiting to be bestowed that people don’t ask for.
Just before these remarks, the bishop had spoken about how Catholic faith in the world has diminished particularly during the 20th century. “The way to Heaven is tough. Our time has reached a higher intensity of evil than before. Temptations are greater than ever,” he said.
He noted that there has been a “terrible crisis in the Church since Vatican II at different levels.”
At one level, he noted, the faith has been diminished, as has the “presence of the Church in the world.” The influence of the church now will be reduced to nothing”
And within the Church itself, religious vocations have diminished as well. “You wonder how far it can go,” he added.
He alluded to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s book Salt of the Earth, which predicted that the Catholic Church would dwindle until it was reduced to “little islands.”
“I fear we are very close to that time,” Bishop Fellay remarked. “A lot of things in the Church have already been destroyed.”
He stressed that we cannot rely upon merely human solutions to the state of the world.
“What has made the saints, the glory of the Church before is precisely not human means … There are human problems, but the solution we bring and the Church brings is not purely human. It is essentially, fundamentally supernatural. It’s as our Lord said it. First you seek the kingdom, the justice of God, and the rest shall be given.”
