Small analysis of Mgr Huonder's videos
Taken from
here.
This Sunday, June 4, 2023, Father Bruno [unfortunately, a priest belonging to the Fake Resistance but this was a good analysis so it is republished here -
The Catacombs] published an interesting analysis of the
interview recently published with Mgr. Huonder and
promoted by the SSPX; this gives additional light to the "Holy Oils" affair".
Mgr Huonder is a Swiss bishop German-speaking, who retired four ago years in a school of the Fraternity. The press release announcing it specified in which goal: « devote oneself to prayer and silence »; what seemed exclude the ministry. In reality, from the start, Archbishop Huonder has been entrusted with catechism, confessions, preaching for students. Subsequently, he visited different chapels, and at Pentecost 2021 he even celebrated a pontifical mass at the seminary of Zaitzkofen, Germany. It's in this same seminar as, Good Thursday last ( April 6 ), he again celebrated a pontifical mass, this time for the consecration of holy oils. This is a very important ceremony, since holy oils are the material of confirmation sacraments and of extreme anointing, and are used also for baptism and order.
For a bishop to consecrate validly the holy oils, he must be really bishop, that is to say that it was validly sacred, and first that it was ordered validly in as a priest. Or Mgr Huonder was ordained a priest in 1971 and a sacred bishop in 2007, therefore in both cases according to the new rite of ordination or coronation, which dates back to 1968. It seems that this new rite is valid in itself, But in practice he is doubtful. This is what Mgr Lefebvre said in a very solemn circumstance, June 30, 1988: the sacraments of conciliary bishops « are all doubtful »,
When it comes to something too vital than the sacraments ( which are the means by which Our Lord we communicates your supernatural life ), you can't stay in doubt. You have to be « tutorial », as say theologians, that is to say go to the safest, to have the certainty that a gives or that we receive valid sacraments. If Mgr Lefebvre founded his Fraternity, it is to preserve the Catholic priesthood, and at the same time the Catholic mass and Catholic sacraments. He crowned four bishops for the same purpose.
I come back to Mgr Huonder: there is a doubt about the validity of his priestly ordination and his coronation episcopal, which casts doubt on the validity of all confirmations and all the extreme functions which will be administered with the saints oils devoted last Thursday to Zaitzkofen. So it's a very serious event, which unfortunately did not make many waves; unfortunately, because the priests who disagree should have protest publicly. Their silence is an accomplice silence. We know however that some priests Germans refuse to use the holy oils consecrated by Mgr Huonder ( ce which is a sign that there is really a doubt ).
In the weeks that followed this ceremony, the Fraternity site has published three videos presented as a « testimony from Mgr Huonder », probably to reassure priests and the faithful about his maids provisions. We will see that it does not reassure much, but anyway we don't have to judge his intentions; the problem is objective: this Mgr Huonder is he really a bishop? the oils it consecrated two months ago in Germany are they really saints oils? children who are confirmed, do patients who are extremized with these oils really receive the confirmation or extreme anointing sacraments? - That said, even if we could have a certainty as to the validity of the coronation of Mgr Huonder ( to which case the superiors should have explained it, instead of asking for confidence that they no longer deserve, at least since April 15, 2012 ), even in this case we could wonder if it was appropriate to have such a ceremony celebrated by this bishop. This is where it is interesting to briefly analyze the three videos.
There are a few words strong enough about the crisis, for example when he says that the abolition of traditional rite is « an injustice, an abuse of power ». But there are many elements that show that it is far from adhering to the fight of faith that we want to wage in the wake of Mgr Lefebvre. Some examples:
- He is very kind to Benedict XVI. He is also mistaken when he claims that this pope has « raised the unjust excommunication of Mgr Lefebvre and the bishops of the Fraternity »: excommunication was not only unfair, but invalid; and Benedict XVI did not speak of Mgr Lefebvre ( ni de Mgr de Castro Mayer ).
- About Assisi, he employs expressions of « shock » and « loss of confidence », but it does not seem see that it is first and foremost a blasphemy against Notre-Lord.
- He recognizes that he wears a « new look » on what has happened in the Church in recent tens years old, but he makes no reference to his own very conciliary bishop's past, very ecumenist. It is for example at the origin of the dies judaïcus, the « day of Judaism », established in Switzerland in 2011 and then adopted by other countries. His videos are not a profession of faith like that of Mgr Lazo in 1998 or like the famous statement by Mgr Lefebvre in 1974. Monsignor clearly stated his « categorical refusal to accept the » reform.
- For Mgr Huonder, the position of Mgr Lefebvre on the Council is much more nuanced: it can be summed up in a letter from Monsignor where he accepted the Council « interpreted in the sense of the » Tradition. It is true that Monsignor had used this formula, but you have to remember the context: it was late 1978, just after the election of John Paul II, who had given birth to some hope after the fifteen years disastrous of Paul VI's pontificate. But Monsignor had quickly returned, and he had made much more severe judgments about Vatican II.
- I noticed in the videos several characteristic habits of rallies: Mgr Huonder cites the text of the Council on the liturgy to criticize the mass of Paul VI, while Paul VI is inseparably the Pope of the Council and the Pope of the new mass, and that the new mass is the mass of Council. He refers to the new code of canon law. He evokes « the priests who, for reasons of conscience, wanted to remain faithful to the liturgy traditional », which is not false but very incomplete, since it would be necessary say « for reasons of faith ». He insists on the right to mass traditional, which is very real but which is not essential: we refuse the new mass because it is bad, dangerous, poisoned. In a way General, Mgr Huonder insists more on the law than on the faith.
- One last very important point : he explains that in January 2015 Rome asked him to make the link with the Brotherhood [SSPX], in view of ... canonical recognition. We also know that he was involved in the « gift » from Pope Francis to the Brotherhood at the end of 2015: the jurisdiction for confessions. He also claims to have settled in a home of the Brotherhood with the blessing of Rome. And at the end of the third video, he frankly admits: « I fulfilled this mandate [ of Holy See ], and I'm still filling it out. » This is clear: Mgr Huonder works, even today, the integration of the Brotherhood into the conciliary Church, integration which can only lead to disintegration. We can fear than « the Huonder » case is not completed, and that other « bearings » are preparing.
Pray for the [SSPX], which is in greater and greater danger, and let us ask the Holy Spirit - even if the Pentecost octave is over - to give us lucidity and strength: the lucidity to see clearly, the strength to walk straight.