Winona (1988-2005)

The Great Split of ’83

In April, 1983, nine of the eleven Society priests in what was then the Northeast American District, among them the District Superior, the District Bursar and the Seminary Rector, brought their increasing differences with the line fixed by Archbishop Lefebvre for the SSPX to the point of open conflict, forcing the Archbishop to dismiss them from the Society. The precipitating act was the refusal of one of the newly ordained priests of 1982 to report to St. Mary’s, Kansas, because only the “John XXIII Mass” – that is, the rite of Mass found in the 1962 Missal – was said there. His disobedience was endorsed by the Rector and seven other American SSPX priests.

The priests dismissed had formed a tight-knit clique that finally exploded into open revolution against the Archbishop and the SSPX. Their brilliant minds, administrative abilities and profound sense of liturgical decorum were ruined by (in the Archbishop’s words) “an extremist way of thinking and a tendency to schism in the domain of the liturgy, the papacy and the sacraments of the Reform” that conflicted with the broad, Catholic vision of Archbishop Lefebvre. They extended their opposition to almost everything done since the pontificate of St. Pius X, and rejected all confirmations, ordinations, annulments, and liturgical reforms done in accordance with Vatican II. After attempts at reconciliation, the Archbishop had no choice but to expel these priests from the Society before they poisoned its work in the United States. Lawsuits followed, as the rebellious priests tried to obtain control of the properties and assets of the SSPX in the United States.

The Split could have proved fatal for the Seminary. Most of the faculty had left and the Society was forced to take immediate action to save this house of formation that was so vital to the growth of the American districts. The Seminary’s priests now had to do double and triple duty in order to keep the mission circuits in existence. Also imperiled by the Split was the Seminary’s new church building, then only half-built and extremely vulnerable to weather damage. Litigation initiated by the nine priests halted construction for a time, and only the intervention of then Superior General Fr. Schmidberger allowed the structure to be winterized, thus saving this major investment from serious loss. Archbishop Lefebvre was able to “christen” the new church with its first major ordination ceremony in May of the following year. Even this joy, however, was tempered by ugly incidents. A sheriff hiding on Seminary property surprised the Archbishop with a court summons. A few days later, Fr. Williamson announced that three of the four newly ordained priests had joined “the nine” despite their promise of fidelity to the Society made less than two weeks before. The entry in the Seminary Diary reveals, “Some had expected that such a thing might happen, but it still was shocking.” This parting blow of the Split of ’83 was a bitter sting for seminarians and professors.

Englishman Fr. Richard Williamson, a convert from Anglicanism, had arrived at the Seminary the previous year and was named Rector in 1983. His first-rate intellect, keen insight into the modern world, absolute fearlessness in standing for Catholic principles and unflinching obedience to Eternal Rome and the Archbishop would be the hallmarks of his stewardship of the Seminary for the next twenty years. Frs. Goettler, Bourmaud and Delaplace arrived from Europe to fill the other vacated professorships. Representing three different nationalities – English, German and French – the new professors gave the Seminary the international character that it retains to this day. They were to form Catholic priests for the Catholic Church and not American priests for an “American SSPX.” One important aspect of the true Catholic spirit of the Seminary’s new professors was well expressed in a May 6, 1983 letter of then Superior General Fr. Schmidberger: “We are firmly convinced that the Church still continues and lives on today, even if the corn can hardly be seen for the weeds. Let us not forget that the Church is not going to be saved through our erecting ourselves into self-glorifying judges; rather we must imitate the love and patience of the crucified Savior by begging for Her resurrection as a gift of grace, and offer ourselves up in this sense.”

Looking back with a supernatural perspective on this troubled time, which almost ended the Society’s presence in the U.S., one sees the guiding hand of Providence at work. Archbishop Lefebvre was a model of fidelity and obedience to his superiors throughout his long career of service to the Church. In the end, however, he was snubbed and betrayed: first by his Congregation, the Holy Ghost Fathers, who made him step down as Superior General because he refused to follow the doctrinal deviations of Vatican II, and then by the Pope and bishops, who had set in motion the destruction of the Church and proceeded to persecute the Archbishop for trying to save Her. It only remained for the Archbishop to suffer a cross rarely granted even to the saints: betrayal by members of the very congregation he had founded. Yet he suffered all with admirable fortitude. “The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. Every one that beareth fruit, the Father will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit” (Jn. XV).

A New Bishop, A New Seminary

Bishop Williamson was soon exercising his episcopal powers. Archbishop Lefebvre had not been in the United States since April of 1986, and many seminarians were awaiting the conferral of Orders. On the 1st of October, the new Bishop tonsured seventeen seminarians and, on the 7th of October, conferred all four Minor Orders on these same seminarians. On Saturday, October 8, Bishop Williamson re-dedicated the Seminary building and put it under the protection of the Seminary’s patron, St. Thomas Aquinas. Addressing seminarians, clergy and faithful that day, Fr. Schmidberger said, “This building, we dare to say, is the most important in North America,” since it was the only one dedicated to the traditional formation of priests.

There had been a time when no one would have conceived of the crucial role the site would play in preserving the traditional Catholic priesthood. The 60,000 square-foot stone structure had been built in 1950-51 as the novitiate for the Dominican Order’s Central American Province and was named St. Peter Martyr Priory. It was closed in 1970 due to a lack of vocations. In 1969, its last year as a novitiate, a Louisiana native, Mr. Byron Bascle, entered as a postulant. He left the Dominicans in 1970 and returned to the closed-down St. Peter Martyr Priory. He was to act as the building’s caretaker for all but two and a half of the next 17 years while living in the adjacent building that is now referred to as “the convent” since it had originally housed Dominican Sisters. During that time, he saw the former priory open as a treatment center for juvenile delinquents (though later closed by the state of Minnesota for abuses), defended it from looters, endured its being picketed by neighbors protesting the United States government’s plans to use it as a Cuban refugee relocation center (the government dropped its plans), worked with investors who opened and soon closed it as a luxury chemical dependency rehabilitation center and saw Playboy Enterprises take an interest in purchasing it as a luxury resort.

Mr. Bascle’s own words, taken from a winter, 1987-88 VERBUM article, are illustrative of the difficulties he faced during the time he spent in the abandoned priory. “…I didn’t want to leave it because I knew within a day or so it would be vandalized even by the local people… But there was a period where, when I got up in the morning, I really didn’t have any more hope for anything different. I would go through the building and it was deteriorating more and more. I just wanted the thing to work, some kind of way, and nothing was happening. I was showing people the building and no one was buying it – they all agreed it was a beautiful place but that was as far as it went. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would ever open as a seminary again… It seems like all that time I thought wasted was worth it.”

Mr. Peter Sardegna, the former mission coordinator for St. Michael the Archangel Chapel in Farmingville, New York, closed down his construction contracting business in New York in the space of four weeks and moved to Winona to renovate the Society’s future Seminary. After having visited on different occasions at the request of then Fr. Williamson, Mr. Sardegna had decided to offer his services in its restoration: “… when I was talking to Father [Williamson] on the telephone from the hotel in Winona… I said to him, ‘I don’t know what your plans are for rebuilding the building, but what would you think if I came out here?’ Well, he gave me this big, ‘Oh, I’d be delighted, and it’s all yours!’” In the 1987-88 article, Mr. Sardegna described the work facing him and his crews: “…plaster is blistered, many of the parquet floors are buckled. A whole dumpster full of doors had to be thrown out. Many walls and ceilings have had to be broken open to fix pipes. That will probably have to be done even more when we get the new boilers hooked up and begin testing the steam lines in early to mid-December.…None of the main building had any insulation and we are putting in four inches of insulation and sheet rock on all the exterior walls which makes it necessary to move all the radiators out. We have put in over 400 double panes of glass and reinstalled and painted the window frames we found all over the building.” He did not mention fixing the leaking roof and repairing the resulting water damage, especially inside the main sacristy. Mr. Sardegna was to continue intensive work on the building until well into 1989 and has remained as a parishioner at the Seminary to this day.

Fruitful Years

For the next several years, the Seminary occupied itself with the continued formation of traditional priests. Numbers of seminarians remained fairly constant, hovering at roughly fifty by the end of each year. Seminarians continued to go on East Coast trips, and the first of several European trips took place in 1995. In the same way that the East Coast Trips were meant to deepen the seminarians’ understanding of American history, the European trips were meant to deepen their understanding of the history of the Catholic Church. Witnessing the civilizing and sanctifying influence of the Church evident in the monuments of Her glorious past would both foster a love for the Church in seminarians and help them see beyond the present crisis to hope in and work for Her future restoration.

The remoteness of Winona as compared with Ridgefield did not stop Bishop Williamson from supplementing the Seminary’s standard curriculum with choice guest speakers flown in from all parts of the country. Bishop Williamson set out to expose the modern world’s lies and perversions of the natural law; to teach seminarians how to distrust and despise (to paraphrase the Bishop) “the glitz and glitter; the artificial, plastic world with its sentimental slush.” The speakers regularly sacrificed the sacred cows of the modern world on the stone-cold altar of reality: feminism, rock music, television and the mass media, suburbia and modern universities all fell in their turn. Meanwhile, seminarians were exposed to the beauty of the true music and arts that pop culture has rejected. The Seminary farm, by exposing seminarians with real cows (they, too, were sacrificed), pigs and chickens, also brought home some hard lessons of reality: food does not come from McDonalds and the life of man on this earth is not to seek pleasure, but to work by the sweat of his brow.

The work of forming laymen continued as well. During its last full summer in Ridgefield (1987), the Seminary had offered, in addition to its complement of Ignatian retreats, an “experimental” seminar on papal encyclicals that focused on social questions. The seminar was prompted by requests from the faithful who, after making an Ignatian retreat, desired to learn more about Catholic doctrine. In June, 1989, its first full summer in Winona, the Seminary offered a second seminar entitled “Workshop on Modernism.” Since these initial sessions in the late ‘80s, the Seminary has consistently hosted weeks of study and formation for the faithful.

The Seminary welcomed back a familiar face in February of 2001. Fr. James Peek, a former professor in Ridgefield from 1985-1987, was recruited from Holy Cross Seminary in Australia to return to St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in order to teach Philosophy and Latin.

After the death of Archbishop Lefebvre on March 25, 1991, neither the Seminary nor the Society of St. Pius X changed the course charted by their founder. This was proof of the words he had often repeated, that his erection of the SSPX and its seminaries was not based on his personal preferences and opinions, but rather on unchanging Catholic doctrine. He had only passed on to the Society what he had received from the Church.

The Seminary’s promising track record continued to yield signs of a future abundantly blessed by the Sacred Heart. A larger incoming class and another four ordinations confirmed that the growth of recent years was more than a temporary swell of vocations. In fact, the following year produced even greater numbers, thanks in part to the first Vocations Retreat run by Fr. Joseph Pfeiffer. In the Fall of 2002, twenty-one entrants packed the house, forcing the four Society Brothers in the community to retreat to the adjacent convent for shelter.

In the fall of 1993, the Seminary received two new professors: Fr. Juan Iscara and Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity. Fr. Iscara assumed duties teaching Moral Theology and Church History. Fr. Urrutigoity became professor of Dogma, Latin and Sacred Music. Through Fr. Urrutigoity’s influence, the Seminary would soon begin to focus heavily on perfecting the Gregorian chant of the seminarians.

At the start of the 1995 academic year, the seminary received 22 new seminarians – the largest entering class since 1982. By June of 1996, the Seminary was preparing for its largest ordination ceremony ever, with nine men stepping forward to give their lives to God. Among the ordinands was Fr. John Fullerton – the present District Superior of the United States. At the summer’s close, seminarians returned to the Seminary to commence the year with a new professor. Fr. Kenneth Dean, Seminary professor since 1990, was being relieved after a six year term by Fr. James Doran (named Vice-Rector in 1998), who took up the classes of Metaphysics, Latin and Canon Law.

Another Trial

The 1996-97 academic year began smoothly, but as the second semester approached, there was a certain restlessness at the Seminary. Cliques had formed, and an ever-widening rift became perceptible, dividing seminarians in everything from the Liturgy to Gregorian Chant to recreational activities. The initial signs of the problem seemed insignificant, but underlying the minor differences in taste was an unhealthy “Medievalism” – the desire to “restore” the tried and true curriculum according to a romanticized “medieval model,” leaving behind what were termed the excesses and deviations brought about by the Counter-Reformation. Five months later, it was discovered that a break-away society was secretly being planned. The Society of St. John was to establish a religious life without the despised “deviations” (which were in fact the glories of the Church).

This return to an imagined Golden Age was, in fact, the construction of something completely new; the Middle Ages are past and its return is impossible. In trying to execute such a project in today’s world, it would be necessary to introduce novelties that never existed in the history of the Church, much less in the Middle Ages. This is precisely what the Modernists did at Vatican II. Every innovation was justified by the call of a return to the pristine purity of the ancient Church, while alongside there was the never avowed intention of avoiding the burdens that life according to the Church’s doctrine and laws, and our own statutes, impose upon us.

After a long build-up, Bishop Williamson dismissed from the Seminary the “talented but proud young Argentinian priest” (to quote the Bishop) who had spearheaded the plans for the new society. He had seen this happen before: a recently-ordained, intellectually brilliant priest using his skills in an effort to reshape the SSPX in his own image and finally, when frustrated in his plans, resorting to subversion and disobedience – taking others with him in his fall. Such as these would have to go their own ways, while the Seminary continued to hand on what it received from Archbishop Lefebvre.

As a consequence of this affair, the Seminary lost two priests and over 12 seminarians. Following these painful events, the Seminary was solemnly consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 6th, to give glory to His name and reaffirm that the Seminary is His domain.

The Humanities and Further Growth

In 1999, Bishop Williamson expanded the regular visits of literature and music professors into a formal preliminary year – a seventh year of formation that was offered to seminarians. As previously mentioned, the Bishop had been inviting speakers on the liberal arts – most notably, Dr. David Allen White, Professor of Literature at the United States Naval Academy. But as more and more young men were entering with heads full of math and science, without the proper understanding of human nature so necessary for a priest, the Bishop found a solution in this additional year. He knew that the study of the humanities was an unparalleled school of life and human nature. History, music and literature would help the Bishop “form more solid priests for the future work of sanctifying souls.” Fr. Brendan Dardis, a Benedictine priest who had decided to assist the Society in its apostolic labors, became a resident of the Seminary in the winter of 1999 and was soon put to work teaching Latin to the Humanities seminarians.

Change of Command

The Seminary was thriving and again there were whispers that it would either need to expand or relocate. A change of location was, in fact, pending – but not for the Seminary. In his June, 2003 Seminary Rector’s letter, Bishop Williamson wrote: “This is one of the last Seminary letters your servant will write, because this August he is being appointed to head up the Society’s Seminary in the Argentine, South America…” Priests and seminarians were saying good-bye to the Bishop who, in his 20 years as Rector, had taken such a firm hand in their formation and had led the Seminary through so many changes. Fr. Yves le Roux, a French priest ordained in 1990 by Bishop Williamson, was re-assigned from Québec in order to assume duties as the Seminary’s new Rector.

The 27 members of the incoming class of 2003-2004 broke all former records, making St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary the largest among the Society’s six seminaries. To make room for the newcomers, the Seminary was forced to fill the convent building to its maximum capacity and fill half of the empty rooms usually reserved for visiting priests. There were now 80 men at the Seminary, 68 of whom were seminarians. Among them were the first Benedictine monks entrusted to the Seminary from the monastery at Silver City, NM, for the purpose of forming them for the priesthood.

Conclusion

Hindsight clearly reveals the prudence, balance and foundation in unchanging Catholic doctrine of Archbishop Lefebvre’s vision. He alone had the courage to organize a worldwide body of priests in order to preserve the priesthood and the integral Catholic Faith in the face of almost universal opposition. If the Seminary finds herself in 2005 with a full house and forming good priests in the midst of an apostate world, it is because she has managed not to stray from the line set forth by her founder. The crises of ’83 and ’97 were caused by deviations to either side of this path. One priest saw himself as more traditional than the Archbishop, the other more open-minded. Both ended in rebellion and betrayal, the normal outcome of pursuing any extreme position. The middle course traced by the Archbishop is the clear reference for the Seminary’s past and future. There have been severe trials in the past, and there will be more crosses to come. As long as we remember that these are permitted by God for our sanctification, they will strengthen rather than harm the Seminary. May the Sacred Heart guide and protect St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in its work of carrying out its founder’s vision of forming true priests to follow the Eternal High Priest, Our Lord Jesus Christ.