Note : This Newsletter was first published on the Canada Fidèle website on 3 April 2018.

It has been more than a year since the first issue of this newsletter came out, a newsletter that simply intends to give a few updates regarding the groups served by Our Lady of Joy Mission.

By the grace of God, things have been going well, it seems to me, since the first issue in December 2016.

The Right Decision

Obviously, making the decision of leaving the Society of Saint Pius X was very serious. In spite of the very grave reasons which have determined some priests to make the step, and due perhaps in part to the fact that so many other priests appear to be comfortably sleeping as if all was well, one cannot help but wonder if one took the right decision in leaving one’s religious community. Time has gone by, and faced with a situation in the Society that grew worse by the day in these last years, we have no choice but to conclude that it was the right thing to do. As a matter of fact, when one speaks with most priests who have left, they consider their departure as a God-given grace.

Providence fails not to give us clear signs that this was the Will of God. A few weeks ago, for example, the young man who served as master of ceremonies in Montreal at the Mass of 17th April, 2016 (the day of the sermon that brought me “fire and fury” from my superiors), was married in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in front of the modernist priest from the local Novus Ordo parish. The SSPX priest looked on with astonishment and amazement, being there on the side as a flower pot and getting ready to celebrate Mass in front of the Novus Ordo priest, (astonished and amazed in turn). The marriage of two young traditionalists, but above all, the marriage of two Churches: Alice in Wonderland! Dear priest of the SSPX, tell me who your friends are, I will tell you who you are. Nothing very surprising here; these are the steps taken by pope Francis and accepted with infinite gratitude by Bishop Fellay. The principle having been accepted, practice will follow step by step, once men’s minds have grown used to it all. Nothing new under the sun. The revolutionary mechanisms are well-known by now. As always, only those who will openly oppose will survive. The others will grow used to the new compromise, which is a lack of love for God and His Church. Lack of love is always punished by blindness in the mind and lukewarmness in the heart.

As it is for all those who have lived within group any little closed on itself, to find oneself on the outside allows one reconsider things with greater pertinacity, and to judge things more acutely. In seeing us priests leave the Society, many treat us as if we had left the Church. In reality, we have left a religious congregation and we continue serving the Church wherever Divine Providence guides us. The Society of Saint Pius X is a means, and not an end, and if this means should grow corrupt and become an obstacle to the good of Tradition and of souls, we ought to be courageous enough to cut ourselves off from it. This is what we call Ignatian indifference: “I will use creatures only inasmuch as they guide me towards the last end which God has given me, and I will detach myself from them inasmuch as they become an obstacle to this end.” How many priests should put into practice what they preach in Spiritual Exercises!

In fact, quitting the SSPX puts us back in contact with the world that exists outside of its bosom, and allows us to open our eyes to reality: no, the Society is not the Church, and is not Tradition, contrarily to what we often hear from some of its members. It is a part of the Church, but the Lord’s flock is in these very days dispersed all over the earth, and we find all over souls of good will remaining faithful to God as best they can. Several voices are heard in what we call the Resistance calling to recreate a little world as closed-in and airtight as before. This could not be for the benefit of the souls of the faithful, and we pray Divine Providence to give to each, on the contrary, “a heart as measureless as the sand on the seashore”. (I Kings, 4,29)

A New Mission in Saint Catharines

In January of 2017, the faithful from St. Catharines, Ontario area, deprived of the regular visit of a priest uncompromised with the Conciliar Church, requested insistently that I visit them. Thus a new mission was opened, with a total of approximately thirty-five members, including three families. Obviously, it was impossible to visit this group except by plane. This group is visited every two months, but it is under threat of extinction, since the St. Catharines families are seriously considering moving to New Brunswick, close to Lakeville, so as to be closer to the Mass and to the sacraments. A first family will move in early May 2018, which will add ten new members to the Lakeville chapel; the two other families don’t have a date yet, but are thinking of doing the same thing. We leave it in God’s hands…

Our Association

We took the steps to become a registered association. Since we were considering purchasing buildings and creating something solid and durable, it was important for us to do things in good order. This is how, on the 1st of March, 2017, the Mission Notre-Dame-de-Joie Inc. / Our Lady of Joy Mission Inc. became a registered association under the New Brunswick Companies Act. This was the beginning of our legal existence.

But companies wishing become a registered charity must then send a request to the Canada Revenue Agency. This was done and, on the 1st of August, 2017, Our Lady of Joy Mission became a registered charity, able therefore to give Charity Tax Receipts and to benefit from tax-exempt status, both very helpful in allowing us to grow.

A Rectory

We were on the look for buildings that could help facilitate the Mission’s apostolate. Till then, I was living in an apartment building in downtown Dieppe, NB, fifteen minutes by car from the chapel: a situation that was not ideal in many respects.

A little house was purchased, close to the chapel. As the closing of the purchase was completed on 29th September 2017, the house was christened St Michael’s Rectory. The house is quite modest, but perfectly suitable for now. Some work has been done. All the insurance companies declined to cover any oil spills, as I am not the owner of the building, but rather considered as a tenant of Our Lady of Joy Mission. As a tenant is supposed to be careless, there would obviously be oil spills, and therefore this eventuality could not be insured. We decided therefore to change the heating system from an oil furnace to an electric. This wasn’t free, since we first had to change the electric panel to a new one that could provide enough electricity for an electric boiler; then we had to change the boiler and to add a hot water tank.

But in spite of the work, the fact of having purchased the house under the name of the association had many advantages, including the security given to the Faithful to have something left should anything unfortunate happen to their priest, as well as the exemption from preliminary purchase taxes and property taxes each year.

More work remains to be done at St Michael’s Rectory. I am hoping to be able to set up a little chapel there to facilitate prayer life. Despite the fact that the chapel is only 900 metres away from the rectory, the chapel is heated only for religious services for obvious financial reasons. It is not rare that the holy water be frozen at the entrance of the chapel, and this does not encourage personal prayer outside of religious services. Also, I would like to be able to make a library in the basement of the rectory to make my books available and facilitate intellectual work. As it was said to me by an old-time Traditionalist faithful, not lacking in wisdom, “solitude must be domesticated”. After two years, things have gotten easier; but is there anything better than prayer, intellectual and manual work, as well as the hours spent carefully preparing ministry to allow the survival of priests reduced to a life of solitude by the needs of our times?

Constant Growth

If we have a few difficulties at Our Lady of Joy Mission, these have been linked to the constant growth of our smaller Missions, and thus to the reality that the help of a second priest would be welcome to serve these faithful better and more regularly. Not a month goes by without new faces showing up somewhere or other, and the number of faithful served by Our Lady of Joy Mission is close to three hundred in the six provinces of Eastern Canada. For example, since the first issue of this newsletter, three families have joined us on Prince Edward Island: that is, a total of twenty-one newcomers for this mission of Prince Edward Island alone. Father Pinaud and I had the joy on 7th March 2018 of conferring conditional Baptism upon eight of them who had been baptised in various Protestant sects, after their profession of Faith, according to the Church’s practice in North America prior the Second Vatican Council. With another adult baptism in Montreal in February and two other faithful getting ready for the same in the coming months, eleven adult baptisms will soon have been given since the beginning of the year 2018.

Will the chapel be big enough?

I’ve often wondered why for the past two years the Lord did not allow us to buy the little church in Lakeville. In reality, I’ve begun to wonder if it will not end up being too small, and if it isn’t another building that we shall have to purchase. Indeed, it happens that the church be filled to three quarters, and this during winter, when families have difficulty travelling from afar, and not counting the three families willing to move from Ontario to New Brunswick…

It is true to buy this church in spite of its small size would allow us to cut down on expenses, and to possibly acquire small chapels for other the missions… We shall see. Divine Providence will not fail to make its will known.

A few words regarding the Missions of Quebec

The Missions in Quebec are stable. As noted before, we had the joy of baptising an adult in Montreal in February. Father Pinaud was good enough to visit, for the tenth time, the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Missions (name given to all groups in Quebec) from 15th February to 15th March. We thank him warmly for doing so. The situation in Quebec and Ontario is different from the Maritimes in the sense that the faithful of Quebec and Ontario are for the most part former parishioners of the Society of Saint Pius X who have a lot of good reasons to beware of the new direction taken by the Society since at least 2012. On the other hand, the faithful of the Maritimes are rather people who have been deprived of the constant presence of a priest, and who are asking above all for an authentic teaching of the Faith, the true Mass and the true Sacraments, although many of them are not without sharing the same concerns regarding the future of the Society.

Future Perspectives

On Sunday 15 October, 2017, all the groups served by Our Lady of Joy Missions in the Atlantic Provinces consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This consecration was prepared for by a novena of prayers to implore the help of Heaven. There is no doubt that this consecration will draw down Heaven’s blessings on each one of us. This consecration will be renewed each year, God willing.

We live in very uncertain times, and it is difficult to foresee what the future of the world and the Church (and consequently, of our small missions) hold. Whatever will happen, it is obvious that we must organise things as if the situation were to remain the same in the long run, and even get worse and worse by the day. It seems that Moncton (Lakeville) is meant to become a centre where families will gather to fight together the good battle of the Faith. Will we be able one day to establish a little school to gather our children and protect them from the public schools? God only knows, but we do not exclude this as a possibility.

My plan was to buy the church first, and only after that a rectory, but as stated above, it was not possible, for several reasons, to implement this plan, and we had to put an end to paying two rents as soon as possible, in order to stop throwing money out the windows. And so we decided to buy St Michael’s Rectory. We still have a debt of approximately $60 000 on it, and all donations are welcome. Once this debt is cleared, and a solution for the church in Moncton found, it is certain that we will have to seriously consider the possibility of finding small churches for the Missions of Halifax in Nova Scotia, and Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island.

Laus Deo

This year, the 3rd of June will be the feast of Corpus Christi. It will also be the second anniversary of my departure from the Society. On this occasion, we will have our usual Corpus Christi procession; we shall also celebrate First Holy Communions, and the families of the Maritimes and beyond who wish shall be able to gather in Lakeville, like the two previous years, for a small parish feast. The Mass of this day will be celebrated in thanksgiving for the divine protection granted to us over the the course of these last two years.

Fifth anniversary of Our Lady of Joy Mission

The 12th of September 2018 will be the 5th anniversary of Our Lady of Joy Mission in the Moncton area. I take advantage of this anniversary to recall a few memories: after one year (2012-2013) of monthly visits to the Maritime Provinces of Canada, (that is, visiting Miramichi, Halifax and Charlottetown), it was becoming obvious to me that the faithful of these areas needed further spiritual help. I asked Father Jürgen Wegner, then district superior of the SSPX in Canada, if we could rent a small flat in the Moncton area, since Moncton is at the centre of these three Missions. Father granted the necessary permission, upon the condition that the Missions manage to pay the rent and, on 12 September 2013, Our Lady of Joy Mission was born. I remember that during this month of September 2013, on my way from Quebec to Moncton and on my way back to Quebec, two small statues of Notre-Dame de Liesse (Our Lady of Joy in French) were given to me by people whom I did not know. I saw this at the time as a blessing from Our Lady. The sitting room, dining room and kitchen were used as a chapel, the bedroom was also used as a sacristy, and the lumber room was also a place where one could “saw away” one’s sins.

We continued coming once a month to the Maritimes, but instead of staying four days, the visiting priests would spend up to ten days in the Maritimes. This allowed a fast growth in the Missions, and, after one year, it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold everybody in the living room, dining room and kitchen of the flat for Sunday Masses. We had to start using the chapel of a funeral home for Sunday Masses. After a few months, the archbishop of Moncton contacted the owner of the funeral home and asked him to give us the boot. The owner was forced to comply so as not to get his business into trouble. This forced us to find something else, and we started to rent the present chapel in August 2015, this church being a former United Church building bought by a neighbour delighted to have us there. The faithful made kneelers and a confessional, added a shower to allow the priests to live there, and insulated the attic to save some money on heating. Thus, the Archbishop of Moncton actually helped us to improve our situation by means of his persecutions; the same thing has happened every time he did so since then. It will soon be three years that we are renting this small church. This year, a sacristy was added, though it still needs some extra work. The sacristy has been made from former kitchen cabinets, and will be easily transportable should we need to move it.

A Final Word

I would like to close this little newsletter by a few words of thanksgiving for the divine protection granted to us during the last two years. Praised be the Providence of God for having kept us in our Holy Faith, in spite of all the difficulties linked to the present situation of the Church. Work is not lacking, and we pray the Good Lord and Our Lady of Joy to continue watching over each one of us, for we need it so much.

Finally, Father Nicolas Pinaud is celebrating this year his twenty-fifth anniversary of priesthood. He has been for me a constant support during the two last years. I am very grateful that he always stayed in contact with me since June 2016, in spite of the distance that separates us and the abundant work he has in France; he is a true confrere. This shows that we do not need to be part of a religious community to behave as confreres should, as we sing in the response of the third nocturne of the Common of Several Martyrs (not that we want to play the martyr): “This is true brotherhood, impervious to all conflicts”. It is in trial that one comes to recognize his true friends.

May the Lord bless you all and keep you!

Serve ye the Lord with gladness! Ps. 99

Father Pierre Roy