NOTE: The following is a letter from Fr. Martin Stepanich OFM about our recent difficulties here at St. Gertrude the Great. Fr. Martin was ordained before Vatican II and was one of the first priests in the U.S. to reject the changes.
Attention, Thomas Drolesky,
In recent e-mail messages to certain persons, you asked them to “let Father Martin know.” I was told that you wanted me to know what you had publicized on your Internet about the disturbed situation existing at the St. Gertrude the Great Church in West Chester, Ohio.
I already knew far more than enough about the situation at St. Gertrude’s and I cannot commend you for what you have been saying on your Internet. Very disedifying! Stories such as yours do not belong on the Internet.
Instead of publicly pronouncing judgment upon the priests of St. Gertrude’s, you would do well to take to heart the words of St. Francis of Assisi who wrote thus in his “Testament” to his friars: “The Lord gave me so great faith in priests who live according to the form of the Holy Roman Church, on account of their order, that if they should persecute me, I would wish to have recourse to them… I wish to fear, love and honor them and all others as my masters. And I do not wish to consider sin in them, because I discern the Son of God in them, and they are my masters.”
The desired solution for once again establishing the right Catholic order and unity and charity at St. Gertrude’s cannot be achieved through offensive and misleading messages spread around by way of your Internet or by protest tracts stuck onto windshields in S.G.G. parking lots.
Nor can the right solution be found in the creation of rebel Mass locations in secular buildings for breakaway S.G.G. parishioners who have abandoned their once greatly admired and loved home of the Eucharistic Lord, thanks, to a great extent, to the agitators who helped stir them up against their leaders. However much the rebels and breakaways may try to justify their rebellious action, the situation is very plainly a wide-open split of the S.G.G. parish. It is a glaring division separating still faithful S.G.G. parishioners from no longer faithful S.G.G. parishioners who, as a result, now have no respectable name with which to identify themselves.
The only real solution for restoring St. Gertrude’s to its former highly respected status is fervent and confident prayers to God to bring that restoration about. As it is, much prayer for that purpose has reportedly been underway for some time. But if we may suggest even more such prayer, we would recommend a program of daily Holy Hours made by S.G.G. parishioners, either individually or in groups. Let’s hope that this can be managed at St. Gertrude’s every single day.
Since Our Lady is the model of perfect prayer, there is one very suitable perfect prayer of hers that faithful S.G.G. parishioners should be glad to repeat every day. It is a prayer attributed to her in the incomparable Mystical City of God (volume Coronation, page 244), and reads as follows:
“I ask, O my Son, that Thou look upon the affliction of Thy Church and that, like a loving father, Thou hasten the relief of Thy children engendered by Thy Most Precious Blood.”
With prayers and blessing,
Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D.
November 30, 2009