@Carol HFr. Wall has been in Scotland for almost 7 years now and has created only divisions since his arrival. I went to visit him at the priory when he first arrived, taking with me a short list of housebound faithful who hadn't had a sacramental visit from a priest in nearly a year. I gave him names and addresses and he promised that these souls would be visited, adding that Our Lord mandated visiting the sick. However, many months past after that conversation and still no visit to the sick housebound, so I approached him again. He said he had lost the list I'd given him and asked if I could give it again, which I promptly did. More months past and still no visit to the sick housebound. I eventually had to contact his superiors in London and Menzingen to force the issue. One of the sick people on that list had thrombosis and was therefore a ticking time bomb. She could have died at any time without having received Extreme Unction because of Fr. Wall's sloth.
I should add here that a little over 2 years ago I was treated at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh for throat cancer. It's quite a brutal treatment in that it lowers the immune system, burns the skin, suppresses taste buds and saliva glands and makes food consumption very difficult due to internal swelling and bleeding in the throat. I'm pleased to say that the cancer is now gone and everything bar the saliva glands has returned to normal. The point is that I caught some kind of virus while undergoing my treatment, a virus that resulted in constant vomiting and diarrhoea. I was hospitalised for 5 days days in a quite serious state, unable to consume food or water for the duration. At no time during my illness did the priests in Scotland ask about my health or attempt to visit me in the hospital. I know for certain that previous SSPX priests would have, but not these priests. That's just to emphasise the point about the sick.
Anyway, back on track, Fr. Wall then attempted to suppress the Leonine prayers after Low Mass. When I asked why he was doing this he replied that the Church had never intended these prayers to be recited after public Masses, only private Masses. I demonstrated to him that his understanding of Church teaching in the matter was seriously flawed, but, again, it took complaints from other faithful and a few lines to superiors before he backed down.
Then I approached him about his refusal to recite the prayers of the Low Mass in audible voice for the faithful to follow in their missals. He deliberately whispered all the prayers of the Mass so that no one knew where he was at any given moment except when altar server responses gave them a clue. His response was a heterodox one. He claimed that the Low Mass is called "Low" because the Church intended it to be silent. I corrected him saying that the true Latin name for Low Mass is "Missa Lecta" (meaning spoken Mass) and the Church teaches that only the Canon is to be said in silence. It made absolutely no difference to him.
The next strange thing I noticed was that he stopped Stations of the Cross through Lent and also suppressed the annual blessing of St. Blaise. This was just before the COVID lockdowns. He then began to enforce sung Masses every Sunday in Glasgow. These were on average almost 2 hours long and included homilies of up to 40 minutes. Now, if you knew the church in Glasgow (St. Andrew's), it is absolutely perishing cold in winter, such is the poor heating system in place. It's also a place where parking is seriously restricted to one hour. Since my mother, and doubtless other elderly faithful, was on blood thinners, she was physically shaking with the cold every week in winter. I also have to say here that his sermons were never pious and rivetting, they were schoolteacher-type lectures, largely history lessons that did nothing for the soul.
On this point about sermons, he told me again that Trent allowed priests up to one hour to preach on Sundays. I checked that out and found that Trent actually said the opposite. Sermons were to be short and memorable. I also discovered that Sts. Francis of Assisi and Francis de Sales advocated short homilies for maximum supernatural effect. Indeed, the latter saint said "The tree that puts forth too much wood, bears no fruit." I put this to Fr. Wall and, once again, he shrugged and ignored it. It wasn't about sanctifying the faithful, it was about Fr. Wall demonstrating his intelligence to everyone.
Next thing we knew, he was splitting the small congregation between two Sunday Masses, one Low and one sung. The Low Mass was set at the earliest possible hour (8.30am), followed by the sung Mass at 10am. Needless to say that despite the hardship, the greater majority attended Low Mass. In essence, however, both Masses were celebrated in a half-empty church. It was ludicrous.
Fr. Wall eventually dumped Glasgow and moved himself over to the SSPX church in Edinburgh where he set up a camera and started streaming 2-hour sung Masses every week with up to 8 altar servers. It was all over the top for effect and those Masses are still streamed on Youtube. I really feel for the faithful in Edinburgh who have borne with this now for several years.
My sister and her family stopped attending Mass in Edinburgh a short time later. They had been attending Mass at that church for 30 years but could no longer stand Fr. Wall's methods. The final straw was when he declared that he would no longer hear Confessions before Mass since he considered that those rushing in to confess before Mass were ill-disposed to receive the Sacrament. People were told that Saturday would be the day for Confession henceforth. He didn't care about the fact that many of the faithful travelled great distances into Edinburgh every week just to get to Mass and that this declaration was going to make their lives a lot harder. It was also nigh-on impossible to park outside that Church on any day other than Sunday. He didn't care about that, he only cared about his performances for Youtube.
Anyway, matters came to head when he preached a sermon in Edinburgh on Trinity Sunday, 2022, which was a direct assault on Low Mass Catholicism.
Before going into this, I should point out that in Holy Week of that year both he and his curate, Fr. Reid Hennick had broken the strict rule imposed by Archbishop Lefebvre on all SSPX priests binding them to exclusive use of the 1962 missal. There was a very good reason for this since the Archbishop was aware of schismatic priests within the SSPX who rejected the legitimate authority of two Roman Pontiffs (Pius XII and John XXIII) to revise the liturgical books. Indeed, in 1983, the Archbishop expelled 9 schismatic priests in North America for precisely this illicit rebellion. All 9 went on to join sedevacantist sects and six went on to become illicit sedevacantist bishops. Archbishop Lefebvre was a saint and he saw the danger.
At any rate, Frs. Wall and Reid Hennick, his American convert curate, decided that there was more pomp and spleandour in the pre-1962 Holy Week ceremonies. They were the only two priests in the entire SSPX that year to break the rule of Archbishop Lefebvre and not a word was said to them.
Now, back to this Trinity Sunday homily that Fr. Wall preached and posted on Youtube for public consumption. He declared that 1950s Low Mass Catholicism was "tick box Catholicism". It was all rushed, according to him, so that the people could simply tick the Mass box and get on with enjoying their weekend. The message was that our parents and grandparents were superficial Catholics absent of liturgical depth, accommodated by Church authorities who approved Low Mass as a stepping stone to the Novus Ordo. His disdain for Low Mass was now dangerously out in the open.
In response to this outrage, I wrote a counter article which Patricia published on her blog. This was after private complaints to Fr. Wall and his superiors went unanswered. He was well informed in advance about the article and invited to comment on the blog as he saw fit. He ignored this as well.
Anyway, the gist of my article was to highlight that 1950s Low Mass Catholicism was a golden period for the Church and that, far from leading to the Novus Ordo, the Novus Ordo was introduced by the enmies of our Holy Religion to bring that golden period to an end.
You can ask parents or grandparents from that time what the Church was like and they will tell you how wonderfully the faith was practiced in those days. In Ireland, for example, Dublin came to a standstill at 12pm every day when the city Angelus bell sounded. Cars stopped in the street and the people got out and knelt to say the Angelus prayers. That's how greatly the faith was held and practiced in the 1950s.
Every city parish around the world in those days had at least 4 priests. There were numerous Sunday Masses in every parish with people queing down the street to enter the church for the next Mass. The seminaries were full, as were the houses of religious orders. The missions were thriving and Protestants were converting in vast numbers, especially Anglicans. In addition, the statue of the Blessed Virgin of Fatima was doing the rounds of the world and millions came out to greet her. National leaders joined with Church prelates in cities packed with the faithful as nations were publicly consecrated to Our Lady's immaculate heart. The miiracle of the doves was witnessed over and over again in various countires. Indeed, such was the heavenly manifestations at these Marian events that Pius XII declared "there are so many miracles that Our eyes cannot believe what they're seeing". This was the 1950s Catholicism that Fr. Wall was disdaining in his homily and I was not having it.
He was predictably furious about that article and decided that Patricia would be put out of the SSPX for daring to publish it. Because she is female and a senior citizen, he saw her as an easy target for revenge even though I was the one who challenged him. He obviously doesn't know Patricia as well as he thinks, but she went quietly because she didn't want to cause scandal to others by turning up at church for Mass and being forced to leave by the police.
I could say more but this comment is already getting way too long. Suffice it to say in conclusion that Fr. Wall's bitter zeal curate, Fr. Reid Hennick, was only too happy to assist in telling Patricia where to go.
This same Fr. Hennick, on Good Shepherd Sunday, 2023, declared from the the pulpit that all Novus Ordo priests are canonically unfit for ordination and that bishops who ordain them are guilty of mortal sin. He further added that Novus Ordo priests who learn the rubrics of the Latin Mass and celebrate it are "playing dress up". It was the clearest declaration of formal schism I have ever heard an SSPX priest make and yet not a single member of the faithful or any of his superiors were interested. They all remained silent while he effectively declared that outside the SSPX there is no salvation. It was this scandal together with the expulsion of Patricia and myself that confirmed to me that the SSPX is now now cult-like in its hierarchy.
I think the final count of family and others who left with us is around 20. The vast majority were unmoved by events, such is the ignorance of Church teaching and practice and the subservience to SSPX inculcated into the faithful. As Fr. Hennick so clearly described it in an email to Patricia "The contract between priests and failthful is transactional, which is to say, SSPX priests provide Mass and the Sacraments in return for obedience". This "obedience" he refers to is blind obedience, the very error that led to the conciliar dismantling of the Catholic Faith and which Archbishop Lefebvre described as contrary to the spirit of the Church. We are the free children of God in the Church, bound only by what is authoritively handed down and in line with Traditional teaching, not slaves to the whims of rogue clergy who present themselves as higher authorities than Our Lord.
It's a heartbreaking development and it demonstrates that the SSPX hierarchy is now imitating the methods of the very "pray, pay and obey" Modernists it was established to counter. This is cult-like, not Catholic.