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Francis Pounds 'Rigid Priests': Time for SSPX to Regularize?
The Remnant ^ | February 11, 2017 | Michael Matt

Posted on 02/13/2017 4:49:48 AM PST by BlessedBeGod

ROME, February 9, 2017 (LifeSiteNews):

Pope Francis has stated that the rise of new religious institutes that attract numerous religious vocations “worries” him because they often promote “rigidity.” Francis denounced new traditional religious orders as “Pelagians,” who want a return to asceticism and penance...

“When they tell me that there is a congregation that draws so many vocations, I must confess that I worry,” he said during the closed-door meeting with 140 Superiors General of male religious orders and congregations that took place November 25. The transcript of the unscheduled Q&A was published this week by the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera .

Asked about how to fire the hearts of young people for the cause of the Gospel, the pope turned his focus to the training of “seminarians and future priests.” Francis said that in priests’ training the “logic of black and white” that “can lead to abstract casuistry” must be avoided. 

“Discernment, meanwhile, means moving forward through the gray of life according to the will of God. And the will of God is to be sought according to the true doctrine of the Gospel and not in the rigidity of an abstract doctrine,” he said. 

Asked what should be done about the plummeting number of vocations to the priesthood, the pope said that while the decline “worries me” he is also worried about the rise of new traditional religious orders.

“Some are, I might say, ‘restorationist’: they seem to offer security but instead give only rigidity,” he said. READ MORE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT : So, do you think this is a particularly good time for the SSPX to get “regularized” -- under a Pope who is “worried” about the “rigidity” (read: orthodoxy) of traditional Catholics' priestly formation?

Have you noticed something odd about all this? The Trad-leaning neo-Catholics have become the most outspoken proponents of SSPX regularization. Now why do you suppose that would be?  I confess to a certain bewilderment at their adamant claim that the SSPX will absolutely positively be in a position to fight much harder for Tradition and against the Revolution, once regularized by Pope Francis.

Really? Well, let's hope so.

"Besides," our trad-leaning neo-Catholics argue, "the SSPX can always go back to where they were, should the Vatican stab them in the back as it has stabbed the FFI and now the Knights of Malta."   But is that how it actually works in the real world?

When a Society of 600+ priests gets regularized—only to discover that some pretty hefty strings were attached, after all—do they really get to go waltzing merrily back to where they came from, as if the Church weren't hierarchical at all?  No harm no foul?  
Surely, some SSPX priests would do just that but, let's be honest, many would not, preferring instead to stay on and work from a less confrontational position. This is just human nature.

Isn't this precisely what happened back in 1988, by the way: some SSPX priests took the Vatican's deal, some didn't. And the two factions have been at loggerheads ever since. Well played, Vatican!


If things go similarly awry this time around, as critics of “regularization” argue they might, then hindsight will make it much easier for us all to see that the Vatican's intention all along was merely to divide and conquer its opposition. But, of course, by then this would be a moot point.

So, the SSPX is going to get up its high horse and really oppose Francis...right after he regularizes them? Really? That's what regularization does?  Is that why we have all those thousands of regularized traditionalist priests out there right now, thundering  away against the Francis Revolution where Communion for public adulterers is concerned---because once a priest is regularized it gets so much easier for him to oppose the folks that just regularized him?


Again, really?!

Archbishop Lefebvre didn't end up in "schism" because he was a bad boy who did something wrong. He ended up in "schism" by choice, because he refused to go along with the great apostasy being spearheaded by the Modernist Revolution in the Church, including all the way to the top of the Vatican.  That was many years ago.

Question: Have things somehow improved in the Vatican since then?

Is it time for the largest resistance movement of priests in the world today to come down out of mountains and sign on Pope Francis's dotted line? Perhaps. But perhaps not. And anyone who tells you he knows God’s inscrutable will on this, one way or the other, is either lying or delusional. Nobody knows, which is why Bishop Fellay has been so wise to wait and hold the holy ground of Tradition for which Archbishop Lefebvre fought and died.


The only thing we can do now is pray: Come Holy Ghost fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy divine love. Send forth Thy spirit and they shall be created and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

Let us pray. O God, Who by the light of the Holy Ghost didst instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by that same Holy Spirit, we may be truly wise, and ever to rejoice in Thy consolation. Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.



TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; Ministry/Outreach
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1 posted on 02/13/2017 4:49:48 AM PST by BlessedBeGod
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To: BlessedBeGod

It will never be a good time for the SSPX to be “regularized” until Rome converts.


2 posted on 02/13/2017 5:22:39 AM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: BlessedBeGod
Pope Francis has stated that the rise of new religious institutes that attract numerous religious vocations "worries" him because they often promote "rigidity."

Right. Better to go with the fading religious communities that attract very few religious vocations.

"By their fruits you shall know them." -- Matthew 7:16

3 posted on 02/13/2017 5:35:08 AM PST by Alberta's Child ("Yo, bartender -- Jobu needs a refill!")
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To: piusv

Amen! Theirs is not a suicide pact.


4 posted on 02/13/2017 5:35:52 AM PST by CatQuilt (Lover of cats =^..^= and quilts)
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To: BlessedBeGod

Not sure if I qualify as a “trad-leaning neoCatholic”, as I’m not leaning nor “neoCatholic”, we are fully and completely traditional.

But I am no longer eager for SSPX reconciliation until we get a different Pope. Some of my fellow FSSP parishioners are wondering whether we are in jeopardy ourselves.


5 posted on 02/13/2017 6:19:20 AM PST by Claud
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To: BlessedBeGod
Francis is so concerned with people defending the faith while referring to us as being "rigid."

It sounds like he is encouraging us to not walk on the one path that would lead us to the Lord.

6 posted on 02/13/2017 6:28:01 AM PST by Slyfox (Where's Reagan when we need him? Look in the mirror - the spirit of The Gipper lives within you.)
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To: Claud

Given how Francis continues to stack the electoral deck, I suspect the next man to sit in the Chair of Peter will be another Francis, perhaps even worse.


7 posted on 02/13/2017 6:52:02 AM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: piusv

Well then we have a bit of a problem!

For my part, I’ve decided I am not giving up the Latin Mass. Ever. The hierarchy can make of that what they will, depending on stupid they want to be. But that is our line in the sand.


8 posted on 02/13/2017 7:01:03 AM PST by Claud
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To: Claud

Houston, we’ve had a problem. ;-)


9 posted on 02/13/2017 7:06:23 AM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: piusv

No doubt. There’s a difference between working on correcting the problem though and going in the complete wrong direction.

Tell you what though...I’ve finally solidified my thinking now that the Novus Ordo needs to be gotten rid of, not just “fixed”. Completely and utterly abolished. And I’ll be making that case to whoever will listen.

Have a holy Septuagesima.


10 posted on 02/13/2017 7:17:09 AM PST by Claud
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To: BlessedBeGod

Communion for absolutely everyone—adulterers, gay couples, abortionists. Female priests.

I think Bergoglio is aiming for some kind of visible, concrete, corporate merger with at least some mainline Protestant sect by October. A kind of demonic, inverted parody of the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart. He wants to do to the SSPX what he did to the FFI.


11 posted on 02/13/2017 7:55:52 AM PST by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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To: Claud

Benedict already clarified: It CANNOT be abrogated. That’s why it never was abrogated.


12 posted on 02/13/2017 7:58:59 AM PST by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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To: Arthur McGowan

Arthur, you’re absolutely right. It just seems that liberals proceed on their own track heedless of how clarified the situation is.


13 posted on 02/13/2017 8:09:26 AM PST by Claud
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To: Claud

To you as well....:-)


14 posted on 02/13/2017 8:30:10 AM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: Claud

Thanks to Benedict’s clarification, no Pope can get away with pretending to abrogate the TLM. Paul actually knew he had no such authority.

Remember the “Agatha Christie Indult”? In the future, there will never be such a petition to the Pope, requesting that he not suppress the TLM. Any pretended abrogation will be universally ignored.


15 posted on 02/13/2017 9:34:00 AM PST by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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To: Claud; Arthur McGowan
But Benedict XVI also believed that both the so-called ordinary and extraordinary forms of the liturgy are the "same lex orandi of the Church" and therefore can not lead to division in the Church's rule of faith:

The Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI is the ordinary expression of the lex orandi (rule of prayer) of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite. The Roman Missal promulgated by Saint Pius V and revised by Blessed John XXIII is nonetheless to be considered an extraordinary expression of the same lex orandi of the Church and duly honoured for its venerable and ancient usage. These two expressions of the Church’s lex orandi will in no way lead to a division in the Church’s lex credendi (rule of faith); for they are two usages of the one Roman rite.

He was joking, right?

16 posted on 02/13/2017 1:02:10 PM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: piusv

He was going as far as he dared.

He was much harsher about the NO elsewhere.


17 posted on 02/13/2017 1:21:57 PM PST by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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To: Arthur McGowan

Please share those comments.


18 posted on 02/13/2017 1:23:22 PM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: Arthur McGowan

I also see that he currently goes “as far as he dares” when it comes to Francis...

which is nowhere.


19 posted on 02/13/2017 1:24:58 PM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: piusv

In his books, like “Feast of Faith.” Famous comments. “On-the-spot product...”


20 posted on 02/13/2017 3:03:18 PM PST by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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