Posted on 01/25/2005 2:58:28 PM PST by csbyrnes84
Father Paul Sretenovic, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, who was ordained to the priesthood in 2002, has abandoned the Novus Ordo in order to embrace Catholic Tradition without compromise. Father Sretenovic (pronounced Stre-ten-o-vich) informed his ordinary, the Most Reverend John Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, of his decision in a letter mailed to his Excellency’s home address on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Wednesday, December 28, 2004:
“Your Excellency: I am writing to inform you of my decision to leave the Archdiocese of Newark. It is a decision that is eighteen months in the making, and it has finally come to a head. This archdiocese, while retaining some very good priests, is, like every other diocese in the Catholic Church today, plagued by the heresy of modernism in many different forms. I recently attended a Monday afternoon of Reflection at Southmont with the Opus Dei priests and listened as one of them said that we are not looking to return to Christendom. To me, that said it all. It is not just about the Latin Mass. It is something much, much deeper, and it is the basis of my decision. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, Quas Primas, said that Jesus Christ is not only the Lord of every individual, but also of every human society. The Syllabus of Errors of Blessed Pius IX, #77, in particular, exposes the error of separation of Church and State, a doctrine now upheld by the Vatican as the ideal, using both the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, which could very easily have been called the Declaration of Religious Liberty (reference to our Declaration of Independence intended), as well as individual decisions from the Vatican to accelerate such a separation in what were otherwise thoroughly Catholic countries, such as, among others, Colombia, 98% Catholic. The orientation of the Church is now very much in line with the principles of the French Revolution, namely liberty, fraternity, and equality. Hence, the mainstay catchwords from the Council—religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality. That is not a coincidence, and it is evil. The Liturgy is just one of the many lambs to be slaughtered along the way towards a Christian Democracy, which, to the dismay and shock of many in the Church, will lead directly to the worldwide takeover of Atheistic Communism, warned of indirectly by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, and communicated by Sr. Lucia to the Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh in 1946. Russia has still not been consecrated, and she continues to spread her errors until one day, it will be too late. In the meantime, I choose to exercise my priesthood in the way intended by Almighty God, teaching sound doctrine and leading the flock by holiness of life, as St. Paul exhorted St. Timothy in his pastoral epistle.
“In the situation in which I am now, and basically in any Novus Ordo parish anywhere in the world, let alone this particular Archdiocese, I always have to watch my back and I always, at each and every Mass that I offer, have to compromise. Whether it is in the bad wording or bland prayers of the Sacramentary, or in the distribution of Communion in the hand, or in the virtually mandatory use of Extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, there is always something there to remind me, as the song goes, and it stops now. I pray to God and to Our Blessed Mother that you obtain the grace necessary to perceive the gravity of the present situation and to act accordingly. I include my email address below for further correspondence. I know this is a shock, but for me, even the FSSP would be a compromise. Haven’t we all done enough of that?! As people were looking East this Advent season, Our Lady was leading me to, go West. In Christ the King, Fr. Paul Branko Sretenovic.”
In an e-mail to this writer sent on January 9, 2005, Father Sretenovic explained the sequence of events after this point:
“To give you the backdrop of my correspondence with the Archbishop, he said that parts of what I wrote, without specifying, were ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I responded through the Vicar General for the time-being that what I wrote was not ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I then asked the question as to whether the Archbishop would say that Cardinal Ratzinger was either of the two, specifying the terms, when he wrote that through the Council, the Church had ‘come to terms with the principles of 1789.’ I left it at that and will write the Archbishop directly within the week.”
Father Sretenovic had determined quite clearly that he could no longer make any further compromises with a Mass that did not give God the full honor and glory that are His due and a pastoral approach to the problems of the world that was premised upon a rejection of a defined teaching of the Catholic Church, the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, and an actual embrace of the errors of Modernity and Modernism.
Father Sretenovic did indeed head west, leaving Our Lady, Queen of Peace Church in Maywood, New Jersey, on Thursday, December 29, 2004, the Feast of Saint Thomas a Becket, to drive out to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California, joining Father Patrick J. Perez and Father Lawrence C. Smith in the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass and the totality of the Catholic Faith in all of its integrity to Catholics in one of the most liturgically revolutionary places in the whole Church, the Metropolitan Province of Los Angeles, California. Father Sretenovic distributed Holy Communion to the faithful at Our Lady Help of Christians on the Feast of the Holy Family on Sunday, January 9, 2005, saying, “I have never before felt like I did in my first Traditional giving of the Eucharist, or however you want to put it. It was awesome and I felt like a priest in a way that I haven't before. The formula is much better, not to mention the signing of the Cross, and the use of the paten for the Sacred Particles, AND the posture of the people with open mouths, heads tilted upwards like chicks eagerly welcoming their mother with the food that she is providing for them.” [He offered his first Traditional Latin Mass there on Sunday, January 16, 2005.]
Father Sretenovic, who was born on January 8, 1974, found his way to Our Lady Help of Christians within three months of meeting Father Perez at Father Nicholas Gruner’s Fatima conference in Glendale, California, at the end of September, 2004. Father Perez’s mother, Mrs. Margaret Perez, saw Father Sretenovic and told him that he had to meet her son, making sure that the two of them sat down for dinner after Father Perez’s talk at the conference. Father Sretenovic was impressed with Father Perez’s knowledge of the Faith and of the development of the Mass. Mr. John Vennari, the editor of Catholic Family News, also spoke to Father Sretenovic about the crisis in the Church and of the necessity of fleeing from the Novus Ordo structures. Seeds were being planted.
Father Sretenovic contacted this writer in early December of 2004, and a luncheon meeting was arranged in Wayne, New Jersey, following a First Friday Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel in Pequannock, New Jersey, on December 3, 2004. This writer and his wife, to put it charitably, pummeled Father Sretenovic, asking him bluntly as to how long he could continue to give out Communion in the hand and continue to offer a Mass that less fully communicates the truths of the Catholic Faith and does not render God the full honor and glory that are His due. Father Sretenovic listened, particularly to Mrs. Droleskey’s heartfelt plea to give Our Lord and His flock unfettered access to the fullness of the Catholic Faith. Father Sretenovic promised to contact Fathers Perez and Smith. He also wrote fairly immediately to Father Stephen P. Zigrang, whose association with the Society of Saint Pius X prompted the soon-to-be promoted Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, the Most Reverend Joseph Fiorenza, a protégé of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, to suspend him for an association with a “schismatic” group that, among other things, denied the “enduring validity of the Old Covenant God made with the people of Israel.”
Father Sretenovic carefully weighed his options, keeping in close contact with Father Lawrence C. Smith, who left the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, on September 8, 2003. Father Sretenovic also had contact with priests in the Society of Saint Pius X, determining ultimately that it would be best for him to be with Fathers Perez and Smith in California. Father was most intent on placing himself in a situation where the gaps in his preparation for priestly ordination could be closed and he could concentrate on his own personal sanctification while offering Catholics the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. He arrived at his decision after a great deal of reflection and a bit of indecision, coming to the conclusion in the final analysis that he needed to make a clean break from the diocesan structure sooner rather than later, understanding that the faithful have a right in perpetuity to the Traditional Latin Mass, which can never be subject justly to any limitations or conditions by any bishop, including the Pope himself. Father Smith was most instrumental in helping Father Sretenovic to come to this decision, saying that “it was his call that put me over the edge. Within 20 minutes after my conversation with him, I was writing my letter” to Archbishop Myers.
Father Sretenovic was not heedless of the fact that his own ordinary, Archbishop Myers, though not a traditionalist himself, has been sympathetic to priests desirous of offering the Traditional Latin Mass. Father Sretenovic also understood, however, that the embrace of Tradition, while it starts with the Mass, involves quite fundamentally an embrace of the totality of the Catholic Faith without any taint of corruption by the novelties and errors of the past forty to forty-seven years. Father Sretenovic also knows that ordinaries come and go, a point demonstrated quite graphically when Bishop John Myers of Peoria, Illinois, was elevated to the archbishopric of Newark. Although Bishop Myers had granted permission to Father Michael Driscoll, the pastor of Saint Mary’s Church in Rock Island, Illinois, to offer the Traditional Latin Mass on a daily basis, that permission was revoked by Myers’s successor, Bishop Michael Jenky, who demoted Father Driscoll to the post of an assistant hospital chaplain at Saint Francis Hospital in Peoria. Father Sretenovic, understanding, as eight cardinals noted in a finding sent to Pope John Paul II in 1986, the binding nature of the Traditional Latin Mass can never be abrogated, did not want to subject himself to the vagaries of episcopal arbitrariness. He realized that he needed the stability offered by the Traditional Latin Mass for his own sanctification–and that the people have the absolute right to safe harbor found therein.
The story of Father Paul Sretenovic continues, therefore, a remarkable display of courage on the part of diocesan priests who have been willing to forsake all of their canonical safety and human respect in order to embrace Tradition without compromise. Men such as Fathers Sretenovic and Zigrang and Smith were ordained after the implementation of the liturgical revolution had begun. Father Zigrang was ordained in 1977. Father Smith was ordained in 1997. Father Sretenovic was ordained in 2002. Although there have been priests (such as Father Stephen Somerville) who were ordained in the Traditional rite and have returned thereto, the embrace of Tradition by priests who are relatively young (in the case of Father Zigrang) or very young (in the case of Fathers Smith and Sretenovic) is particularly galling to the liturgical revolutionaries, men and women who brook no opposition and who protest with great vehemence the glories of the “liturgical renewal.” How can it be, they ask themselves, that men who have been immersed in their handiwork all of their lives can become counter-revolutionaries and reject all of their “enlightened” schemes and programs?
The revolutionaries can protest all they want. The plain fact of the matter is that there are a number of priests across the nation who may be following the examples of Fathers Zigrang, Smith and Sretenovic. More than a handful of priests are on the fence as this is being written. Some are waiting for Rome to come to their “rescue” by means of an Apostolic Administration. Some are afraid of what will happen to their sheep should they simply leave their diocesan assignments. Others are simply afraid to pray for the graces to muster up the courage to stop participating in sacrileges such as the distribution of Communion in the hand. From the vantage point of one who travels great distances across the nation to get his family to the daily offering of the Traditional Latin Mass, it is time for our shepherds to give us our due, the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, understanding that Our Lady will take care of their temporal needs and that the rectitude of their actions will be understood fully only on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead.
Indeed, the witness given by Fathers Zigrang, Smith and Sretenovic, as well as the witness given by the bishops and the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, to the necessity of proclaiming the fullness of the Catholic Faith without compromise and without any dilution serves as an inspiration to the sheep who are seeking safety and security in the midst of doctrinal and liturgical instability and turmoil within the diocesan structures. They are willing to be calumniated, even by fellow traditionalists who have anointed themselves to be in the august and pristine "mainstream," in order to bear a witness to the authentic Tradition of the Church without any compromise at all. No loss of human respect and no amount of name-calling or sloganeering will ever deter them from giving their sheep the fullness of the Catholic Faith.
At least some of the sheep will respond when their shepherds put themselves on the line to give them what is their due, namely, the Traditional Latin Mass. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, for example, have found their way to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California. Most of these people have never heard of The Remnant, Catholic Family News, or Christ or Chaos. They've never heard of Christ the King College and most of them probably think that GIRM Warfare has something to do with bacteriology. They're just Catholics who understand that the first law of the Church is the salvation of souls and that they do not have to sit idly by and be subjected to the rot of conciliar novelties in the context of what pretends to pass for the Church's liturgy and catechesis. These good souls are fed up with what is going on in their local dioceses and parishes and they simply want the fullness of the Catholic Faith to be made manifest to them during Holy Mass and in the life of their parish. The same is true of the fifteen families who have found their way from Saint Andrew's Church in Channelview, Texas, to Queen of Angels Church in Dickinson, Texas (and Saint Michael the Archangel Chapel in Spring, Texas), following after their inimitable pastor, Father Zigrang. The sheep want Christ and His truth to be made manifest to them without novelty or dilution. This is nothing other than one of their baptismal birthrights as Catholics.
Father Paul Sretenovic finds himself some 3,000 miles away from his parents, who are residents of New Jersey. He has gone this distance to serve sheep without compromise. He is in need of our prayers. More of his brother priests need to follow his example of humility and fidelity, to say nothing of his courage. As a son of Our Lady, Father Sretenovic has entrusted himself entirely to her Immaculate Heart. He knows that she will take good care of him as he acts in the person of her Divine Son as a sacerdos. Father Sretenovic delivered his first sermon at Our Lady Help of Christians on Sunday, January 16, 2004, stating that he had come to realize that the devil has essentially used the hierarchy of the Church to communicate the belief that one can eat from all of the trees in the "garden" today (Judaism, Islam, the New Age Movement, Wicca, Modernism) except the tree of Tradition, from which it is forbidden to eat. He said that the Novus Ordo Missae breeds lukewarmness, crediting Father Paul Kramer’s The Devil’s Final Battle and this writer’s G.I.R.M. Warfare with helping him to see how he was stuck in this lukewarmness himself. His sermon resonated with the 700 parishioners in attendance at the three Masses offered at Our Lady Help of Christians.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for Father Sretenovic. Pray for all traditionally-minded priests to follow his example of pure love for Tradition without fear of the canonical and/or temporal consequences. Pray for us sheep, that we might make the sacrifices necessary to help our shepherds feed us with the pure milk of Tradition.
I doubt the matter would be much different, as a Sacrament, that what used to be the norm for Protestant coverts - a conditional Sacrament. In their case, Baptism. In the former case, Holy Orders. Only on condition, only known to God, but based on some investigation. As mentioned, there most certainly is some dispute, regardless of such investigation. Some question the 'reform' sacraments, pretty much across the board, save for Baptism. If they were not previously ordained in this way, then now they would be.
The validity issues are all a big question mark for me. I don't know. I hear both sides of the argument and both make valid points.
My own preference in monarchs is Charles I (Stuart) of England who was beheaded by Cromwell and his power drunk criminal ruffians sometime around 1640 or 1650. His scaffold speech in defense of divine right monarchy exercised on behalf of the liberties of the most despised citizens as well as the least despised citizens is magnificent and might have made a monarchist out of you. His exit line directed at the revolting Roundheads was: "Never let it be laid to your charges, sirs, that I was the martyr of the people."
Of course, Charles I WAS required by law to be an Anglican and the head of that Church. Fat lot of good it did him in the presence of Cromwell's blade! The British monarchy reached its high point during his reign and that of his son Charles II. It has been downhill ever since. Charles II triumphantly returned to London after Cromwell's demise, chased Cromwell's spawn from power, had Oliver Cromwell exhumed and posthumously beheaded, hanged his head from a tripod outside the gates to the City of London, where it swung in the breeze for some years and then disappeared in a storm. Legend has it that the head was then recovered by royal agents and delivered to Charles, thoroughly cleaned up, covered with silver and turned into a drinking cup for the Stuart monarchs and that it is now in possession of Lizzie II. I hope the legend is true for, while I care little for Lizzie II (she is an awful liberal), I care a LOT less for the awful Cromwell.
Charles II also issued a proscription list of the 80 or 90 Cromwellian colonels who signed the death warrant requiring the murdering by headsman's axe of Charles I (they would say execution), promising a large sum of reward money for the head of each. If the head and its possessor were still alive so that His Majesty might have the personal pleasure of dealing with that individual murderer personally, the reward was doubled. They did not call Charles II "The Merry Monarch" for nothing. His mere memory makes me merry to this day.
Nonetheless, in the absence of Charles I or Charles II, I am overwhelmingly likely to prefer a democratic republic with a functioning bill of rights and certainly over anything imagined by Droleskey, et al. Life is less colorful in a democratic republic but it works for me and it sounds like a plan!
I also wonder about the effects of California. Maybe Barbara Boxer has spent too much time in Washington, DC, and needs time at home (like the rest of her life) to restore her mellow. Maybe Droleskey can run for the Senate on the SSPX ticket against DiFi. He can try and translate that monarchy idea into reality on a national scale. Maybe that is too much. He could run against Ahhhhnold on a platform of restoring the California Republic. No, that won't work as a monarchy. He could declare California independent and a monarchy under whom? Bishop Fellay! Give the peasants a few weeks to convert before the auto da fes begin just to show that Tom is a real sport. Potential converts can be sent through cyberspace to Tom's "university" online for their re-education camp experience. Unhappy campers will still be subject to a salutary execution as infidels.
Also: did you know that Tom has actually published in one of the fever swamp journals of schism like the Remnant or "Catholic" Family News that, though he has been a lifelong fan of the New York Mets (As a Yankee fan, I never, even momentarily, doubted this claim of Tom), Tom now believes that attending baseball games (and probably watching them on TV) is a grave hazard to one's moral health. You see it takes you away from non-stop pretentiousness or some such thing. Actually, I think he claims that baseball takes your mind off otherworldly things. Can you imagine what fun Tom must be at a barbeque or a beach party or at a wedding reception or at an inquisition or at any other normal social event?
Still, "the idea of reordination is controversial!" Well, as they say, ROFLMAO!
Wait, are you sure that Droleskey agrees? How about John Vennari? Do you really think that you guys ought to be talking about these arcane secrets of Marcellianism in public where people can smell the nut fudge?
Also, here are two guys in a foxhole at the end. One says to the other: You know, I always knew that the rest of the human race was really nuts and totally unreliable, that they were backstabbers and not to be trusted. Now there are just thee and me left and to tell you the truth, I am not really sure about thee!
See #184. Meant to ping you.
The misnamed "Dark Ages" were actually the Age of Faith and that is resented accordingly by Enlightenment devotees and malignant seculars to this very day. Those who are Catholic and those who love God as Reformed Christians should have no difficulty agreeing on the identification as Age of Faith particularly in the face of nonbelievers who would restrain belief and practice in either group.
Your tastes are offended. No one cares.
As to Sinkspur with whom I certainly have my disagreements, he submits to the authority of Rome and to the authority of his bishop which is more than the schismatics can say. His bishop is no favorite of mine but his bishop IS, well, his bishop. WHO is YOUR bishop? The duly constituted Roman Catholic diocesan ordinary in communion with Rome, that is and not some excommunicated pretender illicitly consecrated and who dares not even PRETEND to geographical jurisdiction.
When they want to be. Same with the bishop. There was apparently almost an uprising when it was rumored a midwest bishop would be appointed who was even Adoreman conservative. The priests and bishops of 'reform' don't obey the papacy so much as a Pope who promotes 'reform', who sees it their way.
If His Holiness is wrong or right, again, is almost irrelevant when it comes to this 'communion'. It has enabled 'reform'. And that is on him. But their standard is one which is decidedly unCatholic. This 'reform' is from the top or the middle, the bishops. It began with the Rhine group as described by Amerio. If you'd care to discuss specifics of just - what Catholics believe - you might recognise your true opinion.
It was, indeed, and was not even particularly dark in certain parts. It tended to be in Britain, and so Bede stands out, etc.
It was also an age of those who confessed a Faith, in the particulars, that is identical to those you apparently and routinely mock as 'schismatics'. Yet your distaste for genuine schism does not seem to be shared by His Holiness, who seems to have done everything he can to deny that the Greek Orthodox are schismatic, even to the point of casting doubt on whether The Church, or at least 'new church', this present institutional church, still recognizes the existence of the Eastern Catholic.
Right to the core of it. By no coincidence, the Rembert Weaklands of the world worship the same way...ME ME ME.
gbcdoj's facts kinda get in the way of your childish dreams, eh?
Recognizing that you are usually well-informed on the issues and more than reasonable, I'll take that "Dark Ages" remark as a flip (and rather cute) response.
As any student of REAL history knows, they were not "dark." The slander-fix was emplaced by people who also characterize Franco as some sort of Nazi knockoff.
Same bunch who insist on the factually inaccurate portrayal of the Galileo story, and that Pius XII was a closet-ally of Hitler.
The list is endless...
How did Augustine know about the Schismatic Society of Pius X?
"Americanism" is offensive to the Church insofar as the tendency is to "vote" on immutable issues (e.g., abortion.)
Further, it is offensive to the Church insofar as the tendency is to imagine that the Church's positions on certain immutable issues should be suppressed to promote some sort of quietude among Catholics and their neighbor Prots (e.g., artificial contraception.)
Not a co-incidence that the single most significant promoter of "Americanism" was the Archbishop of the Twin Cities--a position filled today by a liar.
Ms. Hertz also believes that the only time a Catholic married couple may copulate is when the wife is fertile.
She's just a little too far up the Blue Ridge mountains--her oxygen supply is lacking.
Be careful when quoting her...
Peter the "Great"? Henry VIII?
Ummmnnnhhh--monarchy has had a few mistakes. ENLIGHTENED monarchy would seem to be that which draws the favor of Thomas Aquinas etc.
You mean, gbcdoj's presentation of weak reiterations of Catholic social teaching get in the way of my dream of clear reiterations of Catholic doctrine regarding the same?
No, of course not.
That would be the argument advanced by the Schismatic Society of Pius X.
Catholics disagree.
Why do you waste all that time at the keyboard when you could repent and go Popish?
I thought you were a Catholic.
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