Posted on 01/25/2009 10:32:37 AM PST by Nachum
So what? He acted in a way that caused the Church to boot him out. Being allowed back in is a privilege, and the Church can and should require more than a murmurred (and almost certainly insincere) "my bad" on the technical doctrinal issues in question.
By letting him back in, the Church chose to associate themselves with him. One is known by what one chooses to associate oneself with.
See previous message for why this argument is in error.
To illustrate by analogy: Suppose a drunken lout keeps showing up at your restaurant. Getting drunk and rowdy is not in and of itself sufficient reason for you to keep him out -- but then one day he grab-asses one of your waitresses and that gets him banned. Do you let him back in if he promises only to keep his hands to himself, or do you demand that he behave himself in general?
A guy who regularly patronizes your restaurant has a serious problem with the IRS and is facing tax evasion charges. If he gets drunk one day and grabs one of your waitresses, he may very well face potential criminal charges for sexual assault, etc.
When he stands trial for tax evasion, I can assure you that the assault on your waitress will have absolutely no bearing on how his Federal tax case is adjudicated. The regular customer of yours who keeps his hands to himself will be no better off in tax court than the drunken lout . . . because the charges have nothing to do with each other even if they are strong indicators of the character of the person or people in question.
Your analogy fails because it involves two separate adjudicating authorities. Last time I looked, there weren’t two independent Popes making two independent sets of decisions for the Church.
If a person is a defendant in two different criminal trials, judges will go to great lengths to ensure that the facts of one case cannot even be brought up in the other case . . . so as to avoid having any of the facts from one trial serve as prejudicial information in the other.
There are times I am very happy and proud my ancestors became Protestant...
The point is, it branches him back into the apostolic sucession, and thus retrieves the people he ordained. He can still be punished by the pope for his other errors - before he could not. In fact, he has been instructed not to teach (I think).
You need to understand the apostolic sucession and how it works to understand the mechanics of this.
All that has been done is to lift his excommunication, effective this week. He remains suspended a divinis. which means he cannot confer any of the sacraments, establish new parishes, or employ any of the other powers of bishops. That remains true of all other SSPX bishops and priests - further talks are needed to fully regularize their position with the Church.
Williamson (and the other SSPX bishops) were excommunicated in the first place precisely for being ordained. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated these four bishops in June 1988 without any authorization by the Pope, and in so doing all involved automatically incurred late sententiae excommunication.
Because Lefebvre had the power to consecrate new bishops, Williams (alas) is technically a valid bishop, but he is not a licit one, because he was not authorized to become one by Rome.
As for his ideas on the Holocaust, they are ludicrous but not technically heresy and therefore don't affect his excommunication. But I dare say he will have to recant before he is regularized as part of any deal with the SSPX, assuming he is regularized at all.
Excellent answer - much better than mine.
FAIL
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