Posted on 09/11/2004 6:35:23 AM PDT by Land of the Irish
www.RemnantNewspaper.com
Canadian Cardinal “Ups the Ante” Against Mel Gibson’s Chaplain:
Father Somerville Responds Again
August 18, 2004
Rev. Stephen F. Somerville
Queensville, Ontario
Dear Father Somerville,
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Trebuchet MS'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">I wish to acknowledge receipt of your letter of August 12 in which you respond to my letter of suspension of July 15. I notice that, in the meantime, the letter of suspension and prior correspondence have been published on www.RemnantNewspaper.com
The only manner in which you can persuade me to revoke the suspension is by fulfilling the following conditions and this without any kind of qualification:
1. You write all the priests who have been sent your letter endorsing the publication Priest Where is Thy Mass? Mass Where is Thy Priest? and recant your endorsation;
2. You sever all ties with the Society of St. Pius X;
3. You make a declaration of fidelity to Pope John Paul II and your Archbishop;
4. You affirm the authenticity of the teaching of Vatican II;
5. You affirm the validity of the Eucharist celebrated according to all the Canons approved by the Church.
The conditions 2 to 5 are to be fulfilled in writing and sent to my address by August 31. Condition 1 is to be fulfilled in writing to all the addressees by the same date. We wish to see the text of your message before it is sent.
I am sorry it has come to this; we have known each other for a long time. But my fidelity to the Catholic truth gives me no choice but to suspend you. To all your pettifogging arguments I answer with St. Augustine's chief reply to the self-righteously pure Donatist sect, Securus indicat orbis terrarum.
Wishing you all the best, I remain,
Sincerely yours,
Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic
Archbishop of Toronto
Father Somerville Responds
Most Reverend Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic Archbishop of Toronto
23 August 2004
Your Eminence,
I acknowledge hereby your letter of 18 August further to the matter of my suspension and presenting five conditions requiring my unqualified fulfillment.
It was not my intention to cause you annoyance by letting our correspondence appear on the Remnant newspaper’s website and pages. Even though that consequence might have been foreseen. The Editor, Mr. Michael Matt, took his steps as a responsible journalist, and I learned of the result – by a print-out copy from a friend – only on 8 August. I had seen a number of such publishings of written theological disagreements between a bishop and a priest and sometimes a canonist in recent issues of the traditional Catholic magazines.
Much as it is dismaying to see in print this lack of Catholic accord between some priests and the hierarchy, I cannot regret the fact that such cases, my own included, have become rather public because the disagreements are serious in my judgment, as, I hope, in yours too, they touch on the truths of the faith, and express in deliberate language some aspects of the crisis in the Church since the Second Vatican Council. Without careful argument in print by responsible persons and media organs, vital truths might remain hidden or confused, even for intelligent Catholic laity as well as clergy. I have learned a great deal in these last three years since my relatively sudden and deeply moving rediscovery of Catholic Tradition, starting in those five weeks I spent (August 2001) in Houston Texas doing parish-like work and reading many books. You may remember that after my November 28, 2003 meeting with your chancellor, Msgr. John Murphy, I supplied him with a list— for your perusal also – of some 46 books and pamphlets on Tradition and Church crisis that I had acquired and read. I have today many more such books resting on my library shelves.
To exemplify the danger to the Faith, I can hardly do better than point to the big three themes of the Conciliar Church: Religious Liberty, Collegiality and Ecumenism. People are now conditioned to take these three ideas for granted, to see them as progress, as "good things" for the Church. Of course the Vatican II theologians lauded them. But all three are in need of much caveat and criticism. All are novelties in the Church. All were treated severely by earlier Popes. And they show a striking correspondence to the three-fold motto of that cruelly destructive disaster, the French Revolution of the late 18th century, that is, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”
I will not further pursue the various theological arguments. But some have been illuminated in our more-than-two-sided correspondence. They might well have been left in the shade if we had been content with a face-to-face settling of our concerns. Your Eminence seems to have a reputation for dominating the conversation with an offending priest. This may have some merit. But forty years after Vatican II, we need a public debate over the consequences of that Council, with serious preparatory reading and study by all participants, and serious appraisal of the achievements of the Traditional Church.
You speak of “(your) fidelity to the Catholic truth” on the one hand, with sweeping bows to “fidelity to Pope John Paul”, “authenticity of the teaching of Vatican II”, “the validity (of the new approved ways) of the Eucharist” and on the other hand you dismiss my efforts to illustrate the Church crisis as “pettifogging arguments.” It seems that your approach does not advance “the love of the truth” (2 Thess 2: 10) but rather an unhelpful, stern control. Forgive me for this tentative criticism. Your five conditions for revoking the suspension seem to require a suspending of my hardly acquired understanding of current Church theologies, and certainly a straining of my Catholic conscience, difficult enough to attempt at leisure, but all the less manageable within the few days you grant me before 31 August.
I note that conditions 4 and 5 are the points demanded by the Vatican for the reconciliation of the traditional priests of the Society of St Pius X, conditions they have been unable in Catholic honesty to meet. The SSPX also lays down two conditions to open the discussion: the lifting of the 1988 excommunications of their bishops and the freedom for all priests to say at any time the traditional Mass as it was up to 1962. Do these violate the Catholic conscience of the Vatican authorities?
It is true, as you indicate, that the orbis terrarum Catholic majority accepts the new Catholic order of things. But not by informed judgment (securus judicat). Rather, by somnolent unawareness, because traditional Catholic magazines and books are banned from their churches and bookstores. Liberate that literature and you will see a surge in traditional Catholic numbers.
I lay down my pen for the time being. May the Lord who sent the twelve apostles now send us prophets and thinkers and saints to restore the Church, the shining Truth and the kingdom of Christ.
Respectfully in Him,
(Rev.) Stephen Somerville
Father Somerville Appeals to Rome Once More
His Eminence Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos Prefect - Congregation for the Clergy Vatican City
23 August 2004
Your Eminence,
The letter of August 10, accompanying this present letter is, as you will see, a copy of my formal letter of recourse for requesting the lifting of my suspension by my Ordinary, Cardinal Ambrozic. I send you this copy simply to be sure that my appeal is registered in your office. The original letter was mailed to Cardinal Ambrozic, my Ordinary, following his chancellor's instruction.
Cardinal Ambrozic has written again to me, in evident annoyance because the Editor of The Remnant chose to publish our correspondence on his website and in print (15 Aug. 04). The Cardinal’s five new conditions for revocation are much sterner, but I do not lose hope for eventual resolution of this conflict. I am enclosing copies of the full correspondence between us, for your fullest convenience and information, with apologies for the many pages.
While not admitting to any fault, I understand, Your Eminence, that my rights in the Church may have been unrecognized in that I have not been advised re: requesting revocation or modification of the decree (c. 1734§ 1), re: services of an advocate (c. 1723), or whether one would be provided.
In the Autumn of 2002, I had the honour of an invitation to be the Catholic priest chaplain of a well-known traditional Catholic, Mel Gibson, during the shooting of the film The Passion of The Christ in Rome. Every morning Mr. Gibson served my Mass and counted on this to obtain God's graces for himself and his actors before he went on the set to start work. The result has been a monumental film, breaking records all over the world, inspiring conversions, and reviving the precious Catholic devotion to the Passion. Yet a number of Catholic clergy had belittled this film from their universalist and modernist viewpoint, certainly not for the good of souls.
The traditional Catholic Mass is closer to the Passion in its frequent affirmations of the Body and Blood of Christ as genuine sacrifice offerings to God, unabashed by the modem pressure to see only a memorial of the Last Supper. We discern here a need to strengthen the place of the traditional Mass in the Church.
With prayers for your work in the Church, I am,
Respectfully yours in Domino
Rev. Stephen Somerville
Somerville must be a fan of Gabe Huck.
You put in very stark terms what this is all about for the SSPXers: it's about deafeating fellow Catholics.
The SSPX has already lost, it just doesn't realize it yet.
"Because if you do not accept the New Mass then you do not accept the Church that sanctions it."
The Church does not sanction it.
Eh?
That's right. I regard the Church as a supernatural entity that is 2000 years old, and has existence independently of the mortal men who occupy positions of authority at any given time.
Some mortal men have sanctioned the NO, that's all.
The NO and the rest of the Modernist Heresy will pass, but the Church will remain.
"it's about deafeating fellow Catholics."
No, it's about defeating those who seek to lead Catholics astray.
Like Pope John Paul II and 2500 bishops in every country of the world?
When do you plan to follow Somerville over the cliff? Surely there's an integrist chapel in Nippon-land somewhere.
You have a misunderstanding of the Church. The Church is part supernatural and part of this world, one foot in heaven and one foot here. We are a part of the Church in our complete wholeness body and soul. Christ began the lineage passed on to St Peter to Pope John Paul II. Faith in Christ compels to accept both His Church and this authority. If you say that the Church is just supernatural, that leaves you free to create the Church as you desire it to be.
I too have grave reservations about the misuse by secular Catholics of Vatican II. If anyone leaves the Church, I would prefer it to be these Catholics who are not Catholic at all rather than those of the Society who are attempting to follow traditional teachings. The secular Catholics would like nothing more than for people who think as you to leave the Church.
The SSPX is hanging on to the lex orandi of 2k years - the result is the unchanged lex credendi - something the modernist church authorities despise.
If SSPX is already lost, it is in very good company.
I am no SSPXer, but I do admire them for their preservation of the Holy Sacrifice and Catholic teachings, without them any reference at all to the teachings of the Perennial Magisterium would be burried in the land of modernist ambiguities.
You put in very stark terms what this is all about for the SSPXers: it's about deafeating fellow Catholics.
But the novus ordo has all but defeated fellow Catholics, if SSPX ever accepts the new mass, I think it would serve to show their defeat.
So, you try to have it both ways.
You "admire" the SSPX for preserving Catholic teachings, yet you remain in the Church headed by that horned modernist, John Paul II.
If the SSPX never accepts the Novus Ordo, it will always remain outside the walls, period.
My own opinion is that Fellay and Williamson and crowd better get the best deal they can while JPII is still alive.
There's no sympathy for them among the Curia, and the next Pope will not likely put up with the headaches they cause.
They are destined to become the next "Old Catholic" sect.
There is nothing authentic about the New Mass--it is a subversive liturgy at odds with the Catholic faith. While it is valid and licit--it is offensive and blaphemous as well. The problem is Rome--and ecclesiastics like this cardinal.
There is no call to be unified with novelty and error. There is one Catholic faith--and those who push for another faith are apostates, no matter how high up the ecclesiastical scale you go.
There is no sympathy for them because the sspx has thus far suceeded in preserving the faith that the novus ordo church has all but demolished.
As long as they preserve the faith and the Mass of the perennial magisterium rather than destroy it or change it, they have no fear of becoming the next "Old Catholic sect".
"I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel...But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that you have received, let him be accursed." St. Paul to the Galatians 1:6-9.
You are listening to a new Gospel. It is not the traditional Catholic faith. It cannot be--nor will it be. Not even an angel from Heaven, let alone a pope or a bishop, can change the faith nor substitute another faith for the traditional one by thrusting novelties upon the rest of us. Such men must be resisted.
"It's a tiny little universe they live in."
Just the opposite. We live in communion with the Catholic Church throughout the ages and all the popes and saints and councils that preceded the modernist Church. That is a much wider universe than you can possibly imagine. On the other hand, the Novus Ordo Church is actually getting smaller, not bigger--and it limits its vision to the present, almost completely ignoring its own past. This is why it has been almost wiped out entirely in Europe and is in obvious decline everywhere else. The rejection of Tradition has been a catastrophe of the first order--which the modernist Church even yet refuses to acknowledge.
Most Catholics may be oblivious to the SSPX--but Rome is not. For good reason. It knows the SSPX is the living embodiment of the ancient Church--as it believed and practiced the faith for two thousand years. It is therefore Catholic Tradition itself--standing four-square against modernist novelty. As such it is much feared and resented.
God bless Fr. Somerville for his defense of the Faith!!!
You have it exactly wrong. It is the New Mass which rejects the Council of Trent. If the new liturgy rejects Trent, then it rejects the teaching of the Catholic Church itself--which those who push the Novus Ordo obviously and blatantly do. Cardinal Ratzinger has made this very point at Fontgombault. The modern Church cannot have it both ways. It can't demand obedience and adherence to something that rejects a major Council of the Church while at the same time claiming dogmatic Councils are infallible. That is self-contradictory nonsense. If Trent was wrong--as modernists are claiming--then the Church loses any claim to truth.
He will have the upper hand because his conscience has been informed and it is clear. God's law precedes the laws of men. Not even the Pope can undo the faith. It is the traditional Catholic faith that precedes everything else. Somerville has it, most highly placed ecclesiastics do not, having been placed there precisely to screen-out traditional Catholicism everywhere.
This is the totally brain-dead attitude of the SSPX. And it has rubbed off on many traditionalists inside the Church as well. They go in to chancery offices with belligerence and anger, then scratch their heads, wondering why the bishop won't yield to their demands.
As long as they preserve the faith and the Mass of the perennial magisterium rather than destroy it or change it, they have no fear of becoming the next "Old Catholic sect".
You will become the next Old Catholic sect and fade into oblivion. You are not united to the Church through Peter, thus you are outside the Church. Period.
You're going to be up the creek in the next Papacy.
"The SSPX has already lost, it just doesn't realize it yet."
Saying something doesn't make it so. The SSPX is flourishing, having been mightily blessed by the Holy Spirit. It is the Novus Ordo Church that is bogged down in apostasy and corruption.
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