Posted on 05/02/2005 12:03:36 PM PDT by murphE
You definitely sound like a Protestant sola scriptura believer, holding your own personal interpretation of Scripture against the infallible Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
Although the mass contains great instruction for the faithful people, nevertheless, it has not seemed expedient to the Fathers, that it should be every where celebrated in the vulgar tongue. ... If any one saith ... that the mass ought to be celebrated in the vulgar tongue only ... let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Session XXII, Decree on the Sacrifice of the Mass)
No since you posted his letters in reverse order, he didn't backtrack at all. His position evolved from one of saying not to go to Communion at an SSPX Mass to one of saying that attending an SSPX mass fulfills one's obligations. That's a green light to attend Mass at an SSPX chapel if I ever saw one.
Sin of pride? This from a defender of a man-made revolution that attempted to destroy nearly two millennia of Church doctrine? What of the blind pride so ferociously evident in VAT II adherents who refuse to recognize a train wreck while sitting in steaming rubble at the station? You lefty "catholics" are really something...
"I just think you are caught up the the emotions of defending your position in the face of the overwhelming evidence in Acts that it is God's intent for us to hear his word and worship language.
You have excommunicated me in your own pride,"
Yadda, yadda, yadda. I'm not in the least bit emotional old chap - if you reject the plain teaching of the Church, that's your business and the consequences are entirely of your own making. All I can do is point out the consequences to you.
I have not excommunicated you even in the slightest - fortunately deacons lost their right to excommunicate about 1300 years ago. But its quite within your power to excommunicate yourself when you reject the teaching of the Church.
Your fate, your choice, good luck!
LOL. So it "evolved" but he didn't "backtrack at all". You sound just like a Modernist explaining the "evolution of dogma". Two contrary propositions cannot both be true - if one asserts one, he denies the other. That is a basic principle of logic.
Strange that Msgr. Perl went to great lengths to make it clear that his position HADN'T evolved:
Our letter of 27 September 2002, which was evidently cited in The Remnant and on various websites, was intended as a private communication dealing with the specific circumstances of the person who wrote to us. ...In a previous letter to the same correspondent we had already indicated the canonical status of the Society of St. Pius X which we will summarize briefly here.
1.) The priests of the Society of St. Pius X are validly ordained, but they are suspended from exercising their priestly functions. To the extent that they adhere to the schism of the late Archbishop Lefebvre, they are also excommunicated.
Msgr. Perl knows quite well that Masses of schismatics cannot be attended without a grave reason, as I cited St. Alphonsus before. CIC 844.4: "Whenever necessity requires or a genuine spiritual advantage commends it, and provided the danger of error or indifferentism is avoided, Christ's faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a catholic minister, may lawfully receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick from non-catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid."
That's a green light to attend Mass at an SSPX chapel if I ever saw one.
Remind me to stay out of your way at intersections. Perl wrote in that same letter: "We have already told you that we cannot recommend your attendance at such a Mass and have explained the reason why."
Except when it does.
This is my take. If one is in a diocese that has no induts, and no reverence in the Novus Ordo masses celebrated there, and if a Catholic in question suffers from the scandal of a poorly celebrated mass that it may very well lead them from refraining from taking communion, then I can see how going to a SSPX may be justified, AS LONG AS THAT CATHOLICS DOES NOT ADHERE TO THE SCHISM OF THE SSPX.
That said, if the same Catholics finds himself in a diocese that has a nearby indult, or even what Detroit and St Paul archdiocese have, reverent Novus Ordo masses that celebrate in Latin, Ad Orientem, using the rail for communion, then at least in my view point, there is far less, if any justification to go to a SSPX chapel.
Hmmm. I must have missed it:
To: Land of the Irish
I lived for several years in China. I was told by a priest in Hong Kong that there was no Sunday obligation in China, although one could attend mass at a CPA church in order to find a prayerful atmosphere. In Beijing of course there were proper masses for foreigners held at various embassies by Western priests. If I couldn't go to one of those, I would go to the CPA mass on Sunday but not communicate, in protest at their schism. I don't think the Vatican thinks the CPA is hunky-dory -- I think they just hope to conclude a diplomatic agreement whereby the Pope could appoint bishops, perhaps with some input by the Chinese government. The moderate tone of statements from the Vatican are in hopes of doing that before the schism becomes permanent and the CPA simply becomes another group of irrevocably separated Christian brethren, as the Church of England became with Queen Elizabeth I and the SSPX are in danger of becoming.
13 posted on 01/31/2004 10:25:39 AM MST by Unam Sanctam
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Again, because you posted the letters in a backwards fashion, I thought he backtracked.
As to his position evolving (yes, he's a modernist that the way they develop opinions), it doesn't make much difference to me because Pope Pius V gave us Quo Primum.
Yes - look at the posts from around that time, his post to Land of the Irish about a day later.
What does that mean? I have never known anyone who attends an SSPX chapel who enjoys being called a schismatic and referred to as outside the Church. I have never known anyone who enjoys driving over 100 miles each way to fulfill one's Sunday obligation. No One in the SSPX actually believes for a minute they are schismatic, so how does one who attends their Masses adhere to such a supposed schism?
If there was a backtracking, it would happen either way...
As to his position evolving (yes, he's a modernist that the way they develop opinions)
Ah, but there's no contradiction.
Q. If for a serious reason one has to assist at a Mass of the Fraternite Saint-Pie X (marriage, funeral, school feast...) should one abstain from Communion?A. Yes. For eucharistic Communion is also a communion with the Catholic Church (“The Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church”) from which these priests have separated themselves.
You see that attendance at the SSPX is allowed "for a serious reason", so long as one doesn't receive communion.
5. As the Motu Proprio declares in no. 5 c) the excommunication latae sententiae for schism regards those who "adhere formally" to the said schismatic movement. Even if the question of the exact import of the notion of "formal adherence to the schism" would be a matter for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it seems to this pontifical Council that such formal adherence would have to imply two complementary elements:a) one of internal nature, consisting in a free and informed agreement with the substance of the schism, in other words, in the choice made in such a way of the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre which puts such an option above obedience to the Pope (at the root of this attitude there will usually be positions contrary to the magisterium of the Church),
b) the other of an external character, consisting in the externalising of this option, the most manifest sign of which will be the exclusive participation in Lefebvrian "ecclesial" acts, without taking part in the acts of the Catholic Church (one is dealing however with a sign that is not univocal, since there is the possibility that a member of the faithful may take part in the liturgical functions of the followers of Lefebvre but without going along with their schismatic spirit).
6. In the case of the Lefebvrian deacons and priests there seems no doubt that their ministerial activity in the ambit of the schismatic movement is a more than evident sign of the fact that the two requirements mentioned above (n.5) are met, and thus that there is a formal adherence.
Why don't one of the two of you go ahead and post it? I don't believe you.
Do you agree with Unam Sanctam's statement that Rome hopes the Pope could appoint bishops, "perhaps with some input by the Chinese government."
If so, are you not concerned?
If so, are you not concerned?
Allowing the Chinese to make suggestions is harmless, and could be of great benefit if they repealed the laws against the Church in return.
Good defense. Did you train under the late, great, Johnnie Cochran?
Was God controlling 19 Arabs on 9/11? Your three premises apply to them as well.
Your conclusion doesn't follow, because it procedes from a false dichotomy in which anger v. pleasure are viewed as the only two possible reasons for God permitting such an evil to happen. There are also other reasons, which Augustine enumerates:
Now God is good, God is just, God is omnipotent -- none but a madman would doubt that he is so -- let the great sufferings, therefore, which infant children experience be accounted for by some reason compatible with justice.When older people suffer such trials, we are accustomed, certainly, to say, either that their worth is being proved, as in Job's case, or that their wickedness is being punished, as in Herod's; and from some examples, which it has pleased God to make perfectly clear, men are enabled to conjecture the nature of others which are more obscure; but this is in regard to persons of mature age. Tell me, therefore, what we must answer in regard to infant children; is it true that, although they suffer so great punishments, there are no sins in them deserving to be punished? for, of course, there is not in them at that age any righteousness requiring to be put to the proof. ... Morever, who knows what may be given to the little children by means of whose sufferings the parents have their obdurate hearts subdued, or their faith exercised, or their compassion proved? Who knows what good recompense God may, in the secret of his judgments, reserve for these little ones? For although they have done no righteous action, nevertheless, being free from any transgression of their own, they have suffered these trials. It is certainly not without reason that the Church exalts to the honourable rank of martyrs those children who were slain when Herod sought our Lord Jesus Christ to put Him to death. (Letter 166:16,18)
Of course, we should still firmly hold of the Lord that he is the One Who "make[s] good fortune and create[s] calamity" (Isaiah 45:7).
Note: It's surprising to see Augustine express such hopes for the infants. This is an interesting passage similar to the one in the CCC criticized by the SSPX as denying limbo.
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