Posted on 05/13/2005 1:15:36 PM PDT by NYer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - For all its disagreements with the Roman Catholic Church - and the list is long - the Society of St. Pius X has always maintained its loyalty to the papacy.
Now, with the election of Pope Benedict XVI, the ultra-traditionalist priestly society - considered a breakaway group by the Vatican - sees "a gleam of hope" that the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council will be undone.
One Catholic scholar doubts that will happen, though - especially given that the last time the society dealt with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was trying to persuade its founder to accept those changes.
"To try to reconcile the traditionalists with the church would be an implicit rejection of Vatican II, and that's not going to happen," said William Dinges, associate professor of theology and religious studies at the Catholic University of America.
The Society of St. Pius X, founded in Switzerland in 1969 and first recognized by the Vatican in 1970, maintains its American headquarters in Kansas City. The movement, named for the pope who wrote against modernism in a 1907 encyclical, claims between 1 million and 2 million lay adherents worldwide, 20,000 to 30,000 in the United States.
The society's Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, welcomed Ratzinger's election in a statement issued April 19 from the society's international headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland.
The statement, which appears on the society's American and international Web sites, said Fellay "sees there a gleam of hope that we may find a way out of the profound crisis which is shaking the Catholic Church, of which some aspects have been spoken of by the former Head for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."
A subsequent statement reiterates the order's loyalty to Benedict.
A lay secretary in Kansas City, who asked that his name not be used because of the society's rules, said the society would have no comment beyond anything published on the society's Web sites and in its newsletters.
"He knows who we are, and we know who he is," the secretary said of Benedict.
The Society of St. Pius X's profession of loyalty to the pope sets it apart from most other traditionalist movements, who either consider the position vacant or have elected "popes" of their own.
A former society seminarian, David Allan Bawden, has claimed to be "Pope Michael I" since 1990 and maintains his "Vatican in Exile" in Delia, Kan., about 90 minutes west of Kansas City.
Still, even a cursory review of the Society of Saint Pius X's positions shows how deep the divide runs between it and the post-Vatican II church.
The order's late founder, French-born Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, publicly rejected the church's new Mass, which replaced the 16th-century Tridentine Mass in 1971.
The new Mass may be celebrated in any language, while the Tridentine rite is celebrated only in Latin.
There are other differences: In the Tridentine Mass, the priest faces the altar - away from worshippers - and communion is given only in the mouth, never in the hand. There are no lay readers or communion servers.
The Society of St. Pius also opposes the Vatican's efforts to reach out to Orthodox and Protestant Christians and other religions. One statement on its Web site defends the Inquisition, while another expresses support for capital punishment.
The Vatican banned the Tridentine rite from 1971 to 1984, although Lefebre's followers and other traditionalist groups continued to use it. In 1984, Pope John Paul II said the Tridentine rite could be used in special circumstances.
The Society of St. Pius X dismissed the Vatican's move as a ploy to undermine traditionalists. Still, more than three dozen of the society's priests and seminarians did leave in 1988 to reconcile with the Vatican and form the Fraternity of St. Peter, which emphasizes the Tridentine Mass.
Lefebvre was suspended by Pope Paul VI in 1976, along with his newly ordained priests, and excommunicated in 1988 after consecrating four bishops - also excommunicated, along with a Catholic bishop who supported Lefebvre - against Pope John Paul II's orders.
Several months earlier, the archbishop and Ratzinger signed a protocol that made reconciliation with the Vatican seem imminent, but Lefebvre rejected the accord over a clause that gave Vatican representatives the majority on a commission to settle differences in interpretation of Vatican II documents.
He and his followers' excommunication is considered the church's first major schism since the "Old Catholics" broke from the Vatican after its proclamation of the doctrine of papal infallibility in 1870. The society denies a schism exists, however, saying Lefebvre's disobedience was necessary to deal with a crisis in the church and did not constitute an outright rejection of the pope's authority.
The Society of St. Pius X also contends that as a cardinal, Benedict agreed in principle in 1988 that the order had the right to ordain priests and bishops for service to the larger church.
However, in a 1986 letter, Ratzinger insisted that Lefebvre accept the reforms of Vatican II, "the texts of which are magisterial and enjoy the highest doctrinal authority."
And there, Dinges said, lies the stumbling block for traditionalists.
"The society is intransigent on the liturgy issue and the (Vatican) council issue," he said. "Those are two - in my mind - insurmountable issues to any long-term reconciliation."
ON THE NET
U.S. site: http://www.sspx.org
International site: http://www.fsspx.org
Society's international news site: http://www.dici.org
If Angelus Press reprints old books, that is nice. It also prints the work of the currently living SSPX leaders, does it not? Hence it publishes schismatic and/or excommunicated authors.
Wanna deny that SSPXers also edit Angelus Books????? I did not think so.
Brush the foam off the beer and your entire point is that you, like SSPX adherents generally, deny reality or deny the authority and exercise of that authority by John Paul II to take out the schismatic and excommunicated SSPX trash. He did both in Ecclesia Dei. You know it. You now need to admit it and that will satisfactorily conclude this discussion. Whether you choose to return to the Roman Catholic Church from the dark precincts of the schism is entirely up to you and no real concern of mine.
No the Pope was engaging in errors and policies that were destroying huge parts of the Church and endangering millions of souls.
It is not a false premise. There are plenty of post conciliar quotes from the very people that were doing the damage, add that to the empirical evidence and the condition of the Church and "the smoke of Satan" was and is still billowing all over the place.
There was no schism. That was another bogus charge. Doesn't matter what a Pope says, error is error, lies are lies, injustice is injustice.
God have mercy on JPII and Paul VI for their participation in the attempted destruction of the Church.
I will no longer respond to you for I refuse to be an accessory by provocation.
Seems like when he "took out the SSPX trash" he tracked some Black Elk poo on his feet and now it's stinking up the Church. :)
Be careful. You probably should burn your mail. You know that you might have an SSPX adherent as your mailman.
It'd be a shame to lose all that mail labeled "resident" though.
I get it now! The neo knobs are in a fit because this thread has too much truth in it. So, they are trying to start a flame war and get it pulled.
I'll copy the whole thing for future reference and then I'm done with this.
!!! A little too much hostility there, maybe?
... from a heart overflowing with love We ask each and every one of them to correspond to the interior movements of grace, and to seek to withdraw from that state in which they cannot be sure of their salvation ... (Pius XII, Mystici Corporis)
Yeah, that's the problem, his testimony contradicts the decree (saying Mass happens to be one of the privileges of priestly ordination), and the statement of the Jesuit Vicar General:
I spoke with Fr. Vincent O'Keefe, former vicar general of the Society of Jesus who is now retired. According to Fr. O'Keefe, Malachi Martin was indeed dispensed from his vows of poverty and obedience but not the vow of chastity. At the time Martin requested such dispensation, the Vatican was not dispensing priests who so requested such dispensation from the vow of chastity or celibacy.
Anyone can say that Paul VI said anything to them. That's why his status is unclear.
You do realize how annoying it is to have you ask me to discuss a topic and then to receive nothing but non-substantiative taunts in reply, don't you? If you aren't interested in a two-way dialogue, don't ping me anymore.
Fine by me, please return the courtesy.
It is the Catholic church that has defected from the church and her teachings- not SSPX or any of the other 700 or so traditional church's in the US. All they want is to worship in a reverent way and not have the spirit of Ecumenism, folk masses, hand holding, swaying, 60,000 annulments a year, communion in the hand, tabernacles removed, kids dressed in shorts and flip flops, girls with midrifs showing, unconsecrated hands distributing our Lords body into unconsecrated hands and then to be sold on e-bay, standing instead of kneeling to receive our Lords body after his sacrifice was made with us worshipping God and not eachother, reading from scripture from the DR-bible and not the retranslated PC version new American......Did I leave anything out? Sounds like a new religion to me and maybe Archbishop Lefebvre was trying to save his soul, as others have done in past heresy's and did not defect with the church. Anyone remember some bad Popes we had, like maybe Pope Leo DeMedici who purchased the papacy and then had to sell indulgences to pay off the sistine chapel and caused Luther to go nuts?
Well you may have to put Pope John XXIII and Paul VI in with him when history looks back on the Catholic church in the 21st century
"Like other groups that have separated themselves from the Magisterium, the SSPX no longer resembles the vision of its founder."
The vision of its founder who said Novus Ordo is an abortion and Rome has a new religion was to turn things around. So far, things have got worse ... and will get worse so the traditional movement will continue to grow.
"The Catholic Church now stands at 1.1 billion and is growing in leaps and bounds."
Newchurch seems to brag a billion nominally. I fear this may include a lot of semi-pagan natives jumping up and down in the jungle. Do you count these as well as those who go to protestant churches and supermarkets instead on a Sunday? Remember Ratz said he wanted a smaller church, so your inflated statistic may be in for some pruning if his bite is lounder than his bark.
The SSPX are protestants who claim to be catholic. They are no different from the liberal wing of the church in their selective teachings. Both are cafeteria catholics.
The SSPX nor Angelus Press wrote "My Catholic Faith" (or many of the reprints they publish for that matter).
Thats a fallacy. Protestantism is denial of Catholic dogma (articles of Faith). The SSPX haven't denied any articles of Faith. Therefore, they cannot be Protestants. At least you haven't gone to the point bornacatholic did i.e.; making up words and being silly.
Leo X is portrayed worse than he really was.
Bump to save for later because of a breakfast conversation I had after mass this morning.
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