Posted on 05/13/2005 9:57:43 PM PDT by Canticle_of_Deborah
Fr. Eugene Heidt and Archbishop Levada
Excerpted from “Priest Where Is Thy Mass, Mass Where Is Thy Priest.”
Q: So obedience is not really an objection against saying the traditional Mass, when you consider that it’s not forbidden by the Church?
Fr. H: Correct. There is no question of disobedience involved here, no way.
Q: How did your convictions about the old Mass sit with the Chancery?
Fr. H: Things just got worse. A couple of years before, I had written a letter about what they called the “Stewardship Council.” That was a program that they used to raise money for the operation of the Archdiocese. I told the people in the parish that we couldn’t contribute to that. I black-balled the “Stewardship Council”!
Q: Why did you black-ball it?
Fr. H: Because of the immoral causes that they were promoting. I named some of them in the letter I wrote. But I have to go back a little bit to explain some of this. It all came to a head with this question of the money for the “Stewardship Council” – that’s what really got Archbishop Levada going. I remember coming home from meeting with him on one of those occasions. I said, “You know, that man isn’t Catholic. The Archbishop is not Catholic!” I was telling the whole parish this. No wonder he got so angry with me, in the end of it all!
When Archbishop Levada had first come to the Archdiocese, I was the first one to have an appointment with him after he was installed. I went in there for an hour and a half, and I poured out my heart to him, because I was told he was a good, traditional, orthodox bishop, and that he was going to straighten this Archdiocese out. So I really churned my heart out to him, and he just sat there. He was like an episcopal vacuum cleaner, sucking all this stuff up and listening to it. I told him about the homosexuality in the Church, and I said “I can name six or seven homosexual priests in the diocese. They call themselves the ‘altar society.’” He said, “You’ve come in here with a bunch of rumors, and I’m not going to listen to that.” I said, “Well, one day, somebody is going to have to pay!” But he wouldn’t listen.
Every time I went to see him, I’d go in and argue with him. I think there is only one pastoral letter he wrote, supposedly on the Mass and the Eucharist. I read the thing and I took it to his office, and I said, “Did you write this? Is this supposed to be a complete treatise on the Eucharist and the Mass? How did you manage to get through this whole thing without once mentioning Transubstantiation?” “Well, that’s such a long and difficult term anyway,” he said, “and we don’t use that term anymore.”
I said, “I don’t think that’s the correct estimate of that word. When I was in the first grade and our good little Benedictine Sister was preparing us for First Holy Communion, I can remember her putting that up on the board. She put ‘trans,’ and then she put a line. Then she put ‘substantiation,’ and then she went through and explained what each of those things meant. She was able to put it in terms we could understand, so that we knew that the Bread and the Wine are substantially different from what they were before the Consecration.” He just repeated “That’s such a confusing term!” So, I said, “Let’s go on to the next item.”
The “next item” was his having gone to Our Lady of Atonement Parish – that’s what they called a “Catholic-Lutheran joint parish,” where they have a priest on one end of the altar and a Lutheran minister on the other, and they go back and forth. I asked, “What did you do over there?” and he answered, “We concelebrated liturgy.” “What does that mean?” I asked, “Did you and the Lutheran minister say Mass together? What did you do?” He just wouldn’t discuss it any more.
And then, one night during all this “Stewardship” business, the Archbishop really got angry. He called me up, it was after hours, 5:05 pm! He was supposed to be on his way home, but he stopped and called me. He was SO livid, he could hardly talk on the phone. He said, “You be in my office at ten o’clock tomorrow morning before the diocesan consulters and the other bishops of the diocese. Plead your case there!” I said, “Well, all right, I will be glad to come in and do that, but I haven’t got any time to document all this.” He said, “That’s okay, just come on in and tell us what’s on your mind.”
So, I was in there probably an hour altogether, and those priests were lined up in a big horseshoe, you know, and I was at the table on the end by myself. I had my tape recorder, which I set up beside me, and, as I was trying to plug it in, I heard a voice up at the other end: “Hey, you can’t use a recorder in here!” I turned around, and it was the archbishop. I asked, “Why not?” He said, “We don’t record this kind of meeting.” And I said, “Oh, all right, but I’ll plug it in while I’m talking and unplug it while you’re talking, how’s that?” Then I set up a chair beside me, and one of the bishops, who used to be a very good friend of mine, asked what the chair was for. They were waiting for an attorney to come in, I suppose. I said “Well, that’s for my Guardian Angel.” And these priests looked at me like I was kind of crazy, you know.
At the end of my little speech, the Archbishop said, “Okay, I agree with you on everything except for the question of homosexuality in the Seminary. We took care of that a couple of weeks ago. Of course, you wouldn’t know about that meeting, but it’s already been taken care of.” But he sided with me on the rest of the other complaints that I had.
Afterwards, he got on my case, and he finally told me to take a sabbatical. He said, “You can take you sabbatical if you want, and you are free to write up a proposal of what you want to do.” I agreed, and I took a month to get my plan together and brought it back to him.
I told him that I wanted to spend five months or so studying the Council of Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II, and all of the papal encyclicals from the last two hundred years. But he said, “No, No, That’s non-productive. You will go to the University and take their ‘Credo’ course” (which was an updating in theology). But I said “No, No.” I said, like the boys said when it was time to go to Vietnam: “Hell no, I won’t go! No thanks.” So he said, “Then I’ll send you to a monastery for your sabbatical, and I will draw up a course of studies for you. You will have a private mentor.” I said, “No, I do not need a guru.” Finally, he told me to go ahead and do what I wanted.
I said then that I wanted to spend the last couple of weeks of my sabbatical in Fatima, to talk all this stuff over with our Blessed Lady, and then I would come back. And he agreed. Well, I never got to Fatima, but in the meantime this place came up for sale, and I knew I had been had by that time. When I went back to see him, after the sabbatical was over, he told me that, because I had said the Latin Mass in “excommunicated” chapels, mainly Portland and Veneta [Oregon], he could no longer use my services. So I said, “Okay. You do what you have to do. But you’re going to have to tie me up in chains to stop me from offering the Latin Mass.” He threatened to suspend me if I didn’t stop.
A month or so went by, and I got a letter from him telling me to get an attorney so that we could have a hearing in Portland. I thought it was over, and I decided that, no matter who I got, the result would be the same. In conscience, no Novus Ordo priest could defend me, and, if I got one of the Society of St. Pius X priests, they wouldn’t listen to him. So I wrote back to him and asked him to appoint an attorney for me. I sent this priest the whole case, and he read it and sent it back to me. He said to go back to the Archbishop and tell him that I was sorry and then submit and obey the Archbishop. And then, at the end of the letter, he said, “Besides, the traditional Latin Mass is a thing of the past, and within ten years it will be nothing more than a footnote in the history of the Church.” And so I get nowhere with that. The next thing I knew, the Archbishop sent me a letter of suspension. I never did have a hearing.
I moved up here in 1988, the very weekend that Archbishop Lefebvre ordained the four Bishops. Then, I asked Fr. Laisney if I could help him out in the chapels in Portland and Venata, and he said, “Welcome aboard!” And I have been doing it ever since.
Q: So you’re a renegade because you won’t give up the traditional idea of the priesthood and the Mass. How would you describe the new idea of the priest? What do they think the priest is, in those theological updating courses, for instance?
Fr. H: I don’t know because I never went.
Q: You never went to a seminar?
Fr. H: No, I stopped that right in the beginning. They used to have three-day seminars, once a year. I went to the first one, and I stayed the first morning. At mid-morning, we met with the Archbishop, and we could ask him any kind of questions that we wanted. Well, the Archbishop started out with one of the directives that came from Rome, and he said that the Masses of priests who use anything other than unleavened bread and sacramental wine are to be questioned. But the Archbishop himself was pooh-poohing the idea. So these priest go the idea that they could go ahead and use pita bread, cookie dough, whatever. You could go down to Safeway and get a jug of wine or even grape juice! It didn’t seem to make too much difference to him.
I poked the priest sitting to one side of me and said, “Hey did you hear what he just said?” He said yes. I poked the one on the other side (he was a classmate of mine), and I said, “Did you hear what he just said?” He said yes. I said, “Well, in my book that’s unacceptable!” and I got up and walked out the door and went home. And that’s the last one I attended. I don’t know what they say anymore about the priesthood, the sacraments, or whatever. I just don’t pay any attention to them.
That's funny. Of course no one could possibly believe that for one second, but on the off chance someone does then consider this: If Archbishop Levada is so clueless he can't manage the apostasy within his own diocese, how in the world is he qualified to control it across the globe?
after I point out how flimsy the anti-Levada material you have already posted really was,
Another funny one. I've read this entire thread and I didn't see anything of the sort.
Indeed, why isn't the thread discussed more?
There is repeated sarcasm as if whichever side mocks the most and the best wins. And, to think some call John Paul II their hero when they act like Young College Republicans or Democrats with all their erudite sarcasm, hardly like the late beloved Pope.
Both sides have scored some points in the part of the thread that qualifies as debate.
"Immortal soul."
Are you happy now?
When you've got nothing else play word games. Your side is so predictable.
If the linked sources (like the Cardinal Kung Foundation) are wrong I'd like to see why. I also note there have been no Levada defenders from within his diocese. They all live in other parts of the country. Those of us here in CA know the apostates well.
Do you believe that George Bush typically screens everything that's put up at whitehouse.gov? That the President of GM personally screens everything that goes up on GM's website? That Anrnold Schwarzenegger personally approves what goes on the state of California webistes? Sorry to disappoint, but CEO's typically don't spend much time on the website.
As I've said, in your quest to discredit the Pope and his new Prefect, any stick you find is good enough to hit them with.
Are their any critics who live in Levada's diocese? More to the point, are there any critics who go to a church that is a part of ANY diocese?
Levada is disliked by liberals, conservatives and trads in his diocese. I have never seen any supporters.
Levada knows exactly what goes on the diocesan website and in his parishes. He gets more than enough complaints from all sides which he deftly ignores. So do Mahony, Egan and the rest of Bernadin's boys.
Would St. Thomas approve of a priest yammering to the Congregation that the Bishop isn't Catholic? I'm sorry, I don't believe that for a minute. Oppose the Bishop to his face? I have no problem with that, I do have a big problem with how he handled himself with his parishoners in this regard.
The quote regarding this makes it seem like he's proud of the fact that he denounced the Bishop to his parishoners. I have no use for such a man.
I thought you might be interested in the words of St. Pius X, in Tribus Circiter, touching on such situations:
But their profession of fidelity to the Vicar of Christ is vain in those who, in fact, do not cease to violate the authority of their Bishops. For "by far the most august part of the Church consists of the Bishops, (as Our Predecessor Leo XIII of holy memory wrote in his letter of December 17, 1888, to the Archbishop), inasmuch as this part by divine right teaches and rules men; hence, whoever resists them or pertinaciously refuses obedience to them puts himself apart from the Church. . . On the other hand, to pass judgment upon or to rebuke the acts of Bishops does not at all belong to private individuals - that comes within the province only of those higher than they in authority and especially of the Sovereign Pontiff, for to him Christ entrusted the charge of feeding not only His lambs, but His sheep throughout the world. At most, it is allowed in matters of grave complaint to refer the whole case to the Roman Pontiff, and this with prudence and moderation as zeal for the common good requires, not clamorously or abusively, for in this way dissensions and hostilities are bred, or certainly increased."Idle and deceitful too is the exhortation of the priest Johannes Kowalski to his companions in error on behalf of peace, while he persists in his foolish talk and incitements to rebellion against legitimate pastors and in brazen violation of episcopal commands.
How do you know he knows what goes on the website BEFORE he gets a complaint? The "prayer" you complain about does not appear to be on the website? How do you know that he did not have it removed once it was brought to his attention?
You didn't answer my question. I think we'd be hearing about Levada's heresy and how he had given into modernist rationalism by denying the immortality of the soul, if he had used your words.
As for the doomsday predictions, I think time will prove them wrong, but we will wait and see.
I agree.
I see the hand of God in that. You may not.
Actually, I do see it. I agree with the best case scenario Siobhan has painted regarding this appointment.
I will follow him in obedience.
Me too. The only reason I posted the comments about "Despair" was so that folks here would discern the difference between temporal and eternal despair.
As far as the priest who made these comments, he will be seen as a hero by some traditionalists and orthodox Catholics, and as a disobedient crank by other traditionalists and orthodox Catholics. I simply don't give the benefit of the doubt to either this priest OR Levada. Those who condemn one but not the other, on either side, are making judgements from which they should refrain. And it is NOT the sin of despair to question the prudential judgement of picking this man to head the CDF. Good folks have a right to muse over this latter fact without be charged with the sin of despair.
You are painting with an awefully broad and cynical brush. You have read far more into my posts than is just.
You do well to question this account, especially since there is no link to the article posted on this thread.
The best interpretation of that action is poor judgment.
I sourced it to the book. You can read it for yourself before you make snide insinuations.
Indeed, although transubstantiation is the explanation given by the Church for the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord, Catholics believed in the Real Presence long before the scholastic theologians came up with transubstantiation, and the Eastern Orthodox believe in the Real Presence without necessarily believing in the transubstantiation. I do not believe that any pope has ever suggested that Eastern Orthodox sacraments are not valid, or that what the Eastern Orthodox believe about the Eucharist is heretical.
If you want to accuse Levada of heresy, I suggest finding and reading the letter he actually issued, and seeing if there is anything heretical in it.
And I'm sure you'll ferret it out and post it here for all to see.
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