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.
"Sounds like my Irish born former IRA member (when the IRA was ok) grandfather. Caught me reading a biography on the Tutor dynasty and he took it away from me and threw it against the wall! He told me (loudly) that I shouldn't bother reading about heretics and murderers. He then proceeded to sit me down in 'the parlour' and give me a two hour lecture on the Tutors and on Irish history."
I always find it fascinating and amusing seeing American versions of British history. A friend from Idaho thinks England is full of castles and estates and is awaiting a call to reclaim her heritage. Rather wickedly, I break her dream by saying she is in America because a distant relative was deported for sheep stealing!
"Ah, yes, the hatred for John Paul II that is always simmering below the surface among some of the posters here. I think the late pontiff is enjoying the beatific vision right now, after first having been embraced by the Mother whom he loved so well and to whom he dedicated the entirety of his priestly service to Christ's Church."
.... or breaking up rocks in God's celecstial quarry!
"I want to see P B-16 succeed beyond his wildest hopes and desires, and I think he's the type of man who can blot out the millions of popes in millions of bellies. I wish him only the best, and I'm not about to start second-guessing he who the Holy Spirit appointed. I've made up my mind, I'm not following any ragsheets on him. I can find out what I need to know via other sources. I'm not going to countenance propaganda."
Unlike his predecessor, the Pope has had a long history in Rome. His career did not start in 2005. All his pronouncements and writings are meant to be absorbed and it is legitimate for observers to extrapolate from them.
I think it takes me longer to understand things, but I don't think I'm being misled. No Pope would sanction a priest undermining his Bishop to the Congregation. No Pope.
I have no respect for this priest, he conducted himself shabbily, and because of that I'm not confident that he's telling the whole truth.
As I said, my Priest has had problems in our Diocese because he doesn't sit idly by and watch as Liturgical abuse takes place.
He was transferred from a large suburban parish, and placed in an innner-city one. It is my understanding that he was almost let go completely. He is intense, and maybe even he himself acted in a less than circumspect manner. Yet, many, many of his parishoners travel from that suburb to the inner-city to continue to be part of his parish. Because with all his faults, he absolutely loves and protects the Blessed Sacrament, and teaches us a combination of Faith, morals and history in his homilies.
He would never approach the matter as this priest did. He would never incite the parishoners against his Bishop. Fr. Heidt is self-puffed, and the kind of priest I would not want as my pastor.
Finally, though up front I admit that I'm not an expert on St. Pope Pius X, I can't imagine he would be pleased that a group who has broken away from the Church has taken his name to apply his imprimatur. I don't believe for one minute that he would sanction such a thing.
You're free to extrapolate to your heart's content. That's of absolutely no consequence to me. The piece of my post that you quote applies to me, to the way I plan to approach learning and discerning, there was nothing there advising that I'd like to impose that on someone else. What I lack in education I make up for in good instincts, and the knowledge that I don't have a lot of knowledge.
There are a few assumptions that you make that must be challenged.
The SSPX did not "break away" from the Church. Because the Pope says something like that does not make it true. And the Pope was wrong on this. He is not impeccable on these issues. If he said, I went to Hawaii for vacation in 2003 and I didn't. He is wrong.
By all means read as much as you can about Pope St. Pius X. And see if you think he would be happy with allowing bishops to do what they have done. I really don't think he would've waited for Archbishop Weakland to turn 75 and retire peacefully after he paid $400,000 of hush money to his gay lover.
There is no guarantee that the decisions of a Pope are going to be of benefit to the faithful and if they are positively damaging to the Faith (if say, a Pope decided to do away with Lent for no reason other than it interferes with the way Catholics interact in society on Fridays) then the Pope can and must be resisted.
I'm sure St. Pius X would have been pleased watching JPII kiss the Koran and the ring of the archbishop of Canterbury. Don't you?
"The Church has no right whatsoever to touch the institution and form
of the Sacraments." --St. Pius X
"Let not the priesthood be misled by the miracles of a false democracy
into the maze of modern ideas; let it not borrow from the rhetoric of the
worst enemies of the Church, the high-flown phrases, full of promises, which
are as high-sounding as unrealizable." --Pope Pius X (1903-1914 Our Apostolic Mandate 1910
For Catholics, nothing will remove the authority of the Second
Council of Nicaea, where it condemns those who dare, after the impious
fashion of heretics to deride ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties
of some kind or to endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the
legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church." --PopePius X Pascendi
This is like saying the Eastern Orthodox didn't break away from the Church. They just continued believing what they wanted to believe, with their own ecclessiastical structure completely independent from Rome, under the leadership of bishops all of whom had been excommunicated.
If the SSPX did not break away from the Church, name one SSPX chapel that recognizes the jurisdiction of the ordinary in whose diocese it is located.
in a Roman café
The NCR's John Allen has a chat in a Roman café with San Francisco Archbishop William Levada, who is distressed by "aggressive Pentecostal and evangelical movements making strong inroads into traditionally Catholic populations" in the U.S. Why do these people bother to go after Catholics?
"These are people acting out of their own sense of the missionary apostolate. They are not people touched by the vision of ecumenism. They are convinced that Catholics are going to Hell and need to be saved, so they reach out to them." Can you beat that? These folks really believe that there really is a Hell. They don't want their neighbors to go there -- they're not touched by the vision of ecumenism -- so they put themselves to considerable trouble to reach out to them to save them from damnation.
Now take look at any letter, homily, speech, interview or book produced by Levada or by the USCCB in the past 30 years, and try to come up with a single example of pastoral concern that someone, anyone, may end up in Hell as a consequence of any action whatever. You won't find it.
That leaves us with one group of Christians who believe in the literal possibility of damnation (a teaching they have unambiguously from Jesus) and are thereby spurred to missionary frenzy -- and another group of Christians whose most serious moral concern appears to be Gender-Exclusive Language. Guess which group succeeds in speaking to the minds and hearts of ordinary working people?
Levada also made the news in his local paper today:
The founding chairman of a panel formed by San Francisco's Roman Catholic Archdiocese to look into allegations of priestly child abuse has resigned from the board, accusing church leaders of "deception, manipulation and control' for refusing to release the investigation's results. James Jenkins, one of six members of the Independent Review Board and its chairman until last December, said Archbishop William Levada has blocked the release of the panel's findings on sexual-abuse allegations involving 40 priests. Perhaps the two stories are not unrelated. The truly shocking aspect of the clerical abuse scandal for most laymen was not the revelation of the sexual predation itself, but the drowsy indifference displayed by the bishops in response to it: no rending of garments, no indignation, no flame-thrower reforms. Remember Levada's reaction when Bishop Patrick Ziemann crashed and burned after his catamite went public?
The archbishop described himself as a lifelong friend of Ziemann's and said he joined "friends throughout California and beyond in thanking him for the energy and gifts he has shared far and wide. Our prayers and good wishes go with him." Detect any awareness of a soul at risk of damnation there? Neither do I. It sounds like one Rotarian congratulating another at a farewell luncheon. On the other hand, the odds are increasing that Ziemann, in his retirement, may run into a Pentecostal or evangelical who cares more for his eternal destiny than his comfort. There's hope.
All of the SSPX Mass centers recognize the local ordinary. The Problem is the local ordinary doesn't want to recognize the SSPX.
Except in Venona Italy where the SSPX provides the "Indult" Mass with the permission of the local ordinary. And in ST. Peter's Basilica where Bishop Fellay was allowed to offer the Mass in a side chapel during the Jubilee year.
meant to ping you.
What? The Bishop of Verona allows "schimatics" to say the diocesan indult mass?
And in ST. Peter's Basilica where Bishop Fellay was allowed to offer the Mass in a side chapel during the Jubilee year.
What? Bishop Fellay was allowed to say mass in Rome after he was "excommunicated?". How is this possible? And why would Bishop Fellay even have requested to say mass in Rome since he supposedly rejects the pope and Roman authority and all that?
"Do not allow yourselves to be deceived by the cunning statements of those who persistently claim to wish to be with the Church, to love the Church, to fight so that people do not leave Her... But judge them by their works. If they despise the shepherds of the Church and even the Pope, if they attempt all means of evading their authority in order to elude their directives and judgments..., then about which Church do these men mean to speak? Certainly not about that established on the foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20)." - St. Pius X, Allocution of May 10, 1909
"If one loves the Pope, one does not stop to ask the precise limits to which this duty of obedience extends… one does not seek to restrict the domain within which he can or should make his wishes felt; one does not oppose to the Pope’s authority that of others, however learned they may be, who differ from him. For however great their learning, they must be lacking in holiness, for there can be no holiness in dissension from the Pope. Yet there are priests – a considerable number of them – who submit the word of the Pope to their private judgement and who, with unheard-of audacity, make their obedience to the Roman Pontiff conditional upon such personal judgement." - St. Pius X, Allocution of 18 September, 1912
So are you claiming that Popes are irresistible?
If so, can you point to a doctrine that teaches this?
By the way, Where does it say a Pope develops doctrine?
Also, the Holy Spirit does not suspend a Pope's free will.
I suggest you read up on Paschal II.
And John XXII.
Both of those quotes can be applied to the current heirarchy. B16 is interested in wanting to be only known as the Bishop of Rome. This could be an indication of the mentality that Pius X warned of. Also his writings about the reduction of the Church was also condemned by Pius X when he referred to those that would want the Church to return to Poverty.
Don't think those law settlements weren't hoped for in order to bankrupt the Church.
I believe Levada's old diocese went bankrupt.
The post conciliar Popes have done a marvelous job evading the authority of their offices.
From Leo's prayer to St. Michael in the long form:
"These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered."
The Pope can govern over someone and command them to assist in leveling the Church? C'mon.
The Pope has Supreme Authority but not irresistible carte blanche. He's subject to the Magisterium of the Church himself.
Is the Pope capable of resisting the Holy Spirit?
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