Pope Meets With Head of Lefebvre Movement

Pope Benedict XVI met with the head of the ultraconservative movement founded by the excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on Monday amid a renewed push to bring the "schismatic" group back into Rome's fold.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the meeting between the pope and Monsignor Bernard Fellay, secretary general of the Society of St. Pius X, was held "in a climate of love for the church and a desire to arrive at perfect communion."

"While knowing the difficulties, the desire to proceed by degrees and in reasonable time was shown," Navarro-Valls said in a statement.

Lefebvre founded the Switzerland-based society in 1969, which opposed the liberalizing reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, particularly its call for Mass to be celebrated in local languages and not the traditional Latin.

He was excommunicated in 1988 after consecrating four bishops without Rome's consent. All four bishops, including Fellay, were also excommunicated.

Benedict, who also opposed what he considered excesses of Vatican II, had worked to head off the excommunication order, negotiating with the society to try to keep its members in the fold.

Just months before the excommunication order came down, Benedict, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, signed a protocol with Lefebvre that had indicated reconciliation of the society with Rome was imminent. Lefebvre later rejected the accord.

With Benedict now pope, some have speculated that there might be a new push to bring the society back under Rome's wing.

Fellay, for example, welcomed Benedict's April 19 election, saying there was a "gleam of hope" that the new pope might find a way out of the "profound crisis" in which the Catholic Church currently finds itself.

Fellay has said he would ask Benedict at the audience, which he requested, to rescind the excommunication order and also allow Catholics to celebrate Mass in Latin without having to ask permission first.

Monday's meeting took place at the pope's summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who heads a commission that was created after the 1988 excommunication to try to negotiate with the society, also attended, the Vatican statement said.

In a recent interview with the international Web site of the Society of St. Pius X, Fellay said a return to the Latin Mass would mark the start of a "change of atmosphere and spirit in the church," which he believes has been spoiled by the Vatican II reforms.

However, in his 1997 book "Salt of the Earth," Ratzinger said a return to the Latin Mass wouldn't resolve the church's problems, even though he supported its expanded use.

"I am of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it," he said.

"But a simple return to the old way would not, as I have said, be a solution. Our culture has changed so radically in the last 30 years that a liturgy celebrated exclusively in Latin would bring with it an experience of foreignness that many could not cope with," he said.

Some have pointed to the fact that several top cardinals celebrated traditional Masses and prayer services with young people taking part in the recent World Youth Day in Germany as evidence of the Vatican's continued outreach to Latin traditionalists.

However, another of Lefebvre's bishops, Bishop Richard Williamson, has warned against any reunion with Rome. In an Internet newsletter earlier this month that announced Monday's meeting, Williamson warned that the "resistance" movement would carry on without the society if it were to rejoin Rome.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, former editor of the Jesuit weekly magazine America, said the Vatican had "bent over backwards" in the past to try to reach out to the society, and that Benedict was likely to continue the policy since he helped form it as a cardinal.

"The problem is that these concessions have not been enough for the schismatics," Reese said in an e-mail. "They want the rest of the church to follow them in rejecting Vatican II, which they consider illegitimate."

The society claims about 450 priests, 180 seminarians and has a presence in 26 countries.

Williamson's entire explanation of then Cardinal Ratzinger's mindset based on "Milestone" and in the new Pope's own words is interesting and worth reading.

"Yet can Rome, even as represented by him, be trusted in the matter of the liturgy?

Alas, the answer must be no. Why?

Because while the Cardinal's heart may be open to the Tridentine Mass, his mind is blocked, and in a man of his calibre, the mind rules the heart. His sympathy with the old Mass is relatively superficial, his opposition to it is profound. All this is clear to see in the autobiographical memoirs for the first 50 years of his life, 1927-1957, which he published two years ago in a little book called "Milestones", available in the USA from Ignatius Press, San Francisco. The matter is of interest to all Catholics, because it shows how crippled is even the seeming best of today's Romans when it comes to defending the Faith. Despite their apparent benevolence they cannot defend what they no longer understand.

Josef Ratzinger was born of humble but devout parents in 1927 in a deeply Catholic part of the world, South Germany, close to the Austrian frontier. Youngest of three children in a tranquil home, he grew up with a natural love of God, Church, family and homeland which never left him. He describes how he was also indelibly marked in childhood by the Traditional (then normal) Catholic liturgy, because the great Church ceremonies of the different seasons of the year impressed deep in his soul the sense of the Catholic mysteries.

Here is why the Cardinal has so little sympathy for the so-called "spirit of Vatican II" in the name of which the Church's liturgy has been turned into a wasteland. Towards the end of "Milestones" are a few pages severely condemning the Novus Ordo Missal of 1969 as a "self-made", or artificial, liturgy, pages which Conservative Catholics love to quote and which many a Traditional Catholic could not have written better. No wonder the Cardinal seemed to receive Conservatives kindly in Rome last October! No wonder he might tempt Traditionalists out of their Traditional fortress!

Then where is the Cardinal's problem? Back to "Milestones". After his happy childhood overshadowed by the rise of Nazism and the wartime years marked by its collapse, in 1945 he entered near Munich the re-constituted Major Seminary to begin his studies for the priesthood, where he says (p.42), "We wanted not only to do theology in the narrower sense, but to listen to the voices of man today" - here for the Catholic reader a red light begins to wink! For nobody may mind any brave young man wishing to grapple with horrors which have just nearly engulfed his world - but what Catholic can conceive of his Church's eternal theology as being somehow too narrow to embrace modem man?

So the young Ratzinger plunges with enthusiasm into the study of modern philosophers. “By contrast, I had difficulties in penetrating the thought of Thomas Aquinas, whose crystal-clear logic seemed to me too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made". For, says Ratzinger, he and his fellow-seminarians were presented with "a rigid neo-scholastic thomism that was simply too far afield from my own questions... We, being young, were questioners above all" (p.44).

Now it is all very well pleading youth, but since when was the point of questions anything other than to find answers? Is searching better than finding? That is the modem mentality. Either Ratzinger's teachers did not appreciate the Catholic truth of St. Thomas, or Ratzinger did not appreciate his teachers, whichever it be or both, this young philosophy student is missing out on truth. His brilliant mind is pursuing something else - its own satisfaction upon its own (modern) terms? What will he do when he comes to theology? The crucial Chapter VI tells.

To begin theological studies in 1947, he asks to go not to the diocesan seminary, but instead to the Munich University Theological Faculty "to become more fully familiar with the intellectual debates of our time" (p.47), so as to become later a professional theologian. But, again, are modern (university) questions really more valuable than the Church's (seminary) answers? Does this student have a sense of truth? The star teacher at the Faculty, whose "liberalism restricted by dogma" deeply appealed by its modern-ancient balance to the young Ratzinger (p.52), was a certain Professor Maier, whose "liberal-historical method" in approaching Scripture "opened up dimensions of the text that were no longer perceived by the all-too-predetermined dogmatic reading" (p.52)! In other words, history's relativising had more to give to our young theologian than dogma's absolutes? His mind is at sea!

For he is thinking with the mind not of the Catholic Church but of these humanly brilliant German thinkers, about whom he says, "German arrogance perhaps also contributed a little to our belief that we knew what was what better than `those down there' (i.e. in Rome)" (p.58). Ratzinger and his teachers would submit to a decision of Rome, but basically they felt themselves superior. Chapter VI of "Milestones" abounds in quotations to illustrate the downfall of our pious young Bavarian - intellectual pride.

The pious heart is still there, but it is completely out-weighed and out-gunned for Ratzinger by the dazzling intellectualism of Germany's top modernists, all of whom he will meet and befriend when, after being ordained priest in 1951, he embarks in 1952 upon the academic career he has hoped for. For the next 25 years he is professing theology in Germany in one prestigious seminary or university after another. Let us take a look at how his mind is now working as he sets out to teach (p. 108, 109).

In 1953, to obtain his "Habilitation", or final qualification to profess theology, he describes how he prepared a thesis on the great medieval Doctor, St. Bonaventure. Here is Ratzinger's argument, in which he says he still believes (comments in brackets):

The word "revelation" can mean either the act of revealing or the content revealed [true]. Whereas we usually use the word to mean the content revealed [true], Bonaventure uses it to mean the act of revealing [maybe]. Therefore "revelation" means the act of revealing ["Therefore"? Who made Bonaventure dictator of meanings?]. But there is no act of revealing without someone to reveal to [true, but wait for it ...] . Therefore Church Revelation [act or content??] always includes as an essential element the Church being revealed to. Therefore Revelation, Scripture and Tradition [now Ratzinger has definitely slidden back from act to content!] are all incomplete without the Church or persons being revealed to. Therefore whatever of religion comes to us from God must be no ready-made and finalized product or content such as Catholicism was always supposed to be, but it must incorporate the in-put of us modern men. In brief, in the old days God told men what was in the Catholic religion, but that religion fell dead. Now man tells God what is in the Catholic religion, and religion is again living!

From 1953 to 1988 to 1998 we can see that Cardinal Ratzinger's thinking has not changed. In 1988, in the name of "living Tradition", he did his honest best to stop Archbishop Lefebvre from going into "schism" with his "dead Tradition". In 1998 he did his honest best to keep Conservative Catholics loyal to Rome by trust in a new liturgical reform movement which will of course actively involve living modern man, because without that living in-put the liturgy, like Revelation and Tradition, will be dead. But the excessively private Tridentine Mass is too fixed and ready-made to allow for any such in-put. Therefore the Cardinal's Rome can be trusted not to preserve the Tridentine Mass.

Yet all the while the Cardinal in his heart genuinely appreciates the incomparable sacredness and mystery of the old liturgy (pp. 18-20, 146-149). Alas, that liturgy never took a hold of his head, so it cannot govern his thinking or action. Unless or until he changes his thinking, i.e. doctrine, the Tridentine Mass is bound to remain for him a sentimental side-line. In other words, prior to the Council Josef Ratzinger was a ring-leader of Fiftiesists or Bing Crosby Catholics. Maybe his heart was "dreaming of a white Christmas", but his head was ready filled with the poison of man-centered Vatican II.

Your Eminence, if ideas did not matter, you might be a good Catholic, but since the virtue of faith is seated in the mind and not in the heart, then so long as your mind swings between Tradition and modernity you are, despite yourself, in your position as Guardian of the Faith, a terrible enemy of the Catholic Church.

We might wish to trust you, but we cannot."

Special report that has not been posted:

The Forum: Vatican-traditionalist talks have checkered history

special to CWNews.com

Rome, Aug. 29 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) meets today, August 29, with Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). The meeting is the latest step in a long, contentious relationship between the Holy See and the traditionalist group, which broke with Rome in 1988.

The disagreements between the Vatican and the SSPX can be traced back to the Second Vatican Council (1962- 1965). Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society, was sharply critical of Vatican II statements on ecumenism and religious liberty, and of the liturgical reforms that followed the Council.

In 1970, the French-born prelate founded the Society of St. Pius X, a priestly fraternity dedicated to the exclusive use of the Tridentine rite, which had been the universal form of the Latin Mass from the Council of Trent in the 16th centurty through Vatican II. The archbishop had ecclesiastical approval for establishing the SSPX. But then he took a further step without Vatican approval, founding his own seminary at Econe, Switzerland, to train priests for the Society. After a series of warnings from Rome, in 1976 he was suspended a divinis-- that is, stripped of his permission to minister the sacraments. Archbishop Lefebvre continued to lead the SSPX in defiance of that suspension.

In 1984, in an effort to reach out to traditionalists, Pope John Paul II (bio - news) authorized bishops to allow the celebration of Mass according to the Tridentine rite, and encouraged diocesan bishops to make a "wide and generous" use of this permission. Relations between Rome and Econe were set back by Archbishop Lefebvre's searing criticism of the inter-religious encounter that the John Paul II organized at Assisi in 1986. But hopes for a reconciliation soard in 1988 when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, negotiated a statement in which Archbishop Lefebvre promised fidelity to the Holy See and accepted the teachings of Vatican II and the validity of the Novus Ordo Mass.

When he agreed to that statement in May 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre appeared close to ending his dispute with Rome. But the traditionalist leader then announced that he was committed to ordaining a bishop to succeed him, from the ranks of the SSPX. Pope John Paul II personally wrote to Lefebvre, forbidding the step and warning that the unauthorized ordination of bishops would be a schismatic act. Nevertheless Archbishop Lefebvre remained defiant, consecrating 4 SSPX members (including Bishop Fellay) as bishops on June 30, 1988.

On July 2, 1988, Pope John Paul issue the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, declaring the SSPX leader guilty of schism and thus excommunicated, along with the bishops he had ordained. At the same time, Ecclesia Dei also established a commission to seek ways of satisfying the legitimate desires of Catholics who seek to preserve the Latin Mass. For the next 12 years there were sporadic exchanges between the Ecclesia Dei commission and the SSPX, but no concrete steps toward reconciliation. The next major movement came with the Jubilee Year 2000. In December 1999, Bishop Fellay met briefly with Pope John Paul. Later in the year, some 5,000 pilgrims of the SSPX visited Rome, and obtained permission to celebration the Tridentine Mass in the basilica of St. John Lateran. In a memorable display, the SSPX pilgrims walked in procession down the Via de la Conciliazione toward St. Peter's basilica, with Bishop Fellay declaring: "If the Pope calls me, I will go-- or rather I will run-- in filial obedience to the head of the Church."

Also in the year 2000, Pope John Paul designated Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos (bio - news), the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy to head the Ecclesia Dei commission, and asked the Colombian prelate to make every possible effort to achieve a reconciliation with the SSPX.

Bishop Fellay, in negotiations with Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, set two conditions. To allay the fears of traditionalists, he said, the Vatican should retract the decrees of excommunication on the SSPX leaders, and announce that all priests, throughout the world, have the right to use the traditional ritual for the Mass. That second demand was regarded as excessive by some Vatican officials, and negotiations stalled.

In January 2002 there were fresh rays of hope, as the Vatican successfully achieved a reconciliation with another traditionalist group, the Society of St. Jean Vianney in Campos, Brazil. For a brief time, rumors flew around Rome that a separate agreement with the SSPX would soon be reached. The same rumors arose again in May 2003, when Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos himself celebrated the Tridentine Mass in the basilica of St. Mary Major. Bishop Fellay acknowledged that the event was "an important gesture on Rome's part." But no agreement was forthcoming.

The positions of the two sides were hardened again in February 2004, when SSPX members held a press conference outside St. Peter's Square, condemning ecumenism and urging the world's cardinals to join in that condemnation. But in 2004, when the Congregation for Divine Worship issued its instruction Redepemtionis Sacramentum, calling for an end to various liturgical abuses, traditionalists were somewhat reassured. The election of Pope Benedict XVI was also seen by traditionalists as a promising event; Bishop Fellay referred to it as "a gleam of hope."

The SSPX, meanwhile, has had its own internal conflicts. Some hard-line members, including the English-born Bishop Richard Williamson, are deeply suspicious of efforts to reconcile with Rome, while Bishop Fellay is regarded as more favorably inclined toward the Vatican. Plans for today's meeting between Bishop Fellay and Pope Benedict-- which the Vatican did not formally announce-- were disclosed by Bishop Williamson, quite possibly in an effort to complicate the negotiations.

The SSPX today includes 441 priests, active in 59 countries. The traditionalist group claims 200,000 faithful, including 100,000 in France.

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