Posted on 10/30/2006 9:07:47 PM PST by Petrosius
Translation of the official statement:
Official statement of the bishops of the ecclesiastical Province of Besancon and the bishops of the dioceses of Strasbourg and Metz
Joined together, October 25, 2006 at Lons-le-Saunier, within the framework of the Regional Authority of Bishops and Priests, the bishops of the ecclesiastical Province of Besancon and the bishops of the dioceses of Strasbourg and Metz decided to send to the Holy See their concerns caused by the creation of the Institute of the Good Pastor, in the Archdiocese of Bordeaux, and the possibility of the publication of Motu proprio of the Pope Benedict XVI generalizing the use of the Tridentine rite for the celebration of the Mass.
The bishops, concerned for the common good and the unity of the Church, took this initiative because of the uneasiness felt by many of the faithful, deacons and priests of their respective dioceses.
Understanding that the liturgy is the expression of the theology of the Church, the bishops are fearful lest the generalization of the use of the Roman Missal of 1962 would relativize the directions of Vatican II. Such a decision would also be likely to harm the unity between the priests, as well as between the faithful.
The bishops rejoice in the important accomplishments of liturgical reform over these many years and encourage the members of their dioceses to continue this ongoing work.
Monseigneur André LACRAMPE, Archbishop of Besançon
Monseigneur Claude SCHOCKERT, Bishop of Belfort-Montbéliard
Monseigneur Jean-Louis PAPIN, Bishop of Nancy et Toul
Monseigneur Jean LEGREZ, Bishop of Saint-Claude
Monseigneur Jean-Paul MATHIEU, Bishop of Saint-Dié
Monseigneur François MAUPU, Bishop of Verdun
Monseigneur Joseph DORE, Aposotlic Administrator of Strasbourg
Monseigneur Christian KRATZ, Auxiliary Bishop of Strasbourg
Monseigneur Jean-Pierre GRALLET, Auxiliary Bishop of Strasbourg
Monseigneur Pierre RAFFIN, Bishop of Metz
Ping!
"the bishops are fearful lest the generalization of the use of the Roman Missal of 1962 would relativize the directions of Vatican II"
The unity argument is of course hogwash, leaving the above as the explicit reason for their fears. They (and their 25 or so remaining regular Mass goers) are following the hermeneutic of rupture, instead of the hermeneutic of continuity. Or as one venerable prelate once said: "It is as if they think the Church only just began with Vatican II".
The prophecy that the motu proprio will cause "atomic warfare" in the Church is coming true even before its publication, I think. If you look, you can see how the sides are lining up, in the episcopates and so they say, in the Curia.
When I think about this my Agent Orange starts acting up.
My fears are the mirror image of theirs. I fear that widespread usage of the Traditional Mass as an "indulgence" within the Vatican II framework will serve to solidify the phenomenological underpinnings of V-2.
That is, I fear that some traditionalists will accommodate themselves to the V-2 notions that the Church is the "People of God" (rather than the Kingdom or Mystical Body of Christ) and the "Light of the World" (in leading mankind to the next Teihardian evolutionary level of ecumenical brotherhood).
St. Thomas Aquinas
"Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord: the people whom he hath chosen for his inheritance"
*Yeah. Vatican Two, an Ecumenical Council, was called to destroy Tradition and to indoctrinate us with such heresies as we are the people of God.
Personally, I fancy myself a person of God, what with my attachment to Christianity and whatnot. BTW, does me being a people of God mean I am not also part of the Body of Christ?
Lumen Gentium....The Son, therefore, came, sent by the Father. It was in Him, before the foundation of the world, that the Father chose us and predestined us to become adopted sons, for in Him it pleased the Father to re-establish all things.(4) To carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of heaven on earth and revealed to us the mystery of that kingdom. By His obedience He brought about redemption. The Church, or, in other words, the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery, grows visibly through the power of God in the world. ...
In the human nature united to Himself the Son of God, by overcoming death through His own death and resurrection, redeemed man and re-molded him into a new creation.(50) By communicating His Spirit, Christ made His brothers, called together from all nations, mystically the components of His own Body.
*Reading the Documents of Vatican Two is not a sin
If Unity is rupture and Schism is Tradition, isn't that the Hermeneutics of Orwell?
They actually never forbade it, but the bishops were instructed to replace it with the new rite, which supposedly would not be very different from the old one. There was a brief period in the late 60's when we had a rite that was basically a translation into the vernacular of the Tridentine Rite low mass, with a few tweaks. And then came 1970, when the Novus Ordo mass (along with the calendar changes, etc.) was suddenly dropped on us. I was at my parish church the first day it was celebrated - a weekday - and most of us left the church in tears because of the flat and ugly thing they had presented us with. And this was even before "clown masses" and the other abuses that appeared almost immediately.
The reason they wouldn't permit a choice is that the modernists knew which mass people would choose - and it wasn't going to be the one they wanted to impose.
Of course!!!
Catholic ping!
At least the Holy Father now has their names, which they signed themselves, on record. They won't be able to claim their disobedience is just a "misunderstanding."
Bravissimo!!!!
" I fear that widespread usage of the Traditional Mass as
an "indulgence" within the Vatican II framework will serve to solidify the phenomenological
underpinnings of V-2."
I have no fear of that. I trust in the Sensus Fidei and my own early experiences of the sacred in the Traditional Mass. I don't think any of the watered down notions will last, they can't hold up and will be apparently out of sync with the richer ( downright heady compared to most Novus Ordo Masses I've attended) liturgy and deep heritage it calls forth. Along with the tremendous solemn impact of the liturgy, this is the Mass - same words - of so many Saints and to God all moments are present in their immediacy!
Yet the phenomenologist theologians of the first half of the 20th Century cooked up their notions while worshipping with that very Mass. It may be the Mass of "so many Saints," but it is also the Mass that Karl Rahner and Yves Congar celebrated while they wrote their most important works.
The seminarians of the past 40+ years have been literally deluged with the phenomenological thinking that pervades the Conciliar documents and the writings of John Paul II. These will be the priests who will deliver the sermons at these wide-use Indult Masses.
It is important to understand that at Vatican II, Phenomenology replaced Scholasticism as the "thought of the Church." I advise everyone to read the works of Fr. John F. Kobler, C.Ss.R. on the subject.
The basis of Phenomenology is to look at a familiar thing "in a new way."
Take, for instance the notion of the Church as the "People of God." Of course, taken by itself, "God's people" is a perfectly legitimate term, used by Scripture, the Fathers, and the Doctors. But the phenomenologists can tweak it to mean their new vision of the Church.
One of the forerunners of Vatican II, Dominic Koster, O.P., specifically proposed in 1940 that "the People of God" displace "the Kingdom of Christ" and "the Mystical Body of Christ" as the principle way of understanding the Church. The latter two concepts are "too triumphal" and "too otherworldly."
"The People of God" connotes a Heideggerian People-In-This-World who work together, animated by the same Holy Spirit (see Congar) to live the Social Gospel message of helping the poor and working for peace and justice, as a "light to the nations."
While that paradigm of the Church is certainly assisted by the "horizontal" Novus Ordo, it can certainly be furthered by use of the "vertical" Traditional Mass -- especially when the TLM is merely an "indulgence."
+
If you want on (or off) this Catholic and Pro-Life ping list, let me know!
I would not be so concerned if this were something from outside the Church. But when each one takes as his mission to criticize everything, when each one sets out to rewrite dogma and morality according to his own wishes, the Church disintegrates. When the center of unity becomes the target of the most impassioned attacks, each one feeling that he has the right to criticize the successor of Peter before the whole world on any point whatsoever, the Church herself is therefore wounded. Those who take this liberty do not fully realize what they are doing. Regardless of what pretext they may invoke, however, they are turning their backs on the gospel of Christ, and they scandalize, in the fullest sense of the word, many of their brethren.
Whether they wish to or not, they encourage the formation of small groups whose sectarian pretensions are equalled only by the poverty of their spirituality. The weakening of faith is coupled with the decomposition of the Christian community. They insult all those who hold on to what their faith requires of them as Christians. Inasmuch as it depends on them, they ruin the Church. A Church in which this form of disorder exists and where such morals are accepted is doomed.
*Yeah, the truth of what you demean has nothing to do with the Good News.
And when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in:
Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me. Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee; thirsty, and gave thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and covered thee? Or when did we see thee sick or in prison, and came to thee? And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.
Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink. I was a stranger, and you took me not in: naked, and you covered me not: sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. Then they also shall answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to thee? Then he shall answer them, saying: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me. And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting
Thomas Aquinas College Lecture
Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D.
Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1962, he is internationally recognized and honored for his work in philosophy, particularly phenomenology. In 1994, Catholic University sponsored a conference on his work and published several papers and other essays under the title, The Truthful and the Good, Essays In Honor of Robert Sokolowski. Fr. Sokolowski came to the College as part of the E.L. Wiegand Distinguished Visiting Lecturers Program, which was established to bring distinguished educators to Thomas Aquinas College and St. John's College. Following is abridged from a lecture he gave at the College on March 26, 1999.
I'd like to begin with a rather confrontational claim: That phenomenology can help restore the understanding of being and mind that was accepted in classical Greek philosophy and medieval thought and can still take into account certain contributions of modernity, especially those of science. Phenomenology, in its classical form, understands the human mind as ordered towards truth, and this is the understanding of the mind that prevailed in classical thinking. Phenomenology develops this understanding through its doctrines of intentionality and evidence but with a consideration of modern problems. This revival of classical thinking is both desirable and important. In spite of the many advantages the modern age has brought us over the past 500 years, it has also contributed to a kind of undermining of our human self-understanding and a skepticism about our ability to know both ourselves and the world in which we live. I think phenomenology can provide an alternative to both the modern and the post-modern predicament because it provides a new understanding of mind as ordered towards truth.
Phenomenology began with the work of Edmund Husserl, whose first major work appeared about 100 years ago in Germany. While other phenomenologists came along after him (such as Heidegger, Scheler, and Sartre), I want to concentrate on him because I think the strengths of phenomenology are found more in him than in the others. He was able to overcome the problem that has plagued philosophy throughout the modern age: The isolation of thinking from being. Sometimes we call that "the egocentric predicament" - the problem of claiming to know only ourselves.
Husserl said that the discovery of intentionality is the central move that establishes the phenomenological movement. He claimed that consciousness is intentional, that is, it is always conscious of something. When we know, we don't just know our own ideas; we know something other than ourselves. This looks like a trivial remark but it contradicts the modern notion that the mind is immediately aware of only itself and of events that occur in itself.
henomenology claims that consciousness and the mind are presentational - they let things become present to us - and not just things like chairs and tables and walls and ceilings, but things like past memories and groups and art and judgments and numbers and mathematical equations. These things are not simply constructs that the mind builds up on the basis of impressions or ideas given to it. The mind is made public; it is with other things and not just with itself. Phenomenology describes these different forms of presentation.
Perhaps Husserl's greatest contribution to philosophy is his treatment of the theme of absence. He gives absence a kind of reality. He shows that all presences are accompanied by absences; all presentation is accompanied by intending something that is not present. This counters the modernists who assert that mind only knows itself.
Husserl says whenever we perceive an object there is a mix in it of parts that are present and parts that are absent. If one side is given to us, we always cointend the other sides. The presence of an object involves both presence and absence. It also involves sequence. As one aspect comes into presence, the other one slides into absence.
Now there can be different kinds of absence. Consider how when a sentence is beginning we already anticipate the end, even though it's not there yet, and how we're all waiting for the period of the sentence because the meaning isn't clear until that period is reached. And when we come to the end, the beginning has already been gone for some time. It is in this unusual mixture of presence and absence which stretches through time that the identity of the sentence is recognized. Also, a sentence may be given to us even though its meaning is absent, when we don't "get it." The same can be true when we see a painting, say of Matisse. It is physically present to us but it may be aesthetically absent. The painting comes to life when we finally "get it." We see that all of these distortions are actually a part of a pattern that makes sense.
Consider situations where we can turn our minds to something entirely absent to us. We can talk about the Empire State Building and intend that building in its absence. We might do this through words, but we might also do it through imagination and memory. We can stretch our minds towards things that are far away or past or future. What is absent is meant in its absence. In fact, its absence can be palpable, indeed, even sorrowful, if it is something we deeply regret, or is the absence of someone we love, for example. And we do not have to account for absence by appealing to a present representative of the thing that we are aware of. The mind ranges over the absent as well as the present. And "being" includes absence as well as presence.
Consider how fiction is different as a kind of absence, even from history. Fiction projects a world that never existed at all. Or consider the definitive absence of someone who has just died. This absence is conclusive; it is different from someone going far away. Or consider the absence we have in a picture. A man might have a picture of his wife and children in his office. But it is not the same thing as just putting their names there. Their names impose a different kind of absence. The picture draws the presence of the person there in a way the name does not. Finally, consider absence in theological issues. The absence of God allows the Incarnation to take place. Only because God is so different from the world can He become man.
Another aspect of phenomenology is the theme of identity. Normally in classical philosophy, identity was treated as the permanence of an object through time or the permanence of an object through changes. But there's another aspect to identity that comes out in the presence and absence theme because an object is the same in its absence and in its presence. If we intend the Empire State Building and then go see it, it has the same identity we intended, first absently and now in its presence.
Once I went to see a golf tournament when Jack Nicklaus was playing. I had never seen him play, but I had read about him. That's one kind of absence. I saw his picture in the newspaper. That's another kind of intending of Nicklaus. And then I went to the tournament, and I saw leader boards with the names of the players, including that of Nicklaus. So there I had another intending of him. Then I saw his famous caddy, and that was a kind of associative intending of him. Finally, I saw Nicklaus. I identified him, but I had been intending him in his same identity even when I didn't see him. I'm sure I was the only guy at the tournament thinking of identity this way!
Phenomenology also concerns personal identity - identification of the self or the ego. Our own identity is especially involved with presentation, since what lets us be human beings is most fundamentally being rational animals. We are what we are because things appear to us and because we can let them appear. We identify things, but we are identified also; we are "identified identifiers."
Now Husserl uses several very interesting techniques to bring out what personal identity is. One such example is the theme of memory and imagination which are similar to one another. He argues strongly against the idea that in memory or imagination what we have is an internal picture that tells us about something past or something non-existent. We tend to think of memory and imagination working like a little movie screen in which we look at images of something past. But he rejects that understanding. In memory or imagination we have a displacement of the self. We double ourselves, as it were.
If I'm daydreaming about something I did yesterday, I am now doubled into the one who was doing what I did yesterday. My identity is not found primarily in my present self. It's found in between myself now and myself then. We have this duality within our own selves. We carry around our past and our future. We live not only in our immediate surroundings, but in the absence of the future and the past, and we see ourselves in that future and past. Indeed, sometimes the memory is so powerful and intrusive that it won't remain past. It becomes present constantly, and that's known as a kind of psychological difficulty. Overcoming that problem essentially involves distinguishing between one's present self and one's past self. And one's identity is the identity that occurs between those two.
Following another level of personal identity, we can sympathize with another person and yet know that the other person is always irreducible to us. Wouldn't it be scary to have someone else's memory come up inside of you? Isn't it odd how when we see somebody we haven't seen for 10 or 15 years that we think of them as somehow alien because we realize they have so many memories that we never shared with them?
Also, the way we are in our body is distinctive. So are the ways in which our various senses work - how touch is reciprocal. When you use your hand to rub your elbow you sort of think through your hand; but if your elbow started the rubbing, then you sort of think through it instead. There's a kind of reversibility of your own thinking within your own body because of the extendedness of your own consciousness and reason. Think about how reason is embodied in the human body - how the self expresses itself through voice; how sign language is conveyed and how it expresses emphasis in lieu of modulation.
Finally, there are many other ways in which phenomenology can be fruitful. Consider the play of presence and absence in friendship or hostility, or the patterns that occur in gratitude and in envy. Consider the sequences that take place when we redefine a personal relationship, when we are the same and yet not the same, after a particularly disruptive event in our lives. How is a writer present in the words written? How is a footprint or a flag there for us except as still new forms of presence and absence? These analyses will shed light on what it is to be human and in doing so revive the most classical form of philosophy.
Phenomenology is not just a local dialect in the human conversation, nor a temporary amusement, but part of the philosophical conversation that has been with us since reason first became aware of itself in the great thinkers of ancient Greece
*What? Is it possisble that actual good can be attributed to the work of ther most recent Ecumenical Council? Is it possible that actual good can be atributed to the work of Johannes Paulus Magnus? Well, by gosh by golly, it appears one actually can.
We better keep this quiet. We better keep this to ourselves.
Not speaking ill of an Ecumenical Council, not speaking evil of Johannes Paulus Magnus might signify you are a modernist heretical masonic judaiser.
Edith had been seeking truth for many years. Even in her teens she was a searcher after knowledge. When she began the studies that she thought would qualify her as a teacher, she turned to psychology as offering, she thought, genuine knowledge of the human condition. The experimental and rationalist psychology she found in the University of Breslau disappointed her. Then she came upon the Logical investigations of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, which he had published in 1900. When he wrote, German philosophy had largely lost its way: the giants of the early 19th century were gone, and philosophy had to an extent given up the cause of reaching meaningful truth. Husserl was rooted in experience, in consciousness, and he raised the hope that empiricism, scepticism and relativism do not have the last despairing word.
Embracing phenomenology
Husserl's disciples accepted their master's claim that phenomenology offered an ultimate philosophical foundation for growing sciences like psychology and mathematics, and they would no longer be vulnerable to the prevailing climate of relativism and scepticism. Edith Stein was enthralled and embraced phenomenology as a way of satisfying her desire to pursue the promised path of seeking the truth. She appropriated Husserl's rigorous scientific method of analysing the data of consciousness and began applying it to other areas of experience, which Husserl had not yet managed to select for scrutiny. Thus she selected for her doctoral thesis the issue of empathy. This choice was quite significant as empathy (Einfülung) relates more to feeling than cognition or knowing and is already an indication of her concern for a philosophy embracing the full human person. It is also a step in her own personal search for a meaning of her own life. In time, as we shall see, this search led her to Catholicism. But she was never to abandon her phenomenology, and she engaged profoundly with these skills in the study of the Trinity, the Cross, the mind of St Thomas Aquinas, and finally St John of the Cross
*What? Impossible!!!! The schism says nothing good can come from that stuff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.