Posted on 03/12/2007 5:52:37 AM PDT by NYer
" Orthodox Christianity -- Proclaiming the Truth Since 33 A.D.) "
- no wonder the orthodox have got it wrong... now i know!
;-)
This is an important point and one of the big reasons I have always been opposed to setting up a special administrative formula for the Tridentine Rite. The other, of course, is that it would be seen as just that, "special," and would be controlled by a "special" group of people and removed from the history and life of the Church in a way that will be even more permanent and effective than was its prohibition for the last 40 years.
"Sorry you are so disappointed. Then again God chose JP II ..."
Happy you are so elated, but JPII was chosen by men, unless the doctrine of infallibility is extended to the college of cardinals. The campaign to elevate JPII to saint is also the work of men. I do not agree with the Calvinist doctrines.
cardinal simonis is the dutch dude, i think? (spelling)
and of course candinal martini who lives in jerusalem would be opposed to it.
FYI AD stands for Anno Domini (Latin : "In the year of (Our) Lord"[1]), ie the year Christ was born.
Well, once again we are at loggerheads over the SSPX.
You make many charges, including some I haven't seen you make before.
Ultimately, though, I am not satisfied by your treatment of the issue of necessity. It seems you claim that the Tridentine would have survived without the SSPX; I see no reason to think so.
"He excommunicated the SSPX leaders."
No, he said that they had excommunicated themselves.
"more inclined to sob in my figurative beer over how badly my tastes were offended, etc., since, after all, the entire world was about me and my liturgical misery"
So, we should attend Masses that are so bad as to constitute mockery of God, and shut up about it?
"What pope in his right mind would let the LeFebvrists "choose" their own bishops?"
Popes always solicit nominations for bishop. I understand that it is common for religious orders to send their nominations to the Holy Father for his approval, and very uncommon for the Vatican to insist on refusing all such nominations, instead selecting for a religious order a bishop that is so hostile to the order as to wish its destruction.
"Do you remember the schismatic howling over JP II kissing a Koran and over his praying with pagans, et al., at Assisi?"
I am unsettled by that myself.
Okay, here's the thing. Many of JPII's supporters act like it is a moral transgression to think he made mistakes. But many popes have made mistakes. Some of them were just plain bad popes. Argue, if you like, that I am mistaken in disagreeing with some of the things JPII did, but do not argue that I am a bad man and a bad Catholic for it.
One of the bad things that happened during his papacy was the expulsion of the SSPX. The Holy Father should have allowed them to nominate bishops that were sympathetic to the survival of the Tridentine, rather than allowing modernist Vatican politicians to play games. Had he done that, there would have been no consecrations without approval, no schism, no controversy.
The only consequence of that would have been the survival of the Tridentine. The only thing militating against it was the survival of the Tridentine. The only real issue at all was the survival of the Tridentine.
At this point, there is a lot of history, a lot of bitterness, a lot of water under the bridge...unlike you, I missed it all, because I never even heard of SSPX before I came to FR. Most of what I know of it I learned right here.
I don't claim to know it all, despite your previous mockery of me, and don't deny that I could be mistaken about things. However, I do believe with Pope Saint Pius X that modernists are enemies of the Church, and with Paul VI that "The smoke of Satan has entered the sanctuary." Both were talking about the same people, I think, and those are the people that tried to stampt out the Tridentine and went after SSPX. And I don't see anybody doing anything substantial about it except SSPX.
Admittedly, I have only been to one SSPX mass. But they prayed for the Holy Father just like the NO people do.
I wish I could take you down to the Cathedral of Saint Hipster Doofus here in this town for confession. I'd really like to get your take on it.
Whatever the Pope's final statement on this is the Mass in English will not disappear.
No one chose you as pope. No one chose me.
If you prefer to believe that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost do not care to guide the choice of popes to rule the Church founded by Jesus Christ, you are welcome to your opinion, however unlikely it is to be true. I am not likely to share that opinion now or ever.
What you think of the pending canonization of John Paul the Great is of no interest to me and of no weight in the process. If you doubt that he is in heaven, again, that's simply your opinion which I do not share.
You do display a resistance to and skepticism of the Vatican that is more becoming to a Protestant or to a schismatic than to a Catholic but that is just my opinion.
There was no NECESSITY whatsoever nor can there ever be of rebellion against papal authority, rank disobedience to papal orders on the individuals who may be consecrated bishops, especially when three of the examples still with the schism are moonbats like Fellay, and, even worse, de Mallerais and Williamson who has apparently been banished even by SSPX to the less news producing venue of Latin America where he denies the holocaust perpetrated by the nazis and grumbles about women who wear slacks.
I fail to see the significance distinction between John Paul the Great directly excommunicating the SSPX ringleaders and noting for the record that they have excommunicated themselves latae sententiae. He also declared them in schism. And no, I am not interested in the self-serving rationalizations of the schismatic ringleaders and their apologists as to mental reservations, motives, allegations of "necessity" (that unless they consecrated illicit bishops their tastes might continue to be offended by the Vatican's refusal to obey the schismatics). The nerve of some people's anti-Catholic children in claiming that they are too Catholic no matter what the mere pope has to say!!!!
There are plenty of reverent Novus Ordo Masses available to you. There are also venues where you can attend Tridenrtine Masses approved by the diocesan ordinary. If you don't live in one, move. We did. That probably won't be necessary since B-XVI will probably cause wider availability of the Tridentine.
SSPX is an anti-Catholic schism whose leaders are excommunicated. That puts the disobedient and rebellious and excommunicated SSPXers in a bit different category from Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines and other actual orders which, whatever their problems, are in communion with the Holy See and in good standing (for better or for worse) as Catholics. We don't ask Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Calvinists or atheists or agnostics who to name as bishops. Why should the Church seek the opinions of those who are excommunicated for their willful defiance of a pope and allow them a special protected status where they won't have to submit to Catholic bishops but will be protected by excommunicated bishops? If such an arrangement makes sense to you, we do not have a lot to discuss about the actual Catholic religion.
So you were unsettled by Assisi. So what? No one appointed you or those in SSPX to micromanage the pope. I find it continually amazing that so many SSPX symps have such a problem with John Paul the Great and so absolutely little to say as to WWI's Benedict XV (Della Chiesa), who actually canceled Pope St. Pius X's anti-Modernist program rather immediately after Pope St. Pius X's death leaving it to summer underground for fifty years until its perfidy burst forth forty years ago or so, or as to John XXIII or Paul VI. You are not unsettled by the abuse heaped upon John Paul the Great here by the cheerleaders for the taste-offended schismatics and excommunicati? Each man was pope and entitled to exercise the keys during his tenure but only John Paul the Great is the schismatics' whipping boy because he did his job in whipping them.
Many here throw the term "Modernist" around as though it were not the heresy defined by Pascendi Domenici Gregis and by Lamentabile Sane (each published one hundred years ago this year by, ironically, Pope St. Pius X) but rather anything and everything that offends their infernally worshiped tastes.
You have drunk the SSPX Kool Aid. I shall not. I regard it as a shame that John Paul the Great did not have available to him the physical weapons of yesteryear to wield against the Lefebvrite rebels. A little rack, a little ruin. Some life-long house arrest. Pit, pendulum. They want "tradition????" We could use a man like Torquemada again to "correct" renegade Frnch Archbishops like Marcel and others of his ilk like de Mallerais, Williamson and Fellay.
I certainly think John Paul the Great made mistakes (prudential errors) in not nuking these worthless SSPX miscreants more vigorously than he did. Then again, he was pope. It was his call.
You suggest that, if Pope John Paul the Great knuckled under to LeFebvre and obeyed that infernally insolent traitor to the Faith, there would have been "no schism, no controversy" because the pope would have approved, as ordered by the rebel archbishop who massacred his vow of obedience, more rebels as bishops.
Whatever you may think, that would have had the consequence of undermining papal authority as surely as Dubya's authority would be undermined by putting Osama bin Laden in charge of the Pentagon.
That business of SSPX being somehow responsible for the "survival of the Tridentine" is the essential lie underlying SSPX. I believe (as did the Wanderer after looking into the matter) that my Tridentine wedding was the first authorized Tridentine wedding in the US since the introduction of the new Missal. That it was Tridentine required last minute intervention by my archbishop countermanding his disobedient bureaucrats after 5 PM on the Friday before the Saturday wedding, He told the pastor that the wedding would be Tridentine and that anyone attempting to resist had better have a higher position in the archdiocese than the archbishop because he would deal with them personally. He also approved several other requests for Tridentine Masses as early as 1970. He is dead and his successors have not been worthy and we moved to the vicinity of Rockford, Illinois. SSPX has been a hindrance to restoration of the Tridentine because of the vicious mouths, reflexive disobedience to legitimate Church authority and the all purpose attitude that they are entitled to dictate terms.
If traditionalists (the real kind who acknowledge papal authority) want the Tridentine Mass celebrated, they know how to obtain their purpose. They can show some real respect to the successors of the apostles who are their diocesan bishops. They can humbly recognize that the hierarchy and not some anarchy in the pews is in charge and makes the decisions, whether the traditionalists (and I am one) like to practice humility or not. It has worked for me. It can work for you. It can even work for the schismatics, even the excommunicated ringleaders of SSPX. All they have to do is accept the obligation of Catholics to submit to Church authority. People who won't submit may be decent Christians but they are NOT good Catholics.
You are aware that it was the same Paul VI who talked of the "smoke of Satan surround(ing) our altars" who promulgated the Novus Ordo and effectively if not officially suppressed the Tridentine??? Necessarily, you cannot very well just praise him as you rail against Novus Ordo which IS the Mass of Paul VI. If Paul VI was referencing those who suppressed the Tridentine, he was then referencing himself. Whatever his drawbacks and failures I don't think Paul VI saw himself as "the smoke of Satan."
SSPX prays for the pope because that is part of the liturgy and missal of the pre-conciliar and pre-Paul VI era. If they cared for the pope and the Church, they would sit down, shut up and do as they are told by legitimate authority but noooooooo, they just have to get their way and get it immediately or else.
There certainly is a LOT of bitterness, a LOT of water under the bridge (and it won't reverse its flow). I do not doubt that you missed these controversies in the past. You are very late arriving at the party and you have drawn the wrong conclusions. If popes are capable of prudential error (and they certainly are), so are you.
You owe respect and obedience to the pope in all things moral (tasteful or not) if you want to be a good Catholic man. I take it that you accept Novus Ordo as a legitimate Mass.
I am a bit long in the tooth. This Saint Hipster Doofus: was he of the Haight-Ashbury Doofuses or of the Greenwich Village Doofuses, or martyred at Woodstock or Altamont? I just don't remember :).
ok... the jokes on me then!
A pleasure to see your verbiage, as always.
Thanks!
My eldest child was taught repeatedly at the same once Catholic school that I attended decades earlier that Christ did not actually know He was God even as He was dying on the cross. I tired of writing fourteen-page nastygrams to the leftist ex-nun who was principal. This, mind you, in a parish with a thoroughly Catholic pastor (who said occasional Tridentine Masses elsewhere in town). He was just too busy and overburdened (his associate pastor was old, crippled and unsympathetic to Catholicism) to get control over it all. He did get the pro-witchcraft books out of the school library. He did see to it that leftist parishioners did not succeed in having the local pro-abort (former Executive Director of Emily's List) Congressthing (now Demonratic Deputy Whip) Rosa DeLauro honored at a Lenten fundraiser accompanied by a rendition of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
AND, of course, the Tridentine Mass and missal ARE the history and life of the Church more so than the valid but low rent Novus Ordo rubrics ever will be. Novus Ordo should be turned into the guest and Tridentine acknowledged as the host.
God bless you and yours.
Without the vigilance of orthodox Catholics, things would go even further astray. I think that's one of the reasons the Pope does not at the moment seem to be considering the possibility of setting up a special administrative status.
I am always surprised that, even with a good bishop and some relatively orthodox clergy, there is still such a quantity of heretical garbage circulating in the Catholic education world. My sister is a choir director, and she said that the nun who teaches the religious education classes at the parish where she works showed her a recently published book for children that compared the Eucharist to "going to Grandmother's house for Thanksgiving." It went on in the "special meal" vein for several pages. Remarkably enough, the nun, whom my sister had always thought very liberal, snapped, "I'm not going to use this. It's not a meal, it's a sacrifice."
That was certainly a positive sign, especially coming from someone who didn't seem likely to object in the least to the heretical nonsense contained in the book. But the really shocking thing is that this is getting published in the first place. I would imagine that it has to make its way through various committees of the dread bishops' conferences or some one of their bureaucratic arms, so obviously, there are some bishops out there who need to be sent off to some desert island for recatechization.
The Pope, btw, is producing a compendium of teachings on the Eucharist. Not a moment too soon, I'd say.
" You do display a resistance to and skepticism of ..."
Yes, it is perhaps a fault I've not been able to overcome. I believe corruptibility is possible at any station in life, along with the possibility of repentance. I do not doubt the Holy Fathers of the Church are in heaven. I disagree with the Protestants who believe in salvation by faith alone, as I disagree with Catholics who believe in prayer alone to confront evil. They usually ask God please somebody do something, petitioner excluded. (So there's no mistake, I believe prayer is very powerful and never wasted.) Even though I've done nothing myself, I thank God for those who speak out with righteous indignation while living temporarily in the physical world of God's creation. To turn the other cheek to me means to willfully endure the pains that accompany life in a sinful world, and the disappointments of our fellows.
This particular Catholic, admiring St. Vito of Corleone, believes that we will get further with a machine gun and the truth than with the truth alone.
Surely not! :-)
tell us how it ends...smile.
How long have you been a psychic?
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