The following statement by Bishop Athanasius Schneider is being published in numerous places today.
Posted on 06/29/2023 7:59:06 AM PDT by ebb tide
The following statement by Bishop Athanasius Schneider is being published in numerous places today.
The prohibition of the traditional Latin Mass is an abuse of ecclesiastical power and noncompliance with its prohibition does not in fact constitute disobedience
1. The traditional Roman liturgy of the Mass was the liturgy of our Catholic ancestors. It was the form of the Mass with which most of the European nations (except some Eastern European countries and the Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites), all American nations, and most of the African, Asian, and Oceanian nations were evangelized.
2. “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too” (Pope Benedict XVI).
3. “The problem with the new Missal lies in its abandonment of an ever-continuous history, before and after St. Pius V, and in the creation of a thoroughly new book (albeit compiled of old material)” (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger).
4. The new Missal’s “publication was accompanied by a kind of prohibition of all that came before it, which is unheard-of in the history of ecclesiastical law and liturgy” (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger).
5. “I can say with certainty, based on my knowledge of the conciliar debates and my repeated reading of the speeches made by the Council Fathers, that this [i.e., the reform as it is now in the new Missal] does not correspond to the intentions of the Second Vatican Council” (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger).
6. The traditional Roman liturgy of the Mass was the liturgy of all the Latin-rite Saints whom we know at least during the entire last millenium; hence its age is millennial. Although commonly called the “Tridentine” Mass, the exact same form of the Mass was already in use several centuries before the Council of Trent, and that Council asked only to canonize that venerable and doctrinally sure form of the liturgy of the Roman Church.
7. The traditional Roman liturgy of the Mass has the closest affinity with the Eastern rites in bearing witness to the universal and uninterrupted liturgical law of the Church: “In the Roman Missal of Saint Pius V, as in several Eastern liturgies, there are very beautiful prayers through which the priest expresses the most profound sense of humility and reverence before the Sacred Mysteries: they reveal the very substance of the Liturgy” (Pope John Paul II).
8. The Pope and the bishops do not have, therefore, the authority to forbid or to limit such a venerable form of the Holy Mass, which was offered by the Saints for over a thousand years, in the same way as the Pope or the Bishops would not have the authority to forbid or significantly reform the venerable form of the Apostolic or Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, precisely because of their venerable, continuous, and millennium-old use.
9. Complying with the abusive prohibition of that venerable form of the Mass of the Saints, issued unfortunately by current churchmen in a time of unprecedented ecclesial crisis, would constitute a false obedience.
10. Noncompliance with the prohibitions of the traditional Mass does not make one, by that fact, schismatic, provided one continues to recognize the Pope and the bishops and continues to respect them, and pray for them.
11. In disobeying formally such an unheard-of prohibition of an inalienable patrimony of the Roman Church, one in fact obeys the Catholic Church of all ages and all the Popes who diligently celebrated and commanded the preservation of that venerable and canonized form of the Mass.
12. The current prohibition of the traditional rite of the Mass is a temporary phenomenon and will cease. The Roman Church is experiencing today a kind of liturgical exile, i.e., the traditional Latin Mass has been exiled from Rome; yet the exile will, for sure, one day come to an end.
13. Since the traditional Latin Mass has been in uninterrupted use for more than a millennium, sanctified by universal reception over time, by the Saints and by the Roman Pontiffs, it belongs to the inalienable patrimony of the Roman Church. Consequently, in the future the Roman Pontiffs will without doubt once again recognize and re-establish the use of that traditional liturgy of the Mass.
14. Future Popes will thank all priests and faithful who, in difficult times, notwithstanding all pressures and false accusations of disobedience, and in a spirit of sincere love for the Church and for the honor of the Holy See, maintained and transmitted the great liturgical treasure of the traditional Mass for future generations.
Ping
Protestants have long misunderstood the power of the papacy and now this current anti-pope is exploiting the confusion sewn.
The papacy does not establish a despot; the pope also has certain legislative powers over the affairs of the church, but when it comes to moral doctrine, the pope is more of a judge than a legislator. Papal infallability does not mean the pope can make up whatever nonsense he wants, but rather that when speaking deliberately as pope, he is guaranteed to have correct judgment.
I believe Francis is an anti-pope; Benedict said many things suggesting he did not consider his retirement to be a relinquising of the papacy.
Ann Barnhardt (god bless her) discovered this well before the rest of us.
10. Noncompliance with the prohibitions of the traditional Mass does not make one, by that fact, schismatic, provided one continues to recognize the Pope and the bishops and continues to respect them, and pray for them.
Re. Schneider’s reason no. 10 (above):
He is wrong. Noncompliance is disobedience in this case and therefore schism, for disobedience to the pope’s direction for the church is schism, or rather, one is guilty of the intent to disobey the pope, if he believes that the man whom he is in noncompliance with is the pope.
However, Francis is NOT the pope, for popes are protected by the Holy Spirit from pronouncing heretical teachings. He has made NUMEROUS such pronouncements.
Until Schneider recognizes this he will continue to make such nonsense statements.
That is so wrong and so idiotic. Both St. Augustine and St. Thomas have said an unjust law is no law at all.
There have been numerous saint who have resisted their popes, including St. Paul.
As far as “an unjust law”, you’re missing the point. The point here was that a non-pope has no authority to make church law. THAT is why compliance is unnecessary.
Saint Paul corrected St. Peter for his behavior, not for heretical teaching. There is a huge distinction.
[Aside: I wonder if that is why “Francis” is so heretically teaching that the worst pagans are Catholics who proseletise. That being because if the fact is that we can gain souls through the preaching of the gospel, then it becomes the more evident that the man (”francis”) continually teaches heresy, which will convert souls to hell, and thus he stands all the more clearly, condemned by the real popes, the saints, and Christ Jesus our Lord.]
Show me any saint who has been noncompliant with a pope’s decrees. (I know of none.)
Show me where the teaching of the church is that if you are not in agreement with the pope then you are not in schism.
No. Your point was any disobedience to a legitimate pope is schism.
And that’s flat out wrong.
Thank-you. And he’s a saint at that.
From the Burke article, “The First Vatican Council (1869-70) condemned conciliarism and made its famous declaration of papal infallibility (only valid in matters of faith and morals)...”
The Second Vatican Council was called by a false pope and closed by a false pope, so the council was not of God, and debate about the authority of the pope called into question in that false council is meaningless.
St. Robert Belarmine, Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church teaches that if a man deemed to be pope were to be a heretic, he loses (or never truly gained) his office, defacto, without need for declaration nor edict. It can be shown that the two aforementioned (false popes) were heretics, and thus false popes.
Generally, those that approved of and promulgated the Vatican II council are apostates and heretics due to the numerous heresies and otherwise erroneous and hurtful teachings contained therein.
You can claim Bergoglio is not a pope and dish VC II all you want. I will not disagree with you on either point.
But your argument that any disobedience to a legitimate pope is schism is false.
Otherwise, you’re no better than the folks at Church Militant (Nazi Niles and homo Voris) who claim Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX are in schism.
You are confusing “schism” with “disobedience”. They are not the same.
Some Catholics hold that a faithful Catholic can never defy a Pope which would certainly be news for Saint Paul. One Peter Five brings up the case of Bishop Grosseteste:
In 1253 the Pope nominated his own nephew, Frederick of Lavagna, to a vacant canonry in Lincoln Cathedral! The mandate ordering Bishop Grosseteste to appoint him was something of a legal masterpiece in which the careful use of non obstane clauses [notwithstanding any statutes to the contrary] ruled out every legal ground for refusal or delay. This, then, was the Bishop’s dilemma: He was faced with a perfectly legal command from the Sovereign Pontiff, which apparently must be obeyed, and yet the demand, though legal, was obviously immoral, a clear abuse of power. The Pope was using his office as Vicar of Christ in a sense quite contrary to the purpose for which it had been entrusted to him. The Bishop saw clearly that there is an important distinction between what a Pope has a legal right to do and what he has a moral right to do. His response was a direct refusal to obey an order which constituted an abuse of authority. The Pope was acting ultra vires, beyond the limits of his authority, and hence his subjects were not bound to obey him in this.
In his reply to the papal command, Bishop Grosseteste accused Pope Innocent IV of disobedience to Christ and the destruction of the care of souls. “No faithful subject of the Holy See,” he wrote, “no man who is not cut away by schism from the Body of Christ and the same Holy See, can submit to mandates, precepts, or any other demonstrations of this kind, no, not even if the authors were the most high body of angels. He must needs repudiate them and rebel against them with all his strength. Because of the obedience by which I am bound, and of my love of my union with the Holy See in the Body of Christ, as an obedient son I disobey, I contradict, I rebel. You cannot take action against me, for my every word and act is not rebellion but the filial honor due by God’s command to father and mother. As I have said, the Apostolic See in its holiness cannot destroy, it can only build. This is what the plenitude of power means; it can do all things to edification. But these co-called provisions do not build up, they destroy.”
Any kid post sacrament of confession would agree.
According to “Pope” and “Saint” Paul VI, no Catholic can be disobedient in this way:
It is even affirmed [by the Lefebvrists] that the Second Vatican Council is not binding; that the faith would also be in danger because of the reforms and post-conciliar directives, that one has the duty to disobey in order to preserve certain traditions. What traditions? Is it for this group, not the Pope, not the College of Bishops, not the Ecumenical Council, to decide which among the innumerable traditions must be considered as the norm of faith? As you see, Venerable Brothers, such an attitude sets itself up as a judge of that divine will which placed Peter and his lawful Successors at the head of the Church to confirm the brethren in the faith, and to feed the universal flock (cf. Lk 22:32; Jn 21:15 ff.), and which established him as the guarantor and custodian of the deposit of faith.
And this is all the more serious, in particular, when division is introduced precisely where congregavit nos in unum Christi amor [the love of Christ has gathered us into one], in the Liturgy and the Eucharistic Sacrifice, by the refusing of obedience to the norms laid down in the liturgical sphere. It is in the name of Tradition that we ask all our sons and daughters, all the Catholic communities, to celebrate with dignity and fervor the renewed liturgy. The adoption of the new Ordo Missae [order of the Mass] is certainly not left to the free choice of priests or faithful. The instruction of 14 June 1971 has provided for, with the authorization of the Ordinary, the celebration of the Mass in the old form only by aged and infirm priests, who offer the divine Sacrifice sine popolo [without people attending]. The new Ordo was promulgated to take the place of the old, after mature deliberation, following upon the requests of the Second Vatican Council. In no different way did our holy Predecessor Pius V make obligatory the Missal reformed under his authority, following the Council of Trent.
With the same supreme authority that comes from Christ Jesus, we call for the same obedience to all the other liturgical, disciplinary and pastoral reforms which have matured in these years in the implementation of the Council decrees. Any initiative which tries to obstruct them cannot claim the prerogative of rendering a service to the Church; in fact it causes the Church serious damage.
https://novusordowatch.org/2023/06/athanasius-schneider-overrules-traditionis-custodes/
I challenge you to find where mere disobedience is schism. Mother Angelica even got in tons of trouble for pointing out that the Archbishop of Los Angeles was invalidly consecrating the eucharist. You think Mahoney wasn’t being disobedient? You think it was too trifling of a matter for the Vatican? Pretty much the one thing that seems to have gotten people labeled schismatic in the last several hundred years is the illicit consecration of bishops.
Now, if you proclaim, “the Pope is illegitimate” or “the Pope has no authority to do this,” you could be in schism... if you’re wrong.
As for me, God forgive me when I’m not so clear, but I prefer to say, “Francis promotes heresies,” rather than “Francis is a heretic” because charity requires me to acknowledge that Francis may be a doddering old fool who doesn’t know what the Hell he’s talking about, but how bad are things when THAT’S required charity.
At this point, I often lapse because I don’t understand how one can promote so many heresies so often so relentlessly and punish those who try to clean up his messes without actually being a heretic. Some days it feels sorta like referring to a defendant as an ALLEGED murderer when witnesses saw him run at the victim with a chainsaw, yelling “Die! Die! I want you, victimname to be dead by my hands despite being innocent!” and we have the chainsaw with his fingerprints, his manifesto, and the gruesome pile of remnant flesh.
So how do I reconcile that the Pope may be a heretic?
Well, one POSSIBILITY is that the Pope is an anti-pope. And here I should clarify, “I believe that Francis is an anti-pope.” By saying this, I don’t mean to declare that my Faith is that Francis is an anti-pope. I’m saying that the hypothesis that Francis is an anti-pope seems the most intellectually credible one I can find.
The issue, I suppose, is whether Grosseteste were not only correct, but that he was knowably correct. Can our confidence in Grosseteste exceed our confidence in Pope Francis? This is the moral conundrum I now face.
... and in fact, I find that the letter of Grosseteste has not merely not been affirmed by any papal doctrinal proclamation as having been just and correct (even such as by canonization of Grosseteste might infer), but rather that Grosseteste’s letter’s authenticity is dubious.
Disobedience is schism
From a pre-Vatican II theologian:
What does it mean to “refuse to be under” the Pope? Fr. Ignatius Szal explains:
To constitute the delict of schism in the strict sense, the following conditions are required:
1) One must withdraw directly (expressly) or indirectly (by means of one’s actions) from obedience to the Roman Pontiff, and separate oneself from ecclesiastical communion with the rest of the faithful, even though one does not join a separate schismatical sect;
2) one’s withdrawal must be made with obstinacy and rebellion;
3) the withdrawal must be made in relation to those things by which the unity of the Church is constituted; and
4) despite this formal disobedience the schismatic must recognize the Roman Pontiff as the true pastor of the Church, and he must profess as an article of faith that obedience is due the Roman Pontiff.
(Rev. Ignatius Szal, The Communication of Catholics with Schismatics [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1948], p. 2; underlining added.)
I hope this helps!
(More at https://novusordowatch.org/2018/11/forest-trees-remnant-sedevacantism/)
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