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To: ultima ratio
You hold on to Ecclesia Dei as though it were Sacred Scripture.

You ignore it as if it didn't exist.

But it cannot undo, and did not undo, Canon Law, which is also the Pope's word. And these canons provide that a State of Necessity can void an excommunication. These were clearly the canons Archbishop Lefebvre knew exonerated him.

Lefebvre was mistaken. It has been shown to you on numerous occaisions how he was mistaken.Your unacceptance of the Church's position can only be attributed to.....well, I don't know the cause. It's very sad though. Your constant repition of your private interpretation of canon law will not change the facts.

But even if they did not exist, the Doctors of the Church themselves have taught that a command to harm the Church is unlawful and must not be obeyed, even if the command were given by a pope.

Nothing the pope has done concerning Lefebvre has been harmful to the church. On the contrary, he acted to protect the primacy of Rome, and the salvation of individual souls.

SSPX is virtually the memory of the Catholic Church. It is Catholicism as it had always been practiced before the post-conciliar debacle. Its Masses and devotions and teachings are what the Church has always prayed and taught. Nor does it reject this Pope. In fact, it prays for him at every Mass....

OK, you point that out every day. I'm glad. He needs all the prayers he can get.

Yet tradition itself is what this modernist Pope and his appointees are now actively dismantling.

Apparantly the prayers the SSPX are saying for the pope are going unheard.

as he did most flagrantly at Assisi

Ah - the Assissi battle cry. ( Yawn )

The recent declaration of the American bishops on our relations with the Jews is only the latest test for this papacy. If Rome either ignores or supports this heretical declaration, it will make utterly clear that John Paul II does not intend to reject apostasy or oppose the forces which oppose the Catholic Faith, as he is bound by the papal oath to do.

I would have thought that it was utterly clear to you already. I doubt that the pope will have anything to say about some obscure committee's ( to you it's all the American bishops)in the hinterland of the Church's frontier, making some meaningless, feel good statement. I suggest you ignore it. I suggest the SSPX continue it's extraorinary efforts in providing missions to convert Jews to Catholicism. You all can continue to hand out Catholic tracts outside synagogues. Defy the pope..er..committee.

Have a blessed Feast of the Assumption.

26 posted on 08/15/2002 8:16:23 AM PDT by St.Chuck
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To: St.Chuck
You write, "Lefebvre was mistaken." Surely you realize this makes no difference--even if he was mistaken, so long as he believed a State of Necessity existed, the excommunication was void. So even if you are correct, that the Pope was right and Lefebvre wrong--which I suggest is absurd in view of the modernist debacle of the past 30 years--the Pope's own canons state the Archbishop incurred no excommunication if he merely believed he was acting out of a State of Necessity. The Pope, moreover, has never abrogated these canons. They are still in force and condition anything he might have said in Ecclesia Dei.

The top canonists in Rome, moreover, believe no excommunication was incurred. And not long ago when the Bishop of Honolulu excommunicated six Catholics for disobeying his warnings not to attend SSPX Masses, the six appealed to Rome and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled the excommunication was invalid since the six individuals were clearly not in schism for attending such Masses. Still again, in 2000 when the Prefect for Ecumenical Relations sought to place the SSPX among other churches outside the Catholic Church--i.e., with Orthodox and Protestant churches--the Prefect of the Office of Ecclesia Dei refused to allow this, stating, "The SSPX is an internal affair within the Church."

If I repeat myself as you keep saying, it is because you and others still don't get it. SSPX is not in schism and never has been. Wishing won't make it so. Neither am I or others schismatic for attending SSPX Masses.

27 posted on 08/15/2002 10:51:11 AM PDT by ultima ratio
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To: St.Chuck
One final point. The Bishops put out the declaration as a representative statement of the entire conference. If it was actually an obscure committee and not the whole body of bishops, one still has to marvel at the audacity of the few who would make so daring a pronouncement on the part of the many. It is still another indication, along with the gay subculture that has decimated our seminaries, that discipline within the Church is virtually non-existent.

So whether this declaration proves consequential or not, if the Pope takes no action, it will show clearly once again how dangerously slow he is to put a halt even to statemnts of outright heresy.


28 posted on 08/15/2002 11:07:31 AM PDT by ultima ratio
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