Posted on 09/20/2004 7:38:56 AM PDT by NYer
Taking a break from judging annulments earlier today, I visited a number of French traditionalist websites. I also had the opportunity, yesterday, to speak with a friend of mine who is a canonist from France following the situation as well as another friend who keeps tabs on the traditionalist movement in both the English and the French speaking world. Everyone agrees -- the situation has degenerated into total chaos, as nobody knows exactly what is going on with the highly-respected French SSPX clergy that have criticized what they see as the SSPX's growing rigidity.
It does appear that Rome has refused to take competency over the case, more-or-less stating that the SSPX denied Rome's jurisdiction over them when Lefebvre carried out a schismatic act through the 1988 episcopal consecrations. Beyond that, Rome refuses to comment other than to say, "Our door remains open for their return to full communion."
Beyond that, the rhetoric, polemic and accusations suggest that indeed civil war is breaking out among the laity and clergy within the SSPX's French District. In fact, two websites have now popped up that are exclusively devoted to tracing all the news stories associated with the crisis. What I find personally find interesting is that every news report, commentary, polemic, etc... mentions Fr. Aulagnier's expulsion from the SSPX around this time last year.
In the months that followed, it appears that the SSPX more-or-less tried to sweep Fr. Aulagnier's expulsion under the rug. But in so doing, even the regime currently in charge of the SSPX had to admit the important role played by Fr. Aulagnier in the founding of the SSPX. This is probably why the SSPX appeared to hope the issue would go away.
Yet it is also well-known that Fr. Aulagnier was a close friend of Fr. Laguerie as well as Fr. de Tanouarn -- two of the SSPX's leading priests. (As Fr. Laguerie's assistant, Fr. Henri appears to have just happened into the situation). It is also well-known that a number of French (and some American) SSPX priests were not happy with Fr. Aulagnier's expulsion. Therefore, I will venture to guess that the current SSPX chaos is the effect of Fr. Aulagnier's expulsion coming back to haunt Bishop Fellay. As for the particular details, this is the first time in almost fourteen years of being a traditionalist that I find the fog of war too thick to reasonably discern what is going on. (What I find even more troubling is that behind the scenes, under the flag of truce, other SSPX and traditionalist commentators with whom I am in contact have admitted to having the same problem.)
So if I can end on a personal note to the moderate SSPX clergy and their supporters who follow this blog, I'm more than happy to abide by the flag of truce and keep you guys in prayer while you fight whatever battles need to be fought, but I honestly cannot make heads-or-tails of what is happening. But like Rome has said, the door is open for you to return. I will pray that God gives you the necessary strength to walk through it.
So what if some individual claims he has "proved" otherwise? He is the only one who agrees with his personal and irrational explanation.
Lefevbre also said "All those who cooperate in the application of this upheaval, accept and adhere to this new conciliar church … enter into schism" (Fr. Noél Barbara, Ecône Full Stop, Fortes in Fides).
No doubt we will now hear that Lefevbre didn't mean the Catholic Church was a schism and that his schism was the actual church.
Facts don't matter to ideologues
You have failed.
You cited a quote where Ratzinger was speaking about modern man
Not a single word about the new rite of mass appears in your quote.
And it is painfully obvious you do not do justice to the plain sense of the words (see your irrational explanation about See of Peter and antiChrist) of others.
*Lefevbre says Rome has lost the Faith. Now, that heresy will be explained away by ideologues but the clear sense of the words are obvious to any casual observer.
*The poor man had clearly gone off his rocker. All this stuff is easy to find. I found all of this in the past 10 mins on google. I think I'll stop looking up any more of his heresies. They are repulsive, sickening and evil.
Anyone who defends this sick twisted stuff is clearly out of their mind and in opposition to the promises of Christ and I wouldn't take their word on anything - least of all their personal opinions about the Mass, the Council, the Pope etc
No, you are wrong. The words I cited were taken from the Cardinal's speech at Fontgombault, a conference specifically dedicated to the Liturgy. Ratzinger had pointed out that modern man was unable to believe he wounds God by his sinfulness, something the Cardinal felt precluded belief in classical theological formulations for the reasons for Christ's sacrifice--hence my citation. It was a citation directly related to the notion of propitiatory sacrifice, something central to the meaning of the Mass. If you did not follow this argument, I suggest you go back over the posts. My quote was not the whole of his speech, but a part cited to emphasize the difference between Ratzinger's view of sacrifice and that of the more traditional view of the SSPX, something you apparently misconstrued entirely, thinking I cited the speech to prove the Cardinal was in agreement with SSPX. So you got the argument completely wrong. I was, in fact, suggesting just the opposite from what you claimed I was saying--and I then cited Trent's dogmatic description of the Mass to show how Ratzinger's contemporary view is out of keeping with Trent. In short, you really don't know what you're talking about.
OF COURSE Rome has lost the faith. The SSPX has never denied this publicly--and still does. So do I. It is self-evident. The religion now being promulgated by Rome is not the Catholic faith, it is something newly invented. This was need for a new Mass. It was necessary to express the new religion--which is no longer fully Catholic.
and still does=and still does not.
LOL amen
When everyone is telling you it is you who are confused and you find yourself telling everyone else they are confused, maybe it is time you stopped and took a look at what you are doing.
I hope that isn't too confusing for you :)
* Good. Thanks for the honesty. You and the sspx are heretical and outside the church.
I'll leave it to you and your friends to deal with the consequences of your EENS position.
So, I just went on Google and looked up RAtzinger and the conference at Fontgombault. Here is a bit of what he said. (of course his words expose you as peddling B.S. and Lies - but that is no surprise given your heresy).
Cardinal Ratzinger; I mention this strange opposition between the Passover and sacrifice, because it represents the architectonic principle of a book recently published by the Society of St. Pius X, claiming that a dogmatic rupture exists between the new liturgy of Paul VI and the preceding catholic liturgical tradition. This rupture is seen precisely in the fact that everything is interpreted henceforth on the basis of the "paschal mystery," instead of the redeeming sacrifice of expiation of Christ; the category of the paschal mystery is said to be the heart of the liturgical reform, and it is precisely that which appears to be the proof of the rupture with the classical doctrine of the Church. It is clear that there are authors who lay themselves open to such a misunderstanding; but that it is a misunderstanding is completely evident for those who look more closely. In reality, the term "paschal mystery" clearly refers to the realities which took place in the days following Holy Thursday up until the morning of Easter Sunday: the Last Supper as the anticipation of the Cross, the drama of Golgotha and the Lord’s Resurrection. In the expression "paschal mystery" these happenings are seen synthetically as a single, united event, as "the work of Christ," as we heard the Council say at the beginning, which took place historically and at the same time transcends that precise point in time. As this event is, inwardly, an act of worship rendered to God, it could become divine worship, and in that way be present to all times. The paschal theology of the New Testament, upon which we have cast a quick glance, gives us to understand precisely this: the seemingly profane episode of the Crucifixion of Christ is a sacrifice of expiation, a saving act of the reconciling love of God made man. The theology of the Passover is a theology of the redemption, a liturgy of expiatory sacrifice. The Shepherd has become a Lamb. The vision of the lamb, which appears in the story of Isaac, the lamb which gets entangled in the undergrowth and ransoms the son, has become a reality; the Lord became a Lamb; He allows Himself to be bound and sacrificed, to deliver us.
* In other words, Ratzinger says exactly the opposite of what you say he said.
For those intersted, I'll post a link to his remarks. As for you and the benefit of your soul, you ought to take the time to read the acutal words of Ratzinger and not how the heretical sspx twists them to confuse their supporters and continue their campaign of lies against the Magisterium, the Mass, and the Council
"EUCHARIST, COMMUNION AND SOLIDARITY"
Sunday 2 June 2002
Dear friends, after preparing for your Eucharistic Congress with prayer, reflection and charitable activities under the guidance of your Pastor, Archbishop Serafino Sprovieri, the Archdiocese of Benevento decided to undertake a two-fold investigation. It began an in-depth exploration of the relationship between the deepest sacramental mystery of the Church - the Holy Eucharist - and the Church's most practical, down-to-earth commitment: her charitable work of sharing, reconciling and unifying. The diocese proposed this exploration the better to celebrate the sacrament and to live more fruitfully Christ's "new commandment" that we "love one another".
"Agape, Pax', Orthodoxy, Orthopraxis
Often, in the primitive Church, the Eucharist was called simply "agape", that is, "love", or even simply "pax", that is "peace". The Christians of that time thus expressed in a dramatic way the unbreakable link between the mystery of the hidden presence of God and the praxis of serving the cause of peace, of Christians being peace. For the early Christians, there was no difference between what today is often distinguished as orthodoxy and orthopraxis, as right doctrine and right action. Indeed, when this distinction is made, there generally is a suggestion that the word orthodoxy is to be disdained: those who hold fast to right doctrine are seen as people of narrow sympathy, rigid, potentially intolerant. In the final analysis, for those holding this rather critical view of orthodoxy everything depends on "right action", with doctrine regarded as something always open to further discussion. For those holding this view, the chief thing is the fruit doctrine produces, while the way that leads to our just action is a matter of indifference. Such a comparison would have been incomprehensible and unacceptable for those in the ancient Church, for they rightly understood the word "orthodoxy" not to mean "right doctrine" but to mean the authentic adoration and glorification of God.
They were convinced that everything depended on being in the right relationship with God, on knowing what pleases him and what one can do to respond to him in the right way. For this reason, Israel loved the law: from it, they knew God's will, they knew how to live justly and how to honour God in the right way: by acting in accord with his will, bringing order into the world, opening it to the transcendent.
Christ teaches how God is glorified, the world is made just
This was the new joy Christians discovered: that now, beginning with Christ, they understood how God ought to be glorified and how precisely through this the world would become just. That these two things should go together - how God is glorified and how justice comes - the angels had proclaimed on the holy night: "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, goodwill toward men", they had said (Lk 2,14). God's glory and peace on earth are inseparable. Where God is excluded, there is a breakdown of peace in the world; without God, no orthopraxis can save us. In fact, there does not exist an orthopraxis which is simply just, detached from a knowledge of what is good. The will without knowledge is blind and so action, orthopraxis, without knowledge is blind and leads to the abyss. Marxism's great deception was to tell us that we had reflected on the world long enough, that now it was at last time to change it. But if we do not know in what direction to change it, if we do not understand its meaning and its inner purpose, then change alone becomes destruction - as we have seen and continue to see. But the inverse is also true: doctrine alone, which does not become life and action, becomes idle chatter and so is equally empty. The truth is concrete. Knowledge and action are closely united, as are faith and life. This awareness is precisely what your theme seeks to state, "Eucharist, Communion and Solidarity". I should like to dwell on the three key words you have chosen for your Eucharistic Congress to clarify them.
1. Eucharist
"Eucharist" is today - and it is entirely right that it be so - the most common name for the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, which the Lord instituted on the night before his passion. In the early Church there were other names for this sacrament - agape and pax we have already mentioned. Along with these there were, for example, also synaxis - assembly, reunion of the many. Among Protestants this Sacrament is called "Supper", with the intent - following the lead of Luther for whom Scripture alone was valid - to return totally to the biblical origins. And, in fact, in St Paul, this sacrament is called "the Lord's Supper". But it is significant that this title very soon disappeared, and from the second century it was used no longer. Why? Was it perhaps a moving away from the New Testament, as Luther thought, or something else?
Certainly the Lord instituted his Sacrament in the context of a meal, more precisely that of the Jewish Passover supper, and so at the beginning it was also linked with a gathering for a meal. But the Lord had not ordered a repetition of the Passover supper, which constituted the framework. That was not his sacrament, his new gift. In any event, the Passover supper could only be celebrated once a year. The celebration of the Eucharist was therefore detached from the gathering for the supper to the degree that the detachment from the Law was beginning to take place, along with the passage to a Church of Jews and Gentiles, but above all, of Gentiles. The link with the supper was thus revealed as extrinsic, indeed, as the occasion for ambiguities and abuses, as Paul amply described in his First Letter to the Corinthians.
Liturgy of Word, Prayer of Thanksgiving, Words of Institution
Thus the Church, assuming her own specific configuration, progressively freed the specific gift of the Lord, which was new and permanent, from the old context and gave it its own form. This took place thanks to the connection with the liturgy of the word, which has its model in the synagogue; and thanks to the fact that the Lord's words of institution formed the culminating point of the great prayer of thanksgiving - that thanksgiving, also derived from the synagogue traditions and so ultimately from the Lord, who clearly had rendered thanks and praise to God in the Jewish tradition. But he had emphatically enriched that prayer of thanksgiving with a unique profundity by means of the gift of his body and his blood.
Through this action, the early Christians had come to understand that the essence of the event of the Last Supper was not the eating of the lamb and the other traditional dishes, but the great prayer of praise that now contained as its centre the very words of Jesus. With these words he had transformed his death into the gift of himself, in such a way that we can now render thanks for this death. Yes, only now is it possible to render thanks to God without reserve, because the most dreadful thing - the death of the Redeemer and the death of all of us - was transformed through an act of love into the gift of life.
Eucharist, Eucharistic Prayer
Accordingly, the Eucharist was recognized as the essential reality of the Last Supper, what we call today the Eucharistic Prayer, which derives directly from the prayer of Jesus on the eve of his passion and is the heart of the new spiritual sacrifice, the motive for which many Fathers designated the Eucharist simply as oratio (prayer), as the "sacrifice of the word", as a spiritual sacrifice, but which becomes also material and matter transformed: bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, the new food, which nourishes us for the resurrection, for eternal life. Thus, the whole structure of words and material elements becomes an anticipation of the eternal wedding feast. At the end, we shall return once more to this connection. Here it is important only to understand better why we as Catholic Christians do not call this sacrament "Supper" but "Eucharist". The infant Church slowly gave to this sacrament its specific form, and precisely in this way, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, she clearly identified and correctly represented in signs the true essence of the sacrament, which the Lord really "instituted" on that night.
Precisely by examining the process by which the Eucharistic sacrament progressively took on its form, one understands in a beautiful way the profound connection between Scripture and tradition. The Bible considered solely in the historical context does not communicate sufficiently to us the vision of what is essential. That insight only comes through the living practice of the Church who lived Scripture, grasped its deepest intention and made it accessible to us.
*end of quote.
For some inexplicable reason you desire to claim Cardinal Ratzinger as a proponent of your odd personal opinions.
I can show - in hundreds of ways if necesary (I can find them on google in a matter of seconds)that what you and the sppx say Cardinal Ratzinger means is radically different from what Cardinal RAtzinger actually says. Please stop doing it.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
"You and the sspx are heretical and outside the church."
That's a pretty dumb assertion. You're entitled to believe what you want, but you're not entitled to invent facts. Rome is no longer fully Catholic. That is simply the truth. Many apostates hold high offices. Some officials are true Catholics, but some are clearly not--what's heretical about saying that? It's not even debatable.
And by the way, heresy means the denial of some dogma of faith. What dogma have I denied to warrant such a charge? I have to laugh at people like you--so ready to drum others out of the Church when they themselves haven't got the least idea of what they're even talking about. Learn some theology first--then get back to me.
"In other words, Ratzinger says exactly the opposite of what you say he said"
You are wrong to state this passage deals with what I was talking about--Ratzinger's assertion that the sacrifice of the Mass involved no destruction--or immolation as Trent puts it. I did not claim Ratzinger denied expiation or propitiation. Of course he does not deny this--neither does anybody else in the Novus Ordo Church. They all think what happens at the Novus Ordo is correctly propitiatory. But they interpret propitiation as a transformation, not a destruction--and that is the point of difference. The passage you quote has nothing to do with this insistence by SSPX--and Trent--that what is going on is a real immolation of the Son who took on our sins to appease the Father by dying on the Cross in an act of vicarious substitution. Sin for Ratzinger and for other modern theologians, is something we do to ourselves, not something done to God, so that no actual destruction is necessary. This is the new theology, it is not traditional thinking, and it is not what Trent had stated.
So the b.s. is yours, not mine. So is the ignorance. Here is more of what Ratzinger said: "It is only by grasping that it results from the practical disqualification of Trent, that one can understand the exasperation that accompanies the fight against the possibility of still celebrating Mass according to the 1962 Missal." Trent defined the Mass, but the Novus Ordo--as even Ratzinger admits--is incompatible with that definition.
"You and the sppx say Cardinal Ratzinger means is radically different from what Cardinal RAtzinger actually says. Please stop doing it."
I have not misquoted Ratzinger, nor have I implied he has said anything he has not said. Show where I have. And don't simply post whole speeches or essays nor long but irrelevant quotations sprinkled with words like "expiation" or "propitiation." Show where I have been unfair to Ratzinger or falsified what he said.
The whole point of this discussion with another poster initially was that the new theology uses the same terms used by traditional theology, but these carry new and different denotations. My example was the word "sacrifice"--and I used the Ratzinger quote to show that he was aware that the word had lost its original sense--and was no longer understood by moderns as it was understood in the past. You twisted this to mean that I was citing the Cardinal in order to show he was defending the SSPX generally. That was nonsense. He was simply stating a fact that supported the SSPX view on that narrow issue. But I went on to indicate how he differed from the SSPX view in his own less traditional interpretation of the Liturgy. Your own citation of his words on the Eucharistic Prayer indicates this difference. In no way does it show I have falsified his perspective--that what follows the Consecration is a sacrificial transformation, not a destruction. In fact, he has denied there is any sacrificial destruction. This is why he says, "In what does sacrifice consist? Not in the destruction, but in the transformation of man."
In short, it is you who are being obnoxious by your distortions, not I, and it is you who are resorting to invective to prove a point you don't yourself even comprehend. Follow the argument first before you oppose what I never even said. Otherwise don't expect to be taken seriously as anything other than what you seem to be, a loudmouth who hasn't the foggiest notion of the theological issues involved, but who demands to be heard anyway.
I have posted it at least twice. It is from Vatican 1. I'm not going to post it again. It is a waste of time dealing with you
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