Posted on 09/17/2005 6:24:38 AM PDT by NYer
Sep. 15 (CWNews.com) - A bishop of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has warned traditionalist Catholics the "heresy of neo-modernism" which, he says, now controls the Vatican.
In an email message to his supporters, Bishop Richard Williamson, an English-born prelate who now serves the SSPX in Argentina, said that there are enormous differences "between Catholic Tradition and the position's of today's Rome." He continued: "Between these positions, any reconciliation is impossible."
Bishop Williamson conceded that some traditionalists might accept an offer of reconciliation with the Vatican, but "the conciliar positions of today's Rome would still be as false as 2 and 2 are 5, while the Traditional positions would still be as true as 2 and 2 are 4."
The Lefebvrist bishop wrote his email message to explain why he had said-- prior to the September 1 meeting between Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) and Bishop Bernard Fellay, the head of the SSPX-- that traditionalists would not be reconciled with the Vatican. He explained that if some traditionalists were to reach an agreement with the Vatican, others would resist-- "that if the Society [of St. Pius X] were to rejoin Rome, the resistance of Catholic Tradition would carry on without it."
Bishop Williamson, the most outspoken figure in the SSPX, is one of the four bishops consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in June 1988, in defiance of an order from the Vatican, prompting Pope John Paul II (bio - news) to announce the excommunication of the traditionalist leaders.
c) In the present circumstances I wish especially to make an appeal both solemn and heartfelt, paternal and fraternal, to all those who until now have been linked in various ways to the movement of Archbishop Lefebvre, that they may fulfil the grave duty of remaining united to the Vicar of Christ in the unity of the Catholic Church, and of ceasing their support in any way for that movement. Everyone should be aware that formal adherence to the schism is a grave offence against God and carries the penalty of excommunication decreed by the Church's law.(8)
First of all, an appeal is NOT an order. Interesting that you didn't post the rest of that article in which he goes on to state:
To all those Catholic faithful who feel attached to some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition I wish to manifest my will to facilitate their ecclesial communion by means of the necessary measures to guarantee respect for their rightful aspirations. In this matter I ask for the support of the bishops and of all those engaged in the pastoral ministry in the Church.
Hmmm. Would you say that Those Claiming Obedience to the Pontiff, Within the Church have fulfilled Their Obligation? I would think that They should be held to the fire of obedience before anyone, don't you? Before we all reach for the speck in the eye of the SSPX, how about removing the planks from our own.
how can one defend Tradition by disobeying the pope?
One cannot.
I simply cannot understand why heads in SSPX do not explode containing this contradiction. Oh, valiant logical contortions emanate periodically from SSPX presses that seem to explain things, but they do not.
Really? The church has formed her own pretzels of logic attempting to explain away Quo Primum.
Let all everywhere adopt and observe what has been handed down by the Holy Roman Church, the Mother and Teacher of the other churches, and let Masses not be sung or read according to any other formula than that of this Missal published by Us. This ordinance applies henceforth, now, and forever, throughout all the provinces of the Christian world, to all patriarchs, cathedral churches, collegiate and parish churches, be they secular or religious, both of men and of women - even of military orders - and of churches or chapels without a specific congregation in which conventual Masses are sung aloud in choir or read privately in accord with the rites and customs of the Roman Church.
-Pope Pius V
Ah the old "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain tactic> It's funny how thw heads of those in the SSPX should explode with contradiction, but neo-heads are always perfectly logical.
There are several things to note here. First, Quo Primum was a disciplinary document, not an infallible doctrinal definition on the Mass. As such, there's no reason to think it's irreversible. [emphasis added]
Okay, if we're going to play THAT game then one can say the same for Ecclesia Dei.
Third, the statement in Quo Primum that "no one whosoever is to be forced or coerced to alter this Missal" wasn't aimed at future priests who might dislike the liturgical changes of a future pope and who wanted to retain Pius V's liturgy. It was a safeguard for priests of that day who followed the revised Missal rather than the liturgy of a hesitant local bishop.
Oh so it's exactly the Opposite meaning of the words in Quo Primum, NOW I understand.
The bad news is that adhering to the schism (quite a different matter from mere Mass attendance), will merit you excommunication under Ecclesia Dei. Dare I say that defending the SSPX schism is describable as adhering more so than attending Mass? Yes, I dare.
Have you any defenses of the 16th century reformation other than its sassy anti-papal style?
I never asked that Catholics run a gauntlet. I did express the hope that His Holiness will make SSPX SCHIZZIES seeking readmission to the Roman Catholic Church run the gauntlet and subject them to the full measure of public repentance, sorrow and recantation and humiliation before readmitting them to the Church. If burning at the stake were still an option, I would suggest it but, realistically, running the gauntlet will do. The Roman Catholic Church is, well, the Roman Catholic Church and it is not some sophomoric college debating society.
I well understand that the world is somewhat, well, global, and not flat. The question is as to those who imagine that Pope St. Pius V in Quo Primum did not exceed even papal authority by purporting to bind each and every successor in perpetuity as to a disciplinary matter rather than as to doctrinal matters. The precise rubrics of the Tridentine Mass of Pope St. Pius V were apparently regarded by him as a method of avoiding "reformation" of the Roman Catholic Church. That was the challenge obviously posed in his time and his method for fighting the problem of creepin reformationism. Other methods might well occur to other subsequent popes and to deprive successor popes of the power of the keys as to the mere form of the liturgy.
In the Mass of Pope St. Pius V, we pray for the pope and our respective DIOCESAN bishops. Now, if someone added Fellay and his fellow excommunicati (none of whom by anyone's claim are DIOCESAN bishops) to those for whom prayers are offered in the Mass, such an addition would obviously change the rubric without papal permission to do so. Will Williamson incur double secret excommunication in addition to his pre-existing excommunication (Ecclesia Dei, 1988) if he adds Fellay to those for whom rayers are offered in the Canon of the Mass? I am not a scholar of these matters but I understand that Pope St. Pius V himself allowed the Ambrosian Rite of the Dominicans to survive. The Ambrsian Rite is NOT the Tridentine of Pope St. Pius V however similar. Did Pope St. Pius V excommunicate himself by allowing the Ambrosian Rite or any other rubric than te precise Tridentine? If you take the ultra vires (beyond PPV powers) excommunications and anathemas launched by PPV before any changes were made, how many of our popes are excommunicated starting with Pope St. Pius V?
This entire Quo Primum business brings the papacy and the Church into disrepute to the extent that anyone buys gullibly into the SSPX party line on this (or anything else?????). It reduces the Roman Catholic Church to the level of a Young Republican credentials fight with dubious "standards" indeed.
You are what you post. You may imagine that you have the right to define yourself with disagreement from no one else just because you say so. If so, you are wrong. This is the methodology of "identity politics. In Hillary's case or Marcel's, it amounts to: "I am deluded, therefore I am what I say I am." There is objective truth whatever Marcel and Ms. Hillary may imagine.
I strongly recommend to you a thrteen year-old book by Dick Cheney's wife Lynn. It is "Telling the Truth." The Arkansas Antichrist and Mrs. Antichrist want no one to read that book. Likewise, though it is not a religious book, as such, SSPX hopes you ignore the book as well for reasons that will be obvious when you have read it, if you have read it.
If you express support for SSPX and its schism, you can hardly object to being described as a schizzie.
If you convert to SSPX, you are "converting" to become a non-Catholic. We call this apostasy.
You are making another error in imagining that "charity" is cooing into the ear of the schismatic soft sweet nothings about how right the schismatics are to be offended by those mean old popes who just refuse to obey them. Charity does not consist of comforting lies to its object but rather to tell that person the truth that will set him/her free of all things schismatic or heretical. Caritas is charity is love. Love is wanting what is best for the loved one and not merely or even what the loved one wants.
Example: Gode loves you. If you deny that, you are not converting in any event. You pray to God that he will spare your mother from cancer. She dies of cancer. Does this mean that God hates you or her? No. You pray for what you want and God, loving you better than you can ever love yourself, will give you what you need and not at all necessarily what you merely want.
You have apparently experienced a pastor who has disappointed you by throwing you out of RCIA, to say nothing of directly denying Catholic dogma and Scripture as to Adam and Eve. Assuming that he is a bad pastor and a bad priest and a bad man, he is not the first priest so describable nor will he be the last. Remember that Jesus Christ Himself chose Judas.
Catholics understand that we are like Woody Hayes's Ohio State football teams: three yards and a cloud of dust so long as each of us may live. No Hail Mary passes. Seek out an Indult community which will probably not subject you to RCIA and will baptize or admit you to the Church if the pastor of the Indult community finds you ready to be Catholic. Why should you have to wait for Easter to be admitted to the Church (provided that you believe what we believe and will accept the obligations of Catholicism)?
No "There, there, poor babies, for those in manifest error." And that is NOT hot air.
As supreme legislator of the Church during his papacy, that JP II had the right to make that decision. He did and he did not see it your way. He excommunicated the Econe 5 and their adherents. Any appeal from a decision of the Vicar of Christ on Earth will have to go to, well, Christ, whose vicar he was or to B16 or a subsequent pope.
What a remarkably sensible post! Good for you!
Are you preparing an SSPX insanity plea for your final judgment or will it be invincible ignorance?
The SSPX are surely schismatics and, in a sane world, would be roasting on an open fire. As The Geezer points out, they may also be heretics in their views of papal authority and denial of their obligations to obey. Knuckling under to error or even tolerating it is NOT love.
BAC: Thanks for the defense.
Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia.
Protestants: Aren't there nearly a billion Protestants in 57,000 differing groups each with its own special idiosyncratic views as to Scripture? They also have free will, etc.
Do I want Orthodox to merely SAY that they are Catholic while continuing to be, in fact, adherents of Eastern Orthodoxy? No. I would like them to be actually Catholic and they may well not want to be actualy Catholic. God gave them free will to choose. Who am I to disagree? Protestants likewise have that free will. SSPXers have free will also and have abused it.
Yes the changes are atrocious and liberal as all get out. No more confession as liberals say they are absolved at the beginning of Mass. There are some very Holy Novus Ordo Masses in old Italian Churches. It is still potpourri with the Tabernacle off to the side Chapel. I choose to look at it positive though. In the Catacombs and communist lands one inkling of The Sacrament is risked in partaking. I think God knows it is what is in our hearts and will forgive.Jesus is in the Sacrament no matter what language or abhority of the teachings.
Some of his claims were true and should be admitted (and Ratzinger and JPII recognized them as true when they issued the 1984 and 1998 indults and in the countless times Ratzinger and many others, von Balthasar, even Yves Congar in his later years, pointed out where wrong, bad, things were done in the name of Vatican II) as such. But not everything Lefebvre said about Vatican II or the papacy was true (and very little of what Williamnson says about Vatican II is true). So Lefebvre's truths should be recognized but so too his falsehoods as well as his disobedience, which disobedience undermined all his instances of truth-telling--schism robs the would-be reformer of his credibility, which is a very sad thing because of course Luther said true things about some things that needed reform, so did Lefebvre. But disobeying and going into schism robbed both of them of their credibility.
Hmmm. Would you say that Those Claiming Obedience to the Pontiff, Within the Church have fulfilled Their Obligation? I would think that They should be held to the fire of obedience before anyone, don't you? Before we all reach for the speck in the eye of the SSPX, how about removing the planks from our own.
Oh, for pete's sake: "Nyah, nyah, nyah, I won't do it until he does!" Are you serious? One disobedience is the logical support for another? Non sequitur! Again, how one can admit that disobedience of the pope is not permissible, and then disobey the pope, is amazing, especially over the form of liturgy. The Eucharist is the Eucharist is the Eucharist. Illicit worship is still worship, but when the pope says that adherence to a schism means loss of salvation, is the illicit worship of that schism of any value? I think not! I am not the one condemning adherence to a schism! The POPE is condemning it! My condemnations in such matters are ineffective, irrelevant, meaningless, and perhaps sinful. But I am not making any such condemnations! The POPE condemns adherence, participation in, SSPX!
The church has formed her own pretzels of logic attempting to explain away Quo Primum.
For heaven's sake, what pretzels of logic? Quo Primum was not an ex cathedra statement! It was not dogma! It was not doctrine! It was a disciplinary matter, like priestly celibacy, or like the age at which fasting in lent is necessary, or like how many hours of fasting is necessary before reception of Holy Communion. It is something that the pope can change. This is NOT a "pretzel of logic"!
Ha, that's a knee slapper. There is a group of three or four of you who fawn upon each other and are so called "brothers" in neo-catholicism. You slam anyone to your right, including and especially those who espouse traditional views towards dogma and doctrine.
You hit on even new folks who arrive asking innocent questions or pose views different from your own narrow-minded and exclusionary brand of Christianity. Don't tell new comers about "bad beginnings" when posters ridicule and berate them upon their arrival.
Your mean-spirited attacks are noted and recognized for what they are. Get lost.
I wholeheartedly agree.
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.