Posted on 10/16/2006 8:27:21 AM PDT by NYer
Pope Benedict XVI celebrates the canonization ceremony of Italian nun Rosa Venerini, Mexican bishop Rafael Guizar, Italian priest Filippo Smaldone and Indiana nun Theodore Guerin in St. Peter's square at the Vatican, October 15, 2006. REUTERS/Giampiero Sposito
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
PARIS (Reuters) - After almost two decades of schism, Catholic traditionalists hope the Vatican will soon take them back into the fold by granting two key concessions and leaving unresolved the main issue that drove them away.
Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), says the expected revival of the old Latin mass that was replaced in the 1960s by modern liturgy in local languages would be a "grand gesture" meeting one of his demands.
The Swiss bishop, successor to the late SSPX founder French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, also expects the Vatican to lift the 1988 excommunications of Lefebvre and four bishops -- including Fellay -- whom he consecrated without Rome's approval.
"Things are going in the right direction. I think we'll get an agreement," Fellay told journalists in Paris at the weekend. "Things could speed up and come faster than expected."
Getting an agreement now would mean the Swiss-based SSPX and its 470 priests could return to the Roman fold without resolving a dispute over its opposition to the modernising reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
Claiming a million followers, the SSPX is the vanguard of traditionalists among 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide. Its return would have no direct effect on most parishes but high symbolic value for arch-conservatives in the Church.
The excommunications by the late Pope John Paul created the first schism in the Church in modern times. Since his election last year, Pope Benedict has been trying to hold out an olive branch to the SSPX.
Fellay envisages the SSPX would be an independent group within the Church, free of control by local bishops, while it continued to advocate rolling back other Vatican II reforms.
"We would be a bit like the Chinese Patriotic Church, in the Church without really being there," he explained. "There could be a relationship between Rome and us, but it would not yet be a juridical relationship."
"INTERMEDIATE STATE"
Speculation about an SSPX return arose last week when Vatican sources said Pope Benedict would soon allow wider use of the old Tridentine Mass in Latin that went out of favour when the Church switched to praying in local languages in the 1960s.
Priests can say the old mass if they get permission but few bishops grant it and demand for Latin rites is minimal. Most Catholics under 50 years old have never heard Latin spoken.
The SSPX thinks the post-Council liturgy, which stresses participation by worshippers in open praying and singing, has lost the sacred character and beauty of the traditional mass.
The Tridentine rite it prefers is solemn, with the priest and altar boys quietly reciting the prayers in Latin with their backs to the silent congregation.
The traditionalists also reject the Council decision that the Church, which long saw itself as the only path to salvation, should respect and work together with other faiths.
Echoing this, a senior SSPX official sparked controversy last year by urging the Pope to tell Jews and followers of other religions to convert from their "false systems" to Catholicism.
Fellay said the SSPX sought an "intermediate state" in the Church so it could continue to oppose what Lefebvre called "neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies ... in the Second Vatican Council and in all the reforms which issued from it."
"We don't want a practical solution before these doctrinal questions are resolved," he said. "The focus should be on these discussions."
Benedict, who sparked protest across the Muslim world last month with a speech hinting that Islam had been spread by the sword, has frequently stressed his support for Vatican II reforms including cooperation with other faiths.
Live by papalotry, die by papalotry.
LOL, you modernists are pathetic. What you can't comprehend is that your hero Torq would come after you FIRST.
And an anti-psychotic. Maybe we should buy stock in Pfizer?
Athanasius is the examplar. And a good one.
"This speak the communion-in-the-hand types who love the guitars and belly dancers on the "altar" (when there is one) and other similar improvements that have come from Vatican II?
* I read the Vatican Two Documents. I never encountered those things."
You obviously don't understand the "Spirit of Vatican II".
I have had a few pastors who, I believe, might be happy to explain these "improvements" to you.
Or else spend some time at the website of Oregon Catholic Press, the provider of songbooks, liturgy planning guides, and missalettes for most of the "Catholic" churches in the United States. http://www.ocp.org/en/
"SSPX is already very much like the CPC in that both are institutions of the excommunicated."
Why then are so many Catholic dioceses in the U.S. giving faculties to visiting CPC padres?
How so? Athanasius never willing separated himself from Holy Mother Church. He never announced that Holy Mother Church taught heresies.
"Athanasius never willing separated himself from Holy Mother Church."
Nor has the SSPX.
"He never announced that Holy Mother Church taught heresies."
Neither has the SSPX.
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If you want on (or off) this Catholic and Pro-Life ping list, let me know!
Who are you implying did do this?
Uh-oh.
Damn sitetest, you too?
Hear! Hear! Understand that the charity BE has, he reserves strictly for law breaking Mexicans. Precious little left for nostalgic misguided traditionalists.
The only "charity" I have for SSPX is that they be punished enthusiastically and not re-admitted (as in allowed to return) to the Church from which they are expelled without total humiliation, abject renunciation of their errors, and absolutely NO CONDITIONS demanded by the excommuinicati whatsoever. I would have had the same attitude about Arius, the Pelagians, the Donatists, the Albigensians, Wycliffe, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I for precisely the same reasons.
Most Mexicans are my fellow Catholics. NONE of the SSPX schismatics justly and wonderfully excommunicated by John Paul the Great are Catholic at all. Which reminds me: John Paul the Great was pope. He ruled on these criminals. You ought not make assumptions that Fellay governs Benedict XVI or any other pope. If Fellay or anyone else thinks that SSPX will be readmitted unrepentant and be in charge of its own affairs and be allowed to fire on target at Vatican II and make believe they were never declared schismatic and never excommunicated in Ecclesia Dei, keep whatever they are smoking away from your or at least my kids.
Again, John Paul the Great was pope and he made the decisions. It is about time that the SSPX phonies and other faux "trads" accepted reality and submit to authority or be, ummmm, darned and ruthlessly so. They are getting what they richly deserve.
Let us further not ignore that Red China is a totalitarian state. The United States is not. Nor is England. Nor, whatever their drawbacks as nations, are most (all?) countries where SSPX dips its excommunicated toe. It is said that married men were ordained in Czechslovakia during the communist era there and required to retire as priests when fredom re-emerged.
SSPX is a schismatic, excommunicated evil. Like most of us tell our kids: the sins of others do not justify yours. Likewise, SSPX's arguments from imagined moral equivalency do and ought to fall on deaf ears.
Which dioceses and priests have you in mind that harbor CPC priests? Which bishops preside over this? I have heard that some CPCs study in the Vatican but will not presume the reason why the Vatican allows it. Hopefully it is the fine Roman hand. There are none in Rockford and none are likely while Bishop Doran draws breath.
Ummmm, yes, Athanasius was the scourge of the Aryans and the defender of the Faith and the Church. He was not an excommunicated schismatic making trouble for its own sake like dead excommunicated Marcel and his co-conspirators.
Interestingly, Elinor of Aquitane, widow of Henry II, was safeguarding in her castle at Canossa in Italy Pope Gregory VII from the wrath of the Holy Roman Emperor (HINO Roman Emperor more accurately) who stood across her moat all winter long wearng sack cloth and ashes as personal penance for his attempts to name German bishops (Boy, did he pick on the wrong pope on that subject!). Gregory VII had placed the entire Holy (INO) Roman Empire under interdict: No Masses, no sacraments, no weddings, no funerals, no Catholic burials, as a punishment for the emperor's assumption of the papal prerogative to name all bishops (precisely the crime of the excommunicated SSPX schismatics!!! Gregory VII, pray for Benedict XVI and your Church!).
Thanks for a good post and God bless you and yours!
AND, UMMMMM, I must be the kind of modernist who now attends only the Tridentine Mass (for reasons of convenience) at St. Patrick's in Rockford although, scandal of scandal, young Fr. Geary also says Novus Ordo Masses and each and every Mass he says is quite valid. Not only that but he is in communion with our Bishop Doran and with the Holy Father unlike those adhering to some schisms of the excommunicated we could mention.
Hatred of pope and papacy was never known to be a precondition of Catholicism or even a condition of Catholicism. Rather it seems like a disqualifier to those claiming to be Catholic. What you call papalotry goes like this: John Paul the Great justly excommunicated and declared schismatic Marcel and his partners in ecclesiastical crime and their adherents. John Paul the Great never lifted those penalties and neither has Benedict XVI. Either the penalties will continue or they will not. If they do not that will be only through a decision of Benedict XVI. IF (a very BIG IF) Benedict XVI allows the miscreants to return, I think it unwise and I would be disappointed, but it is his call and his call alone. Whatever he decides will have my loyalty. That is what you call papalotry. That is what I call Catholicism.
Unless and until there is any papal decision to allow the SSPX to RETURN to the Church, I am free to hope that the SSPX be subjected to maximum punishment and humiliation and I do.
One pope at a time. If he makes prudential errors, he is still pope. I expect that the SSPX ooompah propaganda machine is wrong and that they will submit in humility or remain excommunicated. At a minimum, we won't see the raving anti-Semite Holocaust denier Williamson back because you can bet your house he will not willingly return. I would be fascinated to see how de Mallerais will have to back and fill to try to ignore his particularly poisonous schismatic expressions. Fellay MIGHT be able to engage in contortions necessary to the hypocritical high wire act, but I very much doubt it. If any purport to return, they should be ruthlessly kept under the microscope if not permanently cloistered.
If you ask me if I care whether you get back to me, the answer will be: not in the slightest.
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