SSPX to send spiritual bouquet and encouragement to Pope

SSPX to send spiritual bouquet and encouragement to Pope
Bishop Fellay calls expected Latin Mass document "a grand gesture"

Following an hour-plus long press conference in Paris October 14 by Bishop Bernard Fellay, the Superior General for the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), Reuters and the French Le Figaro reported that Bishop Fellay said the expected motu proprio easing current restrictions on the celebration of the Classical Roman rite of Holy Mass (Traditional Latin Mass) would fulfill one of the two criteria established by the SSPX in 2001 for continuing discussions on the path to possible full canonical regularization. In fact, Bishop Fellay called the expected document "a grand gesture" on the part of the Church.

"Things are going in the right direction," Bishop Fellay said. "I think we'll get an agreement," he said according to the Reuters account. "Things could speed up and come faster than expected," he said. Bishop Fellay was not available for a follow-up interview for The Wanderer by deadline, but the SSPX news service, DICI, said he would be available as soon as the expected document is promulgated by the Pope.

The SSPX has 470 priests, four bishops and claims 1 million Catholics who frequent their chapels worldwide. In 1988, Pope John Paul II, in the motu proprio, Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, declared that the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Campos, Brazil's Bishop Castro de Mayer excommunicated themselves by ordaining four bishops, including Bishop Fellay, against the express will of the Holy Father. Pope John Paul II immediately created a new Society of Apostolic Right, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), for those bishops and priests who wanted to maintain full communion with the Holy See while continuing to administer all the sacraments according to the liturgical books in force in 1962.

Then Cardinal Ratzinger was in the heart of the discussions at the time with Archbishop Lefebvre, as well as the current Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone. Cardinal Ratzinger was also instrumental in the establishment and encouragement of the erection of the FSSP.

Ever since 2000, when thousands of SSPX-sympathetic Catholics made a pilgrimage to Rome led by SSPX priests and bishops, a gradual thaw in relations between the group and the Holy See has occurred. In fact, Bishop Fellay and two other SSPX priests met with Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos on August 29, 2005, to discuss the possible path of reconciliation. Since the widely reported existence of a motu proprio relaxing restrictions on the celebration of the Traditional liturgy, it appears that communications between the SSPX and the Holy See may quicken and intensify.

Shortly after the General Chapter of the SSPX concluded in July, re-electing Msgr. Fellay to another 12-year term, the SSPX announced they would present Pope Benedict XVI a spiritual bouquet of 1 million rosaries at the end of October, customarily the month of the Holy Rosary. The SSPX previously announced they would send this spiritual bouquet to the Pope with a letter from Bishop Fellay requesting his acknowledgement that the Traditional rite has never been abolished by the Church and that every Latin rite priest has the right to offer it. "This letter, which is also a letter of support for the Pope in face of current and future adversities, should be sent before the end of the month," Fellay said.

While Fellay would not speculate on the expected contents nor the timing of the expected document on the Traditional rite, he has reportedly told U.S. audiences at SSPX chapels since earlier in the year that "the battle for the Mass is almost won."

The conservative and respected French newspaper Le Figaro reports that four months ago Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos communicated to the SSPX leadership that all that was necessary for the SSPX's return to full communion was a letter from Bishop Fellay requesting the Pope lift the decrees declaring the excommunications, with permission granted for the SSPX to interpret the documents of the Second Vatican Council according to proper theological method — "in light of Tradition." The SSPX disputes some conclusions drawn by the Le Figaro reporter in its October 16 account.

In other words, similar to the recent creation of the Institute of the Good Shepherd in Bordeaux, France, where five formerly highly placed SSPX priests were reconciled to the Holy See, there were no doctrinal retractions or corrections required by the Holy See for those priests reconciling, especially regarding the much-disputed interpretations of religious liberty, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue from the Second Vatican Council. Cardinal Hoyos has previously said in multiple public interviews within the past year that the status of the SSPX is not one of "formal schism," but of imperfect communion.

Bishop Fellay seemed to agree with that previously stated assessment at the press conference where he said that if and when the Traditional rite is freed, the next step the SSPX awaits would be the lifting of the declarations of excommunication against the four bishops. According to Fellay, a process of theological discussions regarding the intricacies and theological weight of what the SSPX considers to be the problematical documents of the Second Vatican Council then would begin.

"There could be a relationship between Rome and us, but it would not yet be a juridical relationship," Bishop Fellay told reporters.

"We don't want a practical solution before these doctrinal questions are resolved," he said. "The focus should be on these discussions."

Canonist Pete Vere, a Catholic convert and former adherent of the SSPX, agreed that the process outlined by Bishop Fellay "from a canonical perspetive it makes sense."

"The reconciliation will probably come about in stages, that there will be an agreement in principle to recognize certain things, as well as a restoration of sacramental communion," Vere said, along with the juridical and canonical issues following later.

Vere noted there has been canonical precedence for this approach with how the eastern-rite Melkites were eventually reconciled, as well as many of Fr. Leonard Feeney's followers, particularly those in Still River, Massachusetts.

And following upon Bishop Fellay's comments comparing how the situation with the SSPX would be an intermediate canonical step toward regularization similar to the China Patriotic Catholic Church, Vere said, "This is also the process Rome appears to be following with certain segments of the China Patriotic Church."

Bishop Fellay also predicted that when the document freeing the Traditional rite is promulgated, it will be followed "by a war within the Church," resulting in a spiritual war being ignited "identical to that of an atomic bomb," he said. Indeed, the increasingly persistent and mounting public opposition from the French episcopate to the newly-created Institute of the Good Shepherd is perhaps just one battle that signifies the possible war that will occur within the Church at large within parishes and dioceses, including bishops, priests and laymen.

Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro, head of Human Life International in Rome, and affiliated with Una Voce America, said that he thought it to be unlikely that the excommunications would be lifted prior to the expected document easing restrictions on the celebration of the Traditional Missal. He also thinks that the sanctions will be lifted only ". . . when some sort of juridical status is granted to the SSPX."

"This is evident because if the sanctions are lifted, but the SSPX continues to function without receiving even a temporary juridical status, they would again incur canonical sanctions," Msgr. Barreiro said.

In the just released September e-version of 30 Days, a well-respected Italian monthly dealing with ecclesiastical news and theology, the current Secretary of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith, again conveys his, and presumably the Holy See's, current perspective of the liturgical reform following the Second Vatican Council. In response to a question on this very issue, Archbishop Rajinth said that the expected positive results expected to appear as a result of the liturgical reform have not appeared.

And in a theme that has been repeated multiple times recently by Archbishop Ranjith in several recent interviews, as well as Cardinal Arinze and Pope Benedict XVI in his books on the liturgy, Archbishop Ranjith decried the attempt "to lower the divine mysteries to a banal level." Indeed, Cardinal Ratzinger warned against the "banal rationalism" that typified much of the attempted liturgical reform. Cardinal Arinze, the Prefect for the Office of Divine Worship and the Sacraments, has decried the "banal music" and "banal words" that accompanies much of the current liturgical orientation.

A quick word search finds the definition of "banal" to be "hackneyed," "trite," "drearily commonplace." In other words, there is no way the consistent use of this word can be perceived by anyone as a positive or glowing assessment of what too often is offered at many churches in the rite of Pope Paul VI.

In response to a question implying that Archbishop Ranjith had "good relations with the Lefebvrist world" (SSPX), he responded that he had never met Archbishop Lefebvre, but has had some contact with "some of his followers."

While Archbishop Ranjith declared he was "not particularly passionate about the Lefebvrists," he emphasized that some of their criticisms about the liturgy were perhaps beneficial to the Church. "And for that, they are a thorn that should make us reflect on what we are doing," he said.

Archbishop Ranjith also said that the fact the Holy See recently approved the Institute of the Good Shepherd [Ed. Note: The establishment of the traditionalist Apostolic Administration of St. John Marie Vianney in Campos, Brazil, headed by Bishop Fernando Rifan is another example.] displays in a very clear and direct manner that "the Mass of Saint Pius V cannot be considered as abolished by the new Missal of Paul VI."

Archbishop Ranjith reaffirmed what he has said recently in at least three other interviews, that is ". . . the Tridentine Mass is not a private property of the Lefebvrists. It is a treasure of the Church and of all of us," he said.

It might be surprising for most Catholics to find out that this very point is identical to the reasoning behind the SSPX's insistence that the Classical Roman rite be acknowledged to be free for all Latin-rite priests to celebrate. Bishop Fellay has repeatedly said that it is "for the good of the Church" that the SSPX makes this request. In other words, the SSPX has repeatedly acknowledged continuously over the years that the Traditional rite is not for their exclusive use.

The 30 Days interview continues with the Secretary of Divine Worship saying: "As the Pope said to the Roman Curia last year [December 22, 2005: See The Wanderer's January 26 edition, "Bishop Bruskewitz says . . . Para-Council Distorted Vatican II,"] the Second Vatican Council is not a moment of rupture, but of renewal in continuity," repeating almost directly this part of the Holy Father's address.

Archbishop Ranjith echoes the primary theme of Cardinal Ratzinger's 1988 Address to the Bishops of Chile in his explanation of the situation of Archbishop Lefebvre, the SSPX and its Catholic lay followers shortly after the illicit consecrations of four bishops. Cardinal Ratzinger told the Chilean bishops at the time:

"Certainly there is a mentality of narrow views that isolate Vatican II and which has provoked this opposition. There are many accounts of it which give the impression that, from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and that what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II.

"The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.

"This idea is made stronger by things that are now happening. That which previously was considered most holy — the form in which the liturgy was handed down — suddenly appears as the most forbidden of all things, the one thing that can safely be prohibited. It is intolerable to criticize decisions which have been taken since the Council; on the other hand, if men make question of ancient rules, or even of the great truths of the Faith — for instance, the corporal virginity of Mary, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the immortality of the soul, etc. — nobody complains or only does so with the greatest moderation....

"All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people. The one way in which Vatican II can be made plausible is to present it as it is; one part of the unbroken, the unique Tradition of the Church and of her faith."

(A special word of thanks again to http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/ for its timely partial unofficial English translation of the 30 Days interview with Archbishop Rajinth.)

Hopefully you will move to Rockford (where you and yours would be more than welcomed with or without disagreements), as we did, where accomplishing all of your laudable goals as to Catholic culture, family, wife, children, formation (that, BTW, IS available here), restoration of liturgy. IF you move to Rockford, I am confident that we WILL meet someday. My family attends the Oratory and I attend St. Patrick's (preferring shorter Tridentine Low Masses and outstanding sermons). Does "putting the Faith first" (laudable enough in itself) mean adopting Euroweenie defeatism and Jimmuh Cahtuh feckless futility as a foreign policy? If so, count me out. As Vatican II indicated, politics is the province of the laity. If it means putting the Church of Jesus Christ first, then, of course.

We have a first rate school (K-12) in Rockford, created and run by parents (no interference by diocesan poobah generically known as Sr. Krupskaya Pantsuit) who preferred educating their kids in the Faith and in all other respects rather than fight with educrats, secular or diocesan. Latin starts in grammar school and proceeds from there to using the Jesuit prep school highschool texts of Fr. Robert Henle that I used in the 1960s (still in print after all these years since first published during WW II), Saxon Math, theology by the Tridentine Mass priests of the Oratory and St. Patrick's, First Fridays every month at the Oratory, organized activity protesting weekly (and not weakly) in uniform outside the Rockford abortion mill, American history using the Samuel Eliot Morrison text in high school and junior high (better than texts used in my college history courses as a history major), English literature utilizing twelve novels/year in junior high, such as Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe and the like with challenging analyses expected, Sacred Music competently taught to choir standards, serious sacramental preparation, high objective test scores (California, Iowa, Stanford) without cherrypicking in admissions. Class size, generally small, often <6 per class. Parents welcome at any time to audit. Tuition: downward sliding scale: $2800 or so for first kid each year, 3/4 tuition for second kid simultaneously enrolled, 1/2 for third kid, 1/4 for 4th kid, 5th kid and more simultaneously enrolled, God bless you as great Catholic parents and those additional kids are free. We expect parents to volunteer. Welcome back home, if you decide to return. If you do, the school awaits you as does the Oratory and St. Patrick's and TAN Books and Publishers and Bishop Doran and a lot of supportive homschoolers and homeschooling institutions (if you prefer) and a lot more.

Now back to business.

The Americanist heresy has to do with Church governance and not with the anti-American fantasies of the John Raos and the Solange Hertzes and their paleopantywaist psychophants. It is not for nothing that our ohhhhhh soooooo sophisticated Euroweenie critics find so much at fault in America. No country such as ours which has sat still for nearly 50 million dead innocent babies under "the Rule of Law" or which has generalized "no fault" divorce or whch is in the process of making believe that those who have erroneous opinions as go which body parts belong where, is describable as "God's own ordained great nation." No objective observer can deny that this nation has also done much good for many people, not our own, at great price. Of course, the paleos are not objective observers.

On the other hand, the ritual misuse of the term "neocons" to give paleopantywaists some sort of standing that they have not earned, avails nothing whatever. The New Right, the conservative movement, is what you and Buchanan and Sobran call "neocons." Note that neither Buchanan nor Sobran were ever involved other than as speakers with the New Right. To conservative political movement people, the very use of the term "neocons" to mislabel the New Right and the conservative movement, speaks volumes and much more than you may think.

David Frum outlined the history of the pathetically unpresentable crew of "paleos" in an April, 2004 article in National Review. The paleos are policy wannabes (heretical in political terms) who are not socially ready for primetime and are not likely to become ready. It took their little platoon about six years to figure that Ronaldus Maximus was NOT going to embarrass himself, the GOP or the nation by allowing most of them to be credentialed in his administration. [They have fared no better under either Bush.] They then erupted in collective rage at a Mont Pelerin Society gathering and effectively conceded that they were never conservatives as that term is generally understood in the US. They then needed a way to call themselves the "real conservatives." The New Republic and the Nation were only too happy to cooperate. Since the actual "neoconservatives" were basically getting to be dead or octogenarian or nonogenarian (Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Daniel Bell, Sidney Hook, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and a handful of others, mostly CCNY students of the 1930s), the paleos and the left misappropriated the term "neocon" in a surely impossible attempt to hijack the name conservative and turn it into code for cowardice in international affairs instead of the quite traditional interventionism. When they fail, they then claim that interventionists are, somehow, internationalists of the Woodrow Wilson stripe. The conservatives have NEVER been internationalists.

In the event that the two cardinals and the bishop would be doing B-XVI's bidding in welcoming the SSPXers back, that is too bad. There is a term for it. It is called "prudential error." Just as many have noted the disasters that followed on the "spirit of Vatican II" enthusiasms, there will probably be analogous regrets as to any prudential mistake made in good will to again bring the SSPX under legitimate and actually Catholic pastoral care. Then again, B-XVI, in such an event, may well be right. Then again, like the rumors of Mark Twain's death years before the actual event, the rumored actions of B-XVI may well be greatly exaggerated. We shall see what we shall see but this Catholic will wait for B-XVI to act. Whether he does act directly contrary to my preferences or otherwise, he will have my automatic submission to his authority and that of every actual Catholic. After all, he IS pope. Meanwhile, the bureaucratic hired help ought not act as termites against the wisdom of John Paul the Great unless and until B-XVI does actually act.

Speaking of which term, one may recall that the term Immaculate Conception was applied by the laity to the conception of the BVM long before Lourdes or the dogmatic definition of Blessed Pius IX. Also Theotokos and many other doctrines. I have little doubt that he is John Paul the Great, that he will be known as John Paul the Great (among other things for declaring SSPX a schism and for summarily excommunicating its adherents and leaders). People may disagree. So, shoot me.

I posit the actions of Hoyos, Medina and Ranjith as disobedience of John Paul the Great because, absent formal action by B-XVI regarding Ecclesia Dei Afflicta, they are, ummmm, disobedient to John Paul the Great. This is hard to understand because.....?????

If you were to return to Rochelle which also has a St. Patrick's (modernist space station architecture but Fr. Peck, prolife director for Doran, as pastor), you would probably want to attend St. Patrick's in Rockford or the Oratory.

No problem with paragraphs 1 and 2. There is an unauthorized Tridentine Mass storefront in Rockford but it is not SSPX and predates the appointment of Bishop Doran. As to 3, if Hoyos, Medina or Ranjith claim that the SSPX (declared schismatic and excommunicated by JP the Great) are still Catholic, then you did not have to say they are contradicting or "overturning" JP the Great. They cannot overrule him without first being chosen his successor in Conclave. By definition, if they claim that the SSPX miscreants are Catholic despite John Paul the Great's judgment against them, they are contradicting John Paul the Great.

God bless. If you have proof (quoting John Paul the Great's own language in Ecclesia Dei Afflicta or anything subsequent and papal), present it. I do not care what the targets of the excommunication like Fellay may say anymore than I trust the civilian bank robber who says I should believe his alibi despite the videotape of the robbery, nor should I elieve any non-papal claim that they are not excommunicated and schismatic anymore than I would trust the blatherings of an ACLU lawyer in defense of Al Qaeda.

Actual SSPXers here (I am not accusing you of being one) have often claimed to be Catholic because of convoluted claims involving due process when John Paul the Great was entitled to act summarily like civilian judges finding the obstreporous to be in contempt of court and summarily punishing them.

Marcel, the archschismatic himself, purported to agree in writing to each and every document of Vatican II (but rejected many later when it suited his convenience) and agreed in writing to obey John Paul the Great and not consecrate de Mallerais (worse even than Fellay), Fellay, and the others. He did not violate that promise. He massacred it. Not that his promise to obey the pontiff in such a matter was needed in any event. His obedience was required by his vow as a priest, long, long before.

Old fossil that I am, I lack most computer skills. I am asking bornacatholic to cite relevant language from Ecclesia Dei Afflicta, demonstrating that the excommunicated include the SSPX "adherents" and not just the bishops. Is suspended from the priesthood not a negative? How about the adherent laity?????

I know Rochelle well and Fr. Peck. I was married in that "gorgeous" church building, which will be gone sooner rather than later...

As for the school in Rockford you mention. I have a couple of questions. Why has there been such a HIGH TURNOVER rate among the faculty and teachers? If it is such high quality, why does it only have 40 or so students, and has climbed beyond that for several years?

If it is so wonderful, why do the board members continuously change the rules over and over and over again to suit their own personal preferences, and treat the teachers and administration like their hired servant boys and girls?

And how come the vast majority of the homeschoolers who participate in the homeschool co-op (I hear this is very well organized and run) which numbers maybe 150, not want to have anything to do with the school?

Just a couple of questions on that. I know Fr. Bovey. I also know that Musicam Sacram asked for the laity to learn how to sing their parts of the Mass and that low Mass is an exception, not the norm. Why in the world would ANYONE attend low Mass when they have the option to attend High Mass? Seems like you're missing parts of Sacrosanctum Concilium, Mediator Dei and Pius II's Musicam Sacram. What gives?

You want to keep engaging in politics and sociology and history. I'm not qualified. I'm actually not too interested either, to tell you the truth...

Politics is the province of the laity, however, as you very well know, this weekend, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. Christ should rule sovereign over not only individuals, families, states and nations as well--in actuality. He actually does, whether we recognize it or not, but our government, whatever form it takes, should reflect that. That is the true meaning of the Kingship of Christ. Other than that, I know what "conservative" policies and laws correspond more or less with Catholic doctrine and discipline, and which ones don't. So much for "conservatives," so-called. I'm really not interested in the little tiff you must have with "Euroweenies" as you call them. Is the current Pope one of them?

Besides, Europe will become Muslim in my lifetime, so they are history anyway.

As Black Elk is North of Rockford, and I am south of Rockford, but north of Rochelle (in Ogle County, I figured out of Winnebago was the only longterm solution), I hope I can be the "in-between" in this discussion.

Regarding the school:

Why has there been such a HIGH TURNOVER rate among the faculty and teachers? If it is such high quality, why does it only have 40 or so students [ . . . ]?

I attended a secular, rather expensive second-tier prep school in Connecticut growing up. My home town of Wallingford is also where first-tier Choate/Rosemary Hall is located, and where I first started playing with computers. (That school is considered first tier, is even more expensive, and Kennedys went there). I also had contact with other first through third-tier prep schools in Connecticut through friendhips and athletics. All lay-run schools have high turnover among faculty and administration. There are several reasons for this. The pay is generally very low. One teacher at the Choate School transferred to the inner-city Meriden public school system for the pay and bennies. The hours and commitment during the school year are extreme. (in boarding schools you never get to get away from work, playing dorm master in many cases. Even in the Day schools and mixed schools, you pretty much have to take on after-school sports and/or extra-curriculars. These teachers are generally young. The teachers in the lower grades are more likely to be women. One teacher who left the Rockford school in question went to join the traditional Benedictine nuns who are now in Kansas City (and whose name has changed, so I cannot give you the proper name). This is certainly an upgrade but does not reflect badly on the school or the quality of teachers attracted. With such a small staff, even a few teachers moving makes for a high turnover rate.

Regarding the small student body, that is likely as much a function of the location as anything. I understand that a non-inner-city location will be built and put into operation next year, this should help. Christendom College, in ten years, with the whole country to draw from, only had 120 students in 1985.

If it is so wonderful, why do the board members continuously change the rules over and over and over again to suit their own personal preferences, and treat the teachers and administration like their hired servant boys and girls?

I am not close enough to the school to know exactly what you are talking about, but all private institutions changes the rules over and over again to meet new needs. That's one thing that sets them apart from the NEA. Also, the school is not even ten years old! When I transferred to Christendom in 1985, the school was ten years old, and I was the first to try to transfer AP credit over (I succeeded, Deo Gratias!) I won't dismiss out of hand what you are saying about the treatment of teachers and administration, but it sounds like mere empty gossip to me, without specific examples.

And how come the vast majority of the homeschoolers who participate in the homeschool co-op (I hear this is very well organized and run) which numbers maybe 150, not want to have anything to do with the school?
Because they are homeschooling! My oldest daughter (5) is being homeschooled now, and we have no plans to enroll our children in any program outside the home. That does not mean the school is not a big plus for others. There is no reason that the Rockford area cannot have excellent home-schooling, homeschool coops, hybrid programs, and a full-blown school. To some degree, a full-blown school and home-schooling are mutually exclusive for parents choosing for their children.

Why in the world would ANYONE attend low Mass when they have the option to attend High Mass? Seems like you're missing parts of Sacrosanctum Concilium, Mediator Dei and Pius II's Musicam Sacram. What gives?

Elk is only 25% Irish, but this side has been naturally dominant and well-cultivated over the decades. They like things quiet and meditative. Elk also likes air conditioning.I am also only 25% Irish, but I also have a natural preference for Low Mass. I suspect God prefers High Mass, as does my wife, and the Oratory offers a full sacramental life (Confirmation, Confession, Baptism, etc. all in the old rite) so we attend the Oratory exclusively.

Another aspect of Elk's self-nursed Irish temperament is to meet kind-with-kind. So, when someone like John Rao makes statements along the lines of "Pope John Paul II is the worst Pope of all time" he figures the gloves are dropped. He genuinely believes that the rhetoric and behavior of SSPXers will undermine the long-term authority of the Church and will lead people to Hell. While I agree concerning the objectively schismatic nature of the conseration I prefer to take a milder approach, as it has been my experience that it is sometimes fruitful at the individual level. His motivations are honest, and are based in a genuine love of the Faith and fear of separation.

I understand the Vatican to be a sovereign nation as well as the HQ of our Faith. Admire John Paul the Great though I did, I can understand distinctions between the foreign policy imperatives of the Vatican and those of the United States. The Vatican needs Islamic cooperation in pro-life initiatives and Third World (often anti-American) cooperation as well. The United States, even under a pro-life president, has many more issues for which it has primary responsibility.

Bear in mind the background of Mehmet Ali Agca, attempted assassin of JP the Great. He grew up in a hut in interior Turkey with a picture of John XXIII on the hut wall. This was to remind him that he would want to assassinate a pope some day, not to prove loyalty to Marcel, but to prove loyalty to Islamaofascism. Fortunately, he failed. More fortunately for Agca, I remember reports that he told JP during a jail visit that Christ had appeared to him without words to show him the empty tomb, thereby convincing Agca that Christ was divine, not a prophet at all much less secondary to Mohammed, thereby refuting the two main tenets of Islam.

These matters of Faith are the province of the clerics. When it is necessary for Dubya to hammer Baghdad or Kabul or Teheran or Pyongyang is conceded by the Catechism to be beyond the knowledge if Church leaders who can establish norms for just war but will not know that the standards are met. That is a burden necessarily born by national governmental leaders.

St. Patrick's in Rochelle was the scene on September 16, 2001 of a sermon by Bishop Doran to the effect that those who think it doesn't much matter what religion one holds so long as one believes in God, ought to review the 9/11 tapes as often as necessary to get the point that it does matter.

You are obviously acquanted with some of our locals. That they are local does not guarantee that their heads are screwed on straight. The faculty (and administrative) turnover at the school has a wide variety of reasons, good and bad. Some were legendarily bad hires in the first place although the decisionmakers had little reason to think so when the hires occurred. In my less informed opinion (than that of the board), some folks should have been retained but were not (but the board knows all of the reasons for the board's decisions as I do not). Some of the departed might better have been burned at the stake but few lasted long enough to cause concern and I am forever falling back on the auto da fe as a default position. NONE, to the best of my knowledge turned over for reasons related to the kids' physical or emotional well-being. Courtesy of Adam and Eve, we are fallen creatures. Marketing has been far less effective than it should be. The numbers of students DO steadily climb and the numbers of faculty along with them. I believe that the numbers are in the 50s at this point but concede that it ought to be higher. Also, some parents object to the rigorous education because their kids complain of the homework compared to their experiences at schools that maintain low standards or compared to nice, sweet mommy who can be emotionally beaten to a pulp in the name of the fallen desire for a life of preteen and early teen leisure. My youngest is sometimes inclined to think that watching insipid Disney sitcoms is a constitutional right. Of course, that is why God gave to her my wife and me as parents. We discourage Disney in favor of cultural, educational and athletic pursuits, good friendships with appropriate friends, etc. I dismay some of the RAICHE (homeschooling parents) by not carrying a bullwhip fulltime to adjust my kids' each and every attitude. I favor the notion that they will soon enough be responsible for their own moral decisions, that morality is what we do when no one is watching but God, take as a reward their every moral behavior, and trust that, when they are loosed upon the world the world will have more to worry about than we will because we did not raise our children as potted plants. Someone has to be raised to rule the gummint skewel kids and we raise our kids with that in mind.

There are also some parents in these circles who believe that actual education of young ladies is a near occasion of sin. We, ummmm, disagree.

The priest you mention is Fr. Brian Bovee who is the pastor of the Oratory. He does early morning Low Tridentine Mass at 7 AM on Sunday and High Mass at 9 AM and then goes to say a third Mass at Aurora.

Some of us who grew up with crisply said (1/2 hour Low Masses) have little desire to devote 90 minutes to the sung High Mass with all the bells and whistles times three. So long as the Church offers shorter Masses of obligation, I do notb imagine that attending them is sinful. I personally find the long form to be like an entire football game in slooooooow motion. I have never pretended here or elsewhere to prefer the Mass that lasts for ages over the Mass of the Ages that I recall from serving it in my youth when it was still the norm. If people want the long form, you can trust Fr. Bovee to provide it at the 9 AM on Sunday. No objection here particularly as I can attend the far crisper version of Fr. Geary at St. Patrick's. I also routinely pray the rosary at Mass as did my ancestors. You don't have to do likewise. I don't have to use a Missal when the choreography alone tells me where we are in the Mass. I don't claim that length and Baroqueness are equivalent to piety. Call me old-fashioned Irish. Just the kind of boy I am.

As to the documents you mentioned, they may represent an ideal but I find MUCH more important the excommunications and declaration of the adherents of the SSPX schism than I do counsels of perfection. I have an extremely long way to go before I'll have to worry about perfection. The choir at the Oratory has a long way to go before it has to worry about being accused of meeting any counsels of perfection either.

To paraphrase a decidedly non-Catholic fellow, Lev Trotsky, who, like the legendary stopped clock, just happens to be right for a change, you may not be interested in politics, sociology and history but, like war, they will be interested in you and in your family. Besides, politics, sociology and history are within my province as a laymen. Bossing the pope around ala Fellay is not nor is it in Fellay's province for that matter.

I decline to answer your questions as to the school for quite moral reasons which relate to personal loyalty and to avoidance of detraction whether or not your perceptions, presumably second hand, may be correct. Living in South Carolina, you have no need to know. If you were actually here and considering the school, you would be much more entitled to SOME but not all info. Some of the turnover has necessarily to do with unacceptable behavior by students and is their business, that of the school and no one else's.

You make various assumptions on one side of local controversies. SOME but not all of RAICHE (homeschool support group) members are not inclined as you say and tend to put their kids in the school when they deem it necessary and bring the kids back to homeschooling . Some are reluctant to be involved with the school but they tend to be the most controlling parents(which is their right before God).

I am not a board member and my agreement with the board is not automatic but the board members are parents who created this school and have spent years bleeding cash for it. They have more knowledge as to their decisions than I can have but I will not engage in calumny against them and I will give them, in most circumstances, a very firm benefit of the doubt as the good people that they are. They are not popes and not infallible nor does any sensible person expect them to be.

Europe will be Muslim in your lifetime and even in mine because the actual Catholics refused to meddle in mere worldly politics (though it IS the province of the laity), because, somehow marshmallowism is equated in some minds with piety, because the Euroweenies decided that two wars in one century was enough and that they are not their brothers' keepers, and besides, they could feel sooooo much better while processing to Chartres or wherever instead of having backbones in civil affairs. Edmund Burke was not Catholic but, unlike today's Eurotrash, he got the meaning of the French Revolution. If the "Goddess of Reason" again dances her nude obscenities on the altars of Notre Dame, it will be because the Catholics of France, for one example, no longer cared enough to suffer inconvenience much less injury or death in defense of their civilization. We Americans are just a few decades at most behind the Euroweenies. Meanwhile, except to save England (which has been our good ally under Thatcher and Blair), Ireland, Scotland, Andorra, Poland, Bulgaria or the Vatican, we should save our capital of men at arms and cash to defend countries that care enough to defend themselves. When the time comes, with those exceptions, I would slam the door on Euro immigration as I never would on Mexico.

Wow. That sounds like a hell of a school system, brother. Your Church and Bishop souind great also.

Now, you may have a great sermoniser, but, I doubt he could stack-up against Fr. Julian Harris of Boynton Beach, Fl, St. Thomas More Parish.

He is a convert from So. Baptism and he knows the Bible like few I have ever met.

While a Lector, Lectrix do the first two readings, and the Deacon the Gospel, Fr. just sits there listening attentively.

And when it is time for the sermon, he walks slowly to the pulpit and begins. I can not tell you how amasing he is. There are MANY of our seperated brethren who come just to listen to him. He has been the proximate cause of conversions too numerous to list.

His sermons run to about 20 mins. I have heard them for years (we are quite good friends) and I have never heard him use one "ah" or "um." He NEVER uses a word incorrectly or confuses subject-verb or mispalces modifiers etc etc. His speech is flawless. Often, during the same sermon, I will be moved to both tears and laughter. He has opened my eys and heart countless times and I have learned so much about the Bible due to him.

And now for the strange part. He has NEVER prepared a sermon. Never. Ever. Never has. Never will.

"FR. how long do you work on your Sermons?"

"What?"

"I mean, how many hours do you prepare and do you just use notes or do you write it all out."

"Brother, I am a preacher. When you hear me, you aren't hearing me. You are hearing the Holy Ghost speaking through Julian. I never know what I am going to say."

We have talked about this several times but it stii blows me away when I hear him.

Luckily, every one of his sermons is now being taped and they are sold.

He is incomparable.

FWIW, our Parish is HUGE. Among our converts are about a dozen Jews and a former Muslim family of nine.

Peter Gerety

Oh yes, it is a very small world. He was Bishop of Maine. The beautiful Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland, Maine experienced some, um, changes while he was there.

Here are a few examples of the astonishingly beautiful stained glass windows in the Church.

*Well, you say, those are beautiful BAC, but why no photos of the Gorgeous High Altar? You know, the one made from imported Snow-White Italian Marble and paid for by the poor and middle-class Italians who lived on Munjoy Hill? You know, the ones who heard rumors Bishop Gerety was gonna dismantle the altar because that is what Vatican Two called for and so they went to see him and he promised, "The altar will never leave the Church."

And then, the next Sunday, when the big Italian Familes walked down Munjoy Hill and walked into the Church they saw no altar because it had been jack-hammered to smithereens and placed in the basement so it would still be in the church? Is that the altar you mean?

Yeah.

But how did you know about it if you never saw it. You didn't live there when he was Bishop

Oh, the first time I went to the Indult at the Cathedral in the adjacent Chapel, I first walked into the Nave of the Cathedral and immediately fell in love with the amasing Stained Glass windows and I saw an old janitor and I told him how much I loved the windows and how beautiful I thought the Church was.

"So, how come there is no High Altar here? I would have thought there would be given the beauty of the Cathedral," I said as I was pointing to the Sanctuary.

Oh, about 20 years ago a Bishop had it torn down.

I turned to face him and tears were spilling from his eyes.

I will never forget that poor man and the pain he bore. He was the one who told me the whole story.

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