Posted on 10/19/2006 5:57:34 PM PDT by monkapotamus
SSPX to send spiritual bouquet and encouragement to Pope
Bishop Fellay calls expected Latin Mass document "a grand gesture"
Brian Mershon
October 19, 2006
From the October 26 issue of The Wanderer.
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.
Road to Reconciliation?
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.
No Doctrinal Concessions Necessary
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.
Sacramental Communion but not Juridical
"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.
Many Modern Liturgies "Banal"; Traditional Rite Never Abolished
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.
Vatican II in Light of Tradition
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.
"The past is not thrown away, but one builds upon it."
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.)
I recall reading the 1st sentence in a book. Was that his autobiography? I have only read one or two books that he has written.
I don't know which one. But he did say it in one of his opening speeches upon becoming pope and it is also in the current Catechism.
Regards...
whispers in the loggia, huh? Weird combinations here...
Birds of a feather, and all that...
By the way, why don't you announce to everyone how many of your administrators will return next year to your school?
Sometimes people cannot identify where the true problem lies...
I renege on my earlier insinuation. Won't be looking at moving there any time soon.
Too many Catholics and Baptists and fundies to evangelize here in the Bible Belt. Ultimately, they end up making better Catholics and better and more chartitable and robust Catholic communities anyway!!!
Rockford is a nice place to visit, but...
FYI. And to encourage an end to the school conversation for reasons stated below. If you have questions, call.
Mershon:
You have no first hand knowledge of the subject of the school. You are right as to one thing: Stay in South Carolina.
Tell your friend and source that the guy in black always thought well of her and was quite disappointed when she decided to resign. I genuinely wish her well in whatever her endeavors may be. She has a great deal to contribute to all causes worthwhile and I have no doubt that she will. I regret not getting to know her better before she left but I have always been fortunate in character judgments and she is the real thing. She should be able to tell by that description as "the guy in black" that it is not "my" school. How much more she tells you will be her business and not mine.
As for me, I regard sympathies for the SSPX under the current circumstances of their being justly excommunicated schismatics to be a disorder to be avoided by Catholics. I am sorry that the Wanderer is apparently slipping in that regard in the direction of the Remnant. IF, ONLY IF, and WHEN an actual pope modifies or lifts Ecclesia Dei Afflicta, it will be my privilege to submit loyally to such a PAPAL decision and not one second earlier. There are NO substitutes. No statement by Dario Cardinal Castrillon de Hoyos nor by Cardinal Medina Estevez nor by Archbishop Ranjith, no self-serving propaganda by Fellay nor by de Mallerais nor by Williamson nor by any other excommunicated schismatic source, no impertinent news release nor press conference nor op-ed piece by any person of lesser authority than His Holiness will suffice. No speculation. No gossip. No lay or clerical subordinate fantasizing or explanations of what the pope will say nor of what he might say nor any claim of what His Holiness is said to have said when he said the precise opposite (this is not English literature class).
Post as you will, but our conversation as to people who are not of your personal acquaintance on issues not of your personal knowledge regarding the school is at an end. I can understand your personal loyalty to such a good person as W, your source, who will certainly be missed. OTOH, you have heard one side of some complex controversies and taken it upon yourself to sit in judgment upon some very good people who have given until they bleed. That sort of judgment I shall not encourage. Read or re-read Rerum Novarum, as the case may be.
If you show or tell any of this to W, be sure and show her all of it. If SHE wishes to discuss it, she knows how to get my number and she can call me any evening but Bingo night.
I have chosen to publicly post this FINAL reply to you on the subject of the school because private communications are subject to mischaracterizations while all may read public posts and judge for themselves.
Buh-bye!
Dude, I so do not know what you are talking about.
And I think I'll keep it that way.....
Black Elk and Bornacatholic's favorite tactic is to smear the wide brush of "anti-semitism" as widely as they can. Accuse as many people of this as possible, esp. when it comes to questioning Americanist NeoCon Zionist foreign policy, and then nobody bothers to look at the facts.
And by the way, to label all those "radical traditionalists" with the broad brush is also called "rash judgment" in Catholic moral theology. But it does usually put an effective end to the debate.
"Black Elk and Bornacatholic's favorite tactic is to smear the wide brush of "anti-semitism" as widely as they can."
Haven't seen any of that, but it is fair to point out that separation from the Church will lead into falsehood.
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