Posted on 01/03/2008 11:09:03 AM PST by NYer
The Vatican has begun drafting a document to elaborate on Pope Benedict XVI's recent liberalization of the old Latin Mass because some bishops are either ignoring his move or misinterpreting it, Vatican officials said.
The Vatican's No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said in comments published Thursday that the Vatican would be issuing an "instruction" on how to put the pope's document into practice, since there had been what he called some "uneven" reactions to it since it went into effect last year.
The document Benedict issued in July removed restrictions on celebrating the so-called Tridentine Mass, the rite celebrated in Latin before the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s paved the way for the new Mass used widely today in local languages.
Following the 1960s reform, the Tridentine rite could only be celebrated with permission from local bishops — an obstacle that supporters of the old rite said had greatly reduced its availability.
In a gesture to such traditional Catholics, Benedict removed that requirement in his document, saying parish priests could celebrate the Tridentine Mass if a "stable group of faithful" requested it.
Implementation, however, has been uneven, with some bishops issuing rules that "practically annul or twist the intention of the pope," Monsignor Albert Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for the Divine Cult and Discipline of Sacraments, said recently, according to the Vatican's missionary news agency FIDES.
Such reactions amounted to a "crisis of obedience" toward the pontiff, he was quoted as saying, although he stressed that most bishops and other prelates had accepted the pope's will "with the required sense of reverence and obedience."
Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, said the upcoming instruction would lay out criteria for the pope's document to be correctly applied, according to an interview published Thursday in the Italian religious affairs weekly Famiglia Cristiana. He gave no date for its publication.
He complained that reactions to the pontiff's document had been uneven.
"Some have even gone so far as to accuse the pope of having reneged on Council teaching," Bertone was quoted as saying. "On the other hand, there are those who have interpreted the (document) as authorization to return exclusively to the pre-Council rite. Both positions are wrong, and are exaggerated episodes that don't correspond to the pope's intention."
Despite such incidents, the Rev. John T. Zuhlsdorf, who runs a blog that has charted implementation of the pope's document, said he had seen growth in both interest in and celebrations of the older form of the Mass.
"In some dioceses in the United States, bishops have been stepping up to the plate and not only learning the older form, but celebrating it themselves," he said in an e-mail. "Younger priests are attending workshops. Several seminaries are offering training for their priesthood candidates."
Even before the pope's document was released, liberal-minded Catholics had complained that Benedict's move amounted to a negation of Vatican II, and some bishops and cardinals publicly warned that its implementation would create a rupture in the church.
Jewish groups also complained because the old rite contains a Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews. Bertone has said the issue could be resolved and that the church in no way intended to go against its spirit of reconciling with Jews.
Benedict's document was also a bid to reach out to the followers of an excommunicated traditionalist, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who split with the Vatican over Council reforms, notably the introduction of the new Mass.
BTTT for further developments.
I can understand your continued attendance at the NO and do consider it heroic in some ways. I would not call you a dupe or a collaborator but I wish the SSPX sympathizers would not be called “schismatic” when Cardinal Ratzinger clearly disagreed with that judgment in the Hawaii case. My sympathy for the SSPX comes from their Catholic faith and preaching, not because their polemics.
I would say though that SSPX/traditional mass attendance can be a prudential judgment especially where the faith of children is involved. The uncharitable polemics need to stop on both sides. Let the differences be discussed openly with charity (1 Cor 13). It is not 1600; we are living in a post-Christian world with secularists and Muslims both ready to violate truth and beauty.
You are also parroting the SSPX schismatic line by the argument that because SSPX Masses are valid, we are supposed to be impressed with allegations that the cult of Marcel is somehow not excommunicated and is not in schism. Williamson and Fellay are bad enough but the French excommunicated SSPX poseur, de Mallerais, who is still living, is worst in show. His venom makes Williamson's fantasies seem mild.
Most active SSPXers were born into Catholicism and rejected the Faith and its discipline consciously and eagerly and most Eastern Orthodox were born into a thousand-year-old schism. The Eastern Orthodox have suffered much particularly in Russia for their Faith in Christ which differs but slightly from our own, is territorial and not an ecclesiastical anarchy, except as to the absolute authority of the papacy. SSPX has "suffered" from the inanity and evil of its own leaders and from imagined offenses to its collective tastes and from popes who simply refuse to obey the hallucinations and demands (no less) of SSPX's excommunicated leaders.
Unfortunately, the auto da fe and its attendant system of corrections has gone out of fashion. Each would never have been more reasonably used than it might have been used against the schismatic cult of SSPX.
What role does ecumenism have in dealing with open, nakedly rebellious miscreants who have PERSONALLY and as a cult rebelled against what they well know is legitimate authority as vested in the papacy. Their true motto is that of Lucifer: Non Serviam. They should be treated justly according to their works. In being declared in schism and excommunicated, the SSPX and its adherents have received at least SOME of what they deserve. If they die unrepentant, they cannot blame JP II for their fate or B XVI for that matter. They have been given every opportunity to confess their sins and repudiate the evil of their cult as openly and publicly as they have practiced that evil and to be forgiven. There is no evidence that they have done so.
Neither the gates of hell nor the SSPX will prevail against Holy Mother the Church. We have it on the Highest Authority that He will be with the Church until the end.
I think you will find that the judgment of the Holy Office was that there was no evidence of actual adherence to the SSPX schism and thus no excuse for excommunication by his lavenderness. It is no part of the Catholic Faith to spit contemptuously upon the papacy itself (a hallmark of SSPX) and most particularly upon the pontiff of the time, John Paul II, (another hallmark of SSPX) quite obviously because he had excommunicated them and their fallen Archbishop Marcel and declared their delusions and evils as placing them in schism.
It IS charitable to be honest enough to call SSPX's ecclesiastical crimes what they are: ecclesiastical crimes. It is NOT charity to make believe otherwise, to hold their hands and to sing Kumbaya with them as thoygh they were not schismatic excommunicati, and to give aid and comfort to the manifest evils of Marcel's little cult. The sooner that cult is crushed permanently the better.
Remember when the SSPX sympathizers and love slaves were just about unanimously predicting that the Motu Proprio would surely mark Rome's surrender to the excommunicated SSPX schismatics? Now the pose is that Fellay and company will ponder (endlessly until death, no doubt) whether Rome has capitulated sufficiently to the demands of the vile excommunicati as though somehow the SSPX had authority of some sort which, of course, it does not.
I think you will find that the judgment of the Holy Office was that there was no evidence of actual adherence to the SSPX schism and thus no excuse for excommunication by his lavenderness. It is no part of the Catholic Faith to spit contemptuously upon the papacy itself (a hallmark of SSPX) and most particularly upon the pontiff of the time, John Paul II, (another hallmark of SSPX) quite obviously because he had excommunicated them and their fallen Archbishop Marcel and declared their delusions and evils as placing them in schism.
It IS charitable to be honest enough to call SSPX's ecclesiastical crimes what they are: ecclesiastical crimes. It is NOT charity to make believe otherwise, to hold their hands and to sing Kumbaya with them as thoygh they were not schismatic excommunicati, and to give aid and comfort to the manifest evils of Marcel's little cult. The sooner that cult is crushed permanently the better.
Remember when the SSPX sympathizers and love slaves were just about unanimously predicting that the Motu Proprio would surely mark Rome's surrender to the excommunicated SSPX schismatics? Now the pose is that Fellay and company will ponder (endlessly until death, no doubt) whether Rome has capitulated sufficiently to the demands of the vile excommunicati as though somehow the SSPX had authority of some sort which, of course, it does not.
I think you will find that the judgment of the Holy Office was that there was no evidence of actual adherence to the SSPX schism and thus no excuse for excommunication by his lavenderness. It is no part of the Catholic Faith to spit contemptuously upon the papacy itself (a hallmark of SSPX) and most particularly upon the pontiff of the time, John Paul II, (another hallmark of SSPX) quite obviously because he had excommunicated them and their fallen Archbishop Marcel and declared their delusions and evils as placing them in schism.
It IS charitable to be honest enough to call SSPX's ecclesiastical crimes what they are: ecclesiastical crimes. It is NOT charity to make believe otherwise, to hold their hands and to sing Kumbaya with them as thoygh they were not schismatic excommunicati, and to give aid and comfort to the manifest evils of Marcel's little cult. The sooner that cult is crushed permanently the better.
Remember when the SSPX sympathizers and love slaves were just about unanimously predicting that the Motu Proprio would surely mark Rome's surrender to the excommunicated SSPX schismatics? Now the pose is that Fellay and company will ponder (endlessly until death, no doubt) whether Rome has capitulated sufficiently to the demands of the vile excommunicati as though somehow the SSPX had authority of some sort which, of course, it does not.
I think you will find that the judgment of the Holy Office was that there was no evidence of actual adherence to the SSPX schism and thus no excuse for excommunication by his lavenderness. It is no part of the Catholic Faith to spit contemptuously upon the papacy itself (a hallmark of SSPX) and most particularly upon the pontiff of the time, John Paul II, (another hallmark of SSPX) quite obviously because he had excommunicated them and their fallen Archbishop Marcel and declared their delusions and evils as placing them in schism.
It IS charitable to be honest enough to call SSPX's ecclesiastical crimes what they are: ecclesiastical crimes. It is NOT charity to make believe otherwise, to hold their hands and to sing Kumbaya with them as thoygh they were not schismatic excommunicati, and to give aid and comfort to the manifest evils of Marcel's little cult. The sooner that cult is crushed permanently the better.
Remember when the SSPX sympathizers and love slaves were just about unanimously predicting that the Motu Proprio would surely mark Rome's surrender to the excommunicated SSPX schismatics? Now the pose is that Fellay and company will ponder (endlessly until death, no doubt) whether Rome has capitulated sufficiently to the demands of the vile excommunicati as though somehow the SSPX had authority of some sort which, of course, it does not.
I think you will find that the judgment of the Holy Office was that there was no evidence of actual adherence to the SSPX schism and thus no excuse for excommunication by his lavenderness. It is no part of the Catholic Faith to spit contemptuously upon the papacy itself (a hallmark of SSPX) and most particularly upon the pontiff of the time, John Paul II, (another hallmark of SSPX) quite obviously because he had excommunicated them and their fallen Archbishop Marcel and declared their delusions and evils as placing them in schism.
It IS charitable to be honest enough to call SSPX's ecclesiastical crimes what they are: ecclesiastical crimes. It is NOT charity to make believe otherwise, to hold their hands and to sing Kumbaya with them as thoygh they were not schismatic excommunicati, and to give aid and comfort to the manifest evils of Marcel's little cult. The sooner that cult is crushed permanently the better.
Remember when the SSPX sympathizers and love slaves were just about unanimously predicting that the Motu Proprio would surely mark Rome's surrender to the excommunicated SSPX schismatics? Now the pose is that Fellay and company will ponder (endlessly until death, no doubt) whether Rome has capitulated sufficiently to the demands of the vile excommunicati as though somehow the SSPX had authority of some sort which, of course, it does not.
The Vatican has begun drafting a document to elaborate on Pope Benedict XVI's recent liberalization of the old Latin Mass because some bishops are either ignoring his move or misinterpreting it, Vatican officials said.
Basically, the messed up AP is claiming this is a liberalization of the Roman Catholic Church by allowing the Tridentine Rite...
Oh well, at least the AP decided to write an article on it...
I guess we should pray for the AP writers and editors that they stop being the tools of Satan...
Let’s not get carried away in rhetoric here. First of all, I never said the validity of the SSPX Mass was the reason for its not being in schism. I said that attendance of an SSPX chapel is not necessarily a schismatic act; and I believe the Holy See has said so.
Second of all, about your view of “legitimate tradition”. I hope you are not espousing a kind of ultramontanism which says that something is traditional and prudent *just because the Holy See approves it*. I just finished reading Alcuin Read’s “Organic Development of the Liturgy” and he lays out a pretty convincing case that such an attitude has landed us precisely in the mess we are in.
Any Catholic has the right to say flat out that Paul VI made a big mistake in promulgating the Novus Ordo Missae. He can’t say it’s heretical, he can’t say it’s invalid, but he can say it was a dumb idea and one that flies in the face of liturgical history. For that matter, any Catholic has the right to say that St. Pius X’s reform of the Breviary was also a bad idea (Reid seems to be in this camp).
And note well that the SSPX was excommunicated *for the illicit consecrations* and not anything they have said about Vatican II or the Mass.
You might be willing to write them off because “there is no evidence” that they’ve repudiated their beliefs. Well, as I have said already, it’s not your job or my job to anticipate their reactions to overtures by the Holy See. Our job is to *keep the door open* in whatever way we can and not cause further alienation by overblown rhetoric and imperious denunciations. As you know, they are quite capable of that as well. ;)
His disappointment with the Archbishop of Milan for one, the fact that his argument leads inescapably to that conclusion for another, and things that I have read on this issue. I'll try and dig some up.
While I’m not a “Bircher” I do find their information quite excellent. What is it you dislike about them? They definitely are constitutionalists and their info about the commies has been proven correct. The latest issue of the New American outines how we let Mao take over China.
The paranoid conspiracy theories and the general anti-Semitism.
Oh....so glad to hear that the Vatican is going to back up the motu proprio with more details. My bishop is definitely using the loopholes to provide obstacles for my pastor to say the mass. More pressure, this soon, will demonstrate more strongly the pontiff’s desire to have the TLM said. God Bless Benedict.
I’m not familiar with their “anti-semitism” but their theories about the CFR, the NAU, and the KGB don’t seem paranoid at all. You just appear to be a name caller. Calling someone an anti-semite is a classic liberal/socialist strategy.
I, however, am. On a first-person basis.
but their theories about the CFR, the NAU, and the KGB don’t seem paranoid at all.
Yet they are. Stating them that vaguely doesn't do justice to the fervid paranoia of their theories.
You just appear to be a name caller.
What an ironic statement.
Calling someone an anti-semite is a classic liberal/socialist strategy.
So I'm part of a conspiracy, then?
I have no idea of who Alcuin Read may be nor do I need to have any such idea. You may well be too easily convinced by him. God gives us popes and thus leaves us without a need for Alcuin Read.
I do not need the opinions of poisonous SSPX dissenters who worship themselves and dead Marcel and his and their opinions and his and their infernal tastes, all instead of worshiping their Savior and obeying His Church. I have heard of ultramontanism and do not expect to encounter any genuine form of it on earth. Was ultramontanism not the error of the otherwise brilliant Tertullian and the reason he died a schismatic to the best of our knowledge? One suspects that ultramontanism was not an error of excessive obedience to the pope or Tertullian would have had less trouble. One suspects in fact that ultramontanism is likely to be better characterized by puffed up self-importance such as that of Marcel and of Fellay and of Williamson and of de Mallerais and of their venomous clique of supporters who think that they are quite holier and more authoritative than any old pope and are their own "living magisterium" of offended tastes, cultural eccentricities and exotic antiCatholic ideas. If Read disagrees, then I need waste no more time taking him seriously than I should waste taking SSPX's predecessor in excommunicated defiant disobedience, Fr. Luther, seriously.
Although I have absolutely no reservations as to the absolute validity of the Novus Ordo Mass, nowadays I attend the Tridentine Mass almost exclusively. Easily, I can avoid the near occasion of sin afforded by the SSPX schismatic excommunucati. Their Masses are valid. If the SSPX Masses were not valid, if their illicitly ordained priests were NOT priests, if their illicitly consecrated bishops were NOT bishops, SSPX could be safely ignored as we tend to ignore Hindus or Muslims or many others who are of other religions. It was precisely the validity (lawless validity but validity) of the grand schismatic excommunicate Marcel that makes the very existence of SSPX a lasting ecclesiastical crime unless or until each and every SSPX bishop is dead.
You are quite correct that it was the consecration of bishops that was the motive for the excommunications. In earlier and more sensiblemtimes, Lefebvre would have been burned at the stake along with those he consecrated. You are also correct that the Holy See has said that mere attendance (or even a modest contribution to defray expenses of the Mass of SSPXers) at SSPX Masses is not schismatic. It is no proof of non-schism either. Those who willingly attend SSPX Masses listening to the infernal opinions of the cult that despises the papacy and the Church do seem a bit blase about frequenting that near occasion of sin. It seems apparent that actual attendance at any valid Mass is more important than is the character of the celebrant. After all, we are not Donatists.
If you feel that honest commentary as to the evils of SSPX is not the job of Catholics, don't comment. I disagree. The moment this or any pope changes their status will be the moment I change my attitude and not until. We have no obligation to coddle those who sexually abused children or to make believe that it was the world that was wrong or that authorities are somehow "bigoted" against those with a desire for sex with children. We have no more of an obligation to coddle those who would destroy the Church by their rebellion, their attacks on genuine tradition, or their despicable conduct against the Church. Their abject humiliation in as public a manner as they have committed crimes against the Church would, in my opinion, be one very desirable step if they are ever to be reconciled. The bishops should be defrocked and required to enter a secure and cloistered monastery (segregated from the actual Catholics except for Novus Ordo Masses of obligation) for life at least.
Is Novus Ordo an example of low rent rubrics? Certainly, as said by most priests I have encountered. A problem with trads, even the legitimate ones, is that no dragging out of the Tridentine in sloooooooow motion is enough. Each Mass threatens to become a career. This is an overreaction to the banality of Novus Ordo. Nearly fifty years ago when I was an altar boy, most Sunday Masses (each and every one Tridentine) were accomplished in a manageable half hour. This was because the congregation had not somehow become convinced that each individual had to compete with the priest and show everyone else how pious each imagines him/herself to be. Piety, in such minds, is a rejection of crisply said liturgies in favor of the slow motion tape.
Let a thousand flowers bloom as Chairman Mao wrote. Let there be Novus Ordo parishes for those so inclined. Let there be Tridentine Masses with each and every imaginable bell and whistle using every available hour. Let there also be crisply said Tridentine Masses as was the actual previous norm and let at least one such Mass be available near me on every Sunday and Holy Day and hopefully every other day as well. Then the eternal mud wrestling can cease and we can ignore the SSPX make-believe "Catholics" as the trouble-making eccentrics that they are and always have been since they were a gleam in mad Marcel's id.
As to what Catholics can do: 1) Excommunicati are NOT Catholics; 2) Schismatics are NOT Catholics; 3) Catholics can (ought not but can) commit serial murders, sexually abuse children, and commit many other sins, but the Church is NOT a democracy and, just as Catholics ought not commit the aforementioned sins, they also ought to refrain from the sort of venomous attacks on the Church and on the papacy which is the very warp and woof of SSPX. The SSPX whine, moan, groan, bitch and complain. Therefore they are. They should sit down (far, far from actual Catholics) and STFU. If Read has problems with the actual Pope St. Pius X (not the schismatic cult stick figure), then that would be one more reason to ignore Read.
I did not grow up in the church of Kumbaya or to hold hands to encourage attacks on the Church and on the Truth by Marcel's minions.
Alcuin Reid SHOULD be taken seriously precisely because Pope Benedict takes him seriously. Before he became Pope, the then-Cardinal Ratzinger reviewed Reid's "The Organic Development of the Liturgy" and concluded "But I think it has become clear that this book, which offers a wealth of material, teaches us some criteria and invites us to further reflection. That is why I can recommend this book."
Pope Benedict XVI (or my pastor) can pass along to us in his flock whatever distilled essence of Read's work which he may find useful in Reid's book itself. I have a living room stacked with books that I want to read such as Civil War histories, biographies, chemistry texts, physics texts, novels, and stuff that my far more cultured wife, Mrs. Elk, regards as trash. When I pray rosaries, I pray for B-XVI'S intentions as to Faith and morals, particularly if they happen to differ from my own preferences.
That having been said, I still pray for your discernment as to your vocation and shall continue to do so. God bless you and yours.
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