Its an elite club. Welcome. But you don't get to learn the secret handshake until you reach the 13th degree.
Posted on 07/18/2002 3:10:53 PM PDT by narses
Letter of Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos to Mgr. Fellay (English translation by Mr. Ken Jones, Una Voce St. Louis)
The Vatican, April 5, 2002
Dear Brother in the Lord:
Since the beginning of our fraternal contacts to find a way toward full communion, I believe that we have experienced the solicitude of our merciful Lord: truly he has not spared us His aide and His support, to gather together all the good things that unite us and overcome what still divides us.
I read at the time attentively, in prayer and not without suffering, your letter of last June 22. I have also studied certain documents concerning our conversations, written by members of the Fraternity of St. Pius X, published on the Internet and disseminated by other means of communication. I have also reread the letters of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, the interviews granted by Your Excellency and the letters that you have sent me.
Until today, for my part, I have never agreed to grant interviews on the subject, in order to maintain the privacy of the details of our dialogue: for me they have always had a provisional and discreet character, because of the great responsibility that I feel in conscience for this matter. It now seems to me opportune, for the love of truth, to clarify here several aspects of the development of this reconciliation, with the intention of imparting a new impetus, to be frank, to move beyond possible suspicions and misunderstandings that compromise the outcome that, I have no doubt, Your Excellency also desires.
The subject that we are considering will have, in fact, particularly important historical consequences, because it touches the unity, the truth and the holiness of the Church, and it is necessary therefore to treat it with charity but also with objectivity and truth. Our sole judge is Christ the Lord.
Permit me now to give a brief historical overview of our journey:
First of all, I must reiterate a historical truth, at the root of everything. My first initiative was not the result of a Pontifical mandate and was not the fruit of an agreement or project of some other person from the Apostolic See, contrary to what has been written and rumored, as if it was a matter of a definite strategy. As I have already had the occasion to say several times, the dialogue was completely my own personal initiative.
In the second week of August 2000, on returning from Colombia, I learned through the media that was available on the airplane, and only through it, that the Society of St. Pius X was participating in the Jubilee. On my own initiative, and without speaking to anyone about it, I decided to invite the four bishops of the Fraternity to a private dinner with me. The meeting with brother bishops would be a gesture of fraternal love, the occasion of a reciprocal exchange. I therefore had the joy of meeting Your Excellency, as well as Their Excellencies Tissier and Williamson. As you will recall, we did not discuss any subject thoroughly, even if, naturally, we did speak about the liturgical rites, and I was able to become familiar with several aspects of the current life of your Fraternity. I manifested publicly the good impression that the aforementioned Prelates made on me.
I subsequently gave an account of this meeting to the Holy Father, and I received from him words of encouragement. I expressed a desire to maintain contacts to explore the possibilities of this much hoped for unity. The Sovereign Pontiff asked me to continue, and he manifested his clear will to accommodate the Society of St. Pius X, by promoting the conditions necessary for this accommodation. Some time later I read, with a private satisfaction, the interview granted by Your Excellency to the magazine 30 Days. The journalist put these words on your lips: "If the Holy Father calls me I come, or rather I run." I had occasion to speak with the Holy Father about this interview, in which Your Excellency expressed freely and spontaneously his thought: the Holy Father indicated to me, one more time, his generous will to accommodate your Fraternity.
As a result, I contacted Cardinals Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State for His Holiness, Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Jorge Medina Estevez, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, as well as with His Excellency Mgr. Julian Herranz, President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts. All manifested their satisfaction with a view to an eventual solution of the difficulties. I also consulted Cardinals Paul Augustin Mayer and Alfons Marie Stickler, who were of the same opinion. It is thus that we studied the fundamental theological problems, already present in 1988 when an accord with His Excellency Mgr. Lefebvre was prepared. It did not seem to us that there have been any new problems. Then we began studying several juridical forms that would make a reintegration possible; this appeared very much desirable. Throughout history, the desire for unity has always been a constant for the See of Peter.
To all it seemed appropriate, if Your Excellency agreed, that the undersigned could proceed to a new dialogue of a provisional character. It was not a matter of discussing theological problems in depth, but preparing the way for reconciliation.
I therefore invited Your Excellency by letter; you amiably accepted the invitation and the meeting took place on Dec. 29, 2000.
As Your Excellency knows well, we then studied the possibility of reconciliation and of the return to full communion, as a very concrete and special fruit of the Jubilee. We concluded with a dinner at my residence, attended also by the Rev. Michel Simoulin, in a very cordial and fraternal climate.
Informed of this new reunion, and despite the amount of work he had in the last days of the great Jubilee, the Holy Father received you with the Abbe Simoulin on Dec. 30, 2000 in his private chapel. After a few minutes of silent prayer, the Holy Father said the Our Father, followed by those present, then he wished them a Holy Christmas. He blessed them by offering several rosaries and encouraged them to continue the dialogue undertaken.
In the same Apostolic Palace and in the presence of the personal secretaries of the Holy Father, I read to Your Excellency a Protocol regarding the dialogue of the preceding day, which would be sent to the Sovereign Pontiff. You have expressed your agreement by specifying two points: 1) the prayer for the Pope in the Canon of the Mass was not your decision but was a prior provision of Mgr. Lefebvre; 2) reservation about Vatican II especially regarding religious liberty, since the rights of God over the public order could not be limited. The secretary took notes in order to make a report to the Holy Father.
For further clarity, permit me to transcribe here the aforesaid protocol:
More (27 pages more) at the link.
Ouch --- That's got to hurt but good news all the same.
David Brown is in denial and is also heterophobic. He's got a strong gay agenda that rationalizes and denies the truth. Because of this, he should be barred from every diocese.
He should read the 250 success cases of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi that are re-discovering their heterosexuality.
TCRNews.com first posted a link to one of my articles in the fall of 2000, America Magazine Spreads Disinformation About Church's Position On Condom Use from the The Wanderer, September 28, 2000. I had visited TCRNews.com intermittently before this, and was pleasantly surprised to see this unsolicited link. I emailed TCRNews.com, told them I liked their site, and that I appreciated their link to my article. They asked me to submit further materials.
They subsequently posted two other articles I wrote, Homosexual Behavior Increases Risk of AIDS and Third World Poverty: Contraceptive Imperialism versus Gospel of Life. These articles are still posted on TCRNews.com.
Subsequently, my friend Brian at www.diocesereport.com posted a couple of my articles, including Catholic Activism--Is it Worth It? from the The Wanderer of 3-15-2001, pages 1, 8, and Of Medicine, Magic, and Original Sin From The Wanderer Issue Date of 3-8-2001
What I did not know is that TCRNews.com considers The Diocese Report to be mortal enemies of the Church and JPII because they occasionally link articles from traditionalist websites.
Therefore TCRNews.com banned me from the website (though in reality I told them that if they were telling me I had to "choose" between TCRNews.com, and my close personal friend at The Diocese Report, I would be forced to choose the latter, even though in their judgement the latter is a schismatic traditionalist integrist, the worst of the enemies of all that is good and honorable among men of good will. (/sarcasm)
So with this perceived snub I became persona non grata with TCRNews.com, and I was instantly branded an integrist extreme trad and enemy of the Church and our Holy Father JPII (though to this day I belong to and attend a Novus Ordo parish, where I teach high school CCD, and my son is soon to serve as an altar boy.)
Finally, what entrenched this embittered rivalry was my investigation of a Catholic university TCRNews.com considered beyond reproach for a problem in their graduate allied health program, where a student thought she was being persecuted by non-Catholic allied health professors for her staunch pro-life views.
Unfortunately this student was represented in her case against the University by a Catholic lawyer who is also a cornerstone of the schismatic traditionalist writers/speakers circuit.
This "association" in the mind of TCRNews.com permanently sealed my state in their opinion among the integrist extreme traditionalists (even though I've never met or corresponded with this lawyer, and the case was settled out of court in the students favor, and the University cleaned up its act as a reslut of our investigation.) Finally, TCRNews.com also had a falling out with The Wanderer newspaper for whom I was still occasionally writing (noticing a pattern here???)
That is pretty much the entire story. And thus I now rank among the stated enemies of TCRNews.com, and by extension against all that is good and decent among men of good will, and they hound me on the Forum as a result and malign my good name, which I simply refuse to tolerate.
"Cathway" and "StillSmallVoice," I believe, are both the same FReeper, and "EditorTCRNews.com" and "theotokos," I believe, are both the same FReeper.
The only thing I have not proven is whether "Cathway"/"StillSmallVoice," and "EditorTCRNews.com"/"theotokos" are two different people or just 4 screen names for the same TCRNews.com staffer. I think at a minimum "theotokos" was banned at least in part for having multiple screen names, in violation of FR policy.
I am not familiar with them. Who are they?
Has the Time Come to Consider Making Celibacy Truly Optional In the Western Church?
Which, unfortunately, makes him a perfect candidate for employment in this diocese.
Oh yeah. I have heard of that creep. Insane and hateful.
Amen.
Thanks for the history.
I kinda like Diocese Report. I think it presents an interesting amalgamation of information. I don't like everything I find linked through it, or everything said on it, but there's a lot of stuff of real interest.
I suppose by these standards, I'm an extreme traditionalist.
I guess I better go learn some Latin. ;-)
sitetest
In charity, in his defense, I must point out that he has done some excellent work with his website, and some things he has written have been written well, with keen intellect and insight. I would never have allowed him to post any of my own writings on his site if there were no merit to his work.
But he has too much subjective involvement regarding traditionalism, having once been an integrist himself, and when he debates he paints anyone who disagrees with him as an integrist, extreme trad, or enemy of the Holy Father. That is bad form, uncharitable, and frankly psychologically unstable.
Its an elite club. Welcome. But you don't get to learn the secret handshake until you reach the 13th degree.
Oh, is that it? I was wondering why I felt so left out.
sitetest
(really, really, I really am sitetest)
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