When The Pope's Friends Walk Away

A number of disturbing reports are heard lately that some of the Holy Father's former friends are in danger of collapsing in the storms; collapsing into the chaos of selective obedience, into the dangers of private judgment's non sequiturs. Michael Rose is trucking with pope-bashers and marketing his books through them, Robert Sungenis is rashly attacking the Pope on Assisi, Patrick Madrid is selling his books at a notorious pope-trashing website and giving "exclusive" excerpts to that site which also peddles the works of the worst schismatics who publicly call for an official "suspension of obedience" to the "Popes of Vatican II," and who gleefully and absurdly predict that JPII will be deposed for heresies. A group called "Roman Catholic Faithful" is openly publishing the works of these men too. Gerry Matatics, of course, has long shown aggressive solidarity with all these.

At first one hopes there is a misunderstanding. Maybe it's just the fact that a certain small percentage of converts or reverts will inevitably go off the rails for a time; maybe they have not fully overcome their fundamentalist spirit and suspicions toward "Rome," or their instinctive splitting into "remnants," and their personalistic "evangelism" wherein if they feel they are "called" to go on the circuit preaching tour, then they infer they must be "sent" by God, though this is contrary to all Catholic teaching, obedience and humility.

Maybe, though---which God forbid---it is a less innocent motive: simply the desire for money. What many, if not most, of these have in common is something to sell. Books, tapes, magazines, whatever...And maybe they haven't considered how immoral it is from a Catholic point of view to put marketing and personal security above the Truth. Michael Davies has long allowed the most virulent Pope-attackers to publish and sell his books and has led the way in all this. Cottage industries need "markets". Ask Fr. Gruner.

Better to sell no books, or just one book, with the Pope, than a million apart from him. Better to have Our Lord's warning about millstones around ones neck and judgment than to scandalize Christ's innocent ones by leading them into wolves dens to sell ones books or magazines.

Whatever the case, some of these cannot easily plead ignorance, even if others are merely confused. Most know what is what where websites and infamous Integrists are concerned. The goal of the older, more cynical Integrists has long been to pretend that conservatives and integrists are doing the same thing, which is absurd.

Whatever the case, it appears that some are showing signs of whithering on the Vine. They seem to be moving from complete loyalty to the Holy Father and the teaching Church to a place of shadows where fidelity mixes with persecution.

Invariably, when one points this out and shouts a warning, the more experienced and cynical in the ways of schism and anti-papal doctrinal collapse encourage their neophytes to respond with absurd charges of ultramontanism or to cynically shout down, ad hominem, the ones who try to warn them, as if no dogmatic certainties were at stake: "Who made YOU the measure of the Catholic Faith! Canon law allows criticism!"

Yes, but not this kind of criticism which moves qualitatively from inner personal concern or "dissent" to outright public attack, which even has the temerity to charge the Popes with heresies or rupture with Tradition which is the second prong of revelation itself.

The Holy Father and living magisterium, the teaching Church, is the measure of the Faith, not Catholic persons or groups.

We are living in sad times. When, earlier, I saw my old friends moving toward the cliffs of schism, well beyond constructive criticism, when they refused to hear the warnings, I knew it was time to bail. One's soul was at stake. I saw the logical trajectory of private judgment toward which Integrist presuppositions were leading .

The Holy Father is being persecuted from all sides today in something like apocalyptic storms. And now, some of his former friends are showing signs of deserting that cross and blaming him for the consequences of not heeding his own teachings-----and they do not see how ironic and absurd and tragic that is.

Real traditionalists---such as we are proud to be--- have their wheels on the dogmatic rails. Ask any Neo-modernist and he'll tell you where TCR is on the theological spectrum and they will not hesitate to say we are traditionalists, but with our wheels on the tracks, with Peter, who, together with his bishops, alone has the right to mediate, interpret, and develop Catholic Tradition.

Archbishop Lefebvre's and Bishop de Castro Mayer believed that if they didn't consecrate the bishops there was no way of assuring the continued ordination of truly Catholic priests. Clearly Archbishop Lefebvre was concerned about the future of the Church and truly believed that the consecrations were necessary, thus he was not liable to a penalty.

Every schismatic in history believed he was acting in a state of necessity. Luther did, etc. Again, the Pope wrote Canon law, it is issued by his authority. He determines what is a valid state of necessity, not you or Lefebvre. Further, you should note the Canon law states that provision is null if the act is harmful to souls, and schism is certainly harmful to souls.

Finally,Vatican I did not infallibly define that Canon law is the ultimate authority, the highest court, whose judgments cannot be questioned by anyone. Vatican I said this of the Pope.

If you believe you can dispute the Pope’s verdict you are a heretic:

8. Since the Roman Pontiff, by the divine right of the apostolic primacy, governs the whole Church, we likewise teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful [52], and that in all cases which fall under ecclesiastical jurisdiction recourse may be had to his judgment [53]. The sentence of the Apostolic See (than which there is no higher authority) is not subject to revision by anyone, nor may anyone lawfully pass judgment thereupon [54]. And so they stray from the genuine path of truth who maintain that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiffs to an ecumenical council as if this were an authority superior to the Roman Pontiff. (Vatican I, Session 4 , Ch. 3, 8.)

The SSPX Bishops were excommunicated, and JPII called it a schism. Whether you are personally schismatic or not I’ll leave to the Church to work out, but the Church has spoken about your Bishops and the Society. >
On May 1, 1991, Bishop Ferrario of Hawaii tried to excommunicate certain Catholics of his diocese for attending Masses celebrated by priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, and receiving a bishop of the Society of Saint Pius X to confer the sacrament of Confirmation. Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, overturned this decision:
From the examination of the case... it did not result that the facts referred to in the above-mentioned decree, are formal schismatic acts in the strict sense, as they do not constitute the offense of schism; and therefore the Congregation holds that the Decree of May 1, 1991, lacks foundation and hence validity (June 28, 1993).

That, of course, does not support your claim above that Ratzinger said “that the SSPX is not in schism.” Nor does it support your claim that “Cardinal Strickler says I can attend the SSPX Mass.”

What it does state is that the Bishop of Hawaii did not have sufficient grounds to excommunicate the Hawaii four. In specific the PONTIFICIA COMMISSIO ECCLESIA DEI, on 29 September 1995, stated:

1. There is no doubt about the validity of the ordination of the priests of the Society of St. Pius X. They are, however, suspended a divinis, that is prohibited by the Church from exercising their orders because of their illicit ordination.
2. The Masses they celebrate are also valid, but it is considered morally illicit for the faithful to participate in these Masses unless they are physically or morally impeded from participating in a Mass celebrated by a Catholic priest in good standing (cf. Code of Canon Law, canon 844.2). The fact of not being able to assist at the celebration of the so-called "Tridentine" Mass is not considered a sufficient motive for attending such Masses.
3. While it is true that the participation in the Mass and sacraments at the chapels of the Society of St. Pius X does not of itself constitute "formal adherence to the schism", such adherence can come about over a period of time as one slowly imbibes a mentality which separates itself from the magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff. Father Peter R. Scott, District Superior of the Society in the United States, has publicaly stated that he deplores the "liberalism" of "those who refuse to condemn the New Mass as absolutely offensive to God, or the religious liberty and ecumenism of the postconcilliar church." With such an attitude the society of St. Pius X is effectively tending to establish its own canons of orthodoxy and hence to separate itself from the magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff. According to canon 751 such "refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or the communion of the members of the Church subject to him" constitute schism. Hence we cannot encourage your participation in the Masses, the sacraments or other services conducted under the aegis of the Society of St. Pius X.
4. The situation of at least one of the "independent" priests . . . to whom you allude is somewhat different. He and the community which he serves have declared their desire to regularize their situation and have taken some initial steps to do so. Let us pray that this may soon be accomplished.
5. Finally, we may say that "the Hawaiian case" resulted in a judgment that the former Bishop of Honolulu did not have grounds to excommunicate the persons involved, but this judgment does not confer the Church's approbation upon the Society of St. Pius X or those who frequent their chapels.

From Catechesi Tradendae: From Ut Unum Sint: From Crossing The Threshold of Hope:

Not a single quote states there are many paths to heaven. They state that God or the Holy Spirit uses the other Churches as he sees fit. Your twisting his words a bit to get your meaning out of them.

Dominus Vobiscum

patent +AMDG

He was received back into the Church which means.....THE POPE WHO EXCOMMUNICATED HIM WAS WRONG? What??? A pope was wrong??? That can't be can it?

You are hyperventilating. Please calm down. First, you have not proven he was excommunicated. Please do so or this entire conversation is based on no more solid ground than your whimsy.

Second, an excommunication is a jurisdictional matter of discipline. It is not an infallible pronouncement of faith or morals. That is, an excommunication can be handed down, and be entirely correct. When the individual repents of his sin or his error, and reconciles with the Church, the excommunication is always lifted. That does not mean it was wrong in the first place.

Similarly, if you steal from your grocery store, get arrested, are tried in court, found guilty (because you are) and sentenced to two months in prison, one does not say that the original verdict finding you guilty was wrong when two months later they release you and let you rejoin society. You were still guilty and still properly punished. Same with an excommunication. A valid excommunication does not damn someone to hell or an eternity outside the Church, as some folks like to accuse us of. It is primarily a wake up call to the sinner, asking him to repent and return to the Church, upon which the excommunication is lifted.

Third, as the excommunication is not an infallible pronouncement, it most certainly can be made imprudently or wrongfully. The person is still excommunicated if it is validly issued.

Fourth, if you think you are qualified to cast judgment upon the verdict of the Holy See, you are a heretic. See Vatican I, quoted above.

patent +AMDG

THIS AND THAT

From Father Ken

{text-indent:28pt} Eucharist. As Roman Catholics, Eucharist is the core of our expression. The gift of Jesus of Himself continually focuses us a community, gives us meaning and direction. Throughout the centuries the celebration of Eucharist has been expressed in a variety of ways and in cultures throughout the world. Some of those expressions would seem totally foreign to us who are used to the Roman celebration of Eucharist.

While in the seminary we were trained naturally in Vatican II’s renewal of the liturgy and in particular our Roman celebration of Eucharist. We spent absolutely no time exploring the other traditions of our Catholic Church that have their roots in the very early years of Christianity, principally in the middle and near East. In the ensuing years since ordination I have had very little exposure to these traditions. The most recent, but limited, was seeing the various Cardinals from the Eastern Churches processing down the aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome for the mass to celebrate the conclusion of the Consistory of Cardinals on the Feast of the Ascension last May.

Last year I met a priest of the Chaldean Catholic Church serving here in the valley. It has been absolutely amazing to me that I have been so ignorant of such a rich tradition that had developed over so many centuries. As I was introduced to the people and their tradition I realized how isolated I had become in my service in the Roman tradition. Since the Chaldean Catholic Church and so many other Eastern Churches (we used to call them Eastern Rites) are in union with Rome, we all would do well to learn about and appreciate them as integral members of our faith family.

With Holy Thursday and Easter but two weeks away I thought you might find the following article of interest. It certainly seems to challenge us to go beyond our limited experience of the celebration of Eucharist.

NO MAGIC WORDS, BUT CHRIST STILL PRESENT
By Father Rickard McBrien

“Last summer the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, with the full agreement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregations for the Oriental Churches, issued a series of guidelines for Eucharistic sharing between the Chaldean church (which is in communion with Rome) and the Assyrian church of the East (which is not).

The guidelines are revolutionary in character. For the first time in modern history, the Catholic church has recognized the validity of a eucharistic prayer (the Anaphora of Addai and Mari) without the words of institution (“This is my body. ...This is my blood”), more commonly referred to as the words of consecration.

In the popular Catholic mind, especially before Vatican II, these words have had an almost magical quality. Whenever a validly ordained priest utters them over a large host (often times over a ciborium full of smaller hosts as well) and then over a chalice containing wine, Christ immediately “comes down” from heaven, taking the form of bread and wine to be received by the faithful as holy Communion, that is, His very “body and blood, soul and divinity.”

There was so much focus on the words of consecration in those days that Catholic students were sometimes asked to consider what one must do if, let us say, a drunken priest stumbled into a bakery shop and pronounced the words over cases full of bread and pastry products. Some proposed that the local parish should purchase everything in the store and send it to a Catholic orphanage for reverent consumption. Others may have had different solutions, but few doubted that the bread and pastries were not the eucharistic body of Christ.

In the original Latin, the words of consecration included the key phrase: “Hoc est enim corpus meum…” (For this is my body…”) Anti-Catholics dismissed the rite as “hocus pocus,” which was a play on the Latin formula. It became a colloquial expression that is still employed to characterize something as nonsensical or a form of trickery.

For many Catholics, the priest’s power to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ through these words of consecration constituted the very basis of his dignity and status within the church.

At Mass everyone—even the ushers— would grow solemn and silent as the celebrant approached the point when he would bend over the host and then the chalice to utter the sacred words. The priest genuflected after doing so, then raised the host and later the chalice high over his head for the adoration of the congregation, and then genuflected once again after each elevation. When the ritual of consecration was over and the final genuflection and ringing of the bells had been completed, one could actually hear the release of tension with the congregation, in the form of coughing and squeaking of kneelers as the worshipers shifted their weight to become more comfortable once again.

If someone had suggested then—–or now, for that matter—that even without the words of consecration, Christ could become really and truly present in holy Communion, they would have been scoffed at and dismissed as either frivolous or heretical.

But the Vatican has now ruled that this is, in fact, the case. In recognizing the validity of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, proclaimed since the earliest centuries in portions of the East and still used today by the separated Assyrian church of the East, the Catholic church now officially acknowledges and teaches that Christ can become sacramentally present at Mass without the traditional words of consecration.

In the end, there are no magic words. It is the church’s whole eucharistic prayer that makes Christ really and truly present for us in holy Communion.

The Vatican’s ruling received little or no notice among Roman Catholics in North America. That’s not surprising. The word “Chaldean” must sound to many like something out of the Old Testament. “Assyrian” probably evokes memories of courses in ancient history taken many years ago.

Although the new Vatican guidelines suggest that the words of institution are at least implied in other parts of the Anaphora or Addai and Mari (a bit of a reach, perhaps), the bottom line is that, under certain pastoral circumstances, Catholics may now receive holy Communion in an Assyrian liturgy in which an anaphora is used that does not include the words of consecration.

This is a long way indeed from the case of the drunken priest in the bakery shop.”

Fr. Richard McBrien teaches at the University of Notre Dame.

This and That 10 Mar 2002

This and That 3 Mar 2002

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