An Open Letter to the Church Renouncing My Service on I.C.E.L.

Communicantes (Newsletter of the Society of St. Pius X in Canada) ^ | October 2002 | Rev. Fr. Stephen Somerville

[Snuffington]

Sacred language should be in classical form.

That is an interesting concept, and one I have not heard previously. Do you think classical forms of English (or any other language for that matter) would sufficiently satisfy the desire for the vernacular? Or would this also be condemned?

[ultima ratio]

"I assume you have seen him corrected constantly."

This is funny, if a bit goofy. Is this the equivalent of 'Rome has spoken'? Once you and Patent and Sitetest and all the others "OF YOUR ILK"--neo-catholics all--have spoken, that ends all debate on a subject? I'm impressed. Hell, even the Vatican can't make up its mind about SSPX but you guys are absolutely certain it is in schism--and you call others "nutballs"? No wonder you buy into the Novus Ordo. You wouldn't know an authentic liturgy from the latest sighting of Elvis. Yet you purport to judge the souls of others as well as their status within the Church. Do you also walk to the front of the church when you pray your Prayer of the Pharisees, asking the Lord to admire your many perfections?

[ultima ratio]

Not thinking clearly has nothing to do with the will--where intentions are formed. You see? You are one big mental muddle.

[ultima ratio]

It's late, but I agree with you. Having said this, I will add traditionalists do not make private judgments. They are aligned with official Church teachings from apostolic times till the present. The confusion has come about by Rome's introduction of novelties that authorities wish to be make normative but which conflict with the pre-conciliar Church's teachings and practices. The Novus Ordo Mass, for example, is objectively blasphemous. It consecrates the bread and wine but ignores Christ's Real Presence, suppressing all mention of this enormous event, even suppressing genuflections and kneeling for Communion, while lavishing attention on His virtual presence among the assembly, exactly as in a Protestant worship service. This is profoundly unCatholic and not all the popes in heaven or on earth can ever make it Catholic.

[patent]

You know, when you post pictures like that with a caption suggesting hula masses, something that picture is not of, so far as I can tell, one starts to wonder if Catholicguy is correct about your partiality, and your selective trust in ultima. It makes me wonder why it is you post in such a frindly fashion to him, agreeing with his arguments so frequently.

As for your question about the Real Presence, that was debated and at length a while back. It is rather important how they ask the question, and when asked poorly, one gets poor answers. Out of curiosity, how well do you think pollsters can gauge belief in the Real Presence, when they can't even figure out who people will vote for? A binary choice between two candidates should be easier to gauge than a belief from a religious system that few reporters and pollsters understand to begin with.

patent

[RobbyS]

To use the term "objective" does not mean that you are in fact not substituting your judgment of "tradition" for that of the Church. Luther began with a discussion of the "objective": saying that the literal text of the Scripture.that the teaching of Rome wss inconsistent with it. Later he moved to the point of denying all authority to Rome and sought to restore the pristine Gospel that had been corrupted by Rome.

[drstevej]

Actually I googled for a picture of a bed of nails and that was the first picture I found. I really wasn't trying to make a statement. And it certainly isn't of a hula mass. Don't draw too much from it.

BTW, I also have cordial interchanges (on and off line) with polycarp and tantumergo and jmj333 etc.

As to the percent question. I think polycarp mentioned a percentage that high or higher. Polycarp, correct me if I am wrong in my memory. BTW, I don't expect reporters to understand theological issues much less measure them with polls. I do think the actual percentage might be quite high. Certainly FR Catholics are FAR more knowledgeable of their doctrine than the Catholics I have known over the years.

[RobbyS]

My off-hand judgement that it is no accident that the banal text of the new mass appeared during the time that deconstruction of language in general gained such a following. A valid criticism is the translation often seems empty of meaning.ee nothing "protestant" about it. Nothing Lutherans or Calvinist or Zwinglian. It does seem language that one would use if he were trying to demythologize the mass.

[patent]

I noticed you shortened my quote quite a bit. In any case the fact is there is nothing to support your repeated claim that “So here we have even Cardinal Ratzinger affirming that assisting at a Mass conducted in an SSPX chapel is NOT a schismatic act.” Cardinal Ratzinger did no such thing, as (1) there was no Mass conducted in an SSPX chapel as there was no SSPX chapel, and (2) nor were they even excommunicated for assisting at Mass. It wasn’t mentioned, was it?

You may want to call it a lawyerly trick, but pointing out that the facts don’t support you is hardly something one learns in law school. I’m sure you think it very unfair and tricky to require you to actually conform your claims to what actually happened, but I think I’ll stick with the real world, and the real facts, rather than your created version. As I said:

LOL. They were excommunicated for assisting at SSPX Masses? How? There was no SSPX chapel there. At best they hired SSPX priests to freelance for them from time to time, hardly the same thing. Regardless, your claim that this is why they were excommunicated directly contradicts every piece of real evidence we have. It contradicts the Bishop’s letter, and it contradicts the direct testimony of the canon lawyer who represented the Hawaii six. Somehow you know better, apparently, than the people who actually participated in the case.

---

Sorry, this is not your courtroom.

This shows how little you understand the law. I don’t have a court room, I’m a lawyer not a judge.

I don’t approve of this Bishop, of what he did with the excommunications, or of his personal “disgusting activities” as you say.

So what the hell are you going on about, anyway?

Well, you did a bit of rather ugly mudslinging, trying to claim we supported his “disgusting activities”, whatever you meant by that. I have no idea what he has done, nor do I care. His errors don’t change the fact that the Bishop’s faults weren’t the issue, whether one can attend the SSPX Masses was the issue. Or do you contend that the answer to that question, whether one may morally attend an SSPX Mass, depends on whether the Bishop is a perv or not? Of course it doesn’t, that is a non sequitur issued by someone losing a debate.

So why do you continue to lie about the status of the SSPX?

Neither of your quotes speaks of the status of the SSPX. One refers to the laity, one to priests being validly ordained, something that has nothing to do with whether they are schismatic or not.

patent

[patent]

Can the vernacular, which is by its nature local, fluid, and ever-changing, properly capture something as permanent and unchanging as the Mass for more than an instant?

For quite some time Latin was the vernacular. It was not then the dead language it is now. There are certain parts of the Mass that are unchanging, necessary to the Sacrament, but there are others that are not nearly so permanent. Any language is a frail object for the Sacrifice, when you consider that language is a human construct, but the Sacrifice is divine.

Dominus Vobiscum

patent  +AMDG

[Polycarp]

Hi folks. I've pretty much sworn off (well, 99.5% anyhow) engaging in Catholic internecine warfare, and for that matter I'm really not doing much apologetics at present.

The Church crisis has finally died down enough to begin again to fight for the culture of life. The hour is late, I'm going to be using this jpg as a reminder for myself and others:

And this article by Kreeft: How to Win the Culture War: The war we really face, and how to win

BTW,

DrSteveJ is one of our most gracious and honest and sincerely nice heretics we have on this forum. And I mean that ;-)

[drstevej]

thanks for the kind words and I appreciate your friendship. BTW, Saturday is a big day here in LA -- time to oust Mary Landrieu!

[ultima ratio]

This is tiresome. I know what tradition is. It is what the Church has always prayed, always believed, always taught. I know what it isn't--a fabrication of the moment, a novelty, something never known before in the Catholic Church. It is not at all mysterious, except to those who have been brainwashed in the new religion. The new Mass, for instance, is not Traditional and no amount of modernist propaganda can make it so. It introduces a doctrinal perspective that is not at all Catholic and had in fact been condemned already by Trent. What people like you want is for people like me to stop thinking, to believe that authorities--who are not famous for telling the truth--can decide even what tradition itself is. But tradition is what has always been, handed-down by the Holy Spirit, not something that is made up to suit the present agenda. Catholics have always believed in the Real Presence, for instance. They have always fiercely guarded this belief. Only in modernist Rome is this essential doctrine ignored and left to wither, even as it is a belief which is fast disappearing among Catholics. Yet it had been an essential Catholic doctrine for two thousand years. So go on all you want about authority. Authority exists to serve the faith, not the other way around. If it violates its trust and defies even previous popes and councils, then it must be disobeyed. It is that simple. The faith comes first. This is because the laws of God's supercede all else, even duly appointed temporal authority.

[ultima ratio]

Reread the bishop's letter. He mentions Mrs. Morley's negative attitude toward the new Mass and her sympathy for the SSPX. What do you think this implies, if not her attendance at traditional Masses? Of course he would not be explicit, since even he must have realized Rome would not have seen it his way. Besides, there are other letters preceding the decree in which he specifically warns her about not attending SSPX Masses, so the inference was there. Nor is the rejection of all this by Cardinal Ratzinger the only instance in which it is made clear attendance at an SSPX Mass is not schismatic. Msgr. Perle of Ecclesia Dei, someone decidedly unfriendly to SSPX, has made the same point in a letter.

[BlackElk]

So, Marcel Lefebvre was excommunicated for..............??????? That's right: consecrating bishops in direct defiance of papal orders not to do so!

[BlackElk]

Luther could not have said it better and he was wrong too, to say nothing of disobedient, defiant, impertinent, and impudent, among other similar qualities shared with those who have joned with Lefebvre. And, as to Honolulu, you might add the homosexual scandal which brought down Ferrario: stashing a former altar boy-toy in a San Francisco apartment for Ferrario to access on weekends and Ferrario's resentment of being outed. There is a teensy bit more to the story than you admit for obvious reasons.

[BlackElk]

Poor analogy. There are schismatics convicted and excommunicated: Lefebvre, Williamson, Fellay, et al., and there are schismatics not worth bothering with (think of them oin legal terms as unindicted co-conspirators). In formal terms, innocent until proven guilty, but schismatics nonetheless.

If you robbed a bank rather than just the hard-earned reputation of Pope St. Pius X, but no one had yet discovered your involvement, you would, nonetheless, be a bank robber in objective terms.

It is the SSPX types who are the very first to imagine that the pope should be ever on the hunt, shotgun at the ready, for every pipsqueak with a cause. AND SSPXers then simultaneously ignore the obvious implication of that desire as it would be applied to them. Careful what you ask for, you just may get it.

I hope you don't imagine that this much bandspace has been wasted on you all for any reason other than the scandal that you give to the gullible and to the otherwise vulnerable.

[BlackElk]

Ever hear of: What you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, what you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; I give you the keys to the kingdom. Of course, the Source of that language needn't be listened to either if He disagrees with SSPX, right?

[BlackElk]

I am not much of a fan of Cardinal Maida but did he not require and obtain public recantation from Fr. "Doc" Ortman who was the leftist AmChurch source of the nonsense as to the Church being "Pro-choice"? We get Catholicism by passing it to our children. "Let George do it" doesn't work except in Chicago.

[BlackElk]

Well, isn't that special????