Posted on 11/29/2002 5:00:21 PM PST by Loyalist
If you insist on proselytizing against the Church, we are big enough to survive easily. In fact it is guaranteed on the Highest Authority. You are not satisfied with being in schism. Misery, of course, loves company, and so you seek to recruit others into rebellion. You volunteer to be a strange god indeed and we will not have you before the Trinity. Assuming that Vatican II turns brains to mush, how would you be qualified to know?
Back to your hole, pagan papolator. You worship a man. We follow Christ's disciple on earth as long as he follows God's Church and Sacred Tradition -- as we are so commanded by God Himself.
I served 20 minute Sunday Masses for a former WWII chaplain who was a priest in my parish treasured by one and all. He managed to say Mass reverently and give a sermon not to be forgotten. No one dared show up late. When he was transfered, he left behind four less popular priests and an absolutely broken-hearted congregation. The archdiocesan newspaper interviewed him in a nursing home on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of his belated ordination and asked the secret of his success. He said: I always did what I was told.
Yes, without Lefebvre there would be a Tridentine Mass (I am assuming you mean that and not a merely Latin Novus Ordo). Indeed, there were such Masses prior to Ecclesia Dei and, I believe, even prior to the indult since I attended at least three in the 1970s. On the occasion of the election of John Paul I and of John Paul II, I attended Tridentine Masses said by the saintly Fr. Gomar DePauw at his chapel in Westbury, Long Island to hear his candid opinions on the elections. He was delighted and claimed that Cardinal Ottaviani was also delighted with the election of Albino Luciani as John Paul I. Fr. DePauw was apparently less delighted with the election of Karol Wojtlywa as John Paul II but did not specify reasons. [See, I am honest and candid even if it encourages you guys.] In that respect, history has proven him wrong. Fr. DePauw was saying daily masses at his chapel (a converted bungalow) in Queens and I was told that his Masses enjoyed some sort of special protection from the quite liberal Baltimore archbishop, Laurence Cardinal Sheehan, although I do not know the details or why he would have any say as to matters in the New York Archdiocese. Probably, Cardinal Sheehan asked this of Cardinal Cooke as a special favor to him personally, but I do not know.
At around the same time there were non-approved Tridentine Masses said by Fr. Paul Wickens, first at a Holiday Inn in New Haven and then at another converted house called St. Clare's Priory run by a self-appointed Third Order Benedictine whose idea of social hour after the occasional Masses was to serve coffee and danish and lead a lively discussion as to his analysis of why Archbishop John Whealon was a heretic to be despised. The "Benedictine" fancied himself Brother Francis Joseph and was born too late to be familiar with the old Mass except as rendered by Fr. Wickens, a fine man wronged by the very liberal Newark Archbishop Peter Gerrity for resisting an execrable sex education program of that archdiocese. Gerrity had previously been a troublesome civil rights protesting pastor in New Haven, a sort of beer league Fr. Berrigan. The experience at St. Clare's Priory was enough to convince me that the future lieth not in the schismatic lane. The Archdiocese of Hartford allowed, cooperated with and gave permission for a Tridentine Mass at the archdiocesan seminary's chapel in Bloomfield, Connecticut, at my request for a national gathering of Young Americans for Freedom in 1970 at the University of Hartford. I was married with a Tridentine Nuptial Mass in 1986 at New Haven. When the usual gang of termites tried to cancel the written permission for that Mass on a Friday afternoon at 4:55 PM before a Saturday wedding, Archbishop Whealon, having heard of the dishonest perfidy of his Chancellor, called the pastor personally and said it would be a Tridentine wedding and anyone disagreeing with that decision had better hold a higher position in the archdiocese than he did as archbishop.
Therefore, based upon my personal experiencesm and with all due respect, I do not believe that Marcel Lefebvre's creation of SSPX or his consecration of bishops in defiance of a papal order not to do so were a necessary precondition to the existence of the option for the Tridentine Mass today. SSPX could have been faithful to the Church and had nothing to do with the beginning of the restoration of the Tridentine Mass. SSPX could have been non-faithful and had nothing to do with that beginning of that restoration. These are not necessarily related. Logically, they are the equivalent of: Is someone with red hair a good Catholic? The answer is yes, no and maybe. It is still not traditional for Catholics to refuse obedience to the pope, however.
I attend the Tridentine Mass sometimes. At least as often, I attend the Novus Ordo Mass. My wife and children attend the Tridentine Mass almost exclusively. Someone around this house has to keep in touch with the Novus Ordo majority of Catholicism. That would be me. I do not owe that debt to Lefebvre. I owe it to John Paul II who issued the documents and the permissions.
It is worthwhile to consider whether good manners and politeness may not achieve what rages do not. That has been my experience in seeking Tridentine Masses before they were at all fashionable again.
I am utterly amazed that JP II is the focus of the attacks since it was John XXIII and Paul VI who opened the floodgates. Why is that?
Fr. Somerville left ICEL in 1973, but had been consulting for it ever since. His thinking, until recently, was very much in line with the sentiments expressed in Liturgicam Authenticam.
Perhaps he has no more energy left to fight the liberal oligarchy in Canada, which is now successfully passing its agenda on to a new generation to advance.
And, lest I forget, golllleeeee, I feel flattered to be attacked personally by one of Catholicism's JP II's certifiable (in how many respects?) enemies. I take it that you will be the one deciding whether the pope measures up to your standards (YOPIOT or your own personal interpretation of tradition). You need to check out the Eastern Orthodox Church of your choice. No messy problems with post-1000 AD popes, dogmas or any of that stuff. All thanks to Michael Celarius and his refusal to follow the Vicar of Christ on earth who did not measure up to Celarius's standards. Celarius knew how to lose his Catholicism with style and grace, far more so than his modern counterparts. The more you study on the Eastern Orthodox Church, the better insight you will gain as to your own religious future which, absent genuine repentance, will certainly not be in the Roman Catholic Church.
I certainly recommend that anyone getting this far into this response of mine, hand copy or print out the post of yours to which I am responding as a reminder of the emotional sobriety and delusional capacity of this SSPX schism.
Well...I guess you got me, then. My argument lost due to spelling error...you wish. You go right ahead with your heretical views of this pope (ironically screaming "schism" at all who disagree with your bizarre and profoundly un-Catholic views) -- disregarding, as we have seen, the past teachings of ALL prior popes (save perhaps Paul VI and John XXIII to a degree). Your inconsistency itself is enough to give any thinking person pause. But no one ever accused neo-Caths of being too up on matters Roman Catholic...
Permissions???? You've got to be kidding!! You are so caught up in this pope that you act as if there had never been prior popes. Ever heard of Quo Primum? Of course you have. Yet you are purposely misleading. JPII had no authority to prohibit the Traditional Mass. His "permission" to attend that which had been codified for all eternity some 500 years ago is superflous and patently absurd. Kind of like the thought proceses of all neo-Cath heretical JPII-worshippers.
The Novus Ordo is another heretical wave already dying out????? I hadn't noticed in Connecticut or in Illinois the SSPX impacted areas where one can hardly find a Novus Ordo Roman Catholic Church. Enlighten us as to the location of your heartland where schismatic SSPX churches have choked out the Catholic kind. Provide the proof. Inquiring Catholics need to know! When will Williamson or Fellay be doing a World Schism Day Tour? How many dozen will show up to greet them? I really don't think you want your argument to be numbers-dependent.
My, what a keen observer! A humiliating cesspool of gay corruption and apostate novelty, huh? People who simultaneously claim to be the Catholic remnant (no less!) and who define themselves by insulting the papacy and the pope are in a very poor position to use the term "apostate novelty" with a straight face. AND: sinners right there in the Roman Catholic Church!!!!!! Imagine! Granting the despicable misbehavior, rape, perversion, pederasty, obstruction of justice, embezzlement and what not of all too many AmChurch liberals and all too many of their British and even Irish lavender counterparts and the fact that their earth will have to be scorched from beneath their feet, have you guys abolished confession in your sinlessness? Do you really think that no lavenders are among you attracted by matters of taste associated with smells and bells and chant? Your SSPX gets a free ride because you threaten no one. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Sin would never have occurred in the traditional Church no matter what they may say about Thomas, Peter or even Judas! Right? Why can't we have another pope just like the popes that thrilled our ancestors in the good old days? Popes like John IX or Alexander VI for instance.
Do you think the age of perfection abruptly ended upon the accession of John Paul II to the papacy? John Paul I? Paul VI? John XXIII? Why? If perfection ended with the death of Pius XII (one of our very finest popes in spite of all the pygmies who criticize him with World War II lies), why was he fond of saying of the liberal Jesuit Superior General Jean Baptiste Janssens to Pius XII's inner circle at every crisis: Bring me the head of John the Baptist! What role did Della Chiesa play in the mess of which you complain? Or Count Galeazzi? In the last analysis, just what do you know?
Great argument. Call people stupid to persuade them you are superior and therefore know best.
Again, as Bishop Bruskewitz says, you introduce confusion, ambiguity and uncertainty and I know enough to know who is the author of confusion, ambiguity and uncertainty.
You reduce the faith to a quarrel, but I am sure that fact poses no problem to you while you view the "mush brains" from your throne.
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