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

[nickcarraway]

In any case, the new Mass in Latin is nowhere to be found in the real world--except maybe on EWTN.

Actually it's quite common.

[Catholicguy]

13 – Who are the authors of these published critiques of the Conciliar Church? Of the many names, let a few be noted as articulate, sober evaluators of the Council: Atila Sinka Guimaeres (In the Murky Waters of Vatican II),

<> Who signed the infamous "We resist you to the face" schism sheet and specialises in attacking the Pope in the execreable "The Remnant."<>

Romano Amerio (Iota Unum: A Study of the Changes in the Catholic Church in the 20th Century),<> Read it. Big deal. Personal opinions of a peritus whose agenda wasn't put into action<>

<> Michael Davies (various books and booklets, TAN Books),

<> English school teach whose books are suffused with errors<>

and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre,

<>excommunicated<>

one the Council Fathers, who worked on the preparatory schemas for discussions, and has written many readable essays on Council and Mass (cf Angelus Press).

14 – Among traditional Catholics, the late Archbishop Lefebvre stands out because he founded the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), a strong society of priests (including six seminaries to date) for the celebration of the traditional Catholic liturgy. Many Catholics who are aware of this may share the opinion that he was excommunicated

<> The Pope who excommunicated him is presumably one of those Catholics<>

and that his followers are in schism. There are however solid authorities (including Cardinal Ratzinger, the top theologian in the Vatican) who hold that this is not so. declares itself fully Roman Catholic, recognizing Pope John Paul II while respectfully maintaining certain serious reservations.

<> Is this Thanksgiving or April Fool's Day?<>

[Catholicguy]

Let's please dispense with all the hackneyed accusations of "schismatic" and "heretic."Let's not. They are useful to identify schismatics and heretics. We have a duty to warn others of spiritual danger and the internet is fertile ground for spawning private judgement Magisteriums that folks, like yourself, stupidly consider worthwhile reading.

Let it be noted the so-called traditionalists NEVER Post a defense of an Ecuemnical Council or the Pope. They ALWAYS attack legitimate Divinely-constituted authority. Some Tradition (if you are a So. Baptist)<>

[ninenot]

This is REALLY significant. Somerville is a "name," and one to be reckoned with. My vague recollection is that he was also quite involved in music.

Was this letter a reprint, or was it sent specifically to the SSPX?

[Slyfox]

I too long for the uplifting words of the Tridentine Mass but, the Novus Ordo, however flawed the prayers may be, is still valid because the words of the Consecration, "This is My Body, This is My Blood", were not changed.

The significance of Father Somerville's opinion is that it may help those to act in favor of better language who are in positions where they could do something.

One of the last times there was a discussion on this topic I stated that Protestants were involved in the formulation of the Novus Ordo and I was told I was full of hooey. Well, whoever you are how told me that here it is. Now put THAT in your crack pipe and smoke it.

[Desdemona]

Among traditional Catholics, the late Archbishop Lefebvre stands out because he founded the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), a strong society of priests (including six seminaries to date) for the celebration of the traditional Catholic liturgy. Many Catholics who are aware of this may share the opinion that he was excommunicated and that his followers are in schism.

Maybe he was excommunicated for insubordination? That's a firing offense in any profession. From all accounts that's what it sounds like. He might have been right, but say/do the wrong thing to the worng person, thus creating a conflict of egos and whammo you're gone.

[BlackElk]

I attack disrespectful, disobedient, taste-obsessive schismatics, and have yet to attack a solid Catholic. Solid Catholics do not despise papal authority. The protest against papal authority is of the essence of Protestantism. You continually support your hatred of papal authority by creating strawmen. Many of us do not disagree with the idea that Latin ought to continue to be the language of the Church but it is NOT an essential.

Many of us do not disagree with the idea that the Tridentine Mass is usually said more reverently than the Novus Ordo (without a need for it to take an exaggerated hour and a half for a normal High Mass just to show our fellow man how VERY reverent we truly are), but recognize that there are also reverent Novus Ordo Masses.

Many of us prefer that the priest OUGHT to face ad orientem rather than ad populum, that the Sacrament of Penance OUGHT to be conducted in traditional confessionals (although again that is NOT an essential) and ought NEVER to be administered en masse other than in strict emergencies, that there are Novus Ordo priests, bishops and laity every bit as insolent, disrespectful and disobedient as the schismatic SSPX and, perhaps, even more so.

None of the above or any of the repetitive ravings of offended calcified trads amounts to a justification for the disrespect, disobedience, disdain and absolutely diabolical hallmark of your "movement", the ingrained habit of the sin which is the rebelliousness shared by SSPX with the worst of the reformation.

When your little temporary sect illicitly ordains priests and illicitly consecrates bishops, it ordains and consecrates IN and FOR disobedience, rebellion, insolence and dissent from the only legitimate religious authority available among men: the Vatican and the papacy in particular. You and that sect of yours then compound this by poisoning the souls of your young people against the papacy itself (against the Vicariate of Christ on earth).

I certainly hope that you get around to repenting before going the way of all flesh. If you want to adhere to this schism to your dying day, tugging pitifully at the sleeves of obedient Catholics bleating your petty arguments against the Church itself, have a party but it may well be both negative and eternal. God did not designate you to judge the pope any more than he designated Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Woods, Ferrara, Droleskey, Marcel Lefevbre or a legion of their respective followers to do so.

Neither SSPX nor Tom Woods nor Chris Ferrara nor Tom Drolesky nor the Remnant nor any other self-appointed religious authority will prevail against the Church any more than the other gates of hell. It's a guarantee on the Highest Authority.

For Catholics, Catholicism ought to be a norm, a sign of contradiction to the world, to be sure, but normal life for Catholics nonetheless and the safest of spiritual harbors welcoming a world weary of the consequences of the world's sorry standards.

We Catholics ought to be able to wear and live our Catholicism with a sense of joy in the conviction that Our Savior lives and, through the Paraclete, continues to govern the Church's life through His vicar on earth and we will. That vision does not seem satisfy you and others like you who worship themselves, their tastes, their opinions and, above all, (don't burn your fingers on their foreheads) your unjustified presumption of theological and prudential adequacy. It is unfortunate that your apparent need to draw attention to yourselves is more important to you than humility before and obedience to the best pope you will ever see and his successors whoever they may be.

[Desdemona]

Sommerville says some interesting things. And if he's renouncing his role...it's worth at least listenting. And to a very large extent with languange and music, he's absolutely correct.

...the Second Vatican Council was early commandeered and manipulated and infected by modernist, liberalist, and protestantizing persons and ideas.

This line says a lot. They did the same thing in the universities. And for some dumb reason, people are afraid to confront them. I have no idea why. It's amazing the number of incompetants who rise to power. In many fields, incuding mine.

Request please: a good, solid definition of "modernism". I haven't gotten one yet. Does it have something to do with thinking for oneself, enlightenment and socialism? What?

I had a talk with my grandmother about this yesterday, and she doesn't particularly like the language of the NO. She said going back to Latin would not bother her, but then she grew up with it. My mother, OTOH, will NEVER accept going back, and she's a daily Mass goer.

I had a whole line of comments for this since I read this last night and with all the distractions while I've been typing, I forgot half of them. I'll be back later.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Shouldn't Fr. Somerville have written his letter of resignation in Latin, since it is a far superior language in every way from English? In fact shouldn't Latin-rite advocates speak in Latin most of the time because of its superiority, resorting to vernacular only when dealing with their inferiors in the secular world?

He is rather mindlessly resorting to the cheap convenience of vernacular. After all, if you expect the laity to have to learn and understand a dead language in order to participate fully in liturgical life, the least the clergy can do is to use it in their daily business.

[BlackElk]

Should we also have avoided all those hackneyed accusations of "schismatic" and "heretic" against Luther. After all, he was a virulent hater of the papacy, didn't that make him a good Catholic in SSPX's book?

I'm looking for a good opportunity to dispense with all of those hackeyed accusations that McGovern was at the least a communist sympathizer, that Willie Sutton robbed banks, that Johnny Appleseed was a boon to the creation of apple orchards, that the sun rises in the East and that disrespect and insolence are to be discouraged among actual Catholics. Valid opportunities in all cases are few and far between.

I also note the repulsively presumptuous abuse of the prefix "neo" yet again. We have in politics isolationist Simon Legrees who imagine themselves the real conservatives and attack the real thing as "neo-conservatives" and now we have schismatics imagining themselves Catholic who abuse that overused prefix by dismissing actual Catholics in communion with the Holy See as something called "neo-Catholics." It is in such cocoons of abused vocabulary, in each case, that politically or spiritually carcinogenic fantasies must be protected lest they be blown away by cold cruel reality and/or common sense as the case may be.

[BlackElk]

It certainly lacks a certain aura of Vatican splendor but they can dream, can't they? They close their eyes and imagine the Michelangelo ceiling above what looks like a rather roomy outhouse. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was St. Mary's, Kansas.

[ultima ratio]

Your pictures are amusing but they have nothing to do with SSPX which follows JnPII when he is not leading his Church astray or making false declarations that can't be backed up by Tradition. Catholicism is above all a faith, not a pope and not fancy Roman palaces. Popes make mistakes--when they depart from Tradition and attempt to introduce novelties as this Pope and Paul VI have done. As the First Vatican Council put it, "The Holy Spirit was not promised to the Successors of Peter that by His revelation they might disclose new doctrine." Popes are divinely protected from error only when they remain within the bounds of Catholic Tradition and not when they stray as this Pope does intermittently. So reread the article and learn something.

[BlackElk]

Pope Pius X, in his encyclical Pascendi Domenici Gregis (known by the English title of Against the Errors of the Modernists) (August, 1907) and its accompanying syllabus of errors Lamentabili Sane (July, 1907) referenced Modernism as the synthesis of all heresies. What he called modernism is an equivalent of what today's Protestants call Secular Humanism but they have naturally failed to see the relationship of Secular Humanism to numerous other heresies.

Another way to look at it is that there was an explosion of bad ideas at the turn of the last century and for about 40 years before. Darwin, Dewey, G. B. Shaw, Freud, Jung, H. G. Wells, and a host of others who bent their intellects to the task of erasing any connection between man and God. They buttressed the movement for "progress" and "reform" by getting that pesky old God and His restrictive rules out of the way of creating new Soviet (whoops, creating a new humanity.

Within the Roman Catholic Church, these demonic characters were aided, abetted and joined by the likes of George Tyrell, SJ, and Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, who tried, as gates of hell to overcome the Church from within. Tyrell was excommunicated and refused burial in sacred ground. Teilhard, also known for an evolutionist hoax (Peking Man) died silenced but was apparently a buddy of Angelo Roncalli (personally not theologically) who was elected as John XXIII. After the election of John XXIII, the floodgates were opened to prudential errors in Church governance and the carnival of misbehavior which proceeded from opening the windows of the Church and letting the world's pollution in.

As a result, there has been entirely too much encouragement of people like Sinkspur who serve as deacons while never seeing a Catholic principle or dogma that ought not be subjected to the misbegotten excuse for "wisdom" that might arise from democracy in the pews and anarchy in place of hierarchy on the one hand and his opposite numbers of SSPX, such as ultima ratio and zviadist and, apparently, Maximilian and a few others who seem to imagine hellfire and damnation for anyone who considers JPII who gave us their Tridentine Mass back as a dangerous subversive not in communion with their schism.

Our job as faithful Catholics is to keep the Church alive with the help of and according to the guarantees of our Savior. In that way, neither the enthusiasts of the misbegotten heretical left nor the the adherents of the misbegotten schismatic SSPX will be allowed to feast on the carcass of the Church. Of course, neither will be allowed to do so because the Church will prevail, as guaranteed.

Back to the original source: Pascendi Domenici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane are published in English by the Daughters of St. Paul in one pamphlet for a modest price well below $5.

[ultima ratio]

I said the new Mass in Latin is nowhere to be found in the real world. I never said it was not to be found--somewhere, some time, in some exotic location. Mass late at night, Mass on first Saturdays, Mass at Opus Dei chapels are not the real world and are not common. Most ordinary parishes use the vernacular.

BTW, some bishops think they can fool the faithful by substituting the Novus Ordo in Latin for the old Latin Mass. More tricks and chicanery from the same people who brought us clown Masses and pedophilia scandals.

[Domestic Church]

"Where exactly does this thinking leave us?"

It appears to be another step into the unofficial schism territory. Perhaps this will help in restoring the Latin Mass to the mainstream of the Latin Rite. I would love to see it expanded from the token category.

[BlackElk]

You misread (why are we surprised) the meaning of the sentence you quoted from Vatican I. The meaning is equivalent to: "....... that by His revelation they might (sell bubble gum)" That is to say that the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of St. Peter to protect against error. This is not an invitation for you to pick or choose what YOU THINK is error but an invitation for you to submit to papal authority and the dogmas of the Church not for you to be a cafeteria type adhering to whatever pleases your rarified tastes and self-importance.

[Loyalist]

This is REALLY significant. Somerville is a "name," and one to be reckoned with. My vague recollection is that he was also quite involved in music.

He composed many of the Mass settings and some of the hymns in Catholic Book of Worship, the CCCB's official hymnal.

With this letter to the SSPX, he will probably become an unperson in the Canadian Church.

[ultima ratio]

The SSPX is not in schism. Nor are its followers. Nor was Archbishop Lefebvre. Your saying so over and over doesn't make it so.

Cardinal Castillo Lara, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of Canon Law: "The act of consecrating a bishop [without the Pope's permission] is not in itself a schismatic act."

Count Neri Capponi, Doctor of Canon Law, renouned for his arguments before Rome's highest juridical body, the Apostolic Signatura: "The fact is that Msgr. Lefebvre simply said: 'I am creating bishops in order that my priestly order can continue. They do not take the place of other bishops. I am not creating a parallel church.' Therefore this act is not, per se, schismatic."

Fr. Patrick Valdini, Dean of the Faculty of Canon Law at the University of Paris: "It is not the consecration of a bishop that creates the schism. What makes the schism is to give the bishop an apostolic mission"--something the Archbishop never did.

Fr. Gerald E. Murray, Licentiate in Canon Law, Gregorian University: "I come to the conclusion that he's [Lefebvre's] not guilty of a schismatic act punishable by canon law. He's guilty of an act of disobedience to the Pope, but he did it in such a way that he would prevail himself of a provision of the law that would prevent him from being automatically excommunicated."

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in responding to the decree issued by Bishop Ferrario of Honolulu excommunicating Catholics for attending Mass at an SSPX chapel: "From the examination of the case, conducted on the basis of the Law of the Church, 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."

Professor Geringer, Canon Lawyer at the University of Munich: "With the episcopal consecrations, Archbishop Lefebvre was by no means creating a schism."

Cardinal Edward Cassidy, President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity: "I would point out at once that the Directory on Ecumenism is not concerned with the Society of Saint Pius X. The situation of the members of this Society is AN INTERNAL MATTER OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. The Society is not another Church or Ecclesial Community in the meaning used in the Directory. Of course the Mass and the Sacraments administered by the priests of the Society are valid."

[ultima ratio]

So the Pope fires a traditionalist for sticking with Tradition, but keeps the prelates who have covered up corruption for decades, who are outright apostates, even awarding them the red hat? What does that say about this Pope?

[narses]

Modernism: "... the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously." From The Oath Against Modernism Given by His Holiness St. Pius X September 1, 1910.