Posted on 01/28/2003 11:27:58 AM PST by NYer
In Perspective
By Alphonse J. Matt, editor The Wanderer
Since the end of the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent promulgation by Pope Paul VI of the new rite of the Mass, there has been a growing division among those Catholics generally known as "orthodox" or "traditionalist."
The Wanderer itself suffered from the divisions and upheavals following the council.
In 1967 editor Walter Matt left the newspaper over a dispute about the meaning of Vatican II. He saw it not so much as a reform and a renewal of the Church but as a revolution that threatened to undermine the Church herself (in that same year, Walter Matt founded The Remnant). His brother, Alphonse J. Matt, Sr. (the present writer's father), took over the reins at The Wanderer and reminded its readers that the real intent of the council was a renewed evangelization of the world for Christ and a personal renewal of every individual Catholic.
For The Wanderer , the council was not a rejection or an abandonment of Tradition, but a development of that Tradition, safeguarded for 2,000 years by the Holy Spirit, to better enable the Church to bring the Gospel to all men.
Those "traditionalists" who view the council as a break with Tradition who blame the council's teaching itself, not the subversion of, and departure from that teaching, by modernists and progressivists are becoming increasingly hostile to the See of Peter and its present occupant.
The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who broke with the Holy See in 1988 over the issue of appointing bishop successors from his Society of St. Pius X, tends to be the hero of these traditionalist Catholics.
This past April, an angry, aggressive statement authored by Atila Sinke Guimarães, a former member of the Brazil-based TFP (Tradition, Family, Property), titled We Resist You to the Face was published in The Remnant, Catholic Family News, and other traditionalist organs.
The statement was signed by Mr. Guimarães and Marian Horvat, both members of Tradition in Action, Inc., Michael Matt, editor of The Remnant, and John Vennari, editor of Catholic Family News.
We Resist You . . . is described by its signatories as "A Public Statement of Catholic Resistance" (in which) "Lay Catholic journalists respectfully suspend obedience to the Pope and remain inside Holy Mother Church."
A brochure promoting the statement declares:
" We Resist You to the Face analyzes the consequences of the adaptation of the Church to the modern world, and the consequences of ecumenism, as applied since the Council including by the present Pontiff. The authors declare themselves in a state of resistance 'relative to the teachings of Vatican Council II, Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, and to your teachings [of John Paul II] that are objectively opposed to the prior ordinary and extraordinary Papal Magisterium'."
One can conclude after a careful reading of We Resist You . . . that its authors and supporters are on a schismatic trajectory that can only have tragic consequences.
We have asked Stephen Hand, no stranger to traditionalists, to examine We Resist You . . ., its premises and conclusions in order to provide some guidance and counsel to those traditionalist Catholics who are troubled and confused by current developments within the Church and the kinds of analysis of such by the likes of We Resist You. . . .
The result of his effort is: "Traditionalists," Tradition, and Private Judgment. Two important addenda are included: Pope Paul II's Credo of the People of God and Cardinal Ratzinger's remarks in 1988 to the bishops of Chile regarding the Lefebvre schism.
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln has graciously provided a preface to the work.
We recommend this commentary to every Catholic who seeks a better understanding of the controversies which continue to spread fear, doubt, and confusion within the Church. It will prove to be an effective instrument to strengthen one's faith.
Alphonse J. Matt Jr. Editor, The Wanderer
Preface by The Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewtiz,
Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska
Stephen Hand has done a distinct service by his fine monograph pointing out by means of careful research as well as by personal and anecdotal experience the reality of removing a cinder in one's eye when such is there, but keeping the eye intact and not removing the eye out of exasperation, because of the annoyance and sometimes serious pain the cinder can cause.
It has been an axiom for many years in historical theology that what oftentimes begins or is declared to be a "return to tradition," in other words, a reaction, ends as being an innovation, that is, a schism or a heresy. There are people who suffer from intense headaches, and find themselves utterly incapable of mastering the horrible pain that they frequently endure. In moments of frustration, such people will sometimes say, "I wish I could cut off my head to cure my headache." But they, and all who are rational and reflective in their presence, would always realize that the so-called cure would be far worse than the continuous enduring of even the most tragic pain. It takes a faith-filled and prayer-filled discerning Catholic life to distinguish liturgical abuses, doctrinal and moral aberrations, and grave disciplinary infractions occurring in the lives and practices of people within the Church, from the Church herself, which despite being composed of sinful members, remains the spotless Spouse and Bride of Christ, not a Church of Cathers or Albigensians, but a Church of those who carry within themselves the sad effects of original sin while at the same time bearing the grace of God, which is to say, the seeds of eternal happiness. St. Thomas Aquinas calls pride the queen and mother of all vices, and oftentimes those who perhaps rightly perceive grave faults and defects in people in the Church, even sometimes in people with positions of clerical authority, forget their own creatureliness and sinfulness, and the ability they themselves have to fall into serious error.
At the time of the Jansenist crisis, for instance, the archbishop of Paris, speaking of the Jansenist nuns at Port-Royal, said they were as pure as angels but as proud as devils. Down through the centuries there have been countless sects, denominations, cults, and churches which have broken off from the Catholic Church under the pretense of being "holier than thou." We are witnessing the same occurrence in our time. Ironically, these groups are most often unknowing and indeliberate allies of the bitterest enemies of Christ and His Church, in effect, denying the abiding Presence of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic Church and the promises that Christ bestowed on His Mystical Body from its inception.
In his masterful work, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, John Henry Newman points out how in the course of the Church's history she occasionally appears to fall into a deliquium, from which, under God's grace, she emerges victorious and stronger than ever. Many of those who defy the Church and even leave the Church in the name of "tradition," thus contradicting the very word by which they choose to define themselves, are ignorant in their despair regarding the Church's future or the realities of the Church's history through 2,000 years. This work of Stephen Hand undoubtedly will assist those who are loyal to Christ and to His Church, and to His Vicar on earth, the Bishop of Rome, to labor zealously within the boundaries of the Church herself for her growth in holiness, and willingly, even joyfully, do all possible to eliminate doctrinal, moral, liturgical, and disciplinary aberrations, but, at the same time, conceding nothing to those who wish not to remove a cinder from the eye, but to remove the eye itself and perhaps replace its empty socket with cinders and decayed matters.
The Venerable Servant of God, Abbot Joseph Columba Marmion, who is scheduled to be beatified on September 3, 2000, once reminded his readers that "God resists the proud," and he added: "Is it not terrible to be alienated from God? But how much more terrible it must be to be 'resisted' by God Himself."
May his rhetorical question echo in the minds and hearts of those who make use of this fine work of Stephen Hand.
The Most Rev.
Fabian W. Bruskewitz,
Bishop of Lincoln, Neb
+ + + Part 1 The Church And The Council
The most wonderful thing about being Catholic is that the Church's saving Tradition is a "given," something which we can only receive from the hands of Christ's ministers, who extend in time through the apostolic succession all the way back to the empty Tomb, and who first heard the stunning words:
"Receive the Holy Spirit
For those whose sins you forgive,
They are forgiven;
For those whose sins you retain They are retained" (John 20:22).
The Church is not some esoteric gnosis which men must try to discern, decipher, and then keep jealously under a bushel. Rather, she is, following the Incarnation itself, astonishingly visible, a "light to the world" and the "salt of the earth," the continuation through time of Him who was "made flesh and dwelt among us."
From that moment when earth's history was split into a "before" and an "after," no one has had to look or wait for another Messiah, another teaching or "Way." For He is "with us," "always," (Isaiah 9:6; Matt. 28:20) and is the God who comes, the God who seeks us out, and who offers forgiveness and reconciliation to a world which will never again have to grope to find Him. He is there, in His Church, where, until the very end of the world are heard the simple words of consecration which are the substance of the Mass. St. Paul tells us what that substance is:
"For this is what I received from the Lord, and in turn pass on to you: that on the night that He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, and giving thanks He broke it, and He said, 'This is my Body, which is broken for you'. In the same manner He took the cup and said:"This is the cup of the New Covenant in my Blood. Whenever you drink it, do this in memory of me" (1 Cor. 11: 23-27).
Should she deem it necessary or good, the Church could reduce her liturgy to these words and acts, the "substance" around which all the ritual "accidents," which change through time, adhere. For only she is given to participate in and dispense the divine authority the great and undemocratic "whatsoever" (Matt. 16:20) until the Bridegroom returns to receive His Bride at the end of time. It is left for us to only "Hear the Church" which changes only in her "accidents" through the ebbs and flows of time, the "substance" perduring to the consummation.
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:41:18 -0400
Author: "Terrence J. Boyle"
Subject: Re: ("Fr. M. E.) Morrison
Body: Hello:
M.E. Morrison was "ordained" in California in a Protestant church (Ebenezer Lutheran Chirch) by Thaddeus Alioto, a married man claiming to be a bishop (because he had been "consecrated" a bishop by Wallace David de Ortega Maxey).
De Ortega Maxey had been "consecrated" numerous times by various North American Old Catholic bishops (whom even the Old Catholic Churches in Europe deny have valid orders). De Ortega Maxey also *claimed* to have been consecrated by Antoine Aneed.
Aneed's story is that he was consecrated a bishop by a RC Eastern Rite bishop in Syria and sent to America. Both the Vatican and the Syrian Patriarchate involved denounced the story as a fabrication.
If you have any doubts over the veracity of my statements as to where Morrison got "ordained," just ask his fellow "independent" priest, Merril Adamson. He was "ordained" in the same ceremony. I've a written statement from him confirming the fact.
This is important not because of anything Morrison states on the internet, but because he dresses up his statements as coming from a RC priest.
Even the devil can quote Scripture.
Anyone e-mailing to Morrison's list a request for the facts of his claimed ordination will be dropped.
It never ceases to amaze me how sedevacantists can be so cock-sure JP II is a fraud, yet swallow hook, line and sinker any number of bogus clerics; just because the frauds sing the music sedes like to hear.
It takes more than "right" preaching to make a priest.
Regards, Terry Boyle
The posts of that particular individual are nothing more than missives from the Darkness. Yours, however, are outstanding but at times it is like trying to teach Calculus to kindergarteners.
Thanks for the ping and the wise words.
When a schismatic friend of mine warned me away from Traditio & "Rev" Morrison" (I was going to San Francicso and I was gonna check-out his lil' "chapel), he suggested I do what Mr. Boyle suggested.
I was promptly dropped from the list. ANYONE can perform this simple test to see if what Boyle says is true.
They won't though...."Rev" Morrison scratches their antipapal itch<>
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