SSPX Update

CNS: "SSPX head says Vatican sent mixed messages during reconciliation talks"
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1300051.htm

Quote:

Apparently speaking without a text, (Bishop Fellay) also called the Jewish people "enemies of the church," saying Jewish leaders' support of the Second Vatican Council "shows that Vatican II is their thing, not the church's."

Those most opposed to the church granting canonical recognition to the traditionalist society have been "the enemies of the church: the Jews, the Masons," he said.

Quote:

(Bishop Fellay) said the only reason he continued discussions with Vatican officials was because others "very close to the pope" had assured him that the pope was not in agreement with hard-line official pronouncements from the Vatican.

Quote:

According to Bishop Fellay, retired Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, then-president of the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei," the office responsible for relations with traditionalist Catholics, had told him in March 2009 that the society would be formally recognized.

When the bishop asked how that could be possible when recognition hinged on accepting the teachings of Vatican II, he said the cardinal replied that such a requirement was only "political" and "administrative" and that, "by the way, that is not what the pope thinks."

Bishop Fellay said he continued to get similar messages from other Vatican officials, even as the formal talks continued. The verbal and written messages were very credible, he said, because they came from officials who saw the pope "every day or every two days."

He said he wouldn't give names, but he did claim "the secretary of the pope himself" was among those who told him not to worry too much about hard-line Vatican positions.

Even if the doctrinal congregation ruled against the society, he claimed the secretary told him, the pope "will overrule it in favor of the society."

I hope Fellay is lying. Either way, will someone remind me why they their excommunicated was lifted?

Presumably as a sign of good will towards reconciliation? Not unlike the mutual lifting of excommunications between the RCC and the Orthodox Churches.

Fellay may be lying, or he may have been misinformed (or deliberately misled) by those he spoke with. In any event, reconciliation seems unlikely at this point, and until the SSPX purges the antisemitic strain from its ranks I say it's for the best.

I'm always in favour of reconciliation, but it has to be a two-way process. As long as SSPX is still saying "Vatican II is their thing, not the church's", regardless of who the "their" refers to, it suggests that they do not accept the authority of an Ecumenical Council and that they are not ready for reconciliation.

If the current trend continues it will be the Vatican who will be forced to make concessions to the SSPX in a not very distant future. It may be hard to understand for Americans but here in Europe real Catholics are really fed up by those nominally Catholic imposters and their follies. Fortunately my ancestors who ended up in jails and concentration camps under the National Socialists as well as under the communists for their faith and their leading positions in the Catholic youth movement did not live to see how their Church cast her pearls before the swine.

>3 John5918:

There's this whole nonsense hermeneutic, beloved of "traditionalists" and approved at the highest levels now, that Vatican II was purely "pastoral," not really very important, and that, as it "defined no new dogma" contains nothing binding. Hang out for a little while on the "Catholic Answers" boards and you get this over and over, with the natural result that, while progressives are manifest heretics for, say, suggesting that it might be possible for the church to ordain women, the SSPX and so forth are merely just disobedient of authority and, well, basically right anyway.

>4 Phlegethon99: Thanks for this post, Phlegethon99, but I'd appreciate it if you could elaborate on it a bit.

here in Europe real Catholics are really fed up by those nominally Catholic imposters and their follies

What is a "real Catholic"? What do you mean by "nominally Catholic imposters"? What "follies" are you talking about? I'm also a European and, while in England we didn't suffer particularly under National Socialism or communism, our ancestors were jailed, tortured and burned for their faith for several hundred years. It's very much part of the story of English Roman Catholicism. Who are the swine in front of which the Church's pearls are being cast?

If the current trend continues it will be the Vatican who will be forced to make concessions to the SSPX in a not very distant future.

The "current trend" is that the Church in Europe and north America is shrinking and the centre of gravity has shifted to Africa, Latin America and Asia. I find little interest, at least in Africa where I live and work, in SSPX and its ilk. I also find that, while the African Church is quite "conservative" theologically (is that what you mean by "real"?), it is quite open and progressive in pastoral matters, and very intent on implementing Catholic Social Teaching, which received a new boost with Vatican II and, just last year, Africae Munus, and even more recently, MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE, 1 JANUARY 2013: BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS.

>5 timspalding: There's this whole nonsense hermeneutic... that Vatican II was purely "pastoral," not really very important, and that, as it "defined no new dogma" contains nothing binding.

And yet the Council Fathers chose to issue four documents which they called "constitutions", two of which were "dogmatic constitutions". My understanding is that they did so to underline the gravity of the Council's (ie the Church's) teaching on those matters.

Commonweal http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=22593 :

Why is the Vatican continuing the pursuit of the SSPX? At what cost? A principal result of the reconciliation effort has been to shift the center of gravity in the church to the far right, so that right wingers who might have been on the fringe in years past are considered sensible centrists — a phenomenon we have also seen in the Republican party in recent years. In the end, it may be irrelevant whether the SSPX or some of its elements return to Rome. The larger goal has been achieved.

The Catholic Register has an article about the SSPX buying up an old Catholic church in Calgary, and the Bishop's warning not to attend it. The Bishop, a noted conservative, attempted to warn people away from the church on the truly perverse grounds that Lefebvre would not have approved of it:

On the other hand, the SSPX has gotten more strident over time, harboring sedevacantists and others with positions more extreme than Archbishop Lefebvre would have tolerated ( http://www.catholicregister.org/news/canada/item/15625-calgary-catholics-warned-... )

Catholic News Service: "Calling Jews 'enemies' is 'unacceptable,' Vatican spokesman says"
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1300086.htm

"It is absolutely unacceptable, impossible, to define the Jews as enemies of the church," Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said.

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/lefebvriani-lef...

"The Holy See has made another reconciliatory gesture toward the Society of St. Pius X; the Vice President of Ecclesia Dei, Augustin Di Noia, to whom Benedict XVI entrusted the Church’s scorching dossier on the Lefebvrians, has written to Bernard Fellay. The letter was addressed to all priests in the Fraternity and pointed out a path towards resuming a dialogue which had been interrupted last June."

"According to authoritative French Vatican correspondent Jean Marie Guenois, it was Benedict XVI’s idea to send the letter which he apparently re-read and authorised.

These people are disobedient schismatic and disgusting bigots. They've already been de-excommunicated. This continual hankering after a deal with a group that will never accept Vatican II is positively craven, and casts doubt on your own view of the Council. Why go on pursuing them?

Meanwhile the Vatican has made completely the opposite of "another reconciliatory gesture" towards a "progressive" priest:

Vatican's demand for silence is too high a price (Irish Times)

Redemptorist priest: Vatican threatened excommunication for advocating discussion (NCR)

Reminds me of an elderly colleague of mine, a theologian and scripture scholar, who left the priesthood a good few years ago. He said he had no problem if the Vatican told him that they would not do any of the things he was advocating, but when they told him that these things could not even be discussed, that was too much.

These priests should leave, set up their own parallel ecclesial structure and take up Holocaust denial. The Vatican will be sure to come calling then.

Catholic rebel group begins criticising new pope
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/uk-pope-traditionalists-idUKBRE93H0VO20...

That didn't take long…