Bishop Fellay has addressed his followers in Toronto on the state of discussions with the Vatican. It seems as though Pope Benedict's attempts at reconciliation have been spat on and thrown back in his face, and the SSPX are heading down the Novatian/Donatist road
wdtprs.com/blog/2013/01/sspx-bp-fellay-delivers-a-long-state-of-the-question-address/Sample comments from Fr Z's combox:
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Jack Orlando says:
1 January 2013 at 4:52 pm
First reactions after hearing the tape:
* Now the Society clearly has said “no” to Pope Benedict XVI, and said it definitely, unequivocally, and finally. “They treat us as excommunicated”. No they haven’t. Soon they will; and they will so de jure.
* The possibility of reconciliation of the Society with Rome and the regularization of the Society no longer exists. This speech shows that Fellay and the Society know this and are planning to proceed accordingly. Müller’s appointment shows that The Church knows this too. The Society, as are the Old Catholics and Anglicans, is outside The Church, a different church. I say this with sorrow.
* Fellay’s argument is “I get confusing signals. The Curia doesn’t do what the Pope wants.” I don’t believe him. The Church has repeatedly said clearly this: “You cannot deny the Council. If a statement in the Council needs clarification, or has not yet been clarified in subsequent teaching, it can subsequently clarified. But if your position is to reject adamantly the Council, and to reject intransigently the possibility of clarification, then you reject the Magisterium of the Church itself, and then it’s over and we go separate ways.”
* He who is not with Rome is not Catholic. By rejecting Rome, the Society places itself out of the Catholic Church and is now in schism. It is now just a matter of time before The Church declares this schism and imposes excommunications.
* I question the Free Masonry charge, the charge of German threats, and the charge of Communists in the Church. Soon Fellay will go to Wheeling West Virginia, make a speech to the Republican Women’s Club, take a piece of paper out of his cassock, and say that he has in his hand a list of 205 Communists/Jews/Masons/Protestants in the Curia. (I know that some of you are too young to understand this reference.)
* The attempt to compare the Society’s situation to the Eastern Church is fallacious.
* Equally fallacious is the attempt to blame the bad situation in The Church, whether in France or elsewhere, chiefly on the Council — thus a post hoc fallacy, thus ignoring the Sexual Revolution, ignoring the secularism of the past three centuries, and ignoring that in the last 20 years our culture is in fact becoming less secular.
* “You are Protestants” “You are Modernists”. The idea that Benedict XVI is a disciple of Loisy is absurd.
* “We must be accepted as we are!” = “We are our own Magisterium and Rome must accept this”.
* Fellay says that the correct term to describe of the new Mass is not invalid or illicit but “evil”. This cements the parting of ways. None of us in the Church can say the new Mass is categorically and unconditionally evil and then remain in the Church. (The new Mass isn’t what the Council wanted anyway.)
* I stopped listening at 1:17 when the Jews are called “enemies of the Church”. Williamson is no exception in the Society. There is now no chance of reconciliation. We now need to devote our time to what in fact can be done: the advancement of the Extraordinary Form.
I regret that I am blunt. St. Flannery, in explaining why she had the element of the grotesque in her work, said “When people are deaf, you have to shout.”
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Geoffrey says:
1 January 2013 at 6:18 pm
jack Orlando: Thank you very much for the succinct summary! I didn’t have the time to listen!
The whole situation is very sad. The Holy Father offered so much of what the SSPX demanded (Summorum Pontificum, the lifting of the excommunications, etc.), and still they speak this nonsense?! The Holy Father showed them such mercy and charity, and this is how they respond?
Sadly, the day is coming when the Holy Apostolic See will have to do something definitive regarding the SSPX… and not just to the bishops of the society, but also the priests and perhaps even the lay faithful attached to the movement. Very sad, but something needs to be done.
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Julian Barkin says:
1 January 2013 at 8:04 pm
jack Orlando,
As a young buck involved in serving the Latin Mass in my diocese, THE very diocese that THAT guy adminstered “confirmations” to young children in, and CONDITIONAL confirmations to adults (as their Novus Ordo Confirmation was of ‘improper’ matter or defective) this past weekend, I must say that I whole heartedly agree with your assessment of the situation. I will have to devote some time to hear the whole speech (should I have the patience to quell my anger), but it is a good general summation. They are done with negotiating.
Further I am sick of how they go around administering empty sacraments, that are NULL and VOID due to these guys NOT being under the jurisdiction of their bishop. So no matter what these children and adults think, they are being LIED to, regardless of how beautiful their sermons on the sacrament are. I am tired of the lies they spew. Another former acquaitance of mine even thought that under pang of mortal sin you must fast friday from attending their “services” when Canon Law of 1983 has removed such (but oh wait! It’s a POST VATICAN II Canon law so it doesn’t apply!)
Anyways Jack Orlano, don’t let yourself be discouraged by these SSPX hard liners. They simply sing the tune they’ve been taught to hum and do it willingly if they took the bait and deserted from the True and Valid Church under the Magisterium and the Holy Father for the mere “appearance” of traditional Catholicism. In fact, part of why I started my Blog Servimus Unum Deum, amongst other things about those happenings in my Archdiocese of Toronto, was to promote VALID AND LICIT DIOCESAN Latin Mass efforts be they parish or lay-orgnaized, so that people in our diocese will come to know the Latin Mass, if interested in serving do so, and not be swayed to likely schism as even the PCED in the last communication warned that attending SSPX “Masses” can lead one to do so. And Canon law makes schism a latae Sentitiae excommunication, meaning “you knowingly do it, bye bye salvation.”
Everyone, please save your souls and stay on the barque of Peter. It might have taken some mighty blows and its officers have mutinied in the past, and some are still doing so (but are dying of old age gradually), but the Captain Benedict XVI and our King Jesus still reign the waters of our world. It is getting better. Young people in my generation and the next are waking up, and bit by bit, we are coming back and getting bolder with our faith. We are evangelizing. But please, as tempting as it is to want to go to their “Masses” with pomp and circumstance and all the fancy visuals, many of your dioceses have the same things starting up. Support those efforts, and more will follow.If you put your money and time into the SSPX, those efforts will be crushed or die, and there will be no one to blame but you, when you did not look after your Catholic brothers who fought valiantly and lost. Furthermore, what will happen when the Pope excommunicates once again the SSPX or makes the final doctrinal blow on them? Will you then wish you had supported your local diocesan TLM?
As for those who aren’t lucky, then support with money and your feet those Novus Ordo parishes that are more orthodox and defend their pastors in writing and your donations! Get involved on liturgy committees and parish councils and with your knowledge of Vatican documents and scripture and the Catechism, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! Worse case, offer up your sufferings to the Lord, but do not stray from the path. The gate is wide but the path is narrow. And you can fall off BOTH sides of the path, liberal or ultra-trad. In addition, remember, most of all, Matthew 16:18. Our Lord will NEVER allow the Church (not necessarily the institutional aspects) to fall to the Devil. Pax Tibi Christi everyone.
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CharlesG says:
2 January 2013 at 8:21 am
David Werling said: You see, JonPatrick, we don’t want to be integrated into a “parish life” that includes altar girls, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, disrespect for and desecration of holy things, bowing instead of genuflecting, banal liturgical music, errors preached from the pulpit and printed in the bulletin, in short, an entirely different religion from what we traditionalists believe and practice.
And so having the example of the extraordinary form and its rubrics, orthodoxy, etc. widely present in parishes to serve as an example to counteract all those things you mention (most of which are abuses and not requirements of the ordinary form) has to be foregone because you hyper purists don’t want to be even in close proximity with parishes in which the ordinary form exists, possibly with some common and prevalent abuses. Sounds like Donatist arrogance to me. I have never understood those Traditionalists who don’t remain loyal to the Pope and the Church and work to counteract abuses from within. I don’t encounter such an offputting ghetto purist attitude from FSSPers generally – more usually it comes from SSPX types who are juridically outside the pale. I don’t think you necessarily speak for all FSSPers. I attend a diocesan extraordinary form mass, which does happen to take place in a parish that offers the ordinary form, and we have had several friendly visitations from FSSP clergy and seminarians. Heaven save us from the Traditionalists that cannot coexist with, deal with, and help to move in the direction of greater orthodoxy the vast multitude in the Church who attend the ordinary form. Moreover, the Pope is correct and you are wrong on the subject of whether the Vatican II Council created a new religion. This is where you radical traditionalists and the liberal modernists are in the same boat — to say the Council created a new religion is to reject the Magisterium. The Council documents must be interpreted according to a hermeneutic of reform in continuity, as the Magisterium posits, and if this is done, there has been no fundamental change in the essential teachings of the Catholic Church. Some disciplinary changes, and a heck of a lot of abuses, but that doesn’t change Catholic teaching. One must learn to make the distinction.
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Sam Schmitt says:
2 January 2013 at 10:04 am
If the Vatican addressed the SSPX concerns, they would either a) expose the heresy of VII or b) show the SSPX as being heretical. Don’t you see why the Vatican refuses to address the SSPX’s concerns? They know. A better tact is to demand obedience. The irony.
If Vatican II is heresy, then why try to negotiate with the Rome, which accepts Vatican II? But then the SSPX claims that is does accept Vatican II, so it must not be heretical. Sounds to me like the SSPX is thoroughly confused about its own position. If the SSPX thinks it is going to “bring Rome back to Tradition,” then again, it has set itself up as the judge and arbiter of the Faith in place of Rome, and no, Rome is not very interested in discussing that. If you don’t believe that Rome has the authority to teach the true Faith, then you have put yourself outside the Church.
And the Father Z crowd will be OUTRAGED for this “disobedience” and call for schism — for what, who knows? Surely its not disobedience to Tradition and the Word which has guided the Church for 1962 years. Who has been disobedient to that?
If Rome is not faithful to tradition, then it is no longer Catholic, and it is better to abandon Rome and go your own way. If this is what the SSPX really thinks, then you’re right – there is a reason why Rome won’t “address the SSPX’s concerns.” No one is “demanding” schism, just opining that this is the situation “de facto.” Again, the SSPX seems confused about where they themselves stand (or maybe it’s just those who claim to speak for them).
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anilwang says:
2 January 2013 at 12:34 pm
David Werling says: “I’m simply making an obvious observation. For example, by observing young traditionalist families and young novus ordo families, you would be hard pressed to tell me there is no difference in belief between the two regarding contraception. “
Not a fair comparison. Remember Humanae Vitae was rejected by the bulk of people who had no experience with Novus Ordo.
The people who go to TLM today are a self-selected group of people who want to be faithful to Tradition. A far better comparison would be to compare Traditional TLM Catholics and Traditional Catholics that go to a faithful and reverent Novus Ordo masses. I’m willing to bet that the numbers are equivalent since the reasons for both choices are identical. If the Novus Ordo masses were abolished today, Traditional Novus Order Catholics who never stepped into a Latin mass and would have no idea what to do would have no qualms about accepting the Pope’s will.
I’m firmly convinced that if the Novus Order did not exist, TLM would have been infected by altar girls, communion in the hand, ad populum, and other abuses that infected the Novus Ordo. Those abuses would have crept in the way other abuses such as confirmation before first communion (yes, it is an abuse…confirmation is *not* a Catholic Bar Mitzvah and was unheard of before the “Enlightenment” French bishops started it). Namely, first the abuse happens where bishops are negligent and grow until no bishop can stop it, then enough bishops give up that the Pope eventually gives up trying to stop it, then it becomes the norm. If you listen to Father Hardon’s lectures you can clearly here the transition from “The Pope has clearly told me that altar girls will never be allowed and he is clamping down” to the comment “The Pope told me he gave up because he has no longer power to stop the abuses since they are so wide spread, and there are bigger fish to fry”.
So ironically, the Novus Ordo help preserve the pristine TLM, so it could anchor the Church and provide a reference for the Novus Ordo to return to sanity (assuming it will still be around in 100 years).
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Fr Martin Fox says:
2 January 2013 at 3:19 pm
David Werling:
When you say you ordinary Catholic parishioners observe “an entirely different religion from what we traditionalists believe and practice,” you are saying only one of you is Catholic, and the other is not. That is an extreme statement.
Now, perhaps you said more than you meant to say–in which case, a clarification would be in order.
But if you really meant to say that the ordinary Catholics at an ordinary parish aren’t, actually, Catholics, then I might ask, what makes you so sure you can render such a judgment?
No question many Catholics are practicing contraception. Do you suppose that there was ever a Golden Age of Catholic belief and practice, in which there were not large numbers of Catholics who were either ignorant of something essential, had a distorted understanding, or else were lax in observance of some particular point? If there was, please substantiate your claim. Please identify the time and location of this Golden Age, so that your claim can be examined carefully.
My point is, I am skeptical that any such Golden Age existed. Scripture knows nothing of it. When, from the first call of God on humanity, did humanity really “get” it? How long after being led from Egypt, did God’s People bow down before a golden calf? How long after a man after God’s own heart was enthroned, did that man sin grievously–not once but many times? How did his son, given all wisdom, work out? How did God’s People manage after the Exile? Under the Macabbees? How did the Lord’s own recruiting and training work out? And so it goes.
God’s patience, and his light hand at the tiller of Providence, is maddening. Why does he allow it all? I have no idea.
But I will say I am grateful for all the ways the SSPX has preserved the faith, and kept to tradition. That is all good, and part of God’s inscrutable plan. But please stop claiming only you are actually Catholic. That’s not helpful. It’s not true.
Finally, given the tenor of your comments, your comment about NFP cannot be left alone. If, in dubbing NFP “contraception” you mean to say it is intrinsically evil, in the same fashion that what is usually termed contraception is certainly evil (which the Church continues to teach, notably by Pope Paul VI), then you are gravely mistaken. You are simply wrong.
If you insist otherwise, then you have a problem. Do you maintain that periodic abstinence from marital relations is evil? Good luck with that. Our Lady and Saint Joseph had a true marriage, yet abstained entirely. Couples abstain, quite licitly, for any number of legitimate reasons.
Will you maintain that knowledge of the operations of the body is sinful? Again, good luck with that.
The intention can be evil–that is correct. And thus the Church teaches that making use of NFP must have a legitimate motive. (The same could be said, after all, from extended abstinance.)
You seem to be unaware that the techniques of NFP are equally useful to ensuring conception as they are to avoiding it. That alone makes your claim that NFP is contraception erroneous: couples seeking to conceive use NFP in order to maximize their hopes of a child. Hardly “contraception.”
Finally, I will simply say that the spirituality of NFP is anything but contraceptive. It is about respecting and appreciating ourselves as creatures who cooperate with the Creator in giving life, and have that as our vocation. While I can’t rule out someone using NFP solely as a “contraceptive,” and excluding the good of children from his or her marriage, I think that is an oil-and-water combination. I reject any suggestion that NFP would give rise to such a mentality, even if someone can sustain that mentality while using only NFP. You are welcome to believe what you like, but some support for your contention would add credibility. For example, if you’re right, there should be some data, of some quality (even anecdotal) that points to couples practising NFP exclusively, having families no bigger, and even smaller, than users of contraceptives. My experience has always been that NFP couples have larger families–and not because it doesn’t work; but because they tend to desire larger families. But again, if you can offer something more, please do so.
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Full transcript HERE - note BTW Fellay cites the shortage of vocations in Ireland as proof of the evil effects of NO and Vatican II
www.therecusant.com/fellay-conf-dec2012Another discussion at RORATE CAELI
rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/01/bishop-fellay-look-back-at-2012.htmlThe comment below raises an interesting point, but a disputable one. I can think of several instances where the SSPX served as a "gateway" leading to sedevacantism (the SSPV, "Pope Michael I", Juan Fernandez Krohn etc). Mine Bean Ui Cribin and her family are the only example I can think of of someone returning from sedevacantism (in this case PAlmar) via the SSPX. Does anyone know of other examples?
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B. said...
Catherine of Siena:
The SSPX also took many of our most educated and devout souls out of the pews and out of the Church. We lost our fighters
You have your history in reverse. The people were driven out of the Churches and they were given a kick in the back as a goodbye note. If someone had traditional tendencies as a layman, he was shunned by his pastor and refused communion on the tongue (Have you seen the video of Bishop Brown physically attacking woman who knelt for communion? I'm sure it was the SSPXs fault in your mind). If he was a pastor, he was removed by his bishop.
The people who were kicked out of the Church were desperate and confusedly wandering in the dark. Where the SSPX was not available, cults such as the Palmar de Troya or the Schuckhardt group flourished. Nobody ever asked why these pseudo-Catholic cults suddenly flourished after Vatican II. It would make an interesting study, I can name some more. If anything, we have to thank the SSPX for rescuing those poor souls from these kind of groups.
02 January, 2013 17:34
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