Sacrilege

I've been having a conversation with a friend over some issues going on with regard to the Novus Ordo and the TLM.  Here is the latest exchange....

My thoughts are although what you have said is all good and true, none of it was sacriligeous... the abuses don't count. the GIRM is not to be considered a handy guide of ways to help make mass better. The fact that priests take it to be that doesn't mean they are correct.

I really want to draw the line between what the Novus Ordo mass actually is theologically, rubrically, and through the instructions provided by the Magisterium, and between what we often see in modern day liberal or even not-so-liberal parishes that are following some "spirit of what I believe to be true" and not the Magisterium.

This would mean that the Novus Ordo mass is said ad orientem, with latin given preference, gregorian chant given pride of place, the organ given pride of place etc etc etc. That is why I listed all the stipulations. Guitar music, David Haus, versus populum, communion on the hand, 10 minute signs of peace, etc are not what the Novus Ordo mass is; those things are what abuses, modernism, and liberal priests/laity have added to the liturgy.

Now while I agree that the Novus Ordo has watered down language, reduced prayers, "simplificiations", and whatnot as you mentioned with the prayers at the foot of the alter, the collects, the kyrie, etc - I don't see the prayers of the Novus Ordo as being sacriligeous.


The distinction is between the Novus Ordo mass being sacriligeous, and people doing sacriligeous things at the Novus Ordo mass. Now, the rubrics being as open as they are surely contribue to the ease of which abuse occurs, but all of the "sacriligeous actions" that you speak of are not part of the Novus Ordo mass, but are introduced into it through abuse, liberalization, and modernism.


Edited to add: These posts are not well thought out or researched, just my first thoughts on the matter.

Here is how I responded to him....

We have to define sacrilege. It would be any transgression against religion. So, let's use that as a starting point. By taking the abuses out, you are discounting any number of sacrileges that do take place in the Novus Ordo, which do, in fact happen and in some cases are widespread. I think that by qualifying abuses is not being intellectually honest. So...

The GIRM SHOULDN'T be a handy guide, but the reality is there is nothing which holds the force of law which the GIRM is. The rubrics are liturgical law and if nobody is enforcing them, then yes, that is sacrilege, because it is a transgression against religion. And precisely because the preists act the way they do, moreso with the Novus Ordo, than with the TLM does speak to the sacrilege which goes on. If nothing more, that is exactly what the lack of institutional control the Vatican excercises over liturgical law does. That lack of control is sacrilege.

If you want to draw the line, I've started to do that. You don't think that shifting the theology from that of a sacrifical action completed by the priest to that of a meal celebrated by the community with the preist as presider is NOT a transgression against religion? It certainly is. I'm not willing to argue the validity of the Mass on this point, but I am willing to say that it is sacrilegious. Because that attitude harms the truth and the religiosity of the Catholic Church.

I'll focus on the music of the Mass....the Mass has music which is proper to it. That music is the prayer and the vocalization of the Mass, both ordinarily and properly. That music has been abandoned and it has been replaced with a Protestant model, of four hymns and nothing properly sung (ie the propers). So, at best only the ordinaries are sung and the proper understanding of singing has been lost. Why because those prayers which are proper to the Mass are either simply recited or in almost all cases (introit, the gradual/alleluia/tract, offertory, communion) have been eliminated. And those prayers which do remain collect and post-communion are no longer sung, but rather recited. This is a transgression against religion. Because it is the religiosity of the Mass through the music which has been summarily destroyed. Sacrilege.

We often times think that sacrilege is a major action such as stealing a host or punching a priest or defacing a statue or something like that, but sacrilege is also the distortion and elimination of those things which are PROPERLY Catholic, in favor of a deficient view.

Again, looking at the role the priest fulfills in the Novus Ordo, compared to the TLM, when it comes to the comparison of the Liturgy of the Word as opposed to the Mass of the Catechumens:

In the LoW, the priest's role has been reduced to that of presider. His active role in the whole of the first half of the Mass is reduced to praying the collect and (if no deacon is present) reading the Gospel. THAT'S IT!!! He has no other function in the Novus Ordo LoW. The priest does all of this from the chair and is not proclaiming anything from the altar to the masses. His necessity is mitigated to the assembled, save two small parts of the first half of the Mass.

By contrast:

In the TLM, the priest's role is indispensible, he is necessary. He must pray the prayers at the foot of the altar. He must pray the Confetior, he must pray the Kyrie, he must pray the Introit, he must pray the collect, he must proclaim the readings (both) and the gradual/tract/alleluia...even if they are also sung, he must STILL read them. All of this is done from the altar, not the chair. He is celebrating the Mass of the Catechumens, leading the heathens to the altar and then proclaiming the Word of God as celebrant to the masses.

To remove the priest from the role of celebrant and to change his role to presider is a transgression against religion. To change the theology from that of a ministerial celebration in which the faithful participate to that which the assembly celebrates and the former celebrant merely presides is a sacrilege. It is a transgression against religion. Why? Because it specifically removes the religiosity of the Mass from the one who properly celebrates it and places it in hands of the assembled. That is Protestant and that is sacrilege.

So, yes, the Novus Ordo is sacrilegious, not only from a legal point of view with the various abuses, but also with the shift in sacramental theology to that of the assembly celebrating the Mass and the priest simply presiding. The same things happen in both the revised offertory and the Liturgy of the Eucharist v. Mass of the Faithful, but stopping at this point is a good place for now.

Vivat Latinitas!

From Slate:


A.E. Housman

 At the beginning of the last century, A.E. Housman, that cantankerous giant of classical scholarship, was already complaining about "an age which is out of touch with Latinity." Around that time, philistines were excising classics from the popular curriculum, and the subsequent 100 years have hardly improved Latin's apparent relevance in Western society. Classicists may tout the fact that Advanced Placement enrollment in Latin doubled between 1997 and 2007, but this mini-surge brought the number of upper-level high school Latinists to a minuscule 8,654—literally 1 percent of the number of secondary school Latinists in the mid-1930s. Like its nouns, Latin continues to decline.

In the face of these grim prospects, I boarded a plane to Rome this summer to join the small network of scholars dedicated to preserving the language by actually speaking it. I found myself in the company of 16 other twentysomethings, puttering about the center of the ancient world chattering not in English or in Italian but —ecce!—in Latin.

I can assure you that the enterprise was even stranger than it sounds. The Paideia Institute's "Living Latin" program is an immersive, spoken-Latin summer course based in Rome. The mornings are spent at the St. John's University campus reading poetry and prose and commenting on the texts in Latin; the afternoons are spent doing the same thing at various sites of literary or archaeological significance. If you vacationed in Italy this June, you might have seen us standing around the Ara Pacis on a scorcher, offering competing Latin orations on the pax Augustana. Other exercises were more modern: using hip-hop beats to memorize Alcaic meter, say.

The class comprised undergraduate and graduate scholars with advanced reading knowledge of Latin but little to no spoken experience; not even the Catholics among us had used the language of Cicero to comment on the vicissitudes of Vespa-dodging, or to describe the phenomenon of the "pimp coat" (tunica lenonis). The latinitas was often exhausting—try rendering a future-less-vivid conditional in proper tense and mood with 32 eyes boring into you and the carabinieri hollering obscenities just outside the window. Most humbling was the constant juggling of stressed and unstressed syllables; a language that had existed too long only on paper was coming fitfully to life, demanding as a newborn. Students, operating in good faith, even did their best to make dinner plans in Latin, though pizza sounds a lot less appetizing in its Latin form: placenta.

While Paideia's "Living Latin" is technically a new program, it derives from Aestiva Latinitas Romae ("summer Latinity in Rome"), an iconic course taught for over 20 years by Friar Reginald Foster. Described by the American Scholar as "a kind of one-man Audubon Society for the Latin language," Foster is known as "Reginaldus" to his students—or, rather, to his acolytes; something approaching a cult of personality has sprung up around the Friar. An American Carmelite monk, Reginaldus served for more than 40 years as the Vatican's secretary of briefs to princes. More simply, he was the Pope's chief of Latin letters, a role that found him translating papal bulls into Latin while overseeing the Vatican's Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis, which offers helpful neologic Latin for such items as popcorn (maizae grana tosta) and pornography (pellicula cinematographica obscena). Reginaldus' eight-week summer Latin course, meanwhile, achieved legendary status among classicists, early modernists, archaeologists, and any number of other scholar-types. A decade ago, a high school Latin teacher described the course to me: "I learned Latin in school, but I did not know it until I met Reginaldus."

Foster has retired to his home state of Wisconsin. (He now runs an eight-week summer course there.) But it is still on the force of Foster's personality that the Paideia program in Rome fuels itself. Paideia's founders, Jason Pedicone and Eric Hewett, were Reginaldus protégés: When the Friar took ill in the summer of 2008, Pedicone and Hewett led the remaining month and a half of the Aestiva Latinitas course. The two are unswerving evangelists for spoken Latin, the type of guys who converse in Latin with precision and ease, though not with the same accent: Hewett, a devout Catholic who lives in Rome and moves in that city's arcane circle of ecclesiastical scholars, speaks the soft g's and hard v's of Medieval Latin, while Pedicone seems to prefer the reconstructed pronunciation of the Empire. (Both are finishing their dissertations, Pedicone on Latin meter at Princeton, and Hewett on Rabanus Maurus at the University of Salerno.)

In Latin, or the Empire of a Sign, Françoise Waquet describes Renaissance classrooms in which Latin was the only permissible language, and schoolboy informants known as "foxes" (vulpes) would snitch on those who slipped into the vernacular. The regime at Paideia was not so unforgiving and, unlike various modern-language immersion programs, did not involve a "language pledge." Nonetheless, even while we spent hours each day on scansion, supines, past-tense contrafactual conditionals, and other staples of by-the-book Latin, the thrust of the course was the revivification of an oft-obituarized language. Such a thrust necessarily involves a fair bit of cheerleading, the result being that the class felt less like school and something more like summer camp.

We descended into the Sybil's cave at Cumae to reel off the pertinent hundred lines of Virgil. We drew stares in the Forum as we declaimed latine (adv.: "in Latin") on the various points of interest. (One elderly Italian gentleman, several sheets to the wind, stuck with us for some time, offering applause and exclamations of "bravi" whenever he thought appropriate.) We stooped into the Catacombs of Priscilla or the bowels of the Basilica San Clemente, where a troupe of friendly Bulgarians listened to our Latinisms on the subject of Saint Cyril. (Cyril invented and gave his name to the Slavic alphabet—Cyrillic—and his tomb remains a pilgrimage destination for Slavs.) On an unusually foggy Friday, we tramped to the peak of Mount Vesuvius and read Pliny Jr.'s letters to Tacitus recounting the volcano's eruption in 79 A.D. A curly-haired Italian high-schooler fell in with us; he offered a sensitive Italian translation and was far less bemused with our manner of speech than one might have imagined.

Frivolous stuff, the haters will say—a fantasy camp for bookish types, an arcane and indulgent pursuit (largely funded by university fellowships) that does nothing to tamp down the national debt or carbon emissions. I'm inclined to say, somnium ("nonsense"). Thanks to a summer of speaking Latin, I can tear through hexameters like Caesar through Gauls. The summer was perhaps not strictly "useful"; summer, after all, is characterized by otium ("leisure"), the lexical antithesis to negotium, or "business." (Graduate students are of course notorious for mixing the two.) Latin immersion offers other, similarly unquantifiable benefits. Knowing one's history is an intrinsic good, and in this sense, the summer's archaeological-literary one-two punch was anything but frivolous: As Nicholas Ostler says in his engaging biography of the language, "the history of Latin is the history of the development of western Europe."

Sadly, latter-day history teaches us that, despite our best efforts, Latin remains on the ropes, dying even among the clergy. "I'm not optimistic about Latin," Foster has said. "The young priests and bishops are not studying it"—a Housman-like complaint that earned the Friar no points among those fellow clerics who had dozed off during Latin class. There is, at last, a comfort in these complaints: Each mini-generation of cantankerous purists will beget another, surmounting the stale calculus of Latin translation to speak it among themselves, in a conversation that has been going for a very long time.

Advice for a New Bishop

From Phil Lawler:

The first reading at today’s Mass, in which St. Paul offers his advice on the selection of bishops, reminded me of a conversation with friends several years ago. As the Church was still reeling from the effects of scandal, we asked each other: What advice would you give to a newly appointed bishop? Herewith the results of that conversation.
The new bishop is young and energetic, fully orthodox, and filled with apostolic zeal. He is taking control of an average American diocese. What assumptions should he make? What should he expect? What should he do?
Assumptions

• The majority of priests are “company men.” They want to live and let live.
• The chancery is filled with toadies who will never tell the bishop what he needs to hear.
• The chancery departments are so bloated that the work they do is about a quarter of what half the staff should be able to do. And the work that is put out is useless at best, damaging to faith and morals at worst. The Office of Social Justice and Gay and Lesbian Ministries do more harm than good.
• There may be one or two truly orthodox priests assigned to the chancery rubble. But some of the priests were assigned to the chancery in order to get them out of parish ministry! In some cases, the transfer was made because of personal problems, including sexual misbehavior. In other cases they came to be seen as problematical because of their orthodox Catholicism.
• About 20-30% of the priests are leftist ideologues, outright heretics, historically encouraged by previous bishops who either feared them or sympathized with them. The most corrupt and liberal priests are the most likely to try to cozy up to the new bishop with flattery. The conservatives are either too busy in their parishes or find such flattery repugnant.
• There's a minority of activist orthodox priests: maybe less than 10%. Some orthodox priests are truly wild men. Also, the priest who insists that all of the world's problems will go away if he avoids speaking up and does more holy hours may be truly “orthodox” in a sane environment, but isn't much use on the field of battle if he gives in to evil programs in the name of “obedience.” Some ostensibly orthodox priests use the outward appearances of orthodoxy to mask sinful behavior.
• The diocese probably has a network of gay priests, maybe very small, maybe extensive, and maybe very, very extensive.
• There is the customary percentage of alcoholics numbered among all the priests, some of whom will soon be knocking at the new bishop's door.
• The liturgy is in shambles in most parishes, even some of the “orthodox” ones. (Many orthodox priests just don't know what constitutes good liturgy!)
• Catechesis is in bad shape, suffering from all the usual problems. Religious-education directors have been recruited through the National Catholic Reporter.
• A “very nice” school superintendent has been promoting sex-ed in the schools. In many ways, he has bought into the corruption as a result of years of scandal. (He may be unwitting as to the true nature and depth of the corruption.) The Catholic schoolteachers—many of them good-willed enough—are in the same boat.
• Finally, the new bishop realizes that if his orthodoxy makes waves in his diocese and beyond, he cannot necessarily count on support from the Vatican.

What should our new bishop do right away? What should be his first steps when he arrives in the diocese?

• If there are any solid orthodox communities of female contemplatives in the diocese, visit them within the first few hours of your installation and enlist their prayers for you.
• Upon arrival, get rid of all paper shredders at the chancery and insist that no work be taken home in briefcases. Make friends with the maintenance man and the wash lady.
• Immediately obtain a backup copy of the computer network and secure it for any future audit. Change the locks. Secure the bank accounts. Check stock.
• Ask for resignations from everyone on the chancery staff. (Ideally the apostolic administrator should have done this before the new bishop arrived.) All staff members should understand clearly that you determine whether or not they stay, and the presumption is negative.
• There are probably a large number of people you really have to dismiss quickly: rebellious pastors, effeminate chancery officials, etc. (The less urgent cases can wait; you can use the budget crisis to justify the blow.) Fire them all at once. Plan it carefully to minimize the uproar. Make the announcements late on a Friday afternoon. On Saturday, release that rip-snorting pastoral letter on family life, which you have been drafting since your appointment was announced. Schedule some event Sunday with a big, loyal Catholic group. Tell reporters you'll answer questions there.
• Meet with the abuse victims. Take names.

Settling in: new ideas

• Hire an outside firm to do a thorough financial audit, and be sure to have a closed-door chat with the on-the-ground auditors to find out what they found.
• Your next pastoral should insist upon the proper celebration of the Mass. It should contain disciplinary teeth. Narcissistic priests hate constraint. It's easier to catch them in an act of liturgical abuse than an act of sexual abuse.
• Put the religious orders on notice. Maybe throw out one of the smaller ones just as a warning shot.
• Let every person know, whether he (or she) wishes you well or ill, that you shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to ensure the survival and success of the confessional. In other words, expunge general absolution, ensure confessionals are screened, and see to a climate of orthodox confessional practice. Make it clear that you’ll be watching and act swiftly when someone brings you bad news.

Building community in the new-look chancery

• Like Archbishop Pell of Sydney, Australia, get a secretary who's married with several children. Break the daisy-chain.
• Talk to the pro-lifers, identify the level-headed ones, and get their read on your own clergy: who's solid, who's good but weak, who belongs to the opposition. Ditto for the lay bureaucrats and hospital admin types.
• Having found a few priests you can trust absolutely, spend some long late evenings going over personnel files with them.
• Plan for a massive scale-down: school and parish closings, clergy put on waivers, chancery pink slips. You'll probably have a 6-to 12-month grace period in which you can justify almost any cost-cutting by saying, “Sorry. We have to pay the sodomy bill.” Use it to get rid of the worst personnel and the schools that are beyond hope.
• To the extent possible, fly in support to your home-schoolers. Inter alia, almost all the vocations you get (and want to keep) will come from them.
• You will find that you have two or three prosperous parishes that are traditional centers of opposition, led by dissident priests. If you had all your priests read that fire-breather pastoral on protecting family life, you'll probably have enough general lay support—even given the hostility of the media—to face down the bad pastors after they refuse to play ball. Replace them with Nigerians to mute the screams from liberals and to force the worst parishioners to go to the Episcopalians or the Paulists.

Collaborating with the laity

• Have a series of meetings with local law-enforcement supervisors—say, lieutenants and up—explaining that you don't want your men feather-bedded any more. Tell them if a priest is caught in a parked car or a washroom, they should book him. Take the district attorney out to lunch, tell him the same thing, and make sure he knows you mean it.
• Get to know some state troopers. Buy them a round of beer. Tell them that you want to hear about trouble from them, not from the press. Tell them it is a moral obligation to arrest wrong-doers. Ask them to pass the word.
• Make friends outside the clerical establishment. (That means: no priests, religious, or church workers.) Spend time with pro-lifers, home-schoolers, doctors who don't prescribe the Pill, community leaders who have taken hits for defending the faith. Wangle invitations to go to their homes. Go by yourself. Don’t talk too much; listen. Ask their teenage boys if they want to be priests. If not, ask why not.

Thinking in new paradigms

• Hire your own director of religious education, and tell him to select new texts throughout. Institute standardized testing to make sure something is happening in CCD classes. Tell parents (and pastors) that kids can't be confirmed if they do not pass the test. Spot-check when you do confirmations.
• Get rid of the prissy MC who handles liturgical ceremonies. Tell pastors that when you come to their parishes, they have to supply the MC. Or better, draft a different seminarian to do the honors every week/month.
• Bring in the people in charge of sex-ed and AIDS ministry. Ask them with whom they've been working in the parishes, and make a list. Give them 30-days’ notice. If you have any “street priests,” pull them off the street ASAP.
• Think seriously about shutting down the diocesan newspaper; it certainly loses money and it's probably a waste. If you decide to keep it going, hire your own editor, give him lots of leeway, but tell him the paper has to support itself.
• Institute zero-based budgeting, and make it stick. Don't ever let someone ask for an X % budget increase; make him justify each dollar spent in terms of demonstrated benefit—preferably spiritual—to the diocese.
• Find a few seasoned professionals—maybe successful lay businessmen who are almost ready to retire—to handle the nuts-and-bolts issues, like real estate and physical plant maintenance.
• Open your own mail. You can farm out the projects later.

Consultation and dialog

• Cultivate a reputation for enjoying candor. When people give you a “nice” answer to your questions, press them: “You don't really think that, do you?”
• Insist on being treated with respect, but whenever people start flattering you, interrupt. Don't let them start. Make it part of your examination of conscience: Have I done anything to encourage flattery today?
• When you speak to friendly Catholic audiences, don't always tell them what they want to hear. Challenge them. The first time you talk to a large K of C event, ask them when they're going to start acting like real men.
• Spend a lot of time at the seminary. Arrive unannounced frequently.
• When you visit parishes, skip the phony paperwork. Speak to the priests, personnel, and parish council: one-on-one, if possible. Ask them what's the biggest problem facing the parish. Look for trends in the sacramental index. Check the liquor cabinet in the rectory. Check the grocery bill.
• Make a habit of calling priests at random, at odd times. Ask them what they're doing.

Networking and team ministry

• Pick a few conscience fights early on: the right of Catholic med students to opt out of abortion and sterilization training, the right of Catholic pharmacists not to fill prescriptions for the Pill, the right of girls working at 7-Eleven not to handle porn, etc. And here's the key: ask the Protestants and Jews who belong to your civil amity luncheon groups to join you in the fights—not in support of your view, necessarily, but at least in defense of freedom of religion. If they balk at helping you, you've got some moral capital in your pocket when they try to rope you into cooperation with their own pet causes.
• Identify Orthodox Jews, who are big on family values, and make it clear you're well disposed to them. Not only is it a huge help politically to have an Orthodox rabbi standing next to you when you hold a press conference deploring some abortion-law outrage, but if you can get on the right side of the rift in the Jewish community you can spare yourself aggravation from the liberal Jews who anoint themselves public spokesmen.
• And while we're speaking of inter-religious affairs, many (professional class) Muslims are flattered to be asked to join in anti-porn or anti-abortion initiatives. Identify people you can work with and get them on board; if nothing else, the media are blocked from spinning stories in certain directions when all the photos or videos show an obvious imam or rabbi in the same frame as the bishop. NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and their chums hate it when that happens. It's a political rule of thumb to find out what your opponents don't want you to do, and do more of it.
• When laws that impinge upon the Christian conscience are discussed (e.g., laws that would guarantee access to abortion or sterilization, laws that require hiring of homosexuals) remind everyone who represents the diocese that it is not sufficient to obtain a “religious exclusion” so that Church-run institutions are exempt. If what's being proposed is morally objectionable, everyone should be able to invoke a conscience clause—at the bare minimum. Church lawyers and lobbyists should defend the rights of all Catholics, not only those employed by Church institutions.

Ongoing processes

• Having informed him of your wishes on the matter, dock the diocesan paper editor a day’s pay every time your photo appears. The diocese is not about YOU.
• Publish every semester a roster of the theologians and philosophers teaching in your diocese along with their mandatum status. Give a brief but candid explanation for any case in which the mandatum has been denied, e.g., “defects regarding Catholic doctrine on contraception.”
• If a complaint comes in on liturgical abuse, phone the pastor and get his side of the story. Make it a policy to write him a letter summarizing the conversation (including his assurances of conformity) and if that complaint was warranted, insist that he post your letter in the vestibule of the church for a month. If the complainant reports no change, send someone to check it out on site.
• Find out when Eucharistic adoration is being held at schools and colleges and make it a point of sliding in unexpectedly and joining the students in adoration—not taking center stage, perhaps not even saying a word, but just being shoulder to shoulder at prayer with them.
• Find an opportunity to visit all three military service academies once a year and give the cadets the most ferocious rip-roaring homily you can muster (as a clandestine vocation appeal). You’ll bag 6 to 10 a year—not all scholars, but good men from good families. There's a huge pool of idealism there that's coming to grips with the disillusionment toward military life. They love folks who promise to make it hard on them.
• Institute a “Good Touch/Bad Touch” program in the diocese: Announce to the priests that if they would like you to visit them in prison, touch.
• Skip a meeting of the USCCB and delay paying the annual assessment, just for the hell of it.

Cardinal Burke in Ireland...

From Desiderium...

Cardinal Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura in the Vatican, celebrated a Pontifical High Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the Marian Sanctuary in Knock County Mayo on Saturday the 10th of September.

His Eminence was formally welcomes by the Parish Priest of Knock who hosted a private dinner for the Cardinal with a few invited guests who included Archbishop Michael Neary of Tuam and Bishop Brendan Kelly of Achonry diocese. The Cardinal began the Saturday with a conference on human life which he said is sacred from the first moment of conception to its natural end. “Human life has value even in those who society seems to no longer care about” he said to those who attended in the only basilica in Ireland at Knock. He spoke about the attack on the Catholic Church worldwide because of its defence not only of human life but because of its defence of the truth “and when we see the ferocity of these attacks especially here in Ireland we can see it is Satan himself who is behind it” he said.

Later in the day the Cardinal celebrated the Pontifical High Mass in the Parish Church of Saint John the Baptist to a packed congregation. The mass itself took just under two hours to celebrate and the homily was given after the final blessing and in accordance to the rubric of the 1962 Missale Romanum. This was the first Pontifical High Mass to be celebrated in 61 years at the Marian Sanctuary; the last one was by Cardinal D’Alton in 1950 in celebrated thank-giving for the Dogma of the Assumption which was proclaimed by Pope Pius XII on November 1st 1950. (End)

Report-William A. Thomas

Photos of the event (all photos are copyright to William A Thomas):

Update on SSPX Meeting Part IV

At the conclusion of the meeting that Bishop Bernard Fellay and his two General Assistants had at the Vatican with Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on September 14, 2011, at 10:00 a.m., the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X answered our questions [for the readers of DICI].

Bishop Fellay (center) with his two Assistants: Frs. Pfluger (left) and Nely (right) How did this meeting go? The meeting was conducted with great courtesy and with equally great candor, because for the sake of honesty the Society of St. Pius X refuses to evade the problems that remain. Moreover the theological discussions that took place during these past two years were held in this same spirit. When I stated on August 15 of this year that we were in agreement on the fact that we did not agree about the Second Vatican Council, I also made sure to explain that when it comes to dogmas, like the doctrine of the Trinity, we are quite obviously in agreement when we find them mentioned in Vatican II. One sentence must not be taken out of its context.  It is to the great credit of our theological talks that they seriously examined and elucidated all these doctrinal problems.

The joint press release by the Vatican and the Society announced that a doctrinal document was delivered to you and that a canonical solution was proposed to you. Can you give us any particulars?

This document is entitled “Doctrinal Preamble”; it was handed over to us for in-depth study. Hence it is confidential, and you will understand why I say no more about it to you. However the term “preamble” does indicate that acceptance of it is a preliminary condition for any canonical recognition of the Society of St. Pius X on the part of the Holy See. Cardinal Levada

On the subject of this doctrinal preamble, to the extent that this does not concern its confidentiality, can you confirm that it contains, as announced in the press release, a distinction between what is de fide [essential to the faith]—to which the Society fully adheres—and what is dependent on a pastoral council, as Vatican II itself claimed to be, and thus could be subjected to criticism without calling the faith into question?

Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos This new distinction was not only announced in the press release; I have personally heard it from various sources. As early as 2005, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos told me, after I spent five hours explaining to him all the objections to Vatican II that the Society of St. Pius X had formulated: “I cannot say that I agree with everything that you have said, but what you have said does not mean that you are outside the Church.  Write to the pope therefore and ask him to lift the excommunication.”

Today, for the sake of objectivity, I must acknowledge that in the doctrinal preamble there is no clear-cut distinction between the inviolable dogmatic sphere and the pastoral sphere that is subject to discussion.  The only thing that I can say, because it is part of the press release, is that this preamble contains “certain doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of Catholic doctrine, which are necessary to ensure faithfulness to the Church’s Magisterium and to "sentire cum Ecclesia" [thinking with the Church]. At the same time, it leaves open to legitimate discussion the examination and theological explanation of individual expressions and formulations contained in the documents of Vatican Council II and of the later Magisterium.”  There you have it;  no more and no less.

As for the canonical status that is said to have been proposed to the Society of St. Pius X, on the condition that it adheres to the doctrinal preamble:  there has been talk about a [personal] prelature rather than an ordinariate;  it this correct? As you correctly note, this canonical status is conditional; only later on will we be able to see the exact modality of it; it still remains a subject for discussion. Msgr. Pozzo, Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission

When do you think you will give your answer to the proposal in the doctrinal preamble? As soon as I have taken the time necessary to study this document, and to consult with those who are chiefly responsible for the Society of St. Pius X, because in such an important matter I have promised my confreres not to make a decision without consulting them first. But I can assure you that our decision will be made for the good of the Church and of souls. Our Rosary Crusade, which continues for several more months, must be intensified so as to enable us to obtain, through the intercession of Mary, Mother of the Church, the graces of light and strength that we need more than ever.  (DICI no. 240 dated September 14, 2011) source

Update on SSPX Meetings Part III

Stay tuned.... From the SSPX: In addition to the publication of the Holy See's press release, Bishop Fellay, Superior General of the Priestly Society St. Pius X, will voice his thoughts during an exclusive interview which will appear later today on DICI.   read on dici > Source: Holy See Press Office Bulletin, September 14, 2011 | DICI

Later today (9-14-2011)... exclusive interview of Bishop Fellay!

Update on SSPX Meetings Part II...

Traditionalists must sign a “doctrinal Preamble” to rejoin the Catholic Church, with a status similar to that of Opus Dei. A “legitimate discussion” on aspects of the Second Vatican Council

Alessandro Speciale vatican city
The Holy See is ready for a complete reconciliation with the Lefebvrian traditionalists, so that they accept the content of a brief “doctrinal Preamble”: this is what emerged from this morning’s meeting in the Vatican between Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Monsignor Bernard Fellay, superior of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, founded by Monsignor Lefebvre.

 A tempting offer for traditionalists who would be welcomed back into the Catholic Church using the “personal Prelature” formula, in return for accepting what has been defined as the “fundamental basis” for a “future and much hoped for reconciliation.” The personal Prelature formula is a canonical structure which so far, only the Opus Dei has enjoyed, free as it is from any reference to specific territory and from the supervision of local bishops and Episcopal Conferences.

The “doctrinal Preamble” offered today to the Lefebvrians, as foreseen yesterday by the Vatican Insider, is a concise two to three page long text, which reaffirms the fundamental principles of the Catholic faith, needed to maintain the unity of the Church. The Vatican’s spokesman, Federico Lombardi, however, said that its content is supposed to be kept secret.

The Holy See’s newsroom published a communiqué explaining that the text “mentions a few doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of the Catholic doctrine that are necessary in order to guarantee loyalty to the Church’s Teachings and to “feel cum Ecclesia”.” The note, however, left “the study and theological explanation of individual expressions or formulations in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent Teachings, for a legitimate discussion.”

The “doctrinal Preamble” therefore, does not seem to contain an explicit request for “full recognition of the Council and the teaching of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI himself.” This was affirmed by the Secretary of State, in a communiqué published issued in December 2009.  

The Vatican’s newsroom said that this morning’s meeting took place two years after the doctrinal talks which made it possible for “the two parties to clarify their respective motivations and relative motivations.” The Holy See’s dialogue with the Lefebvrians started again in 2009 thanks to Benedict XVI., who decided to annul the excommunications of the four traditionalist bishops. Amongst them, was Monsignor Richard Williamson who had denied the Holocaust during an interview. According to Father Lombardi, this morning’s talks were “courteous” and “lively.” The Lefebvrians’ response to the Vatican document will be given in about a month’s time.
 
The Holy See’s newsroom explained that the Vatican’s offer takes into account “the concerns and the motions presented” by the Lefebvrians “with regard to the safe-keeping of the Catholic Church’s integrity” in relation to what Benedict XVI defined as “the hermeneutics of  the Second Vatican Council’s break with Tradition,” in a speech to the Roman Curia on 22 September 2005. His interpretation of the Council contradicted the thousand year old history of the Church.

source