Posted on 02/04/2006 4:55:13 AM PST by bornacatholic
You may not, some here give the impression that they would.
but I'm not sitting on a mountain waiting for it to happen.
I don't know anyone who is.
In exercising supreme, full, and immediate power in the universal Church, the Roman pontiff makes use of the departments of the Roman Curia which, therefore, perform their duties in his name and with his authority for the good of the churches and in the service of the sacred pastors.
CHRISTUS DOMINUS, 9
"ECCLESIA DEI"
JOHN PAUL II>
1. With great affliction the Church has learned of the unlawful episcopal ordination conferred on 30 June last by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, which has frustrated all the efforts made during the previous years to ensure the full communion with the Church of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X founded by the same Mons. Lefebvre. These efforts, especially intense during recent months, in which the Apostolic See has shown comprehension to the limits of the possible, were all to no avail.(1)
2. This affliction was particularly felt by the Successor Peter to whom in the first place pertains the guardianship of the unity of the Church,(2) even though the number of persons directly involved in these events might be few. For every person is loved by God on his own account and has been redeemed by the blood of Christ shed on the Cross for the salvation of all.
The particular circumstances, both objective and subjective in which Archbishop Lefebvre acted, provide everyone with an occasion for profound reflection and for a renewed pledge of fidelity to Christ and to his Church.
3. In itself, this act was one of disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the church, such as is the ordination of bishops whereby the apostolic succession is sacramentally perpetuated. Hence such disobedience - which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy - constitutes a schismatic act.(3) In performing such an act, notwithstanding the formal canonical warning sent to them by the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops on 17 June last, Mons. Lefebvre and the priests Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso de Galarreta, have incurred the grave penalty of excommunication envisaged by ecclesiastical law.(4)
*You don't sit on a mountain waiting for the excomunications to be declared invalid.
There are many sitting in caves denying the excomunication was valid and waiting for lefevbre to be declared a Saint
Okay, so the pope can exercise his power as he wishes whenever he wants. He reigns supreme in the Church. Can he therefore never make a mistake? Is every official act of the pope infallible? Can it never be overturned by a future pope? BTW, overturning Quo Primum is precisely what Paul VI would seem to have tried to do with the publication of the Novus Ordo sacramentary. So he must have been in favor of overturning previous popes' actions, even when they are extremely serious matter and use words such as "always" "forever" and "in perpetuity."
The so-called excommunication of Fr. Feeney was politically motivated and did not serve the good of the Church, in my opinion. It served to pave the way for Vatican II and the attempted destruction of the Mass and all of apostolic tradition. It made the road to perdition wider and easier for many Catholics worldwide. It was a key element of diabolical disorientation as shown by the overnight loss of popularity that Fr. Feeney suffered. I know people who were in elementary school classrooms when long term projects involving Fr. Feeney's name, picture, or writings were stopped cold one day, and his very name became a forbidden word in the school, all in a moment of time. Famous one day and vilified the next.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen had a renown TV show in those days, and when he had to go out of town, he said that there was exactly one priest in the entire United States that he would trust to substitute for him hosting his show in his absence: Fr. Leonard Feeney. Years later, when Sheen had gradually slipped into the modernist net of updating things, he tried to renew his orthodoxy and he was shut down in one fell swoop by the same bureaucrats that did Fr. Feeney in previously. A man met Sheen soon thereafter on a public transit and Sheen told him he regretted ever having complied with the changes, they didn't feel right at the time, but it was a turbulent time. Now, trying to recover what was lost is nearly impossible for one man. He died soon after that meeting, a forgotten mainstay of tradition, swept aside like yesterday's rubbish.
I'm not going to explain excommunications to you. St. Athanasius was excommunicated several times, and today he's the saint and the men who issued his reprimands are long forgotten, some even "condemned" heretics.
You can keep trying to make excuses for such things as "baptism of desire," but to what purpose, so you can turn away well-meaning people like Kolokotronis who scoff at the silliness of the Roman Catholics sqabbling over things laymen are not equipped to discuss? Baptism of desire is not a dogma. Nobody is going to be excommunicated for denying it, and I suspect nobody has been. If that had been the basis of Feeney's "excommunication," in order for it to be "lifted" later, the puppets of the law would have required more than Fr's recitation of the Athanasian Creed to do so. The basis was his refusal to stop saying that there is no salvation outside the Church, plain and simple. Interestingly, when it was "lifted" the Creed he recited contains EENS at the beginning and at the end. It's in there twice. So, Fr. Feeney was "excommunicated" for saying there's no salvation outside the Church, and then the "excommunication" was lifted by saying the same thing twice in one setting. Hmm. Sounds perfectly just and logical to me!
NOT!
The damage done to missionary work by people presuming that they don't need baptism to be saved because all they really need is the "desire" for it, is far worse than simply sticking to the literal meaning of Scripture. The Latin text of Trent uses the word "in voto" which poorly translated can be "of desire," but a better word is "in vow." So it's not exactly the desire for baptism but the firm purpose of intention to receive it at the proper time. Big difference. But the latter does not serve the liberal, progressivist and diabolically disorientated agenda, does it? Perhaps you think it does.
In the end I realized that Tradition is a Person — the Second Person of the Holy Trinity who incarnated Himself in the womb of an immaculately conceived Virgin.
So, now Jesus Christ is one in being with Tradition, Who is the same person as the Holy Ghost, and we are additionally bestowed with the pronounced suspicion of multiple immaculate conceptions?
Mr. Vere might mean well, but I would question his ability to reason well, given his claim to education. While Vere consistently uses the term mystical body of Christ, which comes as a welcome surprise, I had to wonder if Envoy is equally consistent in that practice. But I didn't have to look far for my answer, because another article in the same issue has Patrick Madrid abandoning mystical in the same context:
http://www.envoymagazine.com/backissues/4.6/goingthedistance.htm
Here under the watchful eye of Mahony, Los Angelinos are fully aware of the revolutionary upheaval of doctrine inherent with confusing the Blessed Sacrament with the person receiving it, and curiously, the overall health of the Body of Christ ostensibly his concern, Madrid has exactly one positive thing to say about the SSPX. But then it's followed by yet another excoriation:
While it’s good to know that the pope and the bishops in communion with him are being prayed for at SSPX Masses, it’s disturbing to see the strange disconnect that exists in the minds of the SSPX adherents. On one hand they profess “filial devotion and loyalty” to the pope. On the other, they flatly refuse to obey him.
So Madrid practices a strange disconnect in his mind while he accuses the SSPX adherents of same.
First off, it's not a "newsletter." It's a magazine. Maybe you've never seen one, but if not, you ought to take a look before you start mischaracterizing it.
This "liberal bill of goods" is a condensed list of false doctrine. It is 15 propositions that are apparently supported by the words and actions of liberal bishops and priests all over the world, which has been going on since before 1949, when this list was published, and there's no end in sight. This is to such a degree that there are not a few people around, maybe you haven't met any, who therefore think that this is the Great Apostacy foretold in Scripture. By the way, I'm not one of them.
I'm not sure what kind of a break you would like, but 57 years is quite a respite for the Vatican to come up with some kind of response. However, their apparent approval owing to their reticence notwithstanding, one would hope that when clerics behave as if they believe the Vatican approves of these false propositions, that the Vatican would at least once in a while do something to indicate clearly that it does not so approve.
What we get isntead is quite the opposite. The offending clerics are promoted to higher levels of authority, while those who ask such simple questions as these are ignored, or worse they are censured with one kind of penalty or another.
Now perhaps you are thinking that since the Vatican has not explicityly admitted to approving these false propositions, that it certainly must in fact not approve of them. But I would caution you, that all a pope has to do to teach error is to do nothing while the error proliferates in front of him. I would propose to you, if you are thinking this way, that we have a situation at hand in which the ruling body is aware of the consequences of:
A) acknowledging the Church's traditional teaching and then in that cotext,
B) proclaiming that while this has been the teaching previously, now we teach _______(fill in the blank with something novel or different that what had been taught before).
Do you know what would happen then?
Am I getting through yet? Or do you still want me to give you a break?
In any event, do you still think St. Athanasius wss excommunicated,. several times, by Pope Liberius?
Come on. The Popee was being held captive and, likely, tortured.
Y'all try and draw a parrallel between St Athanasius and Lefevbre. BUt, POpe John Paul was not Liberius and lefevbre sure as hell doesn't merit any sort of favorable comparison with that great Saint
It doesn't work on those who know Ecclesiastical History
Have a Blessed Lent. Seek ye the Lord while ye still have time, brother.
[The link was helpful, but apparently not in the way you had anticipated. Thanks for the effort, though.]
May God console you!...What saddens you...is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way...
You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day.
Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.
I certainly hope you have a blessed lent as well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.