The society has also had a strained relationship with the Church since its founder ordained four bishops against the will of Pope John Paul II in 1988.
In their statement Thursday, the group contradicted now-retired Pope Benedict XVI's stance on Vatican II. The letter made explicit reference to the “hermeneutic of continuity,” rejecting the interpretive lens by which Benedict XVI saw the conciliar documents in light of the Church's tradition.
The bishops say that the documents themselves have grave errors and that they cannot be interpreted without clashing with tradition.
The “cause of the grave errors which are in the process of demolishing the Church does not reside in a bad interpretation of the conciliar texts – a 'hermeneutic of rupture' which would be opposed to a 'hermeneutic of reform in continuity,'” they wrote, “but truly in the texts themselves, by virtue of the unheard of choice made by Vatican II.”
The group also claims that the Second Vatican Council “inaugurated a new type of magisterium, hitherto unheard of in the Church, without roots in Tradition; a magisterium resolved to reconcile Catholic doctrine with liberal ideas; a magisterium imbued with the modernist ideas of subjectivism, of immanentism and of perpetual evolution.”
The document argues that “the reign of Christ is no longer the preoccupation of the ecclesiastical authorities,” and that the liberal spirit in the Church is manifested “in religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality and the New Mass.”
Because of religious liberty, they claim, the Church is being “shamefully guided by human prudence and with such self-doubt that she asks nothing other from the State than that which the Masonic Lodges wish to concede to her: the common law in the midst of, and on the same level as, other religions which she no longer dares call false.”
Because of inter-religious dialogue, “the truth about the one true Church is silenced,” they also say; while the spirit of collegiality “represents the destruction of authority and in consequence the ruin of Christian institutions: families, seminaries, religious institutes.”
The Lefebvrist bishops save their harshest criticism to the Novus Ordo Mass, promulgated in 1969 by Pope Paul VI. “This Mass is penetrated with an ecumenical and Protestant spirit, democratic and humanist, which empties out the sacrifice of the Cross.”
The traditionalist bishops announce that, in practice, the dialogue with the Vatican is over and that from now on, they will wait “either when Rome returns to Tradition and to the Faith of all time – which would re-establish order in the Church.”
Or, “when she explicitly acknowledges our right to profess integrally the Faith and to reject the errors which oppose it, with the right and the duty for us to oppose publicly the errors and the proponents of these errors, whoever they may be – which would allow the beginning of a re-establishing of order.”
Meanwhile “we persevere in the defense of Catholic Tradition and our hope remains entire,” the statement concludes.
Tags: Society of St. Pius X
It doesn't need to be excerpted but websites live by their traffic. The more clicks, the more revenue. My purpose in excerpting these articles is not to annoy Freepers.
It is to help Catholic web sites, such as the Catholic News Agency
We've got far far bigger problems to deal with than a bunch of poor abused Catholics who sought refuge from liturgical abuse and heterodoxy with priests and bishops who still believe and preach the Faith and Liturgy as it was taught for 1960 years.