Posted on 06/28/2013 2:09:10 PM PDT by Teófilo
Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you.
As you may know from most Catholic media, the Priestly Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), founded by the dissident traditionalist French Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, has announced its definitive separation from the Catholic Church.
I don't have to go into the details and for that I refer you to the news report. However, I will share my opinion with you: even when I prayed for a miracle, and granted the SSPX the benefit of the doubt, I never really believed they were actig in good faith. You can read my consistent doubts throughout all my posts about the SSPX collected under the "SSPX" tag or category.
I also will tell you the core reason why the SSPX rejected normalization with the Church - an event that will lead them into formal schism again: their core leadership, many of their clergy as well as their laity are a bunch of anti-Semites. Period, yes, that's what it is, I have no doubt about. For them, the Jewish people have no reason to exist, as individuals, as a distinct community, and as a state. They feel odium theologicum against the Jews and therefore disagree vehemently any exchange between the Church and the Jews that is not aimed at obtaining their unconditional capitulation to Christian truth. Since they no longer find the Church a hospitable place to exercise their hatred under the mantle of traditional liturgics and piety, they leave us so that they can hate in peace.
Brothers and Sisters: I have learned to love the usus antiquor, the extraordinary form of the Latin Mass. I love too the Byzantine Liturgy, and I am at home in a Mass of Paul VI properly and reverently celebrated according to the rubrics. The SSPX has no standing whatsoever to judge the Church gathered around Peter's Successor, nor the spiritual standing of the vast majority of Catholic Christians who disagree with their stands. The SSPX is headed to die in the vineyard now that they have cut themselves off from the Church of Jesus Christ.
To those Catholics of good faith that up to now have stood with the SSPX, you now face a serious choice: you either return in body, mind, and soul to the Catholic Church, or dissolve yourselves in the mist of schism and separation. Your salvation depends now on your decision.
Return, oh return, to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Roman Church. Repent, confess, and begin your healing. Then, come with us to help us rebuild the Church.
Just as Christ did in 1205 in the Chapel of San Damiano when He said "Francis, go and rebuild My Church, which you can see has fallen into ruin."
You have just put yourself above St. John. Why am I not surprised?
The next day, John saw Jesus coming to him, and he saith: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world. [30] This is he, of whom I said: After me there cometh a man, who is preferred before me: because he was before me.
Same complex where Buddhists put a statue of Buddha upon a tabernacle. Same church that suffered severe earthquake damage after one of JP II’s Assisi ecumenical love fests.
St Francis was a fervent missionary who spread the Catholic faith, and he and his priests preached “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”. What is the current Bishop of Rome, Francis, in comparison? He preaches good atheists might go to Heaven without conversion.
What was generous? What other priestly society has had to swear fidelity to an admittedly flawed "pastoral" Council . For goodness sake, not even the converting Anglicans have been required to do so! Not even Campos was put through the crap Rome now demands of the SSPX.
Well, I don’t have the time or interest in entering a full argument about this. Basically, the SSPX argued that Vatican II was heretical, and that the Pope was the Antichrist. Also, that theirs was the true Church and the Catholic Church went off the rails. And so forth.
That is very different from thinking that there were problems with Vatican II. Also, that Vatican II was taken by liberal Catholics, including many priests and bishops, and used to do things that it really didn’t call for. The so-called “Spirit of Vatican II.”
I have read all the documents of Vatican II, and am persuaded that there are no actual heresies in any of them. that accords with the teaching of the Church that the Holy Spirit will watch over it and prevent the Pope, ex cathedra, and formal councils from any heresies. A couple of times Popes have come close, but they have backed away from formal heretical pronouncements. Some Popes have been bad men—the Medicis spring to mind—but even they have not formally promulgated heresies.
On the other hand, not every council is especially useful. Nicea and Trent were vitally important. Some others have pretty much been forgotten, and accomplished little. My own feeling, FWIW, is that Vatican II was one of those. Better if they hadn’t held it, probably, although it’s still too early to tell for sure. Many of the problems were already infesting the Church, and Vatican II was merely an excuse to bring them out.
In any case, SSPX like the Anglicans was given a lot of latitude to do their thing, provided that they consented to recognize the authority of the Church. And it seems that they are refusing to do that.
“and that the Pope was the Antichrist.”
I stopped right there. Until you provide evidence of the above, I will assume you are not a truthful poster.
This love of the Church explains the rule that Archbishop Lefebvre always observed: to follow Providence in all circumstances, without ever allowing oneself to anticipate it. We mean to do the same: 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, faced with this crisis which continues its ravages in the Church, we persevere in the defence of Catholic Tradition and our hope remains entire, as we know by the certitude of Faith that “the gates of hell will not prevail against her.” (Mt 16:18)
I don't see any "adieus" here, let alone antisemitism. One of these two conditions that they list will be met one glorious day, and your slanders forgotten.
Bishop Lefebvre vacillated on calling the Pope Antichrist, or raising the sedevacantist argument, but he did certainly say that from time to time.
Here’s an extract from a long article that discusses the matter, one of several places in the article where the topic comes up:
Was Lefebvre a sede vacantist? It seems that it depended on his mood, or on the audience he was addressing. In 1980 he wrote to the Holy Father and protested, “I have no hesitation regarding the legitimacy or the validity of Your election. I have already had to condemn these ideas and I continue to do so in the face of some seminarians who allow themselves to be influenced by ecclesiastics outside the Fraternity.” But in his various tours, the ex-Lefebvrite priest informs me, he would speak a “faithful-to-the-pope” line to conservative Catholics, and a suggestively sede vacantist line when talking to radical traditionalists. Like any politician, he played to the audience.
But he threw caution to the winds in the preface of his 1987 letter to the four bishops-to-be. Here he calls the pope an Antichrist, which is a vivid way -of saying the papal seat is empty. Moreover, there exists an audiocassette tape of a Lefebvre sermon given shortly after John Paul II’s 1986 Assisi peace convocation. Basing his charges on that ecumenical gathering, the archbishop says, “I think that when a Pope or bishop honors God in this non-Catholic way, they have the intention of going to God as a non-Catholic, thereby renouncing the Catholic faith. Never has it happened in the Church before that he who sits on the throne of Peter has participated in the cult of false gods. Are we then obliged to believe that this Pope is not Pope? Because it seems impossible that a Pope could be a public and formal heretic.”
The sede vacantist question brings us back to the United States. Three previously Lefebvrite priests, Fathers Cekada, Dolan and Sanborn, have now split from the Pius V Society, which Fr. Kelly had formed when he broke with Lefebvre, to become involved in varying degrees with the cult at Mount St. Michael, whose pretense to Catholicism rests on its connection to the Bishop Thuc (of South Vietnam) lineage. As Lefebvrite seminarians proposed for the priesthood back in the 1970s, these three encountered opposition because of their openly expressed sede vacantism. A delegation of American priests warned Lefebvre.
But the Archbishop. knowing their standpoint ordained them anyway. Then, in 1983, Lefebvre used that excuse, sede vacantism, to kick Fr. Kelly and the others out of the Society. The accusation must have rung hollow, given Lefebvre’s own leanings. Especially since Richard Williamson, openly a sede vacantist as a seminarian at Econe, was later made bishop for North America.
The full article is at:
http://sspx.agenda.tripod.com/id9.html
I was speaking from memory in my earlier post. We lived at one time near the seminary of SSPX in Ridgefield, CT, and I read quite a bit about the matter, pro and con. I was not fond of Vatican II and what came after it, but after considerable investigation, I stuck with the Church—warts and all—because it is the Church.
Bravo, annalex!
Friendly note: This is a Caucus thread.
Sorry, somehow I didn’t even notice.
the Pope did not declare that athiests can go to Heaven. Don’t get fooled by the MSM’s misquotes. Pope Francis clearly stated that Christ’s salvation is for all. If some reject it, their loss, but Christ’s sacrifice was for all
“Blunders. Typos. Mine.”
With all this hubbub, I had to go read the original for myself.
The blunder is that they just didn’t say what you said they said. Not no way, not no how.
The problem I have, you see, is that I want to remain faithful to the Church as the Spiritual Bride of Christ, and obedient to the Holy Father. However, it is sometimes very difficult to remain obedient to the men who temporarily occupy posts in the Catholic hierarchy, for this one reason: The SSPX is right.
I don’t know about the Anti-Semitism...Williamson is gone. I don’t blame the Society for being skittish, especially now that BXVI has retired.
I think you are grasping at straws. However, this is your choice. Just be aware that choices have consequences.
+JMJ,
~Theo
Libel also has consequences. Think about it, before you post more of it.
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