Posted on 05/15/2015 9:26:40 AM PDT by ebb tide
Last month members of the Latin Mass community of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida were stunned to receive a letter addressed to them by their local ordinary, Bishop Robert Lynch. Following years of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass being offered at two different diocesan parishes, the faithful of both St. Anthony of Padua in San Antonio and Incarnation Catholic Church in Tampa learned that they would be losing the traditional Mass. Instead of further realizing Pope Benedict’s vision of both forms of the Roman Rite mutually enriching each other through greater availability, Bishop Lynch has instead chosen the path of displacement and containment.
(Excerpt) Read more at onepeterfive.com ...
Stories like this have convinced me that groups like the SSPX will ultimately be vindicated by history. I don’t attend an SSPX church, but I envy them for their courage to just tell a local bishop like this to take a flying leap.
You'd want to be EXTREMELY sure about that, and even if you're sure of your facts, there might also be some problem with your interpretation, after all, we don't have the responsibility to issue the judgment, and we don't know even if perhaps the Bishop was at some fault, if he has already been forgiven by our Blessed Lord, so that He doesn't remember a putative sin, and perhaps the Bishop has even achieved perfect contrition and detachment from effects of the temporal punishment for sin.
That said, it would seem to be in accord with the much vaunted Vatican Council Declaration on Religious Liberty that ordinary people be allowed to worship in the authorized format that most suits them.
Again, we should be in prayer for this and all other Bishops, for if we had to bear up under their responsibility for 5 minutes, we'd crumble like Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, AKA, Semolina Gulch.
This needs to be resisted.
Two questions (maybe only one, if you answer “No” to the first):
1) Do you think Terry Schiavo was murdered?
2) Do you think Michael Schiavo, Judge George Greer and Bishop Lynch all bare complicity in her murder?
Married Greek Orthodox and raised my children in faith. Finally making official move from Roman Catholicism of my parents. Theological distinctions afe man made in my view. The Orthodox Divine Liturgy (mass) is of heaven. Like the Latin Mass. Check it out. The Vatican II ushered in the vulgar. It is difficult for my children to garner the same religiosity when attending RC services with my family
I have felt the church is trying VERY hard to leave me. I will not leave but they (the church in its current form) is not making it easy.
Local priest does not support our Catholic school. Our girls will be going out of parish as there is no Catholic High school in our parish. He will not give us stipend that every other parish does to help send their children to the only Catholic High in the diocese. We put in extra every month for support of our local elemental school. That is going to stop. He is actively trying to kill our elementary school as he feels it is no big deal to have one in our county. The only one in the county I might add. I just don[’t understand some of these people.
5.56mm
What tragically happened to poor and crucified Terri Schiavo is too painful for words. She can surely speak now in the heavenlies, for our sake, and does. We are under siege in the Western Church, and we are all suffering judgment for those of us who stood by wide eyed, frozen in place, and worse, actively assisted in clearing a path for implementing her horrible death.
Now comes the marginalization of the Traditional Latin Mass in the Extraordinary Form. Our spirits are in sack cloth and ashes. We are left in a state of true Penance, suffering, before we are forgiven and absolved. Can we be joyful that we are but barely a Remnant now, who are left in Christ’s Church?
Our Lord spoke favorably of His Remnant. May we try hard to
repent of our sins and faults, and to suffer well as we wage war, in the spiritual battle for piety in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and for Truth in the teaching office of the Church, by the grace of God, and His promise that it may be us who prevail against Hell.
PS: In the old days, Penance was accomplished before absolution. Thinking of this order of thins gives me comfort.
Perhaps he considers Summorum Pontificum distastefully “medieval”.
Diocese Curtails Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament
The Diocese of St. Petersburg. Florida issued new guidelines that severely restrict the practice of exposition of the Eucharist. The directive permits extended exposition (one or more days) only once a year and brief periods of exposition at other times.
The guidelines, which were promulgated by Bishop Robert Lynch in a June 12 letter, maintain that “eucharistic reservation and adoration as we know it today began in the thirteenth century” and implies that they were started because medieval Christians’ understanding of the Eucharist was deficient. One reason, among others, given for this supposed deficiency is that medieval Christianity suffered “a lost connection to the Church’s roots.”
The document goes on claim that the Second Vatican Council “recovered the early Church’s understanding” of Christ’s presence in the minister, the Word proclaimed, other sacraments, and in the participation of the faithful.
The guidelines state that those who want to inaugurate Eucharistic adoration in their parishes should reflect on “their commitment of time and money to social services.” They should also ask themselves, among other things, if they are “as respectful and reverent toward Christ’s presence in the gathered Body, the Church, as they are to the presence of Christ in the Sacrament.”
The diocese had no chapels with permanent exposition. But at least two parishes had to discontinue regular exposition because of the new guidelines.
http://www.perpetualadoration.org/sf2000.htm
This is better known as "false antiquity". It is often used to promote the new liturgy.
Keep in mind that the SSPX is not just about the Latin Mass. It is about theological errors found in Vatican II.
Absolutey disgraceful. Lynch is evil incarnate.
The sexual misconduct charge against Lynch involved former diocesan employee Bill Urbanski, 42, who reported to Church officials that Lynch had sexually harassed him on numerous occasions.
Church officials said they offered Urbanski another job within the diocese but away from Bishop Lynch in September 2002, but Urbanski turned down the offer. Instead, he was given a $100,000 severance package after he agreed not to file a lawsuit. Actually, the figure is closer to $150,000 if the extended salary payment that qualified Urbanski for vested pension benefits is included.
The entire operation was carried out in almost total secrecy. Lynch’s three loyal subordinates — diocesan attorney, Joseph DiVito, Vicar General Msgr. Brendan Muldoon, and Chancellor Msgr. Robert Gibbons — “reviewed” the complaint against their boss. Only Archbishop John Favalora in Miami was notified of the complaint. Nothing was put in writing. Nevertheless, church officials denied that the payment was “hush money.” “The diocese does not buy silence in St. Petersburg,” said attorney DiVito. He explained that the money came from parishioners, bequeaths, investments and unrestricted accounts. “No funds earmarked for the ministry were used,” DiVito said.
When contacted by the press for a statement, Urbanski said the public revelation had caught him by surprise and he was not prepared to discuss it at this time.
Later, Bishop Lynch admitted that he may have crossed the line between friendship and work. He made a vague reference to getting some “counseling.
“http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/abbott/070330
The Fraternal Society of Saint Peter (FSSP) is an apostolate that has been doing some blooming, providing priests who have a strict devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass of the Extraordinary Form to dioceses anywhere who can support their FSSP priest and a proper facility, chapel, or church building.
It takes a bare minimum of stipend and support, enough interested Catholics committed to this devotion for the Extraordinary Form, and an invitation by the bishop and a space for start up.
In my diocese, the bishop has no compulsion to entertain such an idea, and truly, from Rome there is no encouragement to recognize Summorum Pontificum, or to nudge bishops to be cooperative.
FSSP costs a diocese nothing. Not in manpower or financing. It is an apostolate who provide well trained priests and the people themselves support his service. Daily confessions are provided, before daily Mass, which is a service to the entire diocese seven days a week. n
Except for being occasionally being confused with the SSPX, who are at odds with Rome, the FSSP has a sterling reputation for holiness and are in line with the Pope.
But it is my understanding that the FSSP must not speak against Vatican II despite its errors. This was a requirement for its formation. So they really can’t say what needs to be said.
What is going on here is not just about the availability of the Latin Mass. Until others wake up to this, we will continue to witness what is going on in the OP. It seems as if the Latin mass continues to be used as a pawn by the Modernists in the church: We’ll let you have the “extraordinary” mass, but you can not speak the truth about VII.
The errors of Vatican II will be corrected by Vatican III, unless other circumstances make that a moot point. And personally, I think the latter "other circumstances" scenario might be the more likely one. Vatican II was a deliberate strategy to "Protestantize" the Catholic Church. Fifty years later, the institutional Catholic Church as we knew it has made great progress in that regard ... which means it is disappearing just like all the other Protestant congregations.
In several decades, groups like the FSSP and SSPX will be the only Catholic institutions left in many western countries. They won't even need permission from local bishops to open their own apostolates because nobody will care enough about "Catholicism" to oppose them.
I would argue that not speaking out against them makes it easier to ignore them. It also means that others who will join the parish solely because it has the Latin Mass, not because there are issues with Vatican II. By not speaking out from the pulpit, the FSSP parish looks no different than a non-FSSP parish who celebrates the TLM.
That's exactly what they want -- especially if one of the people ignoring them is the local bishop.
It also means that others who will join the parish solely because it has the Latin Mass, not because there are issues with Vatican II.
Who cares why they join it? Do you see your local parish as some kind of vehicle for historical vindication?
One of the common mistakes many traditional Catholics make is that they see modernism as a long-term reality that will always be seen (under the best of circumstances) as one of two institutions running parallel through time: a modernist, heretical church and a traditional (true) Church. That's not the case at all. Modernism does not beget modernism ... it begets nothing. So we are not looking at landscape with a large modernist church filled with people on one side of town and a small traditionalist church filled with people on the other side of town. We are looking at a scenario with a small traditionalist church on one side of town and an empty building on the other.
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