Ironically, the schismatic excommunicati would have it that even any pope after Pope St. Pius V of happy memory lacked any authority whatsoever to modify in the slightest his Quo Primum purporting to calcify the catechism issued by him and to excommunicate anyone whomsoever dared to alter or modify it in any way.
Benedict XVI has the authority as will each of his successors to modify or withdraw or alter Ecclesia Dei Afflicta in the exercise of his discretion and judgment because popes (even one as brilliant as John Paul the Great) lack the authority to limit the authority of their successors (each of whom is or will be the Vicar of Christ on earth) even if the exercise may clash with the tastes of any group of the laity in the pews or with the judgmental preferences of any group of laity in the pews. We are the Roman Catholic Church----not an anarchy, not a democracy (which is what the actual Americanist ecclesiastical deviants wanted), not a republic, not an oligarchy or an aristocracy but an absolute monarchy under Christ's Vicar.
You are therefore wise to stick with the status quo which is that SSPX leaders and adherents are schismatic and excommunicated until further papal notice. You cannot very well "respectfully await" papal action while accepting the utterly non-authoritative modifications of subordinates of the papacy who apparently want to persuade us of what they want us to think John Paul the Great said when he said the precise opposite. No one authorized any of them to sit in judgment on his motu proprio or upon him or to contradict his rulings. Benedict XVI or any of his papal successors are the sole authorities who may do that.
Just as you may find renegade bishops who will claim that condoms may be used by Catholics because of AIDS whatever Paul VI said in Humanae Vitae to the absolute contrary, you can find those entrusted with positions of trust who dissent on other subjects. Nonetheless, as to papal rulings and injunctions, it is not every Bishop Tom, Cardinal Rick, Father Harry, Theologian Eddie or layman Larry for that matter, each his own personal teaching magisterium du jour respectively but actual papal authority which counts.
The term Americanist is customarily used in discussions of Church matters to reference a heresy that was a concern of Pope Leo XIII. It seems that Bishop or Archbishop John Ireland and some other 1890s Church officials presiding in the United States at that time thought that it was just awful that Rome insisted on a monarchical Church ruled by the pope from the top down with no referenda of the liberals in the American hierarchy of the time required before Rome made theological demands or doctrinal pronouncements. Leo slapped that heresy down when he discovered it but it simmers to this day (which is a quite respectable reason for the existence of The Wanderer) although it has finally been besieged by John Paul the Great and Benedict XVI.
I see where I went wrong here in reading the references to Americanism in your writing since you are actually defending the isolationist political creed of the Sobrans and the Buchanans and not the old Americanist heresy which I should have realized would be alien territory for any Wanderer writer and rightly so. You were instead referencing the opposition of normal patriotic Americans and actual conservatives to the paleopantywaist political theories of such as Solange Hertz, John Rao, Joe Sobran, Pat Buchanan, the Rockford Institute, Lewellyn Rockwell and even Justin Raimondo (who, most charitably speaking, may be Pat Buchanan's Minister of Knee-Jerk surrendermonkeyism but is, ummmm, no more Catholic than Boy George for verrrrry similar reasons). One may not sum up the foreign policy of Catholics by joining with Cain in saying: "I am not my brother's keeper." No doubt the aforementioned "paleos" will have some adequate explanation to give to the relatives of the future victims of the North Korean Chiapet or of Ahmahdinejad and the "Bring Back the Twelfth Imam" squad as to just why it was imperative to let these nutcases be armed with atomic weapons.
Sobran is phenomenal all right. So was Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally and Jane Fonda and so was the implosion of stars in other systems. He is a colossal waste of talent. Writing on social issues, he has been brilliant. On foreign and military policy, did his last column before illness not reveal his admission of being the turd in the punchbowl at a recent Sobran family reunion because Sobran's admired father was a naval hero in World War II and Sobran is, well, rather the opposite as the Joseph Sobran we have come to know as an opponent of our country's interests in favor of a Neville Chamberlain-like "peace at any price." Even the America First Committee folded its tent on the day after Pearl Harbor. At least Buchanan does not oppose the Iraq War with troops in the field. During actual wartime, he resists the arrival of Catholic immigrants from our south. In his non-opposition to wars once begun, he is not unlike Colonel Lindbergh, Colonel McCormack, and John Flynn, who having been tragically mistaken in their isolationism, quit that isolationism. They never looked back. Pat probably will when the war is over.
What does backing Father Neuhaus while rejecting Sobran evidence or reveal other than common sense, patriotism and a preference for wisdom over back-biting bitterness and bilge. If you want to side with the "paleos," fine, but do not expect respect. The Wanderer has weathered many storms but it likely will not survive its current drift back to the bad old days of 1930s demilitarization any more than Brent Bozell's Triumph (and its nuclear nervous nellyism and disarmament obsession) magazine did. Soon enough, the fans who were contemporaries of the old 1930s Chamberlains will be gone. Not one American in ten thousand has a clue as to who John Rao or Solange Hertz or the foreign policy anti-American moonbats of SSPX at St. Mary's, Kansas, who publish anti-American history texts, may be.
Without reviewing this thread, I would be quite surprised if I threw the "anti-Semitic label out there (to see) how many people it slanders." I think I actually made a point of saying that I do not know if Fellay is or is not anti-Semitic. I don't know and I tend to give the benefit of the doubt. If he and de Mallerais and dead Marcel and de Castro Meyer had a preference for Lenten rituals referencing "perfidious Jews," I regard those as rituals with unfortunate verbiage in the context of the post-Holocaust world but not as anti-Semitism per se. I am afraid that Williamson is a bit too enthusiastic in his Holocaust denial which has less ecclesiastical justification than does utilization of approved liturgies of Holy Mother the Church.
Do I have to apologize to you and your generation for being a totally enraged (at the changes) teenager at the time of the Council and only a bit older at the time of the changes in liturgy???? Was I supposed to be in charge of the Church at that (or any other) age? I have certainly passed the Faith, handed down by my Fathers, to my children and it is quite intact, thanks very much to the priests and nuns of my youth and the predecessors of the current management at The Wanderer who were more dedicated to handing on the Catholic Faith and less inclined to the political errors and failings of the neo-Chamberlain fringe who include Sobran, Buchanan, Likoudis, Roeser and, apparently, some who are similarly inclined and younger. Actual traditionalists (not excommunicated SSPX schismatics) ARE the Church militant. The "pilgrim church" crapola was one of the most aggravating aspects of the pathetic V-II draftsmanship. I don't think you can point to a single sentence I have ever posted here suggesting agreement with the notion of Catholicism as a "pilgrim Church." That single term was a serious impetus to my looking at Eastern Orthodoxy as an alternative until brought back from that brink to Catholicism.
If opposng a schism of excommunicated schismatics such as SSPX on the authority of Pope John Paul the Great's Ecclesia Dei Afflicta makes me an adherent of "the Gypsy Church or the church of the warm fuzzy pet doggie," how many moons are there in the sky on your planet????
Forty years ago, I was younger than you are now. I plead guilty today of having seen and experienced far more than you have. What, other than spinning for the excommunicated schismatics and serving as an apologist for the Solange Hertz/John Rao school of anti-"Americanist" history and foreign policy, have you done?
Oh, BTW, it is not MY assessment of things traditional OR (not and) SSPX (which is about as "traditional" as Martin Luther and just as excommunicated) but John Paul the Great's assessment with which you say Cardinal Castrillon de Hoyos, Cardinal Estevez and Archbishop Ranjith are disagreeing.
Someone recently said (you?) that the original reasons for the Matt boys splitting are disapearing. Boy, are they ever.
I have sobran's Single Issues and it is great. His foreign policy junk? Not so much...It's all the fault of the joos don'cha'know. Joos run everything...just ask Sobran, Buchanan, and Tom Fleming
As to Sec. Rice running around pimping for the Palestinians...the less said the better :)
Leo XIII condemned Americanism as a heresy. It is alive and well. You want to keep referring to all these other writers and to social, political and historical issues for which I have written nothing. In fact, I have not truly revealed my true personal opinions on much in any of my writings. I have interviewed many people, including bishops and priests and have written what they have said. I am speaking of the Americanist heresy, which is alive and well with most of the NeoCons I have read and spoken with. "America is God's own ordained great nation! Hurrah!!"
And by the way, I am quite certain that Cardinal Hoyos, Cardinal Medina and Archbishop Ranjith are all taking specific orders and messages from the current Pope himself. You might not like it, but I am quite certain that is what is happening.
Why you want to posit this as them "disobeying" Pope John Paul II, I am not certain.
And by the way, I didn't know he had been named "Great" yet. I must have missed that news.
What I am attempting to do is to pick the pieces of the remnant of Catholic culture that is available to me, be open to life, love my wife and children, and provide them with an education and formation that is not available in the United States today that puts the Faith first. That is what I am attempting to do--as well as show the Pope's plan for restoration of the liturgy and bringing estranged traditionalists into the heart of the Church like has already happened in Campos and in Bordeaux, France, most recently.
Perhaps if my family eventually moves to Rockford, we will meet one day...
Perhaps...
BTW, from Rochelle, Illinois...