Traditionalists, Tradition, And Private Judgement

Since the end of the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent promulgation by Pope Paul VI of the new rite of the Mass, there has been a growing division among those Catholics generally known as "orthodox" or "traditionalist."

The Wanderer itself suffered from the divisions and upheavals following the council.

In 1967 editor Walter Matt left the newspaper over a dispute about the meaning of Vatican II. He saw it not so much as a reform and a renewal of the Church but as a revolution that threatened to undermine the Church herself (in that same year, Walter Matt founded The Remnant). His brother, Alphonse J. Matt, Sr. (the present writer's father), took over the reins at The Wanderer and reminded its readers that the real intent of the council was a renewed evangelization of the world for Christ and a personal renewal of every individual Catholic.

For The Wanderer , the council was not a rejection or an abandonment of Tradition, but a development of that Tradition, safeguarded for 2,000 years by the Holy Spirit, to better enable the Church to bring the Gospel to all men.

Those "traditionalists" who view the council as a break with Tradition — who blame the council's teaching itself, not the subversion of, and departure from that teaching, by modernists and progressivists — are becoming increasingly hostile to the See of Peter and its present occupant.

The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who broke with the Holy See in 1988 over the issue of appointing bishop successors from his Society of St. Pius X, tends to be the hero of these traditionalist Catholics.

This past April, an angry, aggressive statement authored by Atila Sinke Guimarães, a former member of the Brazil-based TFP (Tradition, Family, Property), titled We Resist You to the Face was published in The Remnant, Catholic Family News, and other traditionalist organs.

The statement was signed by Mr. Guimarães and Marian Horvat, both members of Tradition in Action, Inc., Michael Matt, editor of The Remnant, and John Vennari, editor of Catholic Family News.

We Resist You . . . is described by its signatories as "A Public Statement of Catholic Resistance" (in which) "Lay Catholic journalists respectfully suspend obedience to the Pope and remain inside Holy Mother Church."

" We Resist You to the Face analyzes the consequences of the adaptation of the Church to the modern world, and the consequences of ecumenism, as applied since the Council — including by the present Pontiff. The authors declare themselves in a state of resistance 'relative to the teachings of Vatican Council II, Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, and to your teachings [of John Paul II] that are objectively opposed to the prior ordinary and extraordinary Papal Magisterium'."

One can conclude after a careful reading of We Resist You . . . that its authors and supporters are on a schismatic trajectory that can only have tragic consequences.

We have asked Stephen Hand, no stranger to traditionalists, to examine We Resist You . . ., its premises and conclusions in order to provide some guidance and counsel to those traditionalist Catholics who are troubled and confused by current developments within the Church and the kinds of analysis of such by the likes of We Resist You. . . .

The result of his effort is: "Traditionalists," Tradition, and Private Judgment. Two important addenda are included: Pope Paul II's Credo of the People of God and Cardinal Ratzinger's remarks in 1988 to the bishops of Chile regarding the Lefebvre schism.

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln has graciously provided a preface to the work.

We recommend this commentary to every Catholic who seeks a better understanding of the controversies which continue to spread fear, doubt, and confusion within the Church. It will prove to be an effective instrument to strengthen one's faith.

Stephen Hand has done a distinct service by his fine monograph pointing out by means of careful research as well as by personal and anecdotal experience the reality of removing a cinder in one's eye when such is there, but keeping the eye intact and not removing the eye out of exasperation, because of the annoyance and sometimes serious pain the cinder can cause.

It has been an axiom for many years in historical theology that what oftentimes begins or is declared to be a "return to tradition," in other words, a reaction, ends as being an innovation, that is, a schism or a heresy. There are people who suffer from intense headaches, and find themselves utterly incapable of mastering the horrible pain that they frequently endure. In moments of frustration, such people will sometimes say, "I wish I could cut off my head to cure my headache." But they, and all who are rational and reflective in their presence, would always realize that the so-called cure would be far worse than the continuous enduring of even the most tragic pain. It takes a faith-filled and prayer-filled discerning Catholic life to distinguish liturgical abuses, doctrinal and moral aberrations, and grave disciplinary infractions occurring in the lives and practices of people within the Church, from the Church herself, which despite being composed of sinful members, remains the spotless Spouse and Bride of Christ, not a Church of Cathers or Albigensians, but a Church of those who carry within themselves the sad effects of original sin while at the same time bearing the grace of God, which is to say, the seeds of eternal happiness. St. Thomas Aquinas calls pride the queen and mother of all vices, and oftentimes those who perhaps rightly perceive grave faults and defects in people in the Church, even sometimes in people with positions of clerical authority, forget their own creatureliness and sinfulness, and the ability they themselves have to fall into serious error.

At the time of the Jansenist crisis, for instance, the archbishop of Paris, speaking of the Jansenist nuns at Port-Royal, said they were as pure as angels but as proud as devils. Down through the centuries there have been countless sects, denominations, cults, and churches which have broken off from the Catholic Church under the pretense of being "holier than thou." We are witnessing the same occurrence in our time. Ironically, these groups are most often unknowing and indeliberate allies of the bitterest enemies of Christ and His Church, in effect, denying the abiding Presence of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic Church and the promises that Christ bestowed on His Mystical Body from its inception.

In his masterful work, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, John Henry Newman points out how in the course of the Church's history she occasionally appears to fall into a deliquium, from which, under God's grace, she emerges victorious and stronger than ever. Many of those who defy the Church and even leave the Church in the name of "tradition," thus contradicting the very word by which they choose to define themselves, are ignorant in their despair regarding the Church's future or the realities of the Church's history through 2,000 years. This work of Stephen Hand undoubtedly will assist those who are loyal to Christ and to His Church, and to His Vicar on earth, the Bishop of Rome, to labor zealously within the boundaries of the Church herself for her growth in holiness, and willingly, even joyfully, do all possible to eliminate doctrinal, moral, liturgical, and disciplinary aberrations, but, at the same time, conceding nothing to those who wish not to remove a cinder from the eye, but to remove the eye itself and perhaps replace its empty socket with cinders and decayed matters.

The Venerable Servant of God, Abbot Joseph Columba Marmion, who is scheduled to be beatified on September 3, 2000, once reminded his readers that "God resists the proud," and he added: "Is it not terrible to be alienated from God? But how much more terrible it must be to be 'resisted' by God Himself."

May his rhetorical question echo in the minds and hearts of those who make use of this fine work of Stephen Hand.

The most wonderful thing about being Catholic is that the Church's saving Tradition is a "given," something which we can only receive from the hands of Christ's ministers, who extend in time through the apostolic succession all the way back to the empty Tomb, and who first heard the stunning words:

The Church is not some esoteric gnosis which men must try to discern, decipher, and then keep jealously under a bushel. Rather, she is, following the Incarnation itself, astonishingly visible, a "light to the world" and the "salt of the earth," the continuation through time of Him who was "made flesh and dwelt among us."

From that moment when earth's history was split into a "before" and an "after," no one has had to look or wait for another Messiah, another teaching or "Way." For He is "with us," "always," (Isaiah 9:6; Matt. 28:20) and is the God who comes, the God who seeks us out, and who offers forgiveness and reconciliation to a world which will never again have to grope to find Him. He is there, in His Church, where, until the very end of the world are heard the simple words of consecration which are the substance of the Mass. St. Paul tells us what that substance is:

Should she deem it necessary or good, the Church could reduce her liturgy to these words and acts, the "substance" around which all the ritual "accidents," which change through time, adhere. For only she is given to participate in and dispense the divine authority — the great and undemocratic "whatsoever" (Matt. 16:20) — until the Bridegroom returns to receive His Bride at the end of time. It is left for us to only "Hear the Church" which changes only in her "accidents" through the ebbs and flows of time, the "substance" perduring to the consummation.

<> Let's see..the Pope can't be trusted, so, schismatics turn to "Traditio"<>

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 20:41:18 -0400

Author: "Terrence J. Boyle"

Subject: Re: ("Fr. M. E.) Morrison

Body: Hello:

M.E. Morrison was "ordained" in California in a Protestant church (Ebenezer Lutheran Chirch) by Thaddeus Alioto, a married man claiming to be a bishop (because he had been "consecrated" a bishop by Wallace David de Ortega Maxey).

De Ortega Maxey had been "consecrated" numerous times by various North American Old Catholic bishops (whom even the Old Catholic Churches in Europe deny have valid orders). De Ortega Maxey also *claimed* to have been consecrated by Antoine Aneed.

Aneed's story is that he was consecrated a bishop by a RC Eastern Rite bishop in Syria and sent to America. Both the Vatican and the Syrian Patriarchate involved denounced the story as a fabrication.

If you have any doubts over the veracity of my statements as to where Morrison got "ordained," just ask his fellow "independent" priest, Merril Adamson. He was "ordained" in the same ceremony. I've a written statement from him confirming the fact.

This is important not because of anything Morrison states on the internet, but because he dresses up his statements as coming from a RC priest.

Even the devil can quote Scripture.

Anyone e-mailing to Morrison's list a request for the facts of his claimed ordination will be dropped.

It never ceases to amaze me how sedevacantists can be so cock-sure JP II is a fraud, yet swallow hook, line and sinker any number of bogus clerics; just because the frauds sing the music sedes like to hear.

It takes more than "right" preaching to make a priest.

Regards, Terry Boyle

YOU haven't been paying attention. I have been posting now for months on end detailed objections to the New Mass--insofar as it is a violation of Trent. Cardinal Ratzinger himself has recognized the problem with the Novus Ordo and its violation of Trent in his speech at Fontgombault. Here is what he said about the invalidation by Trent of precisely the kind of Mass concocted by Bugnini in violation of Catholic doctrine and the whole of Catholic tradition:

"It is only by grasping that it [the hatred for the old Latin Mass by Novus Ordo bishops] results from the practical invalidation of Trent, that one can understand the exasperation that accompanies the fight against the possibility of still celebrating Mass according to the '62 Missal."

And he said this at the same venue:

"From the start, I was in favor of the freedom to continue to use the old Missal, for a very simple reason: people were already beginning to speak of a rupture with the pre-conciliar Church, and the formation of different models of churches: an 'outmoded' pre-conciliar Church, and a new, conciliar Church...It seems to me indispensable to retain the possibility of celebrating according to the former missal as a sign of the permanent identity of the Church."

This is why I speak of a new religion. There is no real permanent identity between the two, between pre-conciliar condemnations of modernism and modernism's triumph in Rome. There is, instead, a clear rupture between what went before the Council and what came after. This is why Rome itself accuses traditionalist priests of not thinking with "the conciliar Church" and makes fantastic claims of being the arbiter of what is and is not Tradition. The Pope is supposedly the bridge, the unifying force, the true decider of all things Traditional. But he ceases to be this when he himself is so enamored of radical change and has aligned himself so clearly against his predecessors. So we have two churches, the before Church and the after Church. You and others apparently accept and affirm the latter which is forty years old. I believe and affirm the former which has existed for twenty centuries and still exists among a traditional Catholic remnant.

The sacrificial structure was dumped, to begin with, along with the Offertory in favor of the Jewish prayer of thanksgiving before a meal. Any reference to expiation for sins was eliminated. Reference to the Real Presence as the Mystery of Faith was eliminated. There are a thousand textual changes that make the new Mass more humanistic and Protestant than Catholic. I'd need to write a book to explain them all. For instance, why was "say but the word and my SOUL shall be healed" changed to "say but the word and I shall be healed?" Why is the word "soul" missing from other passages as well? There are too many of these unCatholic humanist touches to go into here. And this is not even getting into rubrics. Facing the people may seem like a minor issue to you, easily dismissable, but it is just another change that underscores the essential break with tradition, as Card. Ratzinger at Fontgombault has also stated:

"Today celebration versus populum really does look like the characteristic fruit of Vatican II's liturgical reform. In fact it is the most conspicuous consequence of a reordering that not only signifies a new arrangement of the places dedicated to the liturgy, but also brings with it a new idea of the ESSENCE of the liturgy--the liturgy as a communal meal...A common turning to the east during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of something accidental, but of what is essential. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord. It is not now a question of dialogue but of common worship."

But of course the new religion wants no such common worship with anybody. It punished traditionalist priests from the outset and wished to ban the old Mass as well as facing to the east--precisely because it emphasizes what is being offered to the Father--Christ's Body and Blood in a reenactment of Cavalry. This has been anathema to modernist liturgical "experts". Not surprising. All this has happened before. Luther started by turning the priest around to face the people and by throwing out the Offertory. He wanted to underscore the communal meal, the Lord's Supper--just as Ratzinger states is happening now in the Novus Ordo. Unfortunately for those who defend the Novus Ordo--this idea of the Mass has already been banned by Trent. Not all the arguments to the contrary can make the present set-up traditional Catholicism. It is a sucking-up to Martin Luther at the expense of our own doctrinal integrity.

The Neo-Catholic posts "whack job". Gee, what a towering intellectual. If the Neo-Catholics choose to embarass themselves, they are free to do so. However, the thought of entering into any type of correspondence with such an individual does not appeal to me.

The posts of that particular individual are nothing more than missives from the Darkness. Yours, however, are outstanding but at times it is like trying to teach Calculus to kindergarteners.

Thanks for the ping and the wise words.

"For example, some of us find it downright impossible to reconcile our historic faith with a Vatican which now encourages pagans, with Catholics in the next room, to pray to the Great Thumb for world peace, and yet never says a word to them, for sixteen years, about the necessity of converting to the Catholic Faith; which tells Jews that the Old Covenant is still salvific for them, and thus they have no need to be baptized in the Catholic Church for salvation; which promotes, in a major joint-declaration with non-Catholics, a teaching the Council of Trent condemned thirteen times in thirteen different ways (i.e., 'faith alone'); which allows our seminaries and universities to teach that Scripture is rife with errors of fact; which sits and does nothing while liberals who deny the most basic tenets of the faith run rampant all over the world; which exercises such lax control that not a single homosexual bishop or priest has been disciplined or defrocked for nearly forty years; which lets women and girls parade around our altars pretending to be priests-in-the-making; which leads us in singing Protestant-authored hymns that imply the Eucharist is merely a symbol; and which does dozens of other things that make one wonder, as Catholics did during the Arian crisis and the 'Babylonian captivity,' where the hierarchy is leading the Church today."

--Robert Sungenis.

<> Back when my eyes were caught by the traditional black lace stockings worn by the sspx schismatic whore, I was told to sign-up for "Traditio." This was years ago.

When a schismatic friend of mine warned me away from Traditio & "Rev" Morrison" (I was going to San Francicso and I was gonna check-out his lil' "chapel), he suggested I do what Mr. Boyle suggested.

I was promptly dropped from the list. ANYONE can perform this simple test to see if what Boyle says is true.

They won't though...."Rev" Morrison scratches their antipapal itch<>

One? Easy. The Church has always taught the Church of Christ IS the Catholic Church. It no longer teaches this. It now claims the Church of Christ SUBSISTS IN the Catholic Church. In other words, Christ's Church may also subsist elsewhere. It no longer is identified with the Catholic Church alone. This is a major change in teaching.

Here's another. The Church has always condemned the "faith alone" doctrine taught by Protestants. The Council of Trent condemned this teaching thirteen times (see my earlier post). Now in a joint-declaration on Justification it has accepted the Protestant doctrine.

That's just for starters. You need to face up to the ugly truth about what's happening. The Traditional Church is being destroyed--deliberately.

<> There, this oughta settle ANY controversy. The infallible SSPX's own FR. Peter Scott delivers his thoughts about "Rev. Morrison<> A further very recent reproduction of the 'glossy brochure' material has appeared on an Australian site run by a (former?) Maronite clone of the SSPX, who also promotes Fr. M.E. Morrison (who, Fr. Peter Scott alleges, is an Old Catholic posing as a Catholic priest) and a Fr. Paolo Rosari (of unknown pedigree). The site is: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/3543/Lefebv.html "

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