Posted on 10/18/2002 5:01:00 PM PDT by ultima ratio
The choice is clear between the vindication of papal authority consistent with nearly 2000 years of Ubi Petrus, Ibi Ecclesia or the absolute anarchy of every man and woman his or her own theologian and Magisterium who thinks that he or she knows better than the pope (and an extraordinary pope at that). Or more succinctly, between Pope John Paul II and a group of soon-to-be-gone-and-forgotten malcontents stylistically offended in their insatiable self-importance who think that it is "traditional" to figuratively spit out their defiance and disobedience and disrespect into the face of the Vicar of Christ on Earth.
Ohhhh, but the SSPX-types are like, ummmm, Catherine of Sienna, and like this one and that one but actrually like Martin Luther, John Calvin and Mr. Zwingli who, at least, had the personal integrity to recognize that TOPIOS and TOPIOT placed them outside of the Roman Catholic Church. They are so Catholic. Can't you see how they despise the poipe? Isn't that proof enough? The RCC can rejoin them when it likes on their terms. The pope can grovel at their feet and beg for their forgiveness for the terrible crime of not obeying their whim of the week in all things.
The fact is that y'all make it your obsession to give scandal.
The seminarians at Econe, to the extent that they mistook Marcel Lefevbre for pope, had well proven themselves unfit for the priesthood since no priest, diocesan or as a member of an order is ordained without pledging obedience. Lefevbre had proven himself likewise unfit to be a priest much less an archbishop by virtue of his persistent and unrepentant disobedience. In the absence of fulfillment of his vow of obedience and in light of his rank violation of his priestly vow and in light of his enticement of others to follow him in defiant disobedience, and in light of his declared intention to consecrate schismatic bishops so that yet more vipers could be ordained not to serve but to defiantly disobey with priestly faculties as the four schismatic and illicilty consecrated bishops would carry out the powers of that office in defiant disobedience, it is no surprise that John Paul II took swift and certain action to vindicate hierarchical authority.
Your references to the ongoing homosexual scandals and the scandal of pro-abort priests in Michigan or any other scandal of personal sins by clergy is not only inapposite but craven under the circumstances. Somebody did go after the apostates and, not unexpectedly, you complain of it in a fashion reminiscent of the detected secular criminal who, like Scarlett O'Hara, is not at all sorry for what he has done but is very sorry he got caught and tries to divert the attention of authority by whining about why authority does not go after those guys behind the tree who did something different. Sort of like: "How come you guys only crack down of druggies when their are plenty of drunks you could have prosecuted instead." The answer to which is: "Under the circumstances of your own misbehavior, that is no longer any of your business."
It is very hard indeed to distinguish between your tactics against the Roman Catholic Church and those of the modernists, the reformationists, the early Ultramontanists or most heretical groups who all have the same war cry, each for their own nefarious agendas: "We are right. The pope, because he disagrees with us, is wrong. History will vindicate us in calling this terrible faithless and sinful and fallible pope to account. Just you wait and see." Same war cry, same result.
For the record, I would burn the unrepentant pederasts and pro-abort priests and their diocesan enablers at the stake if that were allowed. Short of that they should be defrocked and excommunicated. That has nothing to do with the fact that the SSPX types and the increasingly militant and shameless self-promoters such as the author of the article which started this thread and his close literary comrades who have determined to appoint themselves to substitute their magisterium for the Magisterium of the Church itself largely because their tastes are offended and their pride ungoverned are driving wedges into the Church. If they persist, they should be subjected to such discipline as will bring them to obedience and, failing in that, publicly condemned, anathematized and excommunicated and held up as a public example by the Church and then ignored thereafter.
The Church's real problem along these lines is, in my opinion, an overabundance of charitable tolerance toward those who are enemies of legitimate authority. This the Roman Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Christ, protected, as he promised, by the Paraclete. It is not some town meeting where each opinion has equal status and all will get prizes. Whatever the pope decides to do about the schism is fine with me. If I knew better than he, they would be paying me the big money, figuratively speaking.
I guess I am just one of those guys who does not play well with others after witnessing 35 despicable years of whining, moaning, groaning, dissension, defiance, disobedience to legitimate authority from everyone from birth controllers to architectural wreckovationists to liturgical deconstructionists, to lavender queen archbishops such as the unlamented Weakland, to "gay rights" groups desecrating the Eucharist at St. Patrick's to "Dignity" to so-called Catholics for a so-called Free Choice to renegade French missionary archbishops with delusions of personal grandeur to Feeneyites to pagan temples masquerading as cathedrals in places like Los Angeles. And NOOOOOO, I don't think this very great Pope John Paul II is Superman or that he can wave a magic wand and satisfy thee or me as though it would be his job to do so.
One final note, I must say that something else that gets my goat are these little rump groups (ten here, twelve there) declaring themselves to be the exclusive holders of the franchise for whatever and calling their perfectly orthodox mainstream targets neo-something or others. You know: Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com, probably terrified that war will reduce his, ummm, social options, calls long-time conservative leaders "neo-conservatives" because they are not mired in Justin's little isolationist and military-resenting political ghetto. Maybe Raimondo can give us his social issue views before calling others "neo-conservatives." Or SSPX schismatics beat up on the pope for every perceived personal shortcoming (i.e. disagreement with them) calling broken-glass supporters of Pope John Paul II and the Roman Catholic Church "neo-Catholics."
Go exchange high schismatic fives with ultima ratio. Celebrate your separation from the Church.
If anyone wants to continue with either of you, they may feel free. They will need more patience than I feel like wasting on either or both of you or your few thousand co-schismatics.
This has consistently been your approach, and it is most dishonest. Either you scream "schismatic" or you scream "that's already been disproven." Neither of your two tricks are very convincing. Where, exactly, has the credibility of those I have quoted here been negated? Where have they and their analyses been discredited? I have been here for four years and I have not seen it. Please direct me to where, exactly, this proof of "fallacy" has been posted. Otherwise I must conclude that this is just one of your only two tricks of debate.
How on earth can you call these traditional Catholic priests "schismatic" even before some renegade bishops in Rome moved against them? Your deceitful and hateful nature comes out most clearly in this above quote. At the time, they were certainly not -- even in your twisted definition -- "schismatic." They were saying the Mass as it had always been said. Or is it your contention that the Mass for all time is itself schismatic? Was Pope St. Pius an evil deceiver when he proclaimed the Roman Rite as the only rite, to hold "for all eternity", and that those who defied this would suffer eternal death? Was Pope St. Pius V an evil liar? I am sure you won't answer this, as your whole absurd and twisted logic would fall on its face. The contortions you people twist yourself into to justify a Pastoral Council whose fruits have been nothing but destruction and desolation.
I am begining to think it is you and your Vatican II adherents who are the real "smoke of Satan" that Pope Paul VI was speaking about having entered the Council and the Church. It is you and your type who seek to push forward with this revolution that is devouring the Church, leaving its once-faithful faithless, emptying its semanaries, and so on. Anyone who would cheer the objective decline of the Catholic Church since Vatican II is truly an enemy of the Light, an enemy of Christ, and an enemy of His Church.
Z: Your second paragraph merits no response as being transparently ludicrous except insofar as it demonstrates yet again that rebellion is your religion that you yourself have become the strange god that you have before the One and Only God, etc.
Z: Your first paragraph is factually wrong in several respects. I got my copy of Pope St. Pius V's papal bull Quo Primum at the chapel in Woodside, Queens, New York, of Fr. Gomar DePauw, on the occasion of the Mass he said on the afternoon of the day when Pope John Paul I's election was announced. A group of us drove down from Connecticut to hear, after twenty desperately long years of Pope John XXIII (aggiornamento and all that) and Pope Paul VI (The US war in Vietnam is an exercise in racist genocide, etc.) what Fr. DePauw might say as to Venice Patriarch Albino Luciani's election as pope. Fr. DePauw was pleased and, in fact jubilant. The bull was troubling in its claim to bind all future popes not as to faith and/or morals but as to the prudential matter of the details of the Mass. As such, the bull exceeded Pope St. Pius V's authority. As the lawyers say: it was an ultra vires (beyond his powers) act in that respect and particularly when he purported to excommunicate in advance those not yet born who might change the Tridentine missal in any way. Then again, even Pope St. Pius V did not limit the Mass to what you reference as "the Roman Rite." The Ambrosian rite of the Dominicans persisted under him (a Dominican pope, if I am not mistaken) as did several others. Quite similar rites but not identical.
Although I often attend novus ordo Masses, I belong to a thoroughly Tridentine Oratory in Rockford. Your suggestion that I find the Tridentine Mass itself "schismatic" ought to be a source of embarassment to you, but you are beyond any well-deserved experience of personal embarassment for making a fool out of yourself in public. Pope St. Pius V most certainly was NOT an evil liar as his posthumous first name would indicate. As to how I can call those unrepentant narcissistic defiantly disobedient SSPX Econe products and the excommunicatos who ordained them "schismatic", it is because they were and most still are.
To both of you, you are the tails that attempt to wag the dog. The real fight is within the Church but you both seem to imagine yourselves too, too pure and precious for that fight and so you have separated yuourselves from the Church in which it is fought. One more self-worshipping isolated little group of malcontents who think themselves conscientious objectors in the war for the Church which is and always has been the backbone of Western Civilization. But your consciences are dead, as to JP II your tongues are not civil, and your objections are too transparent by far for further consideration. Be gone!
You and I are making the obvious mistake of indulging their impertinent fantasies. All we are doing is cooperating in helping them advertise their schism. If no one pays attention and no one prolongs the discussion that they seek they will have assumed their legitimate posture of asses braying in the wilderness, don't you think?
(Calms down) ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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