Vatican Reminder: Sspx Ordinations Are Illegitimate

[Mr.Cat]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1314889481' post='2298633']I guess I did. Sorry.[/quote]The sarcastic point I was making was along the lines of...

All these splinter groups have formed claiming to be Catholic, when they don't follow the Pope, which is one of the most prominent part of being a Catholic. So much so that Catholics were called in a derogatory tone Papists, to show their close connection to the Pope, implying that they were subjects or puppets of the Popes. So these splinter groups that claim to be Catholic, can't really be called Papists, because they don't follow the Pope. One of the most defining aspect of being a Catholic...

[Papist]

[quote name='Mr.Cat' timestamp='1314890288' post='2298638']
The sarcastic point I was making was along the lines of...

All these splinter groups have formed claiming to be Catholic, when they don't follow the Pope, which is one of the most prominent part of being a Catholic. So much so that Catholics were called in a derogatory tone Papists, to show their close connection to the Pope, implying that they were subjects or puppets of the Popes. So these splinter groups that claim to be Catholic, can't really be called Papists, because they don't follow the Pope. One of the most defining aspect of being a Catholic...


[/quote]
I get it. Thanks for the clarity.

[Amppax]

[quote name='bernard' timestamp='1314863616' post='2298523']

Its odd that bishop Williamson is often described by mainstream Catholics as being "extreme". I think they would be better to explain why he is incorrect as whether he is extreme or not is beside the point.
[/quote]

Holocaust denial is extreme. In case you didn't get that memo.

[Skinzo]

[quote name='MIkolbe' timestamp='1314886152' post='2298612']
I did not judge you, I asked a queston, stop deflecting.

You can be skeptical or you can have hope. not both.

which one do you have? (as it relates to this situation)

If it's the former, That's sad. If it's the latter, I pray you have the strength to let that hope permeate you and your writings.
[/quote]


I am not deflecting. Your post contains rhetorical questions which amount to suggestions that go too far I still think. I'll disagree on that. I have never pretended to entertain hope the situation is going to improve. I have stated very clearly that I am skeptical the situation with the SSPX is going to be resolved anytime soon. That's not sad, that's reasonable given the history of the situation and the fact that Fellay hmself does not think an agreement with Rome is possible anytime soon. Fellay is not alone in his judgment. It seems it is also shared by Pope Benedict XVI. In a post I made here in 2010 Cardinal Kasper reported that the talks were not going well, and that Pope Benedict was losing sleep over the situation.
http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/105049-pope-losing-sleep-over-sspx-talks/
You may consider the pope "sad" and lacking in hope if you wish as well.

S.

[Skinzo]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1314886328' post='2298613']

I love the Holy Father too and all the 21 Ecumenical Councils.

You seem to be communicating that you are studying up on Falley and the SSPX, which I find very curious for someone who detest them.
[/quote]

I did not say I detest them. I do study Fellay and the SSPX, yes, I wish to understand the whole controversy. I don't see why that is a problem.

S.

[MIKolbe]

have hope, brother.

[Skinzo]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1314884583' post='2298608']
I have indeed read that entire interview, I chose the first quote but I would have been equally satisfied using that quote as well. indeed he wanted to make it understood in Rome, that is, the Catholic faith as the SSPX understands it, as it believes contradicts the current statements.

will you stop accusing me of not having read Fellay's words already? my goodness.
[/quote]

I thought you had missed it. But it does show Fellay wants to teach Rome, which I think is absurd. Perhaps this quote from a Reuters news article in 2010 better clarifies the thought of Bishop Fellay on the doctrinal talks and Vatican II:

SSPX head Bishop Bernard Fellay said in March the Vatican theologians "wish the Church well but also want to save the Second Vatican Council -- that's like squaring a circle."

S.

Edited September 1, 2011 by Skinzo

[Skinzo]

[quote name='MIkolbe' timestamp='1314903697' post='2298742']
have hope, brother.
[/quote]

I have not lost hope, but my hope is in Christ.

S.

[MIKolbe]

quaint.

[Skinzo]

[quote name='MIkolbe' timestamp='1314905267' post='2298751']
quaint.
[/quote]
Actually, it's Scriptural.

[font="Times New Roman,Times"][color="#CC0000"]Matthew 12:21[/color][/font]
[font="Times New Roman,Times"][color="#CC0000"] And in his name the Gentiles shall [/color][color="#3333FF"]hope[/color][color="#CC0000"].[/color][/font]

S.

[MithLuin]

As I see it, Fellay is in a difficult position.

The SSPX has spent the past 40 years lambasting the pope(s) and the 2nd Vatican Council and the activities of the 'mainstream' Church. The hypercritical, they are soooo wrong, we are the last bastion of hope, etc. rhetoric has been non-stop.

Now, he's in talks with the Vatican.

So, what does he say to his people? The ones he's been telling the Church needed to wake up and learn a lesson and hearken back to...? Obviously, he has to say, 'great news! I have a chance to pass on this message to Rome! And maybe even the whole Church!' All of his statements have sounded like, 'God's listened to us!'

I don't want to call that a charade, but it is the way the SSPX has spoken to its followers for some time, and any drastic change in style would be rejected. If Fellay came back and said, 'Talks with Rome are going very well. I think we'll be able to regularize everything soon,' his people would just scream at him that he's a sell-out, that Rome got to him, that he values earthly prestige more than Truth and Tradition. Etc. That would be...less than helpful. If they do get regularized, he's going to want them to feel like they 'won.'

The talks in question are being held privately. It's possible that Fellay takes the exact same attitude he expresses to his followers into that room with him. It's possible he's there to argue that the SSPX has been right all along and the Church needs him...I mean, them. If so...I don't see Rome being terribly impressed with that attitude.

It's also possible he's going into the talks with a completely different attitude, and much more awareness of what's involved in this opportunity. Perhaps he shows a bit more humility and willingness to work with Rome towards a common goal of reconcilliation behind closed doors.

So, knowing that I don't know everything about these discussions, I am willing to be hopeful and wait-and-see.

But, no, the public actions of the SSPX have done very little to encourage my hope that complete reconciliation is nigh. That is...unfortunate, but it's not over yet. I can keep hoping, despite that. At the end of the day, it's up to Rome to decide whether or not we can be in full communion with the SSPX. I await that decision, and will not presume to know what it will be at this juncture.

Edited September 1, 2011 by MithLuin

[Aloysius]

I have not defended the SSPX's actions, but throughout this whole thread I have tried to show that the SSPX's actions are NOT the same as Protestant reformers (going back to my posted analogies about the prodigal son who builds his own house to follow the rules more strictly, or the group that goes back to the entrance to the dark forest where there is light rather than continuing to wander in the darkness looking for the other side). the angry polemic that makes the SSPX out to be "just as bad" as liberal dissident groups or protestant revolutionaries is just plain wrong. they share only one thing in common, disobedience to canonical requirements.

but it remains an INTERNAL matter within the Church, as Pope Benedict insists. they do not wildly run around making up their own doctrines, they submit themselves to magisterial teachings as they were understood prior to the Second Vatican Council. which is not at all like picking and choosing what you like and do not like; and it's not some type of antiquarianism where you oppose the Church because you think you've found some secret in the bowels of the Church's ancient history that you can ressurect to justify contradicting the current magisterium; the SSPX has a direct organic connection to the period prior to the Council, they didn't dig something up, they're doing their best to try to pass on to the next generation what has been passed on to them.

this is a perspective which is absolutely vital, that while we disagree with them, we should have pity and sympathy and understanding. angry polemics about how their disobedience (which is very limited in scope, it is disobedience to certain canonical requirements of jurisdiction and faculties which they have done because they sincerely believe a crisis warrents it) is "just the same" as liberal disobedience (which is broad in scope to the point of rejecting dogmas that truly anathematize them) is unhelpful and unnecessary.

[Aloysius]

oh and Mith, I think you definitely "get" the position of Fellay, that's something Fr. Z tends to speculate about when Fellay is acting cordial one minute but throwing out a seemingly radical statement the next; though it's not wholly just about appeasing his followers, part of the rock and the hard place scenario is truly being honest with himself and his position; he doesn't want to just compromise and ignore the problems he has perceived unless there is a true satisfactory solution. so long as he sees rupture between what the Church says now and what the Church said then, he will refuse to be in union with that rupture. he thinks the talk of a hermeneutic of continuity is just trying to patch up the holes of ambiguity with square pegs for round holes; and when one knows in depth of the issues that cause him worry, one cannot help but see the point that it is indeed difficult. for instance; if subsistit is to be interpretted to mean the same as est, as the CDF has clarified in recent years, why cannot the SSPX think the term "subsistit" was at the very least an imprudent term. from Fellay's perspective, the CDF wants him to say subsistit isn't a problem because it basically means the same as est, but to agree that using subsistit was a good thing.

that's just an example that I don't mean to get bogged down in, I'm not saying he's right. I think the CDF's clarifications of subsistet are satisfactory, actually, and I don't have a problem with both est and subsistet being correct ways to say two different aspects of the same truth. but I can see how he can be dissatisfied with them, how it can look like the CDF's trying to fit the square peg "EST" into the round hole "SUBSISTET". understanding the issue from their perspective is not the same as agreeing with them.

Edited September 1, 2011 by Aloysius

[Skinzo]

Aloysius,
You claim the SSPX "does not wildly run around making up their own doctrines, they submit themselves to magisterial teachings as they were understood prior to the Second Vatican Council."
In fact as Pope Benedict has pointed out they have made up a doctrine which freezes Tradition in the year 1962. By separating tradition from the living Magisterium of the Church, the SSPX has indeed created a novel doctrine.
Paul VI's words are also relevant in this vein as he points out the Lefebvre wished to pick and choose what he wanted and did not want in Vatican II and that is not acceptable either:
"
[b]You say that you are subject to the church and faithful to tradition by the sole fact that you obey certain norms of the past that were decreed by the predecessor of him to whom God has today conferred the powers given to Peter. That is to say, on this point also, the concept of "tradition" that you invoke is distorted.[/b] [emphasis added].
Tradition is not a rigid and dead notion, a fact of a certain static sort which at a given moment of history blocks the life of this active organism which is the church, that is, the mystical body of Christ. It is up to the Pope and to councils to exercise judgment in order to discern in the traditions of the church that which cannot be renounced without infidelity to the Lord and to the Holy Spirit - the deposit of faith - and that which, on the contrary, can and must be adapted to facilitate the prayer and the mission of the church throughout a variety of times and places, in order better to translate the divine message into the language of today and better to communicate it, without an unwarranted surrender of principles.
Hence tradition is inseparable from the living magisterium of the church, just as it is inseparable from sacred scripture. "Sacred tradition, sacred scripture and the magisterium of the church . . . are so linked and joined together that one of these realities cannot exist without the others, and that all of them together, each in its own way, effectively contribute under the action of the Holy Spirit to the salvation of souls" (Constitution [i]Dei Verbum[/i], 10).
With the special assistance of the Holy Spirit, the popes and the ecumenical councils have acted in this common way. And it is precisely this that the Second Vatican Council did.[b] Nothing that was decreed in this Council, or in the reforms that we enacted in order to put the Council into effect, is opposed to what the 2,000-year-old tradition of the church considers as fundamental and immutable. We are the guarantor of this, not in virtue of Our personal qualities but in virtue of the charge which the Lord has conferred upon Us as legitimate successor of Peter, and in virtue of the special assistance that He has promised to Us as well as to Peter:[/b] "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail" (Lk. 22:32). The universal episcopate is guarantor with us of this.
Again, [b]you cannot appeal to the distinction between what is dogmatic and what is pastoral to accept certain texts of this Council and to refuse others.[/b] [emphasis added]. Indeed, not everything in the Council requires an assent of the same nature: only what is affirmed by definitive acts as an object of faith or as a truth related to faith requires an assent of faith. But the rest also forms part of the solemn magisterium of the church to which each member of the faithful owes a confident acceptance and a sincere application."
Letter of Pope Paul VI to Abp. Marcel Lefebvre, Oct. 11, 1976
[url="http://jloughnan.tripod.com/pvi2lefebvre.htm"]http://jloughnan.tri...vi2lefebvre.htm[/url]

I don't think a disobedience to the Magisterium since Vatican II is "limited" in scope. They have set themselves up as judges of what belongs to Tradition and what does not. That really usurps papal authority.

S.

Edited September 1, 2011 by Skinzo

[dominicansoul]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1314908762' post='2298776']
they do not wildly run around making up their own doctrines, they submit themselves to magisterial teachings as they were understood prior to the Second Vatican Council.


[/quote]

where does dis-obeying the Pope fall in the magisterial teachings as they were understood prior to the Second Vatican Council...?