SSPX communique to Rome

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark1970
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
40.png
TimothyH:
I saw the signature and thought it was Brother JR arguing with himself. 😃

It took a few moments for me to figure it out.

-Tim-

I did the same thing.
 
God bless you Br JR and the Franciscans, as well as all who choose religious life for the kingdom of God.
 
triumphguy said:
…

These are the TRADITIONAL Catholics, laying down their lives for the friends!

Read about them. Pray for them. Talk about them. Share their stories.

When they face their Maker and Judge will He ask the priests among them if they said mass ad orientem? No, He will clothe them in Martyrs’ robes of Glory.
Click to expand...
You’re comparing chalk with cheese here. Traditionalists would like actions at a mass to be consistent with the idea of the priest offering a sacrifice on behalf of the people. Ad-orientem is one way to show this. You face the East, the rising sun and thus, symbolically, Christ.

It’s a common argument, 'though. “God is great, so the details don’t matter”. Do this for 40 years and dancing at mass will be normalised. A Catholic has the right to expect the mass he attends, anywhere, to be said according to the mind of the Church, not the feeeeeeeeeelings of local notables.
 
ITriumphguy’s point was that Catholics who have followed the Church’s guidance and are celebrating the OF Mass, have stillbeen formed enough and love their Church and God enough to lay down their lives for Christ. Martyrdom and great Saints did not end in 1964.

And as Br JR said, while Mass (OF and EF, and all other rites) and the Eurcharist confected there *IS *the source and summit of our faith, Christ also instructed us to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. We know that faith without works is dead. So we are all called to both avoid true abuse in liturgy, but to also do the good works that mark us as being obedient to Christ.

I continue to pray for the return of the SSPX priests and the laity that follow them. For the good of their souls. Just as I pray for the reunification of all of Christanity under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome.
 
RogerDeCourcy said:
You’re comparing chalk with cheese here. Traditionalists would like actions at a mass to be consistent with the idea of the priest offering a sacrifice on behalf of the people. Ad-orientem is one way to show this. You face the East, the rising sun and thus, symbolically, Christ.

It’s a common argument, 'though. “God is great, so the details don’t matter”. Do this for 40 years and dancing at mass will be normalised. A Catholic has the right to expect the mass he attends, anywhere, to be said according to the mind of the Church, not the feeeeeeeeeelings of local notables.
Click to expand...
The point is much bigger than mass facing east or south. The point is that we already have priests who celebrate the Extraordinary Form who have been obedient to the Church and who have suffered a great deal during these last 50 years and many in the traditionalist movement are talking up the SSPX as if 500 priests can turn the Church around, forgetting the hundreds of thousands of priests, brothers, sisters and laymen who have labored, suffered and have given their lives for the faith.

It’s not that we don’t want the 500 who will celebrate the EF. It’s that there is an issue of equity here. You can’t just sit there and say that an ad orientem mass is far more important to the heart and mind of God than the sufferings and hard work to keep the faith of so many thousands or millions of people.

The equitable thing to say is that it would be good to have the SSPX home for their spiritual good and for the good of the Church, because, WE CAN ALWAYS USE AN EXTRA PAIR OF HANDS, not because we don’t have anyone as Catholic or a faithful to the mass as the SSPX. That’s not true. Find me one SSPX priest who can outshine Mother Teresa of Calcutta in holiness and service for the Gospel. Find an SSPX priest who has suffered as much as the FSSP priests have suffered inside the Church. Find me an SSPX community of laity or clergy that has done as much for the cause of the Gospel as the Dominicans, Franciscans, Salesians, Augustinians, Carmelites, Missionaries of the Poor, Missioanries of Charity.

What the above poster is trying to tell us is that many of the true heroes of our faith go unrecognized, such as the martyrs in the Middle East, while many are cheering for an institute that has operated in a very comfortable bubble.

It is very easy to be very orthodox, when the only people who come near you are of like mind, when no one is pointing a gun to your head or threatening to blow up your homes, when there are no dissenters among your ranks, when you can thumb your nose at authority because you have no vow of obedience to anyone except to yourself, when the people whom you serve come to you for their sacramental needs and take all of their other material and spiritual needs to the rest of the diocese or other religious to solve.

The SSPX looks great, because it does not run soup kitchens, dodge bombs, get pulled out of bed at night by flying bullets in a dug infested neighborhood, its women religious are not raped by street gangs, it has a squadron of religious brothers who are valets and servants to the priests, liberating the priests to celebrate sacraments and it gives people the mass that they want. I can’t say it gives them the true mass, as that would be false. The Ordinary Form is a valid and as efficacious. The choice between the OF and EF is another choice, just as is the choice between the Franciscan form and the Dominican form.

The point is that if we want to the SSPX to come back and we want it to blend in well, we have to be fair to everyone. We have to acknowledge the strengths and courage of those who have stayed with the Church during these stormy years and we have to be careful not to place expectations on the SSPX clergy that they will be unable to meet.

Remember, if they come in as a prelature, they will have all of the material and spiritual obligations that any diocese has, but none of the help. They cannot turn people away and send them to the Franciscan soup kitchen, the homeless shelter of the Missionaries of Charity, or send away anyone who disagrees with how they teach the catechism, or limit themselves to working only in safe neighborhoods and safe cities. A prelature has to be all over the world. If the SSPX priests are expected to be super heroes, then they are being setup for failure by their own constituency. How is that fair to them? How is that respectful to the rest of us, especially the martyrs?

That’s the point that the post above you is making.

You will still have mass facing east, sitting next to someone who smells of alcohol, who has been sleeping in a brothel, whose home was bombed by radical rebels, who disagrees with the catechism that your catechist are using and with a pregnant teenager who is considering abortion. Once you’re a prelature, you’re an open organization. You can’t live in a bubble and you cannot turn these folks over to the local diocese. Once they step onto your property, they are your moral and canonical responsibility. The Church expects you to say the mass facing east and to distribute your human and financial resources to solve these problems too.

That’s the point that cannot be forgotten here. If we believe that the SSPX coming home is all about orthodox masses and catechesis, without dirtying one’s hands, we’re deceiving ourselves and setting up the SSPX for failure. They will die if they fail to respond. What has kept the mendicants alive for 1000 years has been the balance between stability and change.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, FFV 🙂
 
Again, it’s comparing chalk with cheese: mass ad-orientem as something that must be trumped by the social work the Church does or by its martyrs(?) Why can’t we have both? :juggle:

I wasn’t talking about the SSPX, when replying to that poster. If the SSPX is regularised, it will be nice to have more masses to go to where you don’t have to wonder if they’re being done correctly. As a symbolic act, it will say that the rigour they represent is not now considered dubious in the Church.

Hopefully, it will also signal that one can say the Tridentine mass without being penalised in your career chances.
 
Mrs_Sally said:
ITriumphguy’s point was that Catholics who have followed the Church’s guidance and are celebrating the OF Mass, have stillbeen formed enough and love their Church and God enough to lay down their lives for Christ. Martyrdom and great Saints did not end in 1964.

And as Br JR said, while Mass (OF and EF, and all other rites) and the Eurcharist confected there *IS *the source and summit of our faith, Christ also instructed us to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. We know that faith without works is dead. So we are all called to both avoid true abuse in liturgy, but to also do the good works that mark us as being obedient to Christ.

I continue to pray for the return of the SSPX priests and the laity that follow them. For the good of their souls. Just as I pray for the reunification of all of Christanity under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome.
Click to expand...
Not only that but many of those communities celebrate the OF extremely reverently. Certainly at any Benedictine monastery that I’ve been to the OF has been celebrated in an exemplary manner. Different charisms in the Church have different functions, and the form of the Mass has little to do with our obligation to Christian charity or the obligations of the various religious communities to their charisms.
RogerDeCourcy said:
Again, it’s comparing chalk with cheese: mass ad-orientem as something that must be trumped by the social work the Church does or by its martyrs(?) Why can’t we have both? :juggle:
Click to expand...
I have yet to see a cogent case about why we need ad orientem in all circumstances. And not all religious communities have a tradition of ad orientem, even in the pre-Vatican II days. Maybe I’m wrong but I see in your desires a very strongly “standardized” Church that, while it may reduce abuse, will also reduce the variety that exists between communities.
RogerDeCourcy said:
I wasn’t talking about the SSPX, when replying to that poster. If the SSPX is regularised, it will be nice to have more masses to go to where you don’t have to wonder if they’re being done correctly. As a symbolic act, it will say that the rigour they represent is not now considered dubious in the Church.

Hopefully, it will also signal that one can say the Tridentine mass without being penalised in your career chances.
Click to expand...
Hopefully our priests and religious don’t see their vocation as a “career choice” although human nature being what it is, no doubt some do. In any case a priest of a religious community is bound to celebrate the Mass in the manner his superior dictates. If the abbot or prior says “in this community we celebrate the OF Mass versus populum”, that’s how he’s bound to celebrate it.

And again, liturgical rigour has nothing to do with the form of the Mass, nor is it considered dubious to be liturgically rigorous even in the OF. Any Mass at a monastery of the Solesmes congregation should put paid to that theory; most celebrate the OF, a couple the EF, and regardless of form, they celebrate it with great care, dignity and beauty. Nor does the form of the Mass have anything to do with a priest who mumbles/mangles the Latin in the EF, or where the EF Mass choir isn’t particularly talented or edifying. You’re dreaming if you think a massive return to celebrating the EF will mean perfect Masses everywhere.
 
We need ad-orientem because it makes sense in the context of what a Mass is; an offering, towards a god. Versus-populum says to the laity: “This is directed towards you”.

I said saying the TLM /EFcan affect career chances, not choices i.e. the chance for advancement. It will be nice, when, hopefully, with changing personnel and the reguliarsation of the SSPX, that tendency can be banished for good.
 
RogerDeCourcy said:
Again, it’s comparing chalk with cheese: mass ad-orientem as something that must be trumped by the social work the Church does or by its martyrs(?) Why can’t we have both? :juggle:

I wasn’t talking about the SSPX, when replying to that poster. If the SSPX is regularised, it will be nice to have more masses to go to where you don’t have to wonder if they’re being done correctly. As a symbolic act, it will say that the rigour they represent is not now considered dubious in the Church.

Hopefully, it will also signal that one can say the Tridentine mass without being penalised in your career chances.
Click to expand...
I am positive that those who are willing to lay down their life for their faith are also devout in worship and prayer.
 
RogerDeCourcy said:
We need ad-orientem because it makes sense in the context of what a Mass is; an offering, towards a god. Versus-populum says to the laity: “This is directed towards you”.
Click to expand...
vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20111947_mediator-dei_en.html
  1. The worship rendered by the Church to God must be, in its entirety, interior as well as exterior. It is exterior because the nature of man as a composite of body and soul requires it to be so. Likewise, because divine Providence has disposed that “while we recognize God visibly, we may be drawn by Him to love of things unseen.”[26] Every impulse of the human heart, besides, expresses itself naturally through the senses; and the worship of God, being the concern not merely of individuals but of the whole community of mankind, must therefore be social as well. This obviously it cannot be unless religious activity is also organized and manifested outwardly. Exterior worship, finally, reveals and emphasizes the unity of the mystical Body, feeds new fuel to its holy zeal, fortifies its energy, intensifies its action day by day: “for although the ceremonies themselves can claim no perfection or sanctity in their won right, they are, nevertheless, the outward acts of religion, designed to rouse the heart, like signals of a sort, to veneration of the sacred realities, and to raise the mind to meditation on the supernatural. They serve to foster piety, to kindle the flame of charity, to increase our faith and deepen our devotion. They provide instruction for simple folk, decoration for divine worship, continuity of religious practice. They make it possible to tell genuine Christians from their false or heretical counterparts.”[27]
Click to expand...
  1. But the chief element of divine worship must be interior. For we must always live in Christ and give ourselves to Him completely, so that in Him, with Him and through Him the heavenly Father may be duly glorified. The sacred liturgy requires, however, that both of these elements be intimately linked with each another. This recommendation the liturgy itself is careful to repeat, as often as it prescribes an exterior act of worship. Thus we are urged, when there is question of fasting, for example, “to give interior effect to our outward observance.”[28] Otherwise religion clearly amounts to mere formalism, without meaning and without content.
Click to expand...
 
RogerDeCourcy said:
We need ad-orientem because it makes sense in the context of what a Mass is; an offering, towards a god. Versus-populum says to the laity: “This is directed towards you”.

I said saying the TLM /EFcan affect career chances, not choices i.e. the chance for advancement. It will be nice, when, hopefully, with changing personnel and the reguliarsation of the SSPX, that tendency can be banished for good.
Click to expand...
I’m just gonna throw this out there… I grew up with the OF versus populum and never once did the versus populum make me think the Mass was directed at the congregation. 🤷 I was always aware that the Eucharist is the centre and focus of the Mass which itself is the sacrifical offering of Christ made present again to his followers. This is despite attending the OF, in English, without chant or Latin hymns, versus populum, 30 min max Masses that I attended in jeans. ( I think I added in most of the things more traditionally leaning Catholics tend to complain about ;)) Yet somehow none of that made it any harder for me to know what the focus of the Mass is, or the importance of reverence and silent prayer etc.
 
Cardinal Burke prefect of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature and a former archbishop of St. Louis.
On the other hand, Cardinal Burke says, the practice of reading scriptural passages in modern languages has been a “tremendous gift” of the post-Vatican II liturgy that should be incorporated in the Tridentine Mass.** And he says that the newer version of the Mass, in which the priest typically faces the congregation, can encourage a deeper appreciation of the “transparent devotion” with which priests should celebrate both forms of the liturgy.**
Click to expand...
 
RogerDeCourcy said:
We need ad-orientem because it makes sense in the context of what a Mass is; an offering, towards a god. Versus-populum says to the laity: “This is directed towards you”.

I said saying the TLM /EFcan affect career chances, not choices i.e. the chance for advancement. It will be nice, when, hopefully, with changing personnel and the reguliarsation of the SSPX, that tendency can be banished for good.
Click to expand...
You’re missing the point that people are trying to help you with.

First: You are never going to have every mass facing East, because it was never done that way to begin with. You probably grew up with secular clergy and that’s the way they did it. If you had grown up where I grew up, with friars, we had mass facing the people, because we did not use the Tridentine Form. The priest gathered around the altar with his brothers and the laity sat in the pews facing them. The brothers sat on both sides of the altar in choir stalls that face each other. They were looking at the priest from the side.

Second: There are plenty of places that have the mass facing the congregation with a great deal of reverence and no one feels that it’s thrown out there for them. That’s an over generalization of a personal feeling.

Third: The question on the table for this thread is the SSPX response to Rome. The comments that I made were in response to how some people feel that the SSPX is the solution to all of our problems and the only faithful Catholic institute in the Church. You have failed to address the question on the table. You keep wanting to talk about mass facing East.

Whether they face East or South, the question remains the same. Is the current attitude by many traditionalists, that only the SSPX has been faithful to tradition and to the Church legitimate and just?

Fraternally,

Br.JR, FFV 🙂
 
I wanted to address the career advancement point separately. There is no connection between the form of the mass and career advancement. I’ll give a few simple examples.

The FSSP celebrates only the EF. They have pastorships and hold other offices in the Church.

My religious order has the EF. When it came time to appoint a superior general, guess what? They appointed me. I’m a theologian, not a priest. I don’t celebrate mass. I govern those who do. Do they feel that none of them were appointed superior general because they celebrate the EF? No, they do not? Why not? Because the person who gave them permission to celebrate the EF was the superior general and he can take it away. SP does not apply to them. Therefore, the EF has nothing to do with holding certain positions.

The bishop of my diocese celebrates the EF. He is an Archbishop, a Metropolitan and the president of the local episcopal conference and very dearly loved. Yet, he ordaind 14 men since he became bishop and all of them declined the invitation to celebrate the EF. This would have been great opportunity for these men. Their bishop celebrates it. They trained in it. I know, because I teach it. Their response was, “No thank you.” One of the seminarians asked me, “Brother, do I have to celebrate the EF, just because the faithful feel that it’s beneficial to them?”

My answer was very honest. “Why do you want to be a priest?”

He responded. “For the salvation of my soul.”

My response, “Right answer. Therefore, your first duty is to do whatever is necessary and helpful for the salvation of your soul. A lost priest will have a much more difficult time saving souls.”

His answer, “I get what I need from the OF.”

My answer, “Then celebrate the OF,but do it by the book.”

End of story.

This has nothing to do with career advancement. It does not work that way as you can see from the examples I’ve given. Please God don’t ever let the priesthood and religious life be tied into career advancement. We have seen the damage that can be done to the souls of such religious and priests.

Fraternally,

Br.JR, FFV 🙂
 
thewanderer said:
I’m just gonna throw this out there… I grew up with the OF versus populum and never once did the versus populum make me think the Mass was directed at the congregation. 🤷 I was always aware that the Eucharist is the centre and focus of the Mass which itself is the sacrifical offering of Christ made present again to his followers. This is despite attending the OF, in English, without chant or Latin hymns, versus populum, 30 min max Masses that I attended in jeans. ( I think I added in most of the things more traditionally leaning Catholics tend to complain about ;)) Yet somehow none of that made it any harder for me to know what the focus of the Mass is, or the importance of reverence and silent prayer etc.
Click to expand...
That would be my experience too. Our OF masses have been longer though probably in view of the number in the congregation.
 
JReducation said:
You’re missing the point that people are trying to help you with.

First: You are never going to have every mass facing East, because it was never done that way to begin with. You probably grew up with secular clergy and that’s the way they did it. If you had grown up where I grew up, with friars, we had mass facing the people, because we did not use the Tridentine Form. The priest gathered around the altar with his brothers and the laity sat in the pews facing them. The brothers sat on both sides of the altar in choir stalls that face each other. They were looking at the priest from the side.

Second: There are plenty of places that have the mass facing the congregation with a great deal of reverence and no one feels that it’s thrown out there for them. That’s an over generalization of a personal feeling.

Third: The question on the table for this thread is the SSPX response to Rome. The comments that I made were in response to how some people feel that the SSPX is the solution to all of our problems and the only faithful Catholic institute in the Church. You have failed to address the question on the table. You keep wanting to talk about mass facing East.

Whether they face East or South, the question remains the same. Is the current attitude by many traditionalists, that only the SSPX has been faithful to tradition and to the Church legitimate and just?

Fraternally,

Br.JR, FFV 🙂
Click to expand...
A great post, Brother, thank you.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top