I do try not to comment too much in this thread because it tends to get heated (and uncharitable) on both sides (myself included).
Just because official or semi-official statements are released does not mean there is not a lot of backroom conversations that are going on between both Bishop Fellay and the Vatican.
This Pope wants reconciliation. The next Pope? Who knows.
Every pope has to want reconciliation. This is not a choice that a pope is free to walk away from. That’s his job. He gets paid to keep the Church as one, to put it in very blunt American English. Whether it’s this one or the next, they will always want reconciliation, but on their terms, not those of the SSPX.
The SSPX are not the Orthodox. The Orthodox can set their terms and conditions. They are apostolic Churches with valid and licit sacraments. The SSPX claims to be Catholic; therefore, it cannot dictate to the Holy See it’s terms, because all Catholic organizations are subordinate to the Holy See. Herein lays the problem. Some of them want to dictate to the Holy See. Some things that I have read on Fisheaters and other sites make me laugh. They talk as if they were speaking about the US Congress where the governed dictate to the legislators. Good luck with that attitude and the Holy See.
Pope Benedict knows that if he does not bring them home, the next pope will try and the next and so forth, because it’s the pope’s job to try. Therefore, he does not have to give in, because he’s not in a hurry. He’s on the inside already.
It’s also very interesting that he has assigned two men who are going to give the SSPX a run for their money, if they blow this as Father Z said. Archbishop Mueller is not willing to keep talking indefinitely. The SSPX has literally accused him of heresy. That is not the brightest move in the world. You’re trying to reconcile with the Holy See and you accuse the pope’s number one man of heresy? How does that work?
They also made a incomplete accusation about him. They claimed that he did not want their seminary in his diocese, suggested that their seminarians return to their own diocese and treated them like lepers.
They failed to mention that they treated him like the dirt over which lepers pass. They were told that they could not open a seminary without the permission of the local bishop. They thumbed their nose at the bishop and at the Vatican. That would explain why he made those comments after the seminary was up and running.
They charge him with saying that the bishops should retire. They forget to say the entire comment. He said that any bishop who is ordained illegally and wants to do the right thing, should retire to a life of penance for having committed one of the most serious sins against the Primacy of Peter.
They should take whatever Cardinal Levada delivered to them and work with it.
Archbishop DiNoia has already said that there is no reason that there has to be an agreement for them to be on the inside. He gave the perfect example. The Dominicans and the Jesuits explain grace diametrically opposed. They quarreled about it for more than 100 years until the pope threatened to punish both of them if they did not stop calling each other heretics. When they asked the pope to define with position on grace was the correct one, the pope’s answer was that he was not going to do that. They both had to live with their respective definitions. When asked why later popes have never said which position is the correct one, the last answer came from Cardinal Ratzinger who said, that the Church owes too much to the Dominicans and the Jesuits to take sides on an argument where there can be more than one position.
Archbishoop DiNoia, being a good son of St. Dominic is proposing to them that they do the same as the Dominicans have done. The Dominicans take certain positions that the Church does not support or deny, because they’re the Dominicans and no pope is going to engage with Dominicans, Franciscans, Opus Dei, Benedictines, Jesuits and Salesians. Their numbers are enough to populate a small country and their positions are conflicting, but none of them are heresy. Why create a cat fest when it’s unnecessary is what Archbishop DiNoia is telling them.
While it’s true that the pope wants this reconciliation, these appointments also say that his patience is not infinite. He has appointed two very strong minded men. Archbishop Mueller takes no prisoners. Archbishop DiNoia gives you the way out of an impasse. If you don’t take it; there is not much he can do for you.
I do remember seeing Cardinal Ratzinger angry. He was one of my professors. The one thing that sets off his fireworks is when a student asks a question. He expects his students to understand it the first time or withdraw from his classes. He did not play games in school. I believe that this Q & A situation with the SSPX will at some push his buttons.
I was only precising what the polemic is about. I was reading again about the topic, and It seems that he also doubt the six million number, so are two things.
Blessings!
The pope has already given bishops and every religious superior our marching orders on that point. We are to put distance between this position and ourselves and Catholicism. Besides, we have one canonized saint to prove there were gas chambers. That blows the statement, “No one died in gas chambers.”
The missing 6 million Jews and 4 million Gentiles went somewhere. Spaceships did not beam them away. There are people holding birth certificates, marriage certificates, passports and even baptism certificates, for people who were arrested by the Nazis and were never seen again.
How can anyone with logic explain that one. Either they were killed or they went into hiding and never surfaced again. They just didn’t banish.
The exact number is always going to be off even by thousands, but not by a million or more. There are too many families out here who have paperwork, but no loved ones. My grandparents had five birth certificates to five sons who were arrested by Nazis, whom no one ever saw again. My uncles didn’t just beam up into a mother ship. They were kids between 8 and 17.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
I have posted numerous times about this very thing. Those who are lucky enough to live in places where there is orthodoxy just dont seem to grasp how bad it is in many places I have been. I have lived in the diocese of Seattle, Montana, Portland, and Boise and I can assure you that it is pretty hard to find a Mass that does not have some sort of modern invention, usually by the laity. A full on rock band singing the Christian rock top 20 at Mass, Across the isle hand holding, poor chatechisis, liberal agendas, Homilies calling for gay marriage, priests telling parishioners that a good Catholic should vote for Obama, and the worst of all is the suppression and exclusion of anyone with a traditionalist lean. The MP was looked at with joy but has been suppressed in my current diocese. There are 8 parishes in my vicinity, not one is allowed to have a TLM. There are priests who specifically ask to do it and are told no. The MP Mass is once a month 5 hours and hundreds of miles away from any major population center. The reason we are given for this is that if they have a TLM then it will cause confusion and division in the cookie cutter parishes we all have. However there are masses in just my parish in the following languages. English, Polish, Basque, Spanish, Portuguese. Not to mention a mass specifically targeted at an agegroup, a seven year age group, teens. But Latin would apparently divide us. If you are a 13 year old Polish person you are covered!
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