Thank you for looking it up. I knew that I would not be able to handle navigating that forum. It did not seem, from the recent statements of Bishop Fellay (before the general chapter) that he was influenced by that sort of private revelation.
I hope that you are right, Justin, and that it’s much ado about nothing. You are correct that no proof is offered; however, one precision about what the Seer supposedly revealed was made - that the Rosary Crusade would not be answered while Menzingen is in dialogue with Rome. I find it a bit distressing, and I don’t believe for a moment that it’s really the BVM who “revealed” these things.
Thank God, sounds like a sudden outbreak of common sense.
Incidentally it all happened in the mid-90’s. Talk about scrabbling around to find some dirt.
I don’t believe that anyone is scrabbling around to find some dirt. I, for one, am concerned by the situation, as I already mentioned, because the situation may influence the negotiatons between Rome and the SSPX, which are fragile and complicated enough as it is.
I feel that we should all want to see this reconciliation take place and get this out of the way so that we can get on with other important Church matters. There is no argument there, not from any orthodox Catholic.
Great summary and commentary above on the SSPX situation, Br. JR.I feel that we should all want to see this reconciliation take place and get this out of the way so that we can get on with other important Church matters. There is no argument there, not from any orthodox Catholic.
Can this influence the negotiations between the SSPX and the Vatican? Maybe. Can they have a negative influence? Maybe. If they do, whose fault is that? It’s the SSPX’s fault. The Vatican does not have to justify itself to any institute or lay group. It does not have to accommodate to any institute or lay group. If anyone should walk on eggshells it should be the SSPX, because it’s the SSPX that can potentially be jettisoned right out of the Catholic Church, not the Vatican.
Archbishop DiNoia said that there are too many people paying too much attention to the feelings of the SSPX and the traditionalist movement. Our vision has to encompass the entire Church. He calls attention to the Dominican model. The SSPX has to learn to live with the fact that two sides can say the opposite and both be right.
If the Vatican feels that this was the right thing to do and the SSPX feels that it was not, one can fall back on the Dominican model. Both sides may be right and the discussion should be dropped at that point.
Instead of thinking how the Church is going to defend this or present that to make it palatable to the SSPX, we need to think of what does the SSPX have to learn to live with, just as many other institutes have learned to live with things with which they strongly disagree.
I’ll throw out a few examples of some very orthodox institutes that have had to live with things that they don’t buy into.
Franciscans – have never bought into the priest is to be singled out in the liturgy. So . . . they let everyone else do it in their liturgies, as long as it’s not done in a Franciscan house.
Dominicans – do not believe that there is a discontinuity in the Church before and after Vatican II. They never experienced it in their priories. They flowed along with the changes as the Prior mandated them and no one thought about it. In their mind, what’s the big deal? But they allow everyone else to rant and rave about a crisis that they believe is created by those who are not Dominicans.
Jesuits – everyone calls them heretics and heterodox, except the Holy Father and the Sacred Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the Sacred Congregation for the Faith. These bodies understand that the Jesuits were founded to rattle the boat. At times, some of their problem children rattle it too hard and it takes on water, but not enough to do damage to the Jesuit Order. So . . . Jesuits and Vatican agree to let everyone rant and rave
Jesuits and Dominicans – have opposing definitions of grace. The papacy decided that it does not want to get involved in the affairs of two of the most powerful religious orders in the Church. It ordered them to stop the arguing and accept that both sides can be right and accept that the papacy was not going to comment on the definition of grace to avoid a conflict. Everyone else, lives with these two definitions. Neither is heretical. They’re just different.
Cistercians – the Vatican said, “You must ordain more priests.” The Cistercians say, "This is not in the mind of St. Bernard. When the Vatican abrogates St. Bernard’s mandate to build a brotherhood of monks, not a brotherhood of priests, they’ll comply. The Vatican said, "We don’t want to involve ourselves in the internal affairs of male religious and stopped asking for the ordinations.
Like this, there are many situations where there is not agreement, but there is not disagreement either. You can’t disagree, if you decide that the discussion is over. This is what Archbishop DiNoia says that the SSPX needs to learn in order to live in the real Church. Otherwise, they will be waiting for a disagreement free church that has never existed. Work on the problems on which we agree and continue the discussion on those where we disagree until the Vatican says, “Discussion is over.”
We have to push in this direction rather than hoping that the Vatican will say and do the right things to bring the SSPX along. Obviously, we don’t want the Vatican to be cruel to them. But we don’t want the Vatican to give in to them either. Archbishop DiNoia is willing to facilitate the discussion. Archbishop Muller is willing to hear them out. Both have made it clear that they will not budge on inch on what has been said by the Vatican thus far.
They’re willing to teach the SSPX ways to hold on to what is dear to them and at the same time live alongside that which they don’t like. Let’s not be so concerned about this issue and concern ourselves with encouraging the SSPX to learn to live in an imperfect Church. The rest of us do it and we’re growing and doing well. We navigate around the silliness rather than fighting all the time.
Fraternally,
Br.JR, FFV
I think that what they want is for the Church to say, “You are right. We are wrong.”
I think you’re right. Though if the SSPX can be helped to see, as Br. JR said, that they can live in an imperfect Church, they might change their tune. But how, on a practical level, do we try to convince them of this?
This is what Bishop Fellay said in his letter the dissenters a few months back. He said that the Church has always lived in crisis. One replaces another and you can’t wait for it to be resolved to your satisfaction or you’ll never move.Great summary and commentary above on the SSPX situation, Br. JR.
I’d like to add to this that I agree that the Vatican does not have to justify itself to any institute or lay group, and that if anyone should be walking on eggshells, it should be the SSPX. I guess my main concern is the the SSPX doesn’t seem to see the issue of reconciliation for what it really is. They seem, IMO, to be living in ‘La-La-Land Traditionalist Utopia’ of their own making, and they expect the Church to have solved all of its problems before they will reconcile. It’s so frustrating to me that they don’t seem to see reality. I agree that we should encourage the SSPX to live in an imperfect Church (though I don’t believe that it is as imperfect as they think it is).
That is the mindset.
At this point I become like a dog. My ears perk up. Because I have to ask myself, “Who are you? By what authority do you say this? Show me the evidence.”
Now I’m thinking that there are no such creatures as Vatican II popes. There are Catholic popes and a few Orthodox popes. They identify themselves by their Church, not by an event. You must have an issue with a specific event and popes who approve of that event.
This is where I start to pull away from you. Any Catholic who needs to use such adolescent language to defend his position is not defending anything at all. He’s telling me what he thinks about the other, but has said nothing about why he’s right. He has not even defined the issue.
Then I ask, if you mean someone like someone like Bernard, Francis, Dominic, or Ignatius? “Oh, you mean yourself. How do you compare to these other men who enlightened the Church?”
What is “eternal Rome”?
So you’re a Catholic telling me to stay away from the Catholic Church. Should I become Orthodox or Old Catholic since they are the only other Churches with Apostolic Succession?
Thank you for your kind advice, but I don’t need anyone invading my mind and anticipating my choices. Please stay out of my head.
Wait a minute! The Church cannot teach error, even the Ordinary Magisterium cannot teach error. There can’t be errors in Vatican II.
Some of us would not mind having a clarification of the term “Ordinary Magisterium”. For example would the teachings of a bishop be considered as constituting a teaching of the “Ordinary Magisterium”? As we have seen on this forum, there are many statements which the bishops have given either by themselves or through the USCCB, and nevertheless, some Catholics are not agreeing with them.
Well, in this case, this Catholic Church meeting in ecumenical council can not propigate errors. Unfortunately, those that actually do hold the same mind as Lormar summarized may soon find themselves with too great a gulf between them and the sure truth of the Church. In which case, their eternal soul will be in jeopardy. Rejecting the Church is still rejecting the Church, whether it is in this millenium or anytime in the last 2000 years.
Clearly you are not a sympathizer of the SSPX, a position that you are certainly entitled to hold. However, since you have been rather quick to accuse others of unsubstantiated arguments I’d very much like to see the statistics you are reading that indicate that this “imperfect church” you speak of is “growing and doing well”. The stats that I’ve been privy to would seem to indicate otherwise (unless you are speaking only of the Franciscan Order, in which case I will take your word for it given your close affiliation). The assertion that the Church as a whole is healthy, flourishing and “growing and doing well” is simply not supported by the hard numbers, such as seminarians, women religious, Catholics who actually attend Mass on a regular basis, etc. If you want hard sources, fine. I will ask the same of you, however. One cannot simply bury one’s head in the sand and pretend everything is great, and if indeed everything is not great, naturally one must ask the question - why not?I feel that we should all want to see this reconciliation take place and get this out of the way so that we can get on with other important Church matters. There is no argument there, not from any orthodox Catholic.
Can this influence the negotiations between the SSPX and the Vatican? Maybe. Can they have a negative influence? Maybe. If they do, whose fault is that? It’s the SSPX’s fault. The Vatican does not have to justify itself to any institute or lay group. It does not have to accommodate to any institute or lay group. If anyone should walk on eggshells it should be the SSPX, because it’s the SSPX that can potentially be jettisoned right out of the Catholic Church, not the Vatican.
Archbishop DiNoia said that there are too many people paying too much attention to the feelings of the SSPX and the traditionalist movement. Our vision has to encompass the entire Church. He calls attention to the Dominican model. The SSPX has to learn to live with the fact that two sides can say the opposite and both be right.
If the Vatican feels that this was the right thing to do and the SSPX feels that it was not, one can fall back on the Dominican model. Both sides may be right and the discussion should be dropped at that point.
Instead of thinking how the Church is going to defend this or present that to make it palatable to the SSPX, we need to think of what does the SSPX have to learn to live with, just as many other institutes have learned to live with things with which they strongly disagree.
I’ll throw out a few examples of some very orthodox institutes that have had to live with things that they don’t buy into.
Franciscans – have never bought into the priest is to be singled out in the liturgy. So . . . they let everyone else do it in their liturgies, as long as it’s not done in a Franciscan house.
Dominicans – do not believe that there is a discontinuity in the Church before and after Vatican II. They never experienced it in their priories. They flowed along with the changes as the Prior mandated them and no one thought about it. In their mind, what’s the big deal? But they allow everyone else to rant and rave about a crisis that they believe is created by those who are not Dominicans.
Jesuits – everyone calls them heretics and heterodox, except the Holy Father and the Sacred Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the Sacred Congregation for the Faith. These bodies understand that the Jesuits were founded to rattle the boat. At times, some of their problem children rattle it too hard and it takes on water, but not enough to do damage to the Jesuit Order. So . . . Jesuits and Vatican agree to let everyone rant and rave
Jesuits and Dominicans – have opposing definitions of grace. The papacy decided that it does not want to get involved in the affairs of two of the most powerful religious orders in the Church. It ordered them to stop the arguing and accept that both sides can be right and accept that the papacy was not going to comment on the definition of grace to avoid a conflict. Everyone else, lives with these two definitions. Neither is heretical. They’re just different.
Cistercians – the Vatican said, “You must ordain more priests.” The Cistercians say, "This is not in the mind of St. Bernard. When the Vatican abrogates St. Bernard’s mandate to build a brotherhood of monks, not a brotherhood of priests, they’ll comply. The Vatican said, "We don’t want to involve ourselves in the internal affairs of male religious and stopped asking for the ordinations.
Like this, there are many situations where there is not agreement, but there is not disagreement either. You can’t disagree, if you decide that the discussion is over. This is what Archbishop DiNoia says that the SSPX needs to learn in order to live in the real Church. Otherwise, they will be waiting for a disagreement free church that has never existed. Work on the problems on which we agree and continue the discussion on those where we disagree until the Vatican says, “Discussion is over.”
We have to push in this direction rather than hoping that the Vatican will say and do the right things to bring the SSPX along. Obviously, we don’t want the Vatican to be cruel to them. But we don’t want the Vatican to give in to them either. Archbishop DiNoia is willing to facilitate the discussion. Archbishop Muller is willing to hear them out. Both have made it clear that they will not budge on inch on what has been said by the Vatican thus far.
They’re willing to teach the SSPX ways to hold on to what is dear to them and at the same time live alongside that which they don’t like. ** Let’s not be so concerned about this issue and concern ourselves with encouraging the SSPX to learn to live in an imperfect Church. The rest of us do it and we’re growing and doing well.** We navigate around the silliness rather than fighting all the time.
Fraternally,
Br.JR, FFV
I agree with Bro. JR on this, but I am not going to go digging around for the positive statistics. I post them as I see them in the news, the last being about two months ago, indicating that the Catholic Church is doing quite well statistically. The SSPX has done nothing but claim there is a crisis for the last forty years while the Church has been moving along just fine and dandy. It is a classic sour grapes syndrome where they must think there is a problem to justify their actions. It is time to get beyond statistics.
Let’s take a few pieces, because there is a lot in your post. Don’t assume that I’m not sympathetic to the SSPX. That would be an incorrect assumption. As a superior general and a Franciscan, I am not sympathetic to any form of disobedience. Our Holy Father began alone. By the time he died there were 5,000 brothers. Today, there are 1.7 million Franciscan men and women in more than 114 branches of one family and on every continent on earth. Our Holy Father Dominic began with a few nuns. Today,there are more than 50,000 Dominican sisters, nuns and friars and over 100,000 Lay Dominicans. Benedict began with one house. Today there are Benedictine houses and Benedictine reforms around the world. This is called thriving. These men reformed from within.
And don’t forget, there are 3 types of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.