Our friend, Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia, OP, former Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, who has just been named Vice-President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, has just cleared the air with a most remarkably sensible statement.
Speaking to Catholic News Service yesterday, Di Noia said that the Vatican needed to help people who have strong objections to the Second Vatican Council see "that these disagreements don't have to be dividing or keep us from the same Communion table."
"It is possible to have theological disagreements while remaining in communion with the see of Peter," he said.
"Part of what we're saying is that when you read the documents (of Vatican II), you can't read them from the point of view of some liberal bishops who may have been participants (at the council), you have to read them at face value," Archbishop Di Noia told CNS. "Given that the Holy Spirit is guiding the church, the documents cannot be in discontinuity with tradition."
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Update: "For the record: Important interview with Ecclesia Dei VP Di Noia: 'The Pope doesn't want this division to continue'" (Rorate Caeli, July 1, 2012) -- a sobering dose of party line.
4 comments:
Good. Then the SSPX has never been wrong.
Who is enough of a flummox to buy this latest can of tactical corn?
All he's saying is that trads can keep on bellyaching about whatever mossbacked concerns they prefer to bellyache about, it won't mean a thing, nothing will change, we'll simply peel them another banana, pat their querulous little heads, and ask them to play quietly while the grown ups discuss their grown up things.
In other words, tradition-minded Catholics within and without of the SSPX will go from anathema to irrelevance in the minds of Them What Matter.
Sad to say, everything is coming apart and falling into nastiness: the three SSPX bishops spit in the Pope's face and stick a finger in his eye and call him a heretic; something serious happens between Levada and Fellay; then the new appointed Ecclesia Dei and CDF heads blast back, with or without the Pope's permission, in ways that are bound to alienate and destroy whatever support and goodwill had been generated for reunion (if things keep going the way they are, maybe it will be suggested by the CDF that the SSPX accept Assisi I-III too). Bishop Fellay and others went on and on (wrongly) about SSPX traditionalists not having to accept Vatican II; I doubt the Pope ever intended to shut down the Magisterium for the SSPX and other neo-traditionalists, or to convert to their doctrines about the Council and its 'errors'; misunderstanding, wishful thinking and/or miscommunication? Crazy. Score: God, 0. Devil, 1. Shame.
Ralph,
Perhaps I was sufficiently flummoxed to buy this latest can of tactical corn. I don't know. I know DiNoia well enough to know he's a magisterially faithful Vatican II Catholic. That's not to say that he understands the issues as a Traditionalist would.
Here he's repeating the point that a range of interpretation is permissible, presumably within the hermeneutic of "continuity and reform" (B16's words). What "reform" means is, of course, ambiguous; and that's a problem. And I have heard from a contact who sees DiNoia's appointment to Ecclesia Dei as the death-knell for Fellay et al. Time will tell. Anyone who isn't making this a daily prayer intention just doesn't care. It's not simply a battle of wits or political jockeying, but a spiritual battle in the invisible world. Oremus.
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