For the record: Bp. Schneider on Abp. Lefebvre

Some will find this offensive [Advisory: Rules 7-9]:

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, "Bp. Schneider of Kazakhstan on Archbp. Lefebvre of the SSPX" (Fr. Z's Blog, January 25, 2018):

The best English language vaticanista today is Edward Pentin. He has an interview with Bp. Athanasius Schneider today at the National Catholic Register (that’s the good one that begins with “National”). HERE

The whole thing is worth reading. However, I want to emphasize one part which caught my eye for two reasons.

First, it is Patristic. Bp. Schneider is a student of the Fathers of the Church, as am I. We need to return to the Fathers. It is amazing how many things they treated in their day which apply to our own.

Next, because it concerns a figure I’ve long been interested in, the late Archbp. Marcel Lefebvre. He was a great churchman and missionary in Africa who went on to found the SSPX. Since I once worked for the PCED I remain interested – and hopeful – for a wonderful result.

Here is Schneider on Lefebvre:

PENTIN:

What are your views on the Society of St. Pius X? Do you have sympathy for their position?

SCHNEIDER:

Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis on various occasions spoke with understanding towards the SSPX. It was particularly at his time, as Cardinal of Buenos Aires, that Pope Francis helped the SSPX in some administrative issues. Pope Benedict XVI once said about Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: “He was a great bishop of the Catholic Church.” Pope Francis considers the SSPX as Catholic, and has expressed this publicly several times. Therefore, he seeks a pastoral solution, and he made the generous pastoral provisions of granting to the priests of the SSPX the ordinary faculty to hear confessions and conditional faculties to celebrate canonically marriage. The more the doctrinal, moral and liturgical confusion grows in the life of the Church, the more one will understand the prophetic mission of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in an extraordinary dark time of a generalized crisis of the Church.

Maybe one day History will apply the following words of Saint Augustine to him:

“Often, too, divine providence permits even good men to be driven from the congregation of Christ by the turbulent seditions of carnal men. When for the sake of the peace of the Church they patiently endure that insult or injury, and attempt no novelties in the way of heresy or schism, they will teach men how God is to be served with a true disposition and with great and sincere charity. The intention of such men is to return when the tumult has subsided. But if that is not permitted because the storm continues or because a fiercer one might be stirred up by their return, they hold fast to their purpose to look to the good even of those responsible for the tumults and commotions that drove them out. They form no separate conventicles of their own, but defend to the death and assist by their testimony the faith which they know is preached in the Catholic Church” (De vera religione 6, 11).

Thus, St. Augustine.

Ensconced in his "Evangelical Catholic" perspective, Weigel "positively hysterical" over Rome's SSPX overtures

[Disclaimer: Rules ##7-9] P. J. Smith, "George Weigel and the SSPX" (Rorate Caeli, April 28, 2017):

George Weigel, in his most recent column, has decided that the Holy See should not offer the Society of St. Pius X a personal prelature. It appears from statements by Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, and Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the Society, that a personal prelature is the current offer. More than that, it seems that the Holy See is not insisting on the Society’s submission to every jot and tittle of every document of the Second Vatican Council. This is wonderful news.

Many informed commentators noted that the 2012 negotiations between Rome and the Society were torpedoed at the last moment by the sudden insistence of the Roman authorities on such submission. Archbishop Pozzo has conceded in public interviews that there are levels of authority in the documents of that “pastoral council,” and that total assent may not be necessary. And Weigel is positively hysterical at the prospect. Read more >>

Will Pope Francis strike the deal with the SSPX that eluded both John Paul II and Benedict XVI?

Damian Thompson, "Pope Francis's Traditionalists" (Catholic Herald, February 10, 2017):

On the weekend that posters of a scowling Pope Francis were plastered over Rome by traditionalists protesting against his “bullying” tactics, news filtered through that Rome is on the verge of signing a deal with the Society of St Pius X. This year, the Lefebvrists could be fully reconciled to the Holy See. By the alleged Modernist bully on the posters. And with virtually no strings attached.

This is surreal; but then everything in Rome is surreal now. It’s as if the scriptwriters of The Young Pope have been let loose on the Bergoglio pontificate.

Relations between Francis and conservative Catholics are more toxic by the day. The Holy Father has just torn up the constitution of the Order of Malta; it’s a complicated dispute, but one that clearly pits the Pope and his allies against the super-orthodox Cardinal Burke, who is the order’s patron – for the time being....

In the eyes of traditionalists, Pope Francis’s catalogue of errors is so long that, to quote one priest in the Vatican, “a lot of us are emotionally, even if not intellectually, sedevacantists”....

The SSPX have never been sedevacantists. They accept that post-Vatican II pontiffs are real popes. But for much of their 47-year history they have behaved like a breakaway sect, albeit a well-endowed and successful one, with around 600 priests in 37 countries and a huge new seminary in Virginia....

Mainstream traditionalists are baffled. Why would the SSPX knock back an offer from Benedict, who rehabilitated their liturgy and their bishops, only to accept it from Francis, who seems to dislike everything about the pre-conciliar Church and – in the opinion of some cardinals – is beckoning adulterers to the altar rail?

Fellay’s latest interview points to a possible answer: Rome is prepared to compromise on acceptance of the Second Vatican Council. He points out that Archbishop Guido Pozzo, head of Ecclesia Dei – the Vatican department responsible for relations with the SSPX – now says that “certain texts of the Council [do] not constitute criteria for Catholicity”. Read more >>

[Hat tip to Sir. A.S.]

Related: Why Rorate Caeli, in disagreement with Roberto de Mattei's warnings [here], supports prospect of SSPX agreement with Vatican [here].

Bishop Schneider: "I have asked Msgr. Fellay not to delay his acceptance any longer"

From Adelante la Fe’s exclusive interview with Monsignor Schneider: "Msgr. Lefebvre would accept the canonical proposal of a personal prelature without hesitation" (Adelante la Fe, January 4, 2017, via Rorate Caeli): As Adfero remarks, "It's pretty clear even by just skimming his answers that he believes the time has come for the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX):

Headlines
“There are many places where priests act more like Protestant ministers than Catholic priests”

“There are families that must travel more than 100 km (60 mi) so that they can go to a dignified Mass and hear sound doctrine”

“The faithful must ask the priests for kneelers so that they can kneel”

“We have a eucharistic-heart disease, and as long as we fail to heal it, the whole body will remain ill and will not produce fruit”

“In today’s climate, it’s a true miracle that we have vocations”

“Gender ideology is a depravity, a final form of Marxism”

“If they can, parents should withdraw their children from schools where they are taught gender ideology”

“There is a mentality of radical relativism within the Church”

“We should speak up so that the Magisterium might speak clearly”

“With moral relativism, especially concerning the reception of Communion by the divorced and remarried, we want God to do our will, and not for us to do His”

“A sacramental female diaconate contradicts the nature of the Church”

“We have to love the pope supernaturally, praying for him, not practicing a form of papolatry”

SSPX – Msgr. Lefebvre
“I am convinced that in the present circumstances, Msgr. Lefebvre would accept the canonical proposal of a personal prelature without hesitation”

“Msgr. Lefebvre is a man with a deep sensus ecclesiae”

“The episcopal ordinations were done in 1988 because in good conscience he thought that he had to do it, as an extreme act, and at the same time said that this situation should not last a long time”

“If you remain canonically autonomous for too long, you run the risk of losing a characteristic of the Catholic Church, that is, to be subject to the pope”

“We cannot make our subjection to the Vicar of Christ dependent upon the person of the pope; this would not be faith. You cannot say that “I don’t believe in this pope, I don’t submit, I am going to wait until one comes along that I like.” This is not Catholic, it is not supernatural; it is human. It is a lack of supernaturality and trust in Divine Providence, that God is the one who guides the Church. This is a danger for the SSPX.”

“I have asked Msgr. Fellay not to delay his acceptance any longer, and I trust in Providence, though it is not possible to have 100% certainty”

“It is my great wish that the SSPX might be recognized and established within the regular structure of the Church as soon as possible, and this will be for the benefit of all, for them and for us. Actually it will be a new force in this great battle for the purity of the Faith”

“I have told Msgr. Fellay: “Monsignor, we need your presence to join together with all of the good forces in the Church to achieve this union.”

TRADITIONAL MASS
“The movement to restore the traditional Mass is the work of the Holy Spirit, and is unstoppable”

“If the Fathers of Vatican II witnessed a Mass like the one we know today and a traditional Mass, the majority would say that the traditional Mass is what they want, and not the other”

The traditional liturgy is the liturgy of Vatican II, perhaps with small changes.

For the record: SSPX Communiqué on relations with the Holy See

• New Catholic, "IMPORTANT: SSPX Communiqué after meeting of all Superiors (on Canonical recognition)" (Rorate Caeli, June 29, 2016).
• New Catholic, "Rorate Analysis: SSPX communiqué on relations with the Holy See" (Rorate Caeli, June 29, 2016).
• Related: New Catholic, "Press Release of the Bishop of Regensburg concerning the Ordinations of the Society of Saint Pius X" (Rorate Caeli, June 28, 2016).

For the record: Msgr. Gherardini: "Vatican II must be debated"

Via Fr. Z on FB I learned of this book, a sequel to Gherardini's earlier The Ecumenical Council Vatican II: A Debate to be Opened (2009, Italian). The new book is called Vatican Council II: A Debate That Has Not Taken Place.

Fr. Z. shared the following article: "Vatican II must be debated: Gherardini" [Advisory: Rules ##7-9]. It's hardly news, given the date, but another significant voice in an ongoing discussion highly pertinent to current developments.

Pope Francis: "The SSPX are Catholics on the path to full communion"

"Pope Francis speaks: "The Society of St. Piux X are Catholics on the path to full communion" (Rorate Caeli, May 16, 2016), via La Croix. Excerpt:

La Croix: You received, on the past April 1st, Bp. Bernard Fellay, Superior-General of the Society of Saint Pius X. Is the reintegration of the Lefebvrists in the Church once again being considered?

Pope Francis: In Buenos Aires, I always spoke with them. They saluted me, they asked for [my] blessing on their knees. They consider themselves Catholic. They love the Church. Bp. Fellay is a man with whom we can dialogue. It is not the case of other somewhat strange elements, such as Bp. Williamson, or others who have radicalized. I think, as I had expressed in Argentina, that they are Catholics on the path to full communion. During this Year of Mercy, it seemed that I should authorize their confessors to pardon the sin of abortion.[*] They thanked me for this gesture. Before that, Benedict XVI, whom they respect greatly, had liberalized the Mass according to the Tridentine Rite. We dialogue well, we do a good work.

It seems one can expect just about anything from this pontificate. In the meantime, our correspondent, Guy Noir, asks whether this is in fact newsworthy, stating that he isn't sure. "I'd be interested in what Fellay says about Francis!" he writes, "Does that make me heretical?" Funny man.

For the record: Fr. Schmidberger Letter urging SSPX acceptance of regularization

Richard Chonak, "The moment has come to normalize the situation of the Society" (New Liturgical Movement, April 28, 2016) via Rorate:

In February of this year Fr. Franz Schmidberger, rector of the SSPX seminary in Zaitzkofen, Germany, wrote a short essay expressing his reasons, from a personal point of view, for members of the Society to accept a normalization of relations with Church authorities. Here we present an English translation of the document “Thoughts about the Church and the Place of the Society of Saint Pius X in it”.

Under normal circumstances this is a document we would not have published, because NLM has learned that Fr. Schmidberger wrote it as a private communication. He sent it to the SSPX Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, and to a small circle of colleagues, including fellow professors at the seminary. He did not authorize anyone to release it on the internet, let alone to claim incorrectly that he had sent it to all members of the Society; but in recent days both of these have taken place without his consent.

Now that erroneous translations of the text and untrue stories about the document are doing a disservice to innocent readers, Fr. Schmidberger has approved the publication of this authorized translation in English, in order to clear away the errors.

Read more >>

"The one thing, the first thing, the only thing that matters for the Church is to save souls!"

Bishop Fellay in a recently released 45-minute frank interview on the status of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X under the pontificates of Benedict and Francis (in French with English subtitles), via Adfero at Rorate, March 21, 2016:

Yet another unaccountable prospect from the pope of surprises?

As reported by Rorate Caeli (February 26, 2016), Argentine-Spanish Bishop of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), Alfonso de Galarreta, in a conference in Versailles, on January 17, suggested that Pope Francis is leaning towards "a one-sided recognition" of the SSPX. In his own words:

... I am not saying what I desire but what I foresee. I foresee, I think that the pope will lean towards a one-sided recognition of the Society, and that by acts rather than by a legal or canonical approach.

Substantial interview with Bp Athanasius Schneider on SSPX, women and foot washing, consecrating Russia, anti-pastoral bishops, and more

As always, Bishop Schneider offers an amplitude of ecclesiastical red meat (appropriately before Lent!) in this exclusive interview with Rorate Caeli (February 1, 2016). Some quotable quotes here, which, if I had time, I would excerpt for you; but just read it. Very good, as always.

"Of all the post-conciliar popes, Benedict was the one who finally blinked"

Fr. Karl Rahner with Fr. Joseph Ratzinger during Vatican II
~ Breakin' the law! Breakin' the law! Look, mom, no clerics! ~
A provocative response to those rejecting a favorable comparison of Benedict with Pope Francis. By traditionalist journalist, Michael Matt, "Benedict & Francis: Two Peas in a Papal Pod?" (Remnant, January 26, 2016). Matt offers an educated guess as to why Benedict abdicated, or had to abdicate, suggesting that packs of liberal wolves hounded him out of office. (What pressures they brought to bear, God only knows.) He compares Benedict, whose Summorum Pontificum and lifting of the SSPX excommunications outraged many, with the direction Francis has taken things, asking: "What would life be like right now without the powerful spiritual bulwarks (and human consolation!) provided by hundreds of traditional Mass centers around the world, established as a direct result of [Summorum Pontificum]?" Could anyone in his right mind contend that the escalating crisis in the Church today would not have been exponentially worse, he asks, were it not for those bulwarks thrown up by Benedict? "They got rid of [Benedict] for a reason, which the St. Gallen Group now brazenly admits," writes Matt. "Of all the post-conciliar popes, Benedict was the one who finally blinked. And history may well reveal that the reign of Pope Benedict helped undermine the very Modernist revolution which, ironically enough, Benedict himself had had a hand in a half century earlier," he adds. (Remember, back when Fr. Joseph Ratzinger worked along side Karl Rahner, and was a peritus at Vatican II under Cardinal Frings?) There's much more to it than this bit here, but check it out. Food for thought.

[Hat tip to JM]

Whose clarity? Whose confusion?

What sort of sign is this? Is this not depressing? Should it not be? That the Superior General of a priestly fraternity whose founder was declared excommunicated, in his "Declaration Concerning the Final Report of the Synod on the Family" (Documentation Information Catholiques Internationales, October 28, 2015), should speak more clearly about the role of the Pope and bishops, marriage and the Catholic family, than the official representatives of the Church in good standing in their Synod's Relazione Finale? Is this not scandalous?

Don't get any mistaken ideas from this. It's more of a lament about the state of the Church than anything. [Advisory: Rules 7-9]

Archbishop of Ravenna-Cervia having SSPX priest celebrate Mass in one of his parishes

Not sure what conclusions should be drawn from this, but here it is: "SSPX Clergy Invited to Help in Ravenna Archdiocese by Archbishop" (The Eponymous Flower, October 13, 2015).

Madison Bishop Morlino Apologizes to SSPX on EWTN

[Disclaimer: see Rules 7-9]

Pope Francis: Catholics may licitly receive sacrament of confession from SSPX priests during Year of Mercy

The official announcement comes from the Vatican Bullettino in the form of a "Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization at the approach of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy," dated September 1, 2015. The relevant paragraph comes at the end.

The announcement appears also on the usual websites, such as Rorate Caeli today; although I first caught wind of it from the often-comic site of Amateur Brain Surgeon, who can be found conceding that he has "lost a fight" as a "among the most strident opponents" of the SSPX, to whom he now offers his congratulations.

How the future will unfold waits to be seen, although the fireworks between Church Militant's Michael Voris and SSPX-supporting traditionalists (like Michael Matt, Chris Ferrara, Louie Verrecchio, and John Vennari) will likely continue unabated.


Cartoon courtesy of Fr. Z's Blog

For the record: "Voris obtains 'clarification' from Bishop Schneider which confirms SSPX not in 'schism'”

[Disclaimer: See Rules 7-9]

"Voris refuted by clarification from Bp. Schneider" (SSPX news & events, August 14, 2015).

Voris vs. Matt on the proper Catholic attitude toward SSPX

Michael Voris, "The Vortex - Rome has not Spoken" (Church Militant, July 15, 2015)

Michael Matt, "News from Remnant TV ... Obsessed with the SSPX: Michael Voris & the CMTV Witch Hunt" (The Remnant, July 16, 2015)

Fr. Louis Bouyer, "The Catholic Church in Crisis" (1978)

Translated by John M. Pepino HERE (July 6, 2015).  Excerpts sent to me by Guy Noir with these words:

My old literary friend-in-faith Louis Bouyer...

Acquaintance of Tolkien, Ratzinger, and Ignatius Press's Fr. Fessio, among others, and (if I remember correctly) dissertation advisor to Hans Kung...

I have read several reports that he was a bit the incorrigible hothead, and may have made some enemies at a pace only a bit slower than he made friends. Or something like that. And I am often not sure how much of him I quite translate properly from his French mindset. 

But he seems to have been more conservative than not, and more concerned with preserving tradition and Scripture  than revising them.

I  hope his memoirs make it into an English translation at some point, as a counterpoint or stereophonic accompaniment to Yves Vinegar if nothing else.

In the meantime, this is striking, as much as I can make sense of without much knowledge of French Catholicism... The last lines remind me of an observation I think I read in TIME Magazine years ago, that as much as liberal theologians have disdained Evangelicals, they sort of have to admit that Evangelicals are among the few people actually worrying about thinking theologically. Ditto that for the SSPX in Catholicism...

Wherever one may be inclined to place Louis Bouyer on the theological-ecclesial spectrum, he was clearly an important thinker, as his books attest (not least his poorly-translated but excellent The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism).  Here are Noir's excerpts (his emphases) from Bouyer's long essay, "The Catholic Church in Crisis":

[...]"The Lefebvre affair” deserves a close investigation. At first glance, one may think that it reveals only the somewhat strange mentality, a ghetto mentality, of Catholics who are incapable of coming out of their isolation, of their life within a closed community in a safeguarded dream. In reality, once one examines it seriously, it reveals a deep malaise in French Catholicism and, therefore, in French society as a whole. And it would be a mistake to believe that this malaise is a recent one: it goes back a long way and its symptoms will never be healed so long as we refuse to go back to its sources...

Surprised?

"SSPX Superior-General after Vatican visits of their Seminaries: 'Francis has kept his promises to us, he sees us as Catholic'" (Rorate Caeli, June 29, 2015).

Bishop Fellay declares: "[W]e have no choice but to think that [Pope Francis] does consider us Catholic." Again, after Cardinal Brandmüller and Bishop Athanasius Schneider's visit to a number of SSPX seminaries, Fellay says: "There is no doubt that their conclusion after this first closer contact was that we are a work of the Church."

Read more >>