[Apologetics] Re: Welcome Home, SSPX?

[Art Kelly]

Bishop Williamson, making trouble again 
Posted Jan. 22, 2009 2:41 PM || by Phil Lawler || category Commentary 
If the reports from Rome are accurate, within the next week Pope Benedict will lift the excommunication of the bishops who lead the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X. That would welcome news, promising a long-awaited resolution of a rift within the Church. 


 
By lifting the decree of excommunication, the Pope will be creating an anomalous situation, which will cry out for a prompt resolution. If these traditionalist prelates are validly ordained-- which the Vatican does not dispute-- and if they are now restored to full communion with the Church, then they are members of the Catholic hierarchy, and they must be given appropriate canonical status. 
 
Even now the Vatican must be planning what to do with the SSPX bishops: how to fit them into the structure of the Church. In all likelihood this lifting of the excommunications will soon be followed by another agreement to resolve that canonical problem. 
 
However, if the Pope is to welcome the SSPX bishops back into the Church, the Vatican will be forced to confront yet another problem, and it's easy to put a name on that problem. 
 
The name is Richard Williamson.
 
Bishop Williamson, one of the four bishops illicitly (but validly) consecrated in 1988 by the late Archbishop Lefebvre, has a history of making injudicious public comments. This week-- the very week when Rome seemed poised to take a step for which traditionalists had prayed for years-- Bishop Williamson complicated matters by telling a Swedish television interviewer he did not believe in the reality of the Nazi death camps. 
 
That remarkably stupid statement allowed the London Times to demonstrate its own penchant for irresponsible statements, with a story headlined: "Pope could welcome Holocaust denier back into the fold." The headline inaccurately hinted that the bishop's obtuse statements about the Holocaust were the cause of his excommunication. 
 
(Although the text of the story cleared up that confusion, reporter Ruth Gledhill could not resist taking her own ugly shot at the faith, with a reference to "nearly two millenniums of Christian anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust"-- as if Hitler's genocidal racial policies were a natural outgrowth of Christian teaching.) 
 
While the two subjects are not related-- the bishop's statements are appalling, but they are not grounds for excommunication-- there can be no doubt that Bishop Williamson poses an enormous public-relations problem for the Holy See.
 
However this may be a moot point. 
 
Over the years Bishop Williamson has been the most truculent of the SSPX bishops, and his public statements indicate that he sees no real likelihood of reconciliation with Rome. If the Vatican eventually does reach a canonical agreement with the SSPX, it is quite likely that a cadre of intransigent traditionalists will refuse the accommodation and remain separated from the Holy See. 
 
When that happens, I'll wager, Bishop Williamson will emerge as the leader of the holdouts, and he'll become someone else's public-relations problem. 
--- On Thu, 1/22/09, Dianne Dawson <rcdianne at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Dianne Dawson <rcdianne at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Apologetics] Welcome Home, SSPX?
To: "Apologetics Group" <apologetics at gathman.org>, "Deacon Charley Poole" <cppoolejr at sc.rr.com>, "Fr Richard Harris" <stjoefrharris at aol.com>, "Fr Martin Lawrence" <martinus1965 at yahoo.com>, "Mitch Michaelis" <mitch.michaelis at gmail.com>, "David Mullaney" <MayDay1 at aol.com>
Date: Thursday, January 22, 2009, 11:33 PM








Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Welcome Home, SSPX? 


Moving quickly along the wires comes word that, "within the coming days," the Holy See will lift the excommunications of the four bishops of the Society of St Pius X, whose illicit ordinations in 1988 by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefevbre placed the top rank of the lead traditionalist group in formal schism.

The tag-team of Italy's most reliable Vatican scribes -- Il Giornale's Andrea Tornielli and Il Riformista's Paolo Rodari -- have both reported that a decree banishing the sanctions is "ready" and slated for imminent release.

In his dispatch, Tornielli wrote that the pontiff is slated to use the "formula requested by [Bernard] Fellay" -- Lefevbre's successor at the Society's helm, with whom the newly-elected Pope met in summer 2005. Rodari added that the decree is to come from the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, signed by its president, Archbishop Francesco Coccopalmerio, at the Pope's expressed behest.

If executed, the development would bring to a close years of false starts and daunted hopes on the part of the Holy See, which has actively pursued the Switzerland-based group in the hope of reconciliation. The timing of the leaks -- and reports that the decision will likely be released before Sunday's 50th anniversary of John XXIII's decision to call what would become Vatican II -- is enough to raise eyebrows; best known for its adherence to the pre-Conciliar Missal or Tridentine Mass, the SSPX has, over time, objected to the Council's teachings on religious freedom, the nature of the church, ecumenical dialogue and Nostra Aetate's reboot of the church's stance toward Judaism.

The Society has maintained that the 1962-65 gathering was a "pastoral" assembly as opposed to a dogmatic one, with one of its bishops, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, going so far as to call for the church to "erase" the Council.

"You cannot read Vatican II as a Catholic work," the cleric said in a 2007 interview with The Remnant, a traditionalist journal.

Two of Benedict's more distinctive moves on Peter's chair -- 2005's programmatic speech centered on the concept of a "hermenutic of continuity" and Summorum Pontificum, the 2007 motu proprio relaxing restrictions on the use of the 1962 Missal -- bore the prominent stamp of seeking to satisfy the Society's qualms over returning to full communion.

The Vatican-Econe negotiations long overseen by Rome's lead delegate to the traditionalist communities, Columbian Cardinal Dario Castrillion Hoyos, the last major effort at reconciliation fell apart last summer after the Society reportedly gave no response to a series of conditions proposed by the Holy See, including its assurances that it would avoid "the pretext of a magisterium superior to the Holy Father" and "avoid any public intervention that does not respect the person of the pope and that could 'be negative for ecclesial charity.'"

The most likely scenario for a reconciled SSPX would seemingly involve the formation of a personal prelature or apostolic administration for the group, whose 700-plus chapels and six seminaries are spread across the globe. The Society counts close to 500 priests and 200 seminarians in over 60 countries.


 
http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2009/01/welcome-home-sspx.html
 



Like a deer that longs for running waters so my soul longs for you, O God.
Ps 42:1
 
 




      
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