To clarify, the "Transalpine Redemptorists" led by Fr. Michael Mary have reconciled with Rome. You are likely referring to the "Society of St. Josaphat" led by Fr. Kovpak who was excommunicated by the UGCC Synod.

...who were reconciled to Rome last year, folding up their Eastern-Rite missions in the process.

I don't think that the SSPX will ever be reconcilled with Rome (at least anytime soon). They are very anti Vatican II and anti ecumenical and yet they seek reconcilliation with the Vatican which seems to be very big into the above two things. If I reunion were to occur, it would unfortunatly be very similar to the two short lived reunions of East and West, at the Second Council of Lyons and the Council of Florence. In both cases, the East and West tried to force a reunification while they still held onto very seperate concepts of the Church and theology. The hurried reunion brought about by these councils was quickly disapated when both sides realized that they had never actually hammered out their differences to the point of the doctrinal clarification necessary for a united faith. It is impossible to have one Church without one faith to guide it and the same sad thing will most probbly happen between Rome and Econe unless one (Econe probably) is willing to bend on some issues (which they seem not willing to do anytime soon).

The very fact that the SSPX couldn't even hold off on ordaining a couple priest at Romes request seems to prove they are not all that serious about heeding the Vatican, even on simple matters such as this. Who knows, mabye talks would have worked out much smoother if only the Pope could have seen the SSPX willing to listen to him in a little matter such as these ordinations?

I'm sure that the hostility of the German hierarchy only confirms some of the siege mentality within the Society....

I have been told that the SSPX is closely aligned with the monarchist faction in France. So in that sense, some of their agenda is for a pre-Vatican II church and a pre-revolution state.

Let's be frank-- quite a number of people in the SSPX, and a significant portion of their hierarchy, are raving, reactionary loons. History for them began in 1565, and ended in 1965. One gets the impression they think of themselves as the saving remnant waiting in eschatological expectation for the end times. What they call tradition is really just nostalgia for a set of medieval and renaissance innovations.

Stuart,

I will certainly concede that their outlook is reactionary, and that it is based on a distorted view of history, not to mention the defects of Scholastic theology. However, I see no reason to have an uncharitable attude towards them or anyone else. The world is full of people who ridicule each other--we are called to something more than that!


Peace,
Deacon Richard

I'm not ridiculing anybody. I am simply stating facts. And, for the life of me, I really do not understand why the Holy See is reaching out to these people, who seem to doubt the very legitimacy of the current Bishop of Rome, his three immediate predecessors, and just about everything the Catholic Church has done since 1958. In my dealings with them, they have been exceedingly uncharitable to Eastern Catholics (except the tame, latinized variety), the notion of autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches, outreach to the Eastern Orthodox Churches and just about every other aspect of the Church that is of importance to me.

Their opinions are, to be very charitable, eccentric in the extreme, based largely on a fanstastical view of history commingled with significant ignorance, and a healthy dose of bigotry. If the Holy See wants to reconcile with them, by all means. That is Peter's job. But such reconciliation cannot include compromise on matters settled at the Second Vatican Council.

If only the Holy See had used such 'forbearance' in dealing with the Eastern Catholic priests in the '30's who desired nothing more than to remain what they were, Greek Catholics, according to the solemn undertakings of the Union of Uzhorod! It seems that there is one standard that is used for home-grown scismatics (and almost certainly) heretics and another for the Eastern colonials. And then they talk about the Church's breathing with both lungs! As one Italo-Albanian Greek Catholic priest said in the ear-shot of Pope John Paul II when he used the well-worn image of the two lungs, "Ma almeno facci respirare!: (= Well at least let us take a breath). In view of all this do you wonder why when my students ask me when I think the reestablishment of full communion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches will take place, I answer them, "Fifteen minutes after the Parousia!"

The 1930's and the 2000's are totally different times. In the 1930's, Rome did not tolerate dissent -- even those of a disciplinary nature -- whether from Eastern or Latin Catholics, period. Today, many Eastern Catholics openly repudiate some doctrines proclaimed by the Catholic Church post-schism as mere "theologoumenon" -- do you ever hear of Rome swooping down on them?

The Usus Antiquior of the Roman Rite is certainly NOT a medieval or renaissance innovation. As embodied today in the 1962 Missal, it is in essence the Roman Rite as it stood at the end of the Patristic Age, with merely secondary ceremonial or rubrical modifications for the past millennium. I am not one to minimize the liturgical modifications to the Roman Rite in the past 1,000 years, and I certainly am against the way Fortescue and Michael Davies and many historians of the liturgy have minimized these for the past 100 years, but neither should we exaggerate and consider the "Tridentine" liturgy to be a mere medieval / Renaissance innovation!

How would you feel if I said that the Byzantine Divine Liturgy is a "Renaissance innovation from Venice" because it took what is more or less its final form only in the 16th century, in books pubished in Venice? I'm sure you would feel insulted -- and rightly so! So please, don't do the same to the Usus Antiquior of the Roman Rite!

They do not doubt the legitimacy of ANY Pope since 1958. If you would actually bother to read Traditionalist literature, the SSPX are just as harsh towards the "sedevacantists" (those who deny that there has been any Pope since 1958) as it is towards perceived modernists in the Catholic Church.

They do question a lot of what has happened to the Catholic Church since 1958, and I agree that they question to an unacceptable and narrow-minded degree, but the fact is that there is much to question! Is the wholesale destruction of the Roman liturgy in the 1960's something that cannot be questioned? I really find it strange and distressing that on this forum that is so passionate about the purity of the Eastern rites, there is so much hostility and anger towards the idea of preserving the "Tridentine" liturgical rites. Why, is it such a threat to you?





You are not the Church.

In my own country, the Philippines, I have been villified and condemned by many in the SSPX as a "modernist" and a "compromiser", but that does not blind me to the need to reconcile them to Rome.



I actually somewhat agree with you, but I would like to add that they also raise a lot of questions worth exploring. Most significantly, a serious study of the SSPX's questions might be of utmost interest to any student of the so-called "development of doctrine."




Why is it that the SSPX is required to uphold the Second Vatican Council, whilst many on this forum would maintain that Eastern Catholics should be allowed to refuse to acknowledge the binding or ecumenical character of any of the Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church after the Seventh?

This interview is worth watching. The attitude presented in it is a lot more irenic than some of what I have been reading here.

Salt and Light Interview

"hy is it that the SSPX is required to uphold the Second Vatican Council, whilst many on this forum would maintain that Eastern Catholics should be allowed to refuse to acknowledge the binding or ecumenical character of any of the Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church after the Seventh?"

One very simple reason: the SSPX claims to be a religious order of the Latin Church, and is therefore bound by the decrees of a general council of the Latin Church, as well as by the ecclesiology and discipline of the Latin Church.

The Eastern Churches, on the other hand, have entirely separate Traditions, particularly with regard to liturgy, ecclesiology and ecclesiastical disciplines. Our relationship to the Pope of Rome is quite different from their relationship to the Pope of Rome, just as, e.g., the relationship of the Pope of Alexandria with the clergy of his Church is very different from the relationship of the Patriarch of Constantinople with his.

You see, asianpilgrim, apparently not all Catholics are bound to accept the same Apostolic Faith.

Sometimes that does seem like what some are saying here.

Alexis