www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall New News From SSPX!

Diak, Whats wrong with that? The Bible says, Women should be silent in Church. One of the reasons why we do not have women priest.

Many traditionalists and other faithful
have been wondering what on earth is going on with Rome and the
S.S.P.X. I should like to take this opportunity to present a
theory. Please note that it is *only* a theory.

First, there were reports in "Il Messagero", "La Stampa",
"The London Times" and "The New York Times" that three of the
four S.S.P.X bishops were to be reconciled at a Traditional
Latin Mass to be celebrated on 24th May by Dar�o Cardinal
Castrill�n Hoyos. These reports were published on Easter Monday
and suggest that a deal was reached on Easter Sunday,
paralleling the decree signed on Christmas Eve for the Padres de
Campos. A careful examination of the different reports indicated
that the declarations of excommunication against three of the
four Society bishops--all except Williamson--would be announced,
resulting in a reconcilation. One of the four suggested that a
structure similar to a personal prelature [wrong structure!]
would be granted but the exact title of the jurisdicton was not
named and the other three publications did not mention it. At
least one of the four suggested that Society bishops or their
representatives would be present for the Mass. Once again, this
was not given by all the reports.

On Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, several authorities in
the S.S.P.X denied the news of any 'reconciliation', including
the Superior-General, Bishop Bernard Fellay and another Society
leader, Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais. The latter opined
that this news was a device being used to divide the four
bishops [perhaps to isolate Bsp. Williamson and hardliners] and
that this had not worked : all four bishops remained united and
it is Rome which must be reconciled to the Traditional Faith.
Interestingly, one report indicated that 'Rome' had refused to
deny the reports, the 'no comment comment' (a variation of Sir
Humphrey's 'no policy policy'). To my knowledge, Rome has not
denied any of the reports. Her silence is not yet deafening but
becomes louder by the minute. Why has Rome not denied the
reports if there is no truth to them? And did journalists--the
least imaginative and least intelligent people on earth--simply
dream up this news, publishiing all this with no source and no
corroboration--especially given some of the details published? I
think not.

An examination of the reports suggests that some source in
the Vatican told reporter(s) for "Il Messagero" that the
excommunications of at least three of the four bishops would be
lifted and that this would be announced at a specific place and
time (the Mass which we have already known about now for some
time--at Sta. Maria Maggiore). The rest, it seems, was filled in
by the journalists, as the leaker knew it would be. To most
journalists, a lifting of declarations of excommunication equals
a reconciliation : most journalists know nothing about canon law
(or anything else, for that matter).

It is easy for us to forget that canon law is not a form of
contract law. The Pope giveth excommunications (or declarations
of the same, depending on his mood) and the Pope taketh them
away: Blessed by the name of the Pope. Canon law is merely an
extension of the Pope's power. He did not need anyone's
permission to declare the excommunications in 1988 and he can
remove them without even informing the Society bishops
beforehand. Should he choose to do so, he could remove them
after eating his croissant tomorrow morning and then simply not
tell anyone--not even the beneficiaries. In fact, I would not be
surprised if the declarations against Lefebvre and de Castro
Mayer were secretly removed before they died in 1991, just as
some cardinals are appointed 'in pectore'. This might all be
announced after a reconciliation has been effected.

So, then, what is going on? Well, His Holiness saw the
tremendous faith of the Society pilgrims at Rome in 2000. He
realised that traditionalists are at the heart of the faith.
H.H. has control over the body and the mind (the periti at Rome"
more like the 'mindless') but a body, however corpulent, is
futureless and directionless without a heart. One to five
million traditionalists worldwide is only a fraction of one per
cent of the faithful but it is nothing to sneeze at because
traditionalist are zealous loyalists who go to Church and will
defend Church teaching, sometimes at a high cost to themselves.
They are much like the apostles and first disciples, who created
a truly universal Church from a small Jewish sect, all guided
the whole way by their faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and His
Holy and Immaculate Mother. The Pope wants the S.S.P.X
reconciled; he does not want to be known as the 'oecumenical'
Pope who not only failed to reconcile the heretics and
schismatics but even managed to drive the very heart right out
of the Church: that would mar his legacy irreparably and it
would harm Holy Church. He needs traditionalists and
archconservatives to counter the influence of liberal lunatics
and move the Church slowly and gradually back towards sanity and
truth. So he found a tough cardinal from Colombia--one who had
faced down drug lords--and commissioned him to solve this
problem.

Facing Cardinal Castrill�n Hoyos on the other side, is
Cambridge-educated Bishop Richard Williamson, who is no fool and
a hardliner. Williamson knows that he has a strong hand and that
the Pope wants the Society reconciled before he dies, which
cannot be too far in the future. So he is holding out for the
'whole ball of wax'. The one card C.H. holds is papal
approbation for the Society, which would significantly increase
its support worldwide but especially in Latin America, where
one-half of all Catholics live. Most tradition-oriented faithful
in Latin America will not go near any T.L.M. not blessed by the
man in white. Period. Some of them are joining evangelical sects
of idiots but few are enthused by NewMass, going to it strictly
out of loyalty to the Pope. But to their mindset, one might
leave the faith but one cannot be a Catholic 'without' the Pope.

The Society bishops erected two barriers to reconciliation:
a universal Indult or recognitio that every priest in the Latin
Church has the right to celebrate the ancient Mass in Latin; and
a lifting of all declarations of penalties. C.H. deftly
postponed the latter condition to be achieved at the end of
negotiations. We can now see that this may well have been a
careful manoeuvre. But the first condition is the deal-killer. I
suspect that it was promoted especially by Williamson and other
Society hardliners. They are in no rush; they can afford to wait
until it be granted, as the Society continues to grow and
NewMass continues to nosedive into the not-so-Pacific Ocean--and
as Pope John Paul II ages. The reason I call the universal
Indult/Recognitio a deal-killer is the following: (1) other
provisions of Canon Law would make it ineffective except for
retired priests (I have explained this in detail on this list in
the past but would be willing to look up the canons for
requesters yet again), for these canons restrict the number of
Masses parish priests ('pastors') can say on any day to *one*
without episcopal permission and then require that the faithful
have a right to the normative Mass on Sundays and holydays and
the normative Mass is the N.O.M.; also, vicars and curates would
be free under a universal Indult but need to avoid irritating
their bishops if they wish to be given parishes to govern in the
future; (2) most priests in NewChurch don't want to say the
ancient Mass in Latin; (3) we don't want most NewChurch priests
to say the old Mass because they could harm it with their
balloons and pink felt banners, Alterettes, lectorettes,
Communion in the Hand standing, hugs and kisses, &c., &c.; (4)
lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the powerful
*psychological* effect of a universal Indult or Recognitio would
cause the liberal bishops to see red. Williamson knows that,
despite my canonical objections, a universal Indult would be
effective because most bishops are not canonists and would
simply not interfere in their priests celebrating the ancient
Mass. But he also knows that a large per centage of bishops
(concentrated in France, the U.S.A., Canada, the Netherlands,
Germany and Belgium) would rather drink strychnine than see this
come to pass. It would be a slap to their face; a slap implying
that NewMass had been a failure, a deliverance that did not
deliver. They would lose face and this must not happen at all
costs, at least until they are safely retired or dead.

Castrill�n Hoyos cannot get an unconditional universal
Indult past the archliberal bishops. Therefore, he has offered
them the solution which I have been advancing on this list now
for about five years: a *personal* apostolic administration or
equivalent personal ordinariate, which is, in effect, an
independent diocese directly subject to the Holy See and having
for its subjects those within a certain territory who are
registered in one of its parishes or missions (all others in the
same territory being automatically subject to the local ordinary
but still allowed to fulfil their obligations and receive Holy
Communion, Penance & Extreme Unction from priests of the
p.a.a.). To prove that he was serious about the offer, C.H.
actually conferred it on the Padres de Campos but he is keeping
them in line by confining their structure to one tiny corner of
Brazil. Bishop Fellay has been offered the same structure but
with the world as its territory. Fellay once described this
structure as a "Rolls Royce" solution but, for him, the bottom
line is that he *will* not divide the Society and Williamson et
alii will not compromise. Fellay does not want to be the man who
divided the Society in two, the Society entrusted to his
leadership as the successor of the great Archbishop Lefebvre.

Williamson and his hardline supporters in the S.S.P.X have
simply stopped Castrill�n Hoyos by threatening to split the
Society if these two pre-conditions are not met. The Cardinal
cannot overleap this wall, so he has declared that it does not
exist. His latest tactic is to address the *other* pre-condition
[a word which *must* have a hyphen, by the way] set by the
S.S.P.X. By deferring discussion of it at the outset, C.H. can
afford to lift the penalties without making this look like a
concession, for controvery has not swirled around this condition
(In fact, C.H. declared at the beginning that lifting the
penalties was no real issue). So, he got permission from the
Pope to lift the declarations of excommunication. To attempt to
isolate Williamson, it was 'decided' to exclude that bishop. Now
comes the next problem: how to prevent leading liberals in the
curia from stopping this action. The usual technique is to leak
the concession to the media before it is granted, even implying
by the time of the leak that it already has been conceded by the
Pope (on Easter Sunday). Then it becomes unstoppable. Next, it
is leaked in such a way that distortion of the news by the media
becomes a probability; hence the reports of 'reconciliation'.
Now an offence against decency has been committed (unwittingly,
of course). This means that the good Cardinal must 'make things
right'. Hence he lifts the excommunications on all four bishops
and not only for three of them. But this will still leave the
S.S.P.X as an irregular and unapproved organisation--unapproved
by legitiamte ecclesiastical authority. It will not change the
situation vis-�-vis the status of Society Masses and their
ability to fulfil the Sunday obligation (a deliberately hazy
question at present). It will make the S.S.P.X like that chapel
in Phoenix, Arizona (unapproved) or like Fr. DePauw's chapel on
Long Island (unrecognised). What to do?

Well, Cardinal Castrill�n Hoyos is not a 'pussycat'; he is
more like a boxer. He prefers to follow a jab with a knock-out
punch, a left hook or something. I suspect that he will
follow-up the lifting of penalties with another act. He cannot
grant an *unconditional* universal Indult for all priests to say
the old Mass without losing face in the negotiations (and, as I
have explained, this is not really what the S.S.P.X can really
need in any event); and he cannot easily grant a personal
apostolic administration or other ordinariate without the
agreement of the S.S.P.X (although this is not impossible). I
really do not know what will follow a lifting of penalties but I
can *suggest* what he might do. He might grant a *conditional*
universal Indult, one which is restricted to *retired* priests.
This would be a smooth 'development of what Pope Paul VI
granted: that all aged and retired priests could continue to
celebrate the ancient Mass in Latin sine populo, privately.
Well, why not let them celebrate it publicly? For reasons too
complicated to explain here, this would be a de facto extension
of the Indult to most retired priests (their bishops can stop
them technically but only by enormous and constant effort, by
forbidding the use of one Altar after another in an endless
series of administrative actions--it would never happen).

Should the Cardinal follow up the lifting of supposed
excommunications in some way (as I have suggested or otherwise),
this would put enormous pressure on Williamson and the
hardliners to accept the offer of a personal apostolic
administration covering the whole world. C.H. is building
bridges of trust in his tactics. The Padres de Campos is one
example and, should the Pope lift the declarations of
excommunication, this would be a second example. It is all
needed to counter what happened to the F.S.S.P. in 2000, which,
by the way, was a disaster which should cost Msgrs. Perl and
Calkins their jobs. It will be difficult for the S.S.P.X to
resist this pressure and they should not resist it. They should
protect their real property by transferring it to other
corporations and then take the p.a.a., for Heaven's sake. This
will be the message to the Society bishops from their own lay
supporters and priests. Soon, the hardliners will risk isolating
themselves if they do not make a deal. And if the whole Society
refuses an ordinariate, the Cardinal can always offer it to some
approved society of priests or other group.

Will something special happen on 24th May? Of course it
will. Every time Mass is celebrated, the greatest miracle on
earth is effected and perpetuated. Will there be more? I think
so but perhaps not. We shan't need to wait long to find out.

Let us all pray for a deal, provided it be just and good.