Müller Out Of The Running

According to Cathcon's blog, Gerhard Müller, Bishop of Regensburg, is out of the running to replace Cardinal Levada at the CDF.  Among the speculated reasons is his past hostility to the SSPX.  Perhaps, without yet even being regularized. the SSPX is having a positive effect on the church.

This is the same Bishop who scoffs at the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin, believes that it is problematic to refer to the Blessed Sacrament as the "body and blood" of Christ, and believes that Adam's father was a monkey.

The SSPX will need 20 Bishop Williamsons to stem the tide of these ill-formed and radical prelates!

Letter of the Three Bishops

When I first heard about them, I found it really hard to believe they were authentic.  It did not seem like something the three bishops would do .. that is, write a joint letter as opposed to individual private letters that would be much less prone to a leak. However, after speaking to some folks who would know, I now believe they are authentic.

It has caused a lot of anxiety among the clergy, not so much in the content, but in the fact that it has become public and has made a spectacle of something so delicate and important.  And, absent any information to the contrary, Bp Williamson will probably get the credit for the leak, assuming the same sort of thing happened as with his “leaked” communication with Bp Fellay last year.

That said, I was moved by Bp Fellay’s justification of moving forward. 

To read your letter, one seriously wonders if you still believe that the visible Church whose seat is at Rome is indeed the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a Church horribly disfigured, to be sure, a planta pedis usque ad verticem capitis, but a Church that in spite of all still has as its head Our Lord Jesus Christ. One gets the impression that you have been so scandalized that you no longer accept that it can still be the true Church. For you, it would seem to be a question whether Benedict XVI is still the legitimate pope. And if he is, there is a question as to whether Jesus Christ can still speak through him. If the pope expresses a legitimate will concerning us which is good and which does not order anything contrary to the commandments of God, have we the right to neglect or to dismiss this will? Otherwise, on what principle do you base your actions? Do you not believe that if Our Lord commands us, He will also give us the means to carry on our work?

In essence, if you don’t believe that Benedict is the pope, you have no horse in this race. If you do, then you must believe that Christ may still speak through him and that he is the Vicar of Christ’s church.  So if the SSPX wants to be successful in its mission to restore the faith, it may best do that using some of the tools that church may provide a canonically recognized Society, while holding firm to the weapons it has always used to combat modernism.  If the “deal” leads to a compromise of the faith, then we need to go where the true faith is, wherever that may be.

The Castle, The King, and the General

There is a castle in a land once hospitable and now filled with bandits and thieves.  The ultimate prize of this land is in this castle.  Many years ago, this castle was overtaken by the enemy and many were either held hostage or sided with the enemy and remained in the castle.  The old king in this castle is kind but his mind and heart have been clouded by years of keeping company with the enemy.  Some believe he is a prisoner and others believe he remains in the castle among the enemy of his own will.

Several brave armies have gone to battle over the years to try and overtake the castle and its treasure.  They would attack and fall back.  Sometime the battle was fierce but the armies could always retreat to a safe distance for comfort.

One day, to everyone’s surprise, the king sends a message to the general of one of the attacking armies.  The message offers to let the attacking army in to the castle walls.  The old king needs these attacking soldiers to help him fight other wars. He warns the general that, although he is being invited into the city, everyone will be watching the soldiers and looking for signs of aggression.  However, the king is allowing the army to bring all of its weapons with them.

The attacking general is excited by this prospect.  What better way to defeat the enemy in the castle than to fight from within the castle itself?  But he wonders about the old king. Why would he invite him into the protective walls of the castle?  Is it a trap to defeat the attacking general?  Does the old king expect to win the general over to the enemy’s perspective?  Or does the old king believe in his heart that this general and his army will be the eventual salvation of his kingdom?

The general decides that the courageous thing to do would be to fight the enemies from within the walls of their own castle.  As dangerous as that might be, the general knows that his weapons are more powerful than the enemy and in the end, they cannot strike him or his army with a mortal wound.  Some of the general’s soldiers have misgivings about entering the castle. Perhaps they will be attacked by snipers. Perhaps people throughout the land will think that, since they enter through the front door, they are sympathizing with the enemy. “No”, says the general, “.. it would rather be cowardly to fear entering among the enemy to do battle on their turf. For only there, in hand to hand combat, can the enemy be not only defeated but won over to the side of righteousness.  The mission must be to convert the king and to salvage the treasure.  There will never be gain by firing upon the walls of the castle and then retreating to s safe distance.”

Milan - the New Mecca?

Muslims praying at mid-day. Is this Mecca? Or Islamabad, perhaps.  No, it is the courtyard of the Cathedral in Milan Italy. The total number of Muslims currently living in Italy comes to, according to the Interior Ministry, more than 1,583,000. On average every four days in Italy a new Islamic place of worship is established.

Part of the blame for this is the de-Catholization of Italy and Europe in general. It is no longer "correct" to seek to convert Moslems.  According to the New Catechism of the Catholic Church, Muslims and Catholics pray to the same God. No conversion necessary! They contain a measure of the "truth". Perhaps they even "subsist" in the Church as set out in Lumen Gentium?

Really?

The God I worship did not send an angel down to Mohammad and give him "new" revelation including the notion that Christ was not the Son of God.  In fact, if it was not God or His messenger that appeared, it could ONLY have been the prince of lies.


No wonder the SSPX could not accept a doctrinal preamble as interpreted through the "light" of the CCC.  Maybe as interpreted through the light of the Oath Against Modernism!

Fr. Pfluger's Comments

Thanks to Rorate Caeli for bringing Fr. Pfluger's conference to the blogosphere.  Here is an abridgement of the core of what was reported of Fr. Pfluger's conference in Germany:

Recent weeks have revealed that the Pope is so much interested in a canonical solution for the Society that he is ready to seal a deal, even if the Society does not recognize the disputed texts of Vatican II and the New Mass.

Under these circumstances the Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, does not consider it possible to reject the Pope’s proposal. It would be tantamount to a lapse into Sedevacantism if one would still isolate oneself from the Pope’s wish, if this wish does not entail acknowledging false doctrine.

It is, of course, a pre-condition that an agreement will cover the assurance that the Society will be able to disagree from Rome’s positions in disputed matters and that it will have the freedom to continue her work in her entire apostolate. Part of an autonomous status would also be the right to criticize the Council and Modernism.

By way of support for Bishop Fellay’s decision Fr. Pfluger recalled the way of action of Archbishop Lefebvre in 1987 and 1988. At that time the Archbishop proposed a far-reaching proposal for an agreement with which he wanted to arrive at a pragmatic interim solution which would have benefited the whole Church. The arrangement that the Archbishop was willing to sign at that time demanded far more concessions from the Society than what Pope Benedict demands at the moment.

Moreover, one has to realize how much false doctrines have spread throughout the Church. Even if a theological conciliation between Rome and the Fraternity would have been achieved, it could not be expected that by a word of command from the Pope all false doctrines would suddenly disappear from the face of the earth. Fr. Pfluger points to parallels in the history of the church: after the condemnation of Arianism, this false doctrine was still spread widely for quite some time, in some regions even for many decades. And even fifty years after the Council of Trent, the Archishop of Milan asks Rome for advice, for almost all of his clergy have wives and children. What is he to do? – The response from Rome shows how the church reacts with wisdom and common sense in such situations: if he cannot replace the clergy, then he simply has to keep it.

Of the most impractical outcomes that those within the SSPX worry about in the event of a reconcilliation is that a portion of the laity, clergy, and perhaps episcopacy would become sedevacantist.  It seems almost implicit in Fr. Pfluger's talk.  I wonder how that can be?  How can a Vatican-SSPX agreement convince someone that the Pope has lost the papacy as a result of a canonical agreement with a traditional and orthodox order of priests?  Of course it wouldn't.  But it could certainly cause some to choose to remain independent of a canonical agreement with the Pope. This would not be due to a sedevacantist tendency, but rather the development of a heretofore comfortable justified disobedience into something, well, less justified 

Here Fr. Pfluger is spot-on as he relates Bp Fellay's  purported opinion that it would be nearly impossible to deny a request from the Pope that did not compromise faith or morals.  Our faith does not allow us to disobey the Vicar of Christ a rightful request out of fear that he (or another church authority) may ask us to do something in the future that challenges the faith. How cowardly would that be? Perhaps it has been too long since some have had to obey an ecclesiastic authority?  Perhaps we fear the martyrdom, dry or wet, that might be in store for us in the future should a stand for the faith need be taken?


Archbishop Lefebvre, even as he subsequently rejected the Protocol in 1988, spoke of his excitement in signing the document only to later fret of the canonical restrictions that could result.  In initially signing the Protocol, he may have foreseen the vision of a Society of St. Pius X that led a flank of the church militant in defense of the evils that beset the church in 1988 and that have only worsened since then.  His eventual fear of restriction seems to not be an issue in this go-around.


There are certainly those voices who knew the Archbishop personally and proclaim that he would not be accepting a reconciliation under even the supposedly liberal terms that they have been presented.  But the Archbishop did not hold out for a solution in 1988 that included the unattainable condition that Rome "convert" from the new religion before the SSPX would entertain joining her ranks in a regularized way. No, on the contrary, perhaps he saw, first and foremost, a solution that could conceivably let the Society's voice on matters of faith be heard by a wider and perhaps more receptive audience.  We certainly now have a stronger undercurrent of traditionally minded young men, women, and families who have been exposed to the true faith and sacraments and are more horrified than in 1988 at the advocacy of same sex marriage, secularism, and abuse coming especially from within the church herself let alone the ADL!

Add to that the heresies of the likes of Cardinal Pell who recently argued for the mythology of Adam and Eve, the certainty of the physical evolution of man from Neanderthal monkeys, and the John-Paulian  concept of an empty hell where a neutered Satan sits alone in the inferno without even the ability to attract the likes of Bill Maher. 


The church needs the Society operating as it currently does within the church and challenging, from the bosom of the hierarchy, the Cardinal Pells and Kaspers and the religious orders who have not only abandoned the faith but teach contrary to it like the Jesuits and the modern nuns that haunt RCIA and parish councils.


So be not afraid, be ye laity, clergy, or episcopate.  The regularization of the SSPX is not what needs be feared - it is fear itself.  Woe to any society, orthodox or otherwise, who loses The Faith, regularized or not! And woe also to those who do not trust the power of the rosary and scapular.