www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Cardinal Suspends Gibson's advisor

Toronto, Sept. 1--(RNS) A Toronto-area Roman Catholic priest who served as spiritual adviser to Mel Gibson during filming of "The Passion of the Christ" has been suspended by Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, archbishop of Toronto, for celebrating the Latin Mass for a conservative Catholic splinter group.

Father Stephen Somerville celebrated daily Mass in Latin, with Gibson acting as his altar server, when the movie was filmed in Italy last year, reports the Toronto Star. Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in the film, also attended the 7:30 a.m. services most days before filming.

Somerville, who was a priest in the Toronto archdiocese for 48 years and who has strongly defended the movie against charges it and Gibson are anti-Semitic, was suspended by Ambrozic for celebrating Mass in Toronto for the Society of St. Pius X, a group that Ambrozic and the Vatican's ecclesiastical commission consider "not in full communion with Rome."

The "Cardinal's" decision is "for the birds". But even Church officials are subject to error.

Dan L

Dear Friends,

I knew Fr. Somerville who was the pastor for St Margaret's Church in Midland (he was involved with the liturgical music for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Canada).

He is an excellent man who appreciates the old Latin ways!

Our Cardinal is a bit sensitive about the Society of St Pius X, especially since a number of Catholics in his Archdiocese began attending SSPX liturgies in recent years - and their contributions led to the building of SSPX churches!

He then allowed the indult for the Tridentine Mass in Toronto and elsewhere, but I don't think he has been able to stop those Catholics from attending the SSPX liturgies.

When I worked at the Ontario Legislature, we once had a group of religious representatives come in to ask that the Lord's Prayer be removed from the beginning exercises in the Chamber.

One of the representatives was one from the Catholic Archdiocese. I asked this person if they were there on the express wish of the Cardinal.

That person simply said, "Yes."

I'm sure the Cardinal thought he had a good reason to send his rep to join this group in its demand, but I just don't know what that reason could be.

Alex

It's the old comedic line attributed to Henny Youngman, I think... "take our bishops, please!"

I don't know Fr. Somerville, so I will trust Alex's good word for him. However, I read an article about this from a Traditionalist source (so they were obviously in support of Fr. Somerville), and frankly he comes across as a disobedient priest who deserved to be suspended. They quoted the letters between the Cardinal and Fr. Somerville, and Somerville was very disrespectful of his lawful superior and showed extreme pride in dealing with him. When it comes down to it, he should have obeyed his superior instead of instigating him.

I will try to find the link to the site that printed the letters in full.

Dear Francis,

I never said that Fr. Somerville didn't deserve to be suspended.

He obviously broke canon law in doing what he did.

I guess my point is ultimately about whether other jurisdictions would treat their priests in this way (?), that is, if they had dealings with the SSPX.

Also, perhaps even Cardinals are not above suspension for things they do.

The RC Cardinal in question, as I understand from practicing Catholics of his own nationality, is not exactly "well liked."

But I guess he doesn't have to be, if he doesn't want to be.

This would not be the first time I've heard of a priest in our RC Archdiocese who has had less than nice things to say about the Cardinal, I'm just surprised that it had to come to suspension.

There are other priests of a much more liberal bent here that could use with some suspended time off from their priestly duties, if you ask me, and you aren't.

Liberals seem to get away with all kinds of things. Traditionalists don't seem to have the same, shall we say, "political skills" in dealing with the hierarchy . . .

Our RC leader here doesn't get very high marks from me with respect to the incident I reported above and some others.

But I agree with you - there is never any excuse for disobedience or refusal to submit to one's religious superiors.

No excuse whatever and I'm sorry if I seemed to be somehow justifying or defending him on THAT score.

Alex

Alex, I did not think you were defending Fr. Somerville's actions in any way, and you raise an important point.

In general, liberal priests can get away with just about anything, and no discipline occurs. This is shameful. Fortunately, some bishops (such as the one in Arizona) have begun to change this.

I would say any disobedience by any priest should be disciplined quickly, regardless of if it is on the "right" or the "left". I think disobedience is a more insidious evil in the Church than any "liberal" heresy - and unfortunately it effects all of us (thanks Adam!). It is even more important, in my opinion, to be obedient to a legitimate superior when we disagree with him.

Regarding disciplining a bishop, I'm sure you agree that it is a more sticky situation, since a bishop has complete authority over his diocese, and it opens a whole host of other problems if we simply answer "the Vatican should crack down".

Alex brings up a cogent point. During my teaching days in an SSPX school (I was the token "Greek Catholic"), I observed several RC bishops who actually pushed people to the SSPX by severely limiting the "indult". By Latin canon law any priest actually has the right to use an immemorial rite of his church sui iuris) privately, but certainly needs faculties for public celebrations within the diocese.

I must say now many years later the presence of "full time" Latin priests from the Fraternity of St. Peter or other traditional orders in communion with Rome in many dioceses now have to a great extent stopped and reversed that migration in the U.S. And their seminaries are thriving as are their monastic communities.

Regardless of the issues between the priest and the bishop, the bishop will likely find drastically much less poaching by the SSPX if he would allow not just an "indult" Mass (which is not more than a throwing an ecclesiastical bone to those folks) but all of the sacraments through a Latin Mass community. Without a community or parish, some will keep going to the SSPX.

When people leave for the SSPX, you would think the bishop would question why the SSPX has more to offer. That never happens, of course. I spent 4 years helping folks in this area get one of the indult masses. I knew how to do the paperwork, so I guided them through the process, wrote letters to the Chancery, etc. I had no legal standing to ask for the Traditional Mass for myself - and wouldn't anyway - since I am Byzantine. People leave the RC, not because of what it offer, but because of what it doesn't.

Rather a good or bad person is irrelevant.
He was disobedient to a lawful authority of the Church and that should make one question his motives.
Stephanos I

I know someone who's teaching at the FSSP, and he tells me Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary will soon have finished an expansion project to accomodate 150 seminarians - and that it will be full upon completion!!!

Anyway, as others have observed, there is a lot of suspicion of the "traditionalist" movement among many bishops. Basically, many view even indult masses are seen as a breeding group not only for the SSPX but the entire "pre-Vatican II Church" that many hate so much.

I'm right now reading Archbishop Bugnini's (may he rest in the peace of Our Lord) memoirs/defense of the 1970 missal, and I am really quite shocked at his attitude towards the "pre-Vatican II church". His disdain for the "corrupted Roman liturgy" is quite apparent and any objection that's made towards his pastoral liturgical paradigm is seen as a reflection of the "traditionalist" and "reactionary movement". He even objects to an experimental liturgy in the Sistine Chapel because the place is too "elitist" and there's too much influence from the pro-Chant, pro-Palestrina Papal Choir! I take it that many of our current bishops have the same attitude towards the "Tridentine Mass", Gregorian Chant, and the like.

Anyway, my opinion is that this is at the core of the Latin Church's present sickness in the US - many priests/bishops have a "post-Vatican II" ecclesiastical paradigm that finds even the slightest taint of the old regime repugnant. The division between the "post-vatican II Church" and "pre-Vatican II Church" is artificial and seriously disruptive to the Church. Nevertheless, I'm 25 now and I really think that by the time people my age are becoming bishops this will have mostly disappeared.........


BTW, I'm with Fr. Stephanos on this one. The priest should not have been concelebrating with the SSPX without permission.

Especially considering the ipso facto excommunication of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre [see Ecclesia Dei]. The agreement with Rome was apparently good enough for the FSSP and several traditional monastic houses such as Le Barroux, all of which are now thriving in full communion with Rome.

The solutions are both immediate and proximate. You can put out the flames but if you don't extinguish the underlying spark, it will come back.

For the immediate there is certainly an issue of obedience between this priest that needs to be resolved. For the proximate, hopefully also the bishop will conisder this situation and its causes, and show a loving economia by granting greater freedom to the Latin Mass community to hopefully prevent these kinds of episodes.

Dear Marc, Father Yves Congar wrote what I believe is a much more balanced and enlightining book about the whole situation of the Council, the liturgical changes and Archbishop Lefevbre. Bugnini clearly had an agenda.

According to Ecclesia Dei attendance at an SSPX mass DOES fulfill the catholic obligation to attend mass on Sunday. Also, according to the papal indult a bishop has no written authority to deny a public latin liturgy. Bishops, defying the intent of the Pope himself, ASSUMED this authority. Vatican II NEVER abrogated the latin rite. The Roman Church is fundamentally split between the "traditionalists" and the "novis ordo" camps. As a "trad", I simply point to the utter deconstruction of the roman church in America as Vatican II's result. The recruiting of homosexuals into the priesthood and radical feminists into convents has NOT served the church. Pro-abortion public servants who still call themselves catholic without ANY official rebuke do NOT serve the church. Bishops whom openly defy instruction after instruction from Rome, yet chastise preists who return to a 400 year old liturgy ( codified by a DOCTRINAL council ) do NOT serve the church. From declining enrollments in our mass attendance and parochial schools to the laities complete confusion on doctrine and dogma, Vatican II has been a statistical and literal failure ( I should add that Vatican II was a pastoral council ONLY ). Please forgive my anger in this reply, but the bishop in Toronto ( if he suspended the priest ONLY for performing the latin rite for an SSPX community ) ignored the instruction from Rome, serving only his own interests and not those of the souls entrusted to him. I know the SSPX communities drain resources from the church. However, who can blame them for wanting to keep their hard earned donations from paying off yet another lawsiut of sexual abuse. The American Roman Catholic Bishops ( and,I apologize for painting with a broad brush as there are many excellent bishops )_ have failed their church and more importantly have failed our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Tridentine, while I do agree there have been liturgical abuses I do not agree with the black and white "everything since Vatican II is bad" arguments.

Vatican II has been the springboard for us Greek Catholics to return to tradition, not depart from it.

Overall, there are more Catholics now than there were in 1965.

I have a friend who occasionally reads this Forum and is a professor at the diocesan seminary in Monterrey, Mexico, a Novus Ordo diocese and not FSSP or any traditionalist order. He has about a two to three year waiting list for his "bread and butter" seminarians. He is sending some to work in American Hispanic parishes since he has no assignments within the diocese for them.

Also the trends you speak about in seminaries were already well into motion in the 1950s, years before the Council. That is well documented. Clerical abuse allegations were not uncommon earlier in the first half of the 20th century, they were just kept "hush".

Since a Dogmatic Constitution was promulgated at Vatican II [ Lumen Gentium], it cannot rightly be considered only a Pastoral Council. Pastoral councils do not promulgate dogmatic constitutions with the imprimatur of the Pope.

The Constitution on the Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium called for the preservation of Latin and Gregorian chant.

One cannot simply make a blanket condemnation of the Council. I posit it is because the documents of the Council were not followed is the source of the problems, rather than the converse.

This might not be a popular answer, but my experience is that an indult mass often acts as a temporary "solution" and the problem is deeper than what liturgy is being used. There is a major problem with catechesis. Catholics, confused, go to the indult mass. They will talk to traditionalists there, who will also tell them "see what else is wrong" and start labelling the Pope as a heretic (in all ways but the word). That leads them to go to SSPX or SSPV. They will see texts abused by the traditionalists, to trump the Church itself, and so help inspire schism.

There is yet another problem. The "traditionalists" do not like to follow (as we have seen here) the tradition of obedience. This is one of the reason why traditionalists in Byzantine Churches tend to become a problem -- they start dictating to the Church itself, to the East, what they should be doing and why they are wrong -- wrong for not using the filioque, wrong for having married priests, wrong for -- not by hyper-traditional triumphalistic 1950s Latin-mass Catholic. There is a spirit of disobedience and a spirit of looking for error -- and if one has those together, no matter where they go, they will complain. This has resulted in controversies within the FSSP and the people who go to their churches, with many priests there finding the same crossfires, and the indult mass itself has not fixed it.