www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Excommunication of SSPX Bishops are lifted

Apparently, it could be made public in the next few days, possibly tomorrow: http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/#252152599745272760

It is always a great thing when "schism," "internal conflicts," or whatever you want to call it, are overcome. I imagine this is only the very beginning of that long and arduous journey.

If this is the Will of God, then Deo gratias! And God bless Pope Benedict!

Alexis

By the way, I'm posting this in Town Hall until it's actually "Church News," not just "Church Rumors."

Alexis

That's great news if it happens. I am unsure about the exact ramifications of this, so will have to await some expert commentary. There is a nice SSPX chapel down the street I would like to attend but have been avoiding, primarily because it seems to be consensus that one shouldn't. If this solves their problem with jurisdiction and authority and makes their masses licit and confessions valid, I'll probably go.

Catholic News Agency [catholicnewsagency.com] is reporting that the excommunication maybe lifted this week. So, is this a good thing? I used to believe that it would be, but given their rather anti-Orthodox, ecumenical stance I wonder if it would be an impediment to any possible future reunion.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

I would advise everyone to go to Rorate Caeli and read what they call the "One-Two-Three Step" process of total reconciliation with the SSPX that the Church seems to be following.

It would seem that this removal of excommunication of the SSPX Bishops wouldn't automatically solve everything, but instead simply creates a more suitable environment to dialogue and tackle the "doctrinal questions" (Step #2). Only at Step #3 does the Church try to come up with the best canonical solution.

So, in that light, I think it is probably good, since it leads to further dialogue.

For those of us who find the prospect of a Catholic-Orthodox reunion much more unlikely than a Rome-SSPX reunion, I suppose one would logically support dialogue with the SSPX, even if they may have an "anti-Orthodox" stance.

Alexis

What percentage of the laity and clergy will welcome this in their heart? I have heard several strong rants against Vatican II from their lips.

Lifting the communion does mean I can attend mass at one of their parishes, which I look forward to.

Then there is the little matter of providing a schismatic group in Ukraine with ordained priests. I prefer to think of them as becoming Catholic again. It is they who left and we who stayed. They join up with us.

Alexis:

I don't think you understand what being in communion is about. This isn't a negotiation between Rome and a group of people who have left the Church. If they are received back, they'll have to accept the Vatican Council and recant their anti-Orthodox stance as well as anything else that makes them out-of-step with the Catholic Church in 2009. In some views of this group, they have blasphemed the Holy Spirit when they denounce the Vatican Council. The Council was promulgated as being ecumenical, that is, being something that all Catholics must give assent to--no exceptions. Some things may have gone awry with the implimentation of the Council, but it is the framework within which we work today. For them it may be a bitter pill to swallow, but it is what it is. If they want to be Catholic . . .

On the other hand, lifting an excommunication does not necessarily mean communion is restored. We and the Orthodox have lifted the mutual anathemas of 1054 and we are a long way from full communion.

In Christ,

BOB

Care to make it interesting? I doubt they'll have to accept anything related to Eastern Orthodoxy. I think the Vatican has bigger fish to fry than that (like much of what you describe concerning Vatican II). Unless the things they'll have to accept about Orthodoxy fall under that bigger umbrella. What specifically is "anti-Orthodox" in their stance? I'm asking because I honestly don't know the answer.

Anyway, I agree that all Catholics must accept Vatican II as an ecumenical council of the Church, just like Trent, Nicea, and all the others. Perhaps we should insist that those who profess to be Eastern Catholic here accept this as forcefully as we insist the SSPX does (I'm in favor of doing both).

Alexis

I don't think lifting the excommunications will matter. They will bring up yet another demand that must be met, like renouncing ecumenism, that they think will not be met so they can maintain their status quo.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Alexis:

Good question. But you brought it up.



If I recall the late Abp Lefebvre's stance, he had a "fortress Roma" mindset--something straight out of the Counter Reformation; something like the mindset of about 50 years ago when people didn't know their Orthodox brethren up close and personal. It's the whole idea that the Church should come out of her fortress mentality and open up to an ongoing dialogue with all men who call themselves Christian. They went ballistic when Pope John XXIII said that the Counter Reformation was over.

Permit me to add my own experience and earliest training. One didn't speak about religion and if one did one didn't speak to Protestants or Orthodox Christians because there was only one way to Heaven and they weren't on it. My earliest books outside the catechism were from a set my family had, published in 1910, that defined all those not Roman Catholic as not being Christian. Period. Written, to be sure, by people who probably had little contact with our Eastern Catholic brethren. After all, these people might corrupt a good Catholic and one might "catch" one of their ways of thinking or practice.

I'd read some of the SSPX literature many years ago and, frankly, wrote them off as not worth my time. They want to be frozen in time, IMHO, but frozen in their own interpretation of what that time was. Forgive me, but I have no time in my life for those whose religion must include a negative stance toward others. Like the anti-Catholic Protestant who would have nothing to believe in if the Catholic Church disappeared tomorrow, it seems to me that the SSPX would dissolve if Rome could turn the clock back to sometime in the mid-1950s and freeze everyone there. Because then everyone would be like them. But it won't happen and it won't work.

It isn't just about how the Liturgy is served. It's about a whole way of life that was slowly evolving over the course of the 20th century. And it's about the fact that the U.S. bishops had had many indults to lift the most difficult parts of Catholic life from the faithful because of the conditions of life in this country. But that's for another day and another thread.

Forgive me for taking a tangent.

BOB

One of my aunts was at a Pro-life rally today in front of a PP clinic and said that they met some SSPX'ers there who had brought it up and were quite excited about it.

I'm certainly not unhappy with Vatican II. However, I would call it a "General Council of the Western Church", not an Ecumenical Council. Nobody has threatened to excommunicate me. But for my part I certainly have not and would not suggest that this terminological question is any reason to break with the Catholic Church. Moreover, Vatican II does not assert infallibility for any of its decisions.

Fr. Serge

This may not happen so smoothly with one of the 4 being quoted on Swedish TV making anti Jewish comments regarding WWII.

Bob, that's not a tangent; that's the whole point. Thanks for the edifying post.

-- John