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Bishop Fellay, The Three and the SSPX Deal: A Preliminary Analysis

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Three who give testimony...

THE EXCHANGE of letters in April 2012 between three SSPX bishops (Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso de Gallaretta, April 7, 2012) and SSPX Superior General Bernard Fellay (April 14, 2012) over whether SSPX should accept a Vatican offer to be integrated into the Conciliar Church represents a fascinating twist in the ongoing drama of the Society of St. Pius X’s negotiations with “Rome.”

The three bishops, consecrated together with Bp. Fellay by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988, wrote to Bp. Fellay in order to express their grave reservations about the accord he was in the process of negotiating with the Vatican over the Society’s status. The letter of “The Three” (the French are big on designating groups of individuals with a number) was leaked on May 8, shortly followed by Bp. Fellay’s response.

The two documents have caused intense speculation and heated discussion on the Internet. Here are some of my preliminary thoughts.

... et hi tres unum sunt?

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THE LETTER OF THE THREE

“The Three” make a number of excellent points in their letter, in particular:

1. They nail exactly how an SSPX integration without a doctrinal accord would fit into the Ratzingerian ecclesiology, which allows for “union” among those who do not profess the same doctrine. This is the “Frankenchurch” heresy.

2. They “call out” Benedict XVI’s subjectivism — a topic that +Tissier analyzed in great detail, and that +Williamson repeatedly addressed in a popular and easily comprehensible way.

3. They also nail the practical effect an SSPX integration would have in the long run — gradual (or perhaps not-so-gradual) absorption on the level of apostolate and theology.

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One for the price of four?

BP. FELLAY’S RESPONSE

Bp. Fellay’s response is noteworthy because:

1. It demonstrates, I think, that +Fellay is determined to do the deal with or without “The Three.”

2. It in effect explains why so much of the SSPX senior management has been thumping the drum for the deal. +Fellay needed to show B16 that he has the support of the people who actually CONTROL the organization.

3. He makes it very clear that as Superior General he does indeed control the organization, that this was what +Lefebvre wanted, and that by that standard, they are out of line.

4. He more or less recapitulates standard ecclesiology on the need to submit to the Roman Pontiff, and rubs their noses in it by hinting that what they say makes them (gasp) SED*&@#@N+!STS. (This is a cheap shot at them; fat chance!)

5. His response to The Three’s warnings about absorption and compromise tells me he is either disingenuous or clueless.

Both sides, predictably, trade quotes from +Lefebvre to back up their respective positions. No surprise there, as I’ve pointed out.

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CAN +FELLAY SELL THE VATICAN ON A ONE-MAN SHOW?

How could this rather fundamental dispute play out from the Vatican’s perspective? Obviously, they would want to get all FOUR bishops on board for the deal in order to end what they see as a schism.

To allay the Vatican’s fears, +Fellay could pitch the deal to them more or less as follows:

• I control the organization and the properties.
• The senior SSPX officials throughout the world, as you can see, all weighed in and support the deal.
• As my upper management and branch managers, I can count on them to keep the lower clergy in line.
• I can also count on them to pitch the deal to the laity through speeches, magazines, bulletins, etc.

A sweet deal
• Realistically, The Three do not present much of a threat.
• +Williamson is compromised because of the Jews, etc. No confirmations by HIM, Your Holiness, in your old Bavarian backyard!
• + De Gallaretta, as a Spaniard has no home constituency.
• +Tissier is the only threat because he would have considerable support in France. He is also extremely intelligent and has written extensively on modern theological errors,
• However, +Tissier is older, has a less-than-dynamic personality, and, since any of his French clergy supporters would be shut out of the properties SSPX would still control, he would have to conduct his apostolate in the meeting rooms of Sofitels (or whatever).
• In countries outside of France, the situation would be the same. Supporters of an SSPX “rump faction” would have no bases from which to operate, and in the face of our already existing parishes, etc. would find it virtually impossible to operate.
• Effectively, The Three would be marginalized and would pose no threat whatsoever.
• Ergo, Your Holiness, let’s do the deal.
• And pass the strudel.

* * * * *

THUS MY initial reading of the exchange.

However things may finally turn out, though, you don’t need the gift of prophecy to predict that for trads, the rest of May 2012 will be very interesting indeed!

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The Leader is Always Right! Fellay, Il Duce, and the SSPX Deal

Monday, May 7, 2012

The Leader: Always right!

IN THE FACE of what looks more and more to be an impending deal between SSPX and the Vatican, observation of an English traditionalist on the Ignis Ardens forum speaks volumes about the mentality of the rank-and-file SSPX priest:

In London today (May 6, 2012), the priest from the pulpit expressed very frankly how dismayed and “disappointed” he was that the position of the SSPX has been changed without any of its priests being informed. From another large English Mass centre I hear the priest there addressed the issue similarly.

For them, the key question for resolving any controversy is not “What does CATHOLIC THEOLOGY teach?,” but “What is THE POSITION OF THE SOCIETY?”

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NO THINKING, PLEASE, WE’RE SSPX!

Generations of SSPX priests have been imbued with this mentality, and indeed, it was one of the main bones of contention in our own conflict with Abp. Lefebvre in 1983. On any given topic, at any given moment, SSPX priests were always supposed to adhere to and to preach the “position of the Society” — no matter how much it contradicted the principles of logic and Catholic theology, and no matter whether it directly contradicted an EARLIER “position of the Society” or Abp. Lefebvre.

The then-Father Donald Sanborn, former SSPX U.S. seminary rector, wrote two excellent articles about this, “The Crux of the Matter” (1984) and “Mountains of Gelboë” (1994).

His central insight: While among SSPX priests there have always been hardliners and soft-liners on the question of “Rome,” the only TRUE SSPX priest-members are those who do not THINK. They let +Lefebvre and now +Fellay do the thinking for them.

The then-Fr. Williamson was a perfect example of this mentality. During the ’83 controversy, he supported Abp. Lefebvre’s position (then!) that the new rite of priestly ordination was VALID. But the next year Fr. Williamson wrote that if the Archbishop changed his mind one day and said the rite was INVALID, then he would then be obliged to say it was invalid as well!

“il Duce ha sempre ragione!” Mussolini’s party members said: The leader is always right!

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Founder: Always right too!

THE 88 DEAL/NON-DEAL

Another personal anecdote will illustrate the point.

The big SSPX controversy of ’88 was whether Abp. Lefebvre would sign an accord with the Vatican to obtain recognition, or whether he would consecrate bishops and incur excommunication. Just like today, contradictory reports constantly flew back and forth, speculations by the laity abounded, and Abp. Lefebvre issued a stream of statements espousing directly contradictory positions. You never knew WHAT was going to happen.

In October 1988, after the consecrations, Fr. Dolan and I were visiting London and invited our former Econe classmate, then the SSPX UK District Superior, to dine with us at the Goring, near Victoria Station.

Talk turned to the consecrations. He volunteered that after a long period of gearing up people for the May 5, 1988 Lefebvre-Ratzinger accord, he didn’t know WHAT to think when Lefebvre renounced it the next day. Nor did he know WHAT to think during the next few weeks when there was much going back and forth over whether the consecrations would proceed.

But once he received word that the consecrations would actually proceed in June, he was absolutely fine with that, too, even though he had been promoting the accord only a few weeks before. He then knew what to think!

(Since he was a Scot, I will note that there was at least ONE matter he wanted settled in advance: Who was paying for the meal. Looking at the menu after Fr. Dolan had ordered the snails, he inquired, “Now you DID invite ME, didn’t you?”)

————————————————–

Him too!

AND NOW?

A raft of statements from higher SSPX functionaries like Frs. Schmidberger, Rostand, Walliez, Simoulin and Pfluger have been aimed at propagandizing the laity to accept SSPX’s full integration into the Conciliar Church.

If the reaction on the internet forums is any indication, however, many lay SSPX followers are not buying the deal SSPX is selling. Fr. Pfluger’s comments in particular have been regarded as an insult to the laity’s intelligence.

Some laymen who are upset over the current SSPX party line think, or perhaps even hope, that, in the event of a deal, a large percentage of the lower SSPX clergy will see it as a sell-out, and promptly bail out.

For the foregoing reasons, I don’t see this happening. You survive in SSPX if you follow the party line wherever it may lead, and wherever it may have been the day before. Such is not the mentality of those who would lead a “new traditionalist resistance,” this time against SSPX.

So most SSPX priests, after an initial period of not knowing exactly WHAT to think, will, like my Scottish classmate, go along with whatever decision the SSPX Superior General imposes because, as current Prophet, Seer and Revelator of Menzingen, he alone can discern whatever would have been “the REAL attitude of Monsigneur Lefebvre” in this situation.

But how, the laity may ask, can SSPX possibly justify full integration and absorption into what +Lefebvre called the “Conciliar Church”? Isn’t there some principle at work here?

Yes, there is, and any SSPX member must follow it: “Il Duce sempre ha ragione!” Our leader is always right!

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An SSPX Deal: But Will the Fat Lady Sing?

Thursday, April 19, 2012

The end of the opera at last?

“The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings.”
— George H.W. Bush

OUR FORMER president’s allusion to Wagner’s interminable four-opera “Ring Cycle,” which ends after fourteen confusing hours with a well-upholstered soprano howling a ten-minute aria, comes to mind now in mid-April 2012, when the press and the trad blogsphere is abuzz with talk of an impending deal between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).

The on-again, off-again negotiations over integrating SSPX into the Conciliar Church (Abp. Lefebvre’s term, please note) appear to be heading towards a final act: SSPX’s Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, it is said, will sign a Doctrinal Preamble, making various doctrinal concessions regarding the teaching of Vatican II. In return, the Vatican will grant SSPX some sort of special canonical status.

Everyone seems to think this is virtually a done deal.

And yet, and yet… no fat lady.

For while Father Ferderico Lombardi, head of the Holy See’s Press Office, confirmed receiving Bp. Fellay’s response and called it “encouraging,” he said nevertheless that it contained “the addition of some details or integrations.” These would have to be examined by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and by Benedict XVI himself before any decision could be reached, he said, adding “I think the wait will not be long because there is the desire to reach a conclusion in these discussions.”

On the other side, an April 18 communiqué from SSPX headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland says that while the media are announcing that the doctrinal question between the Holy See and SSPX is now resolved, “the reality is different.”

After mentioning that Bp. Fellay’s response will indeed by examined by the CDF and Benedict XVI, the SSPX communiqué concludes by saying, “This is therefore a stage and not a conclusion.”

So, the matter of the Doctrinal Preamble is still up in the air.

Pointing clearly to SSPX's future?

But even if the parties agree on the doctrinal question in the next few weeks, the canonical arrangement for SSPX, the press reported, will still need to be settled.

The discussion could get very complicated. Over the course of nearly forty years, SSPX has set up a worldwide hierarchy and a string of institutions parallel to and indeed in opposition to those of the Conciliar Church. Their existence and operation would somehow have to be brought into line with the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

SSPX would undoubtedly want to retain the ability to continue to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, anywhere in the world. Benedict XVI, obviously, could not allow this.

Looming over this discussion, moreover, would be the principle laid down in Canon 1256 (1983 Code). This would give Benedict and his successors the trump card to control SSPX’s institutions, because it provides that property ownership is “under the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff.”

So, if Bp. Fellay wanted to reignite his “We resist you to your face”/ Paul-reproving-Peter routine one day against Benedict XVI or his successors, he would wind up doing so from the sidewalk outside his former residence in Menzingen.

It would not be difficult, therefore, to envision SSPX and the Vatican agreeing on an ambiguous (and therefore mutually satisfactory) doctrinal formulation in the next few weeks, but then failing to agree on the details of a canonical arrangement to SSPX’s liking.

The Protocol: Signing — then "un-signing"

It was on this level, after all, that the May 5, 1988 accord Archbishop Lefebvre signed with Cardinal Ratzinger supposedly went sour, and prompted the archbishop to “unsign” the agreement the next day. (A few maintained, however, that the turnaround was due to the influence of Lefebvre’s sister, Mother Marie Gabrielle, a formidable lady — albeit thin — sometimes slyly referred to as “Her Excellency.”)

When you take all these factors into consideration, a global integration of SSPX into the Conciliar Church is by no means a sure bet at this moment.

The latest installment could wind up being merely one more scene in the ongoing opera of SSPX/Rome “negotiations” — an “Archbishop’s Ring Cycle” that has been playing since the suppression of SSPX nearly forty years ago.

Newcomers to the traditionalist cause, perhaps understandably, find the drama quite riveting: What will Bp. Fellay do now? Will “Rome” make a wily counteroffer? Will SSPX hold together? Will evil cardinals conspire to frustrate the will of our beloved Holy Father, that Rottweiler of Orthodoxy? Will the Hero-Prelate and anti-Wagnerian, Bp. Richard Williamson, sing to Fellay’s score? Will the united-but-not-absorbed SSPX be the new Jesuits who will convert the Novus Ordo Church from its modernism?

Thinking about not singing along?

But old-timers in the trad movement like me have seen this Ring go round and round for decades: the Roman visitation and suppression in ’74, Lefebvre’s battles and kangaroo trial at the Vatican in ’75-76, the Nuncio delivering letters and notices of suspension by limousine in ’76-77, a cardinal appearing in the Ecône courtyard with the ex-President of Senegal as his chauffeur, the “bastard rites” sermon at Lille, innumerable Lefebvre conferences to seminarians on “Rome,” the bear hug from JP2 in ’78, “Let us make an experiment in tradition,” the “official” Church vs. the “real” Church, “sifting” the magisterium to find “Tradition,” ’80-83 negotiations with Ratzinger, Lefebvre’s “anti-Christ” and near-sedevacantist pronouncements in ’88, more negotiations, May 5, 1988 accord signed with Ratzinger and repudiated the next day, more negotiations, episcopal consecrations, “Operation Survival,” excommunications, negotiations to get Lefebvre to reconcile before his death in 1991, two more decades of back-and-forth Vatican negotiations under Schmidberger and Fellay, excommunications lifted, Fellay “preconditions,” Fellay saying he’ll “run to Rome if the Holy Father calls,” Roman pilgrimages with cardinatial lunches, smiling Apostolic Palace photo-ops with Benedict XVI, hot-cold contradictory statements from Fellay for several years, and then the latest.

Forty years, and the fat lady never sings.

But in all this, as with many operas, when you step back from the particular dramatic incidents and closely study the libretto, you encounter absurdities. And the theological absurdities that eventually wound up driving the SSPX negotiation drama should make any thoughtful Catholic cringe.

First, a real Catholic does not negotiate with the Roman Pontiff — he submits to the Roman Pontiff. It is an article of faith that this is necessary for salvation.

Yet Archbishop Lefebvre and SSPX’s whole, grand, forty-year spectacle of resistance and negotiation renders that article of faith utterly and completely hollow in the practical order.

The endless negotiation is, in turn, the consequence of another absurdity, because,

THE question: Catholic or not??

Second, Abp. Lefebvre and SSPX never really answered the key question: Is Vatican II and the whole Novus Ordo system (doctrine, discipline and worship) Catholic? Some things they said and did would lead you to conclude Vatican II was Catholic, while other things they said and did led to the opposite conclusion.

It was a course of pure praxis, attended by theological zigzagging, jury-rigged to justify the desired result of the moment. If Paul VI suspended you, you could talk about heretical popes losing their office. If John Paul II received you warmly, SSPX could not tolerate among its members those who said the pope was not the pope. If the pope was willing to allow you to consecrate a bishop, he was “Most Holy Father.” If not, he was an “anti-Christ.”

The ideal SSPX member followed the Society’s position du jour, ignored the successive contradictions, and generally, did not think. Hardliner and soft-liners might come and go, but in the Society the only long-term survivors were the “flat-liners.”

Bishop Fellay’s latest statement about his demands to the Vatican (4/16), reported by Andrea Tornielli, fits perfectly into this incoherent world. He asks that:

(1) “no concessions be asked from the Society that touch upon the faith and that which derived from it (liturgy, sacraments, morals and discipline)” — implying that the Roman Pontiff would force SSPX to adhere to teachings and practices imposed elsewhere in the Church, but which are harmful to the faith.

(2) “that a true freedom and autonomy of action be granted to [the Society of] St. Pius, which would allow it to grow and develop” — implying that adherence to universal discipline of the Church would compromise point (1)

“How to interpret this message of the Lefebvrist superior?” Tornielli asks.

Indeed, Mr. Tornielli! Good luck trying to square it with standard, pre-Vatican II theology on the indefectibility of the Church, the infallibility of her universal disciplinary laws, and the need for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff!

For while Jesuits take a fourth vow to obey the Roman Pontiff, SSPX-ers seem to have taken a fourth vow to negotiate with him.

* * * * *

NATURALLY, there will be the tendency on the part of some to dismiss all the foregoing as sedevacantist sour grapes.

Far from it. An SSPX deal that officially integrated the whole outfit into the Conciliar Church would draw an unmistakably clear theological line on the issue of accepting or rejecting Vatican II. This I would regard as a positive development.

Moreover, as with my critique of the reformed liturgy, my comments about SSPX are based ultimately upon the truths of the Catholic faith I learned in my youth: The Church of Jesus Christ gives only what is true and good, never evil and error, and that no Catholic can be truly such unless he submits to the pope.

Nothing “sedevacantist” to see there, folks, so please move on.

That said, what advice to give in summing up?

Onlookers should be wary of sitting forward on their wicker chairs and becoming enraptured by the latest dramatic arias in the SSPX/Rome negotiation opera.

But still another act to go?

Bp. Fellay may not sign the Doctrinal Preamble, or he may sign it, and “unsign” it the next day. Or he may sign the Doctrinal Preamble, but then come a cropper over a hundred different canonical issues about how the Society will have to operate. Or he may sign the canonical protocol, and then repudiate it the next day. Or he may wait five years until provisional statutes imposed by Rome on SSPX expire, and then take back everything.

The point is that however this particular episode turns out, we should not get too excited over the drama. Anything is possible with SSPX, because its mode of operation for nearly four decades has been praxis without principle.

So if at the end of this latest act, the fat lady does seem to sing, the pyre is lit, the stallion rears up, modernist Valhalla burns in the distance, and the Swiss Rhone (rather than the German Rhine) overflows into the Tiber, don’t be too surprised if the curtain rises for yet another act!

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Short Critique of Article “Regarding the Restored Order of Holy Week”

Saturday, March 31, 2012

1955 Restored Order of Holy Week

QUESTION: I’ve recently encountered a missive of defense regarding HH Pius XII’s Holy Week changes in 1955 and, as I know you argue against them, I thought I’d forward it on to you in case you wanted to address the points at any time. I personally am undecided on the matter, though given the anecdotes regarding the physical and mental condition of the Holy Father following his illness in 1954, I consider there to be at least significant doubt as to their validity, or the degree to which his hand was actually involved at all.

ANSWER: Thanks for the article: I treat the problems with the new Holy Week as a precedent for the Novus Ordo in Work of Human Hands, pp. 54–6, 58–61, 68–69, and the role of Pius XII on pp. 69–9.

The article “Regarding the Restored Order of Holy Week” has also recently appeared on the Internet. The author is an anonymous layman who bases his case against using the pre-1955 Holy Week rites exclusively on legal arguments: the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, the binding force of Roman decrees, the authority of the Roman Pontiff in matters liturgical, the authority of the Congregation of Rites, and the authority of the decree promulgating the new Holy Week.

One cannot take exception to any of the principles he quotes from papal pronouncements and general legislation; indeed, what I have written on the question assumes it.

However, I have already answered the author’s “legal” objection to using the old Holy Week. For this, see:

Is Rejecting the Pius XII Liturgical Reforms “Illegal”? Rev. Anthony Cekada. Why the general principles of church law allow us to reject pre-Vatican II liturgical changes that were the work of Annibale Bugnini, the modernist who went on to create the Novus Ordo. (Internet, 27 April 2006) [1 May 2006]

The Pius XII Reforms: More on the “Legal” Issue. Rev. Anthony Cekada. Stability and the legislator’s intention. Principles and precedents for the Novus Ordo in the Pius XII reforms. Indefectibility. Are you “pope-sifting” à la SSPX? Are you disobedient to lawful authority? “Last true pope” principle is impossible to apply consistently. (Internet, 11 July 2006) [11 Jul 2006]

As you can see from the foregoing, the pertinent legal/canonical principles that justify not using the 1955 Holy Week are:

(1) Lack of Stability, i.e. the legislation lacked one of the necessary elements for a law, stability, because it was transitional in nature and intent, and

(2) Cessation, i.e., a human ecclesiastical law that was obligatory when promulgated can become harmful (nociva) through a change of circumstances after the passage of time; when this happens, such a law ceases to bind.

"Facing the people" in the 1955 Easter Vigil

These general principles may be applied to decrees promulgating liturgical laws, including the new Holy Week, because (1) the legislation was transitional in nature, in intent and in fact; and (2) the many parallels in principles and practices between the Missal of Paul VI and the 1955 reforms now render continued use of the latter harmful, because such a use promotes (at least implicitly) the dangerous error that Paul VI’s “reform” was merely one more step in the organic development of the Catholic liturgy.

Apart from the legal question, the attempt of the author of “Regarding the Restored Order of Holy Week” to apply Pius XII’s condemnation of “liturgical antiquarianism” to those who use the old Holy Week is particularly fatuous.

Mediator Dei was written in part to respond to Archbishop Groeber’s 1942 memorandum on the errors of the liturgical movement, among which he listed “placing undue emphasis on forms of religious life in the primitive Church.” This referred to modernists in the movement who wanted to strip from the liturgy anything “medieval,” and these proposals are what Pius XII was actually condemning.

I also note in passing that the author of the article is a layman. As such, it is unlikely that he has an intimate practical knowledge of the texts and rubrics of the old Holy Week, the 1955 Holy Week or the Paul VI Holy Week that a priest could have. Hence, he will be more or less oblivious to the differences or similarities between the rites (if indeed he notices them at all!) and will not really understand why a traditional Catholic priest could be completely repelled at the thought of performing rites created by Bugnini as one step in destroying the Mass.

Have a blessed Holy Week — pre-’55, of course!

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Fr. Martin Stepanich OFM, STD: Seventy Years a Priest!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Fr. Martin Stepanich OFM, STD in his garden.

NOTE: I thought readers of Quidlibet would enjoy reading some of the reflections of Father Martin Stepanich, OFM, STD, who recently celebrated his seventieth anniversary as a priest. After Vatican II Father rejected the changes and set about conducting an extensive apostolate by mail and phone, encouraging countless faithful Catholics to do the same.

The following is excerpted from Father’s July-August-September 2011 Newsletter. God bless you, Father!

JUST PERFECT for a priest jubilarian are the following words of one of the stanzas of Father Frederick William Faber’s immortal Eucharistic hymn, Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All:

Had I but Mary’s sinless heart
To love thee with, my dearest King!
O, with what bursts of fervent praise
Thy goodness, Jesus, would I sing!

Yes, with what bursts of the fervent praise and love and thanksgiving of Mary’s Immaculate Heart does an aging priest of 70 years address the infinite goodness of Jesus, the Eternal High Priest! And how easily do also the following words of that same sinless Heart of Mary come up from such a priest’s own unworthy heart and onto his lips: Magnificat Anima Mea Dominum — My Soul Magnifies the Lord!

The day of the beginning of specially fervent praise and love and thanksgiving for this priest of 70 long years was Sunday morning, May 18, 1941, when he was ordained, according to the traditional Catholic rite of ordination, by Chicago’s Bishop Bernard Sheil, in the Quigley North Seminary Chapel, together with a small group of other ordination candidates from different Religious Orders and Congregations within the Chicago area. Usually, for such a small group, there is no organist nor choir in the Quigley Chapel choir loft, but, much to our pleasant surprise, we suddenly heard the beautiful Litany of Saints being sung — a litany which is always a part of an ordination ceremony.

As a bit of a distraction, and before telling about my First Solemn Mass, let me mention that 3 days before the May 18th ordination, that is, on Thursday, May 15th, an unforgettable, tremendously powerful mid-afternoon storm blew in from the northwest upon our Lemont, Illinois, Franciscan Monastery (St. Mary’s Seminary) of the Slovene Franciscan Fathers. Among the trees blown down on the monastery grounds was a beauty of a tall majestic elm tree right in front of the monastery building. There was speculation by weather experts that a tornado funnel may possibly have skipped through, but without quite coming down hard on the ground.

As so often happens after a big storm, chilly air moved in from the north for the next few days and, as we headed for Quigley Seminary on the Sunday morning of May 18, it was a bit chilly.

And now about my First Solemn Mass. The date of that Mass was delayed until June 15, so that relatives and acquaintances, especially those from Pueblo, Colorado, could make it. The privileged church for such a rare solemnity was St. Ignatius Church in the small town of Neodesha (population 3,300) in southern Wilson County, southeast Kansas, some 30 miles north of the Oklahoma border. It was in that church that I had been baptized (on December 5, 1915), had received my First Holy Communion (on May 21, 1925, four days after the canonization of St. Therese Martin, the Little Flower), and was confirmed by Wichita’s Bishop Schwertner (May 14, 1928).

The long-time pastor of Neodesha’s St. Ignatius Parish was the highly-regarded Father George Reinschmidt (born in Rochester, New York). The deacon for my First Solemn Mass was the many-years major superior of Lemont’s Slovene Franciscan Fathers, Very Reverend Father Benedict Hoge, O.F.M. (native of Cleveland, Ohio), while the subdeacon was our Lemont Franciscan Father Cyril Shircel (born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin), a Doctor of Philosophy graduate of Washington’s Catholic University, and also a zealous and very talented promoter of the philosophy and theology of the renowned 13-14th century Franciscan John Duns Scotus. It was this Father Cyril who later arranged for me to enroll in the Catholic University School of Sacred Theology, with the final outcome being that I there gained the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology. The title of my doctoral dissertation is The Christology of Zeno of Verona.

Interestingly enough, my hometown of Neodesha, Kansas, was the location of the first commercial oil well west of the Mississippi River, an oil well that to this day goes by the historic name of Norman Number One oil well. Standard Oil Company operated a refinery in Neodesha for about 75 years. Noteworthy, too, is the fact that Neodesha’s mayor, Harry Woodring, became Democratic Governor of Kansas for two terms, and then Secretary of War under President Roosevelt — until he could no longer stand Roosevelt’s socialist policies.

How do you pronounce Neodesha? Add the letter y to it, this way: Neodeshay — and pronounce it with the accent on the “shay.” It’s an Osage Indian word that means “the meeting of the waters,” because two rivers, the Verdigris River on the east side of town and the Fall River on the west side of town come together a mile or so south of town. Southeast Kansas was Osage Indian Territory.

To get back to the Father Martin Stepanich issue — dad’s Kansas farm, where I was born (in 1915) and grew up was about 7 miles southeast of Neodesha. Purchased as a 160 acre double farm by my dad (Joe Stepanich) and by my uncle Frank Bambick in 1911, it eventually, over a period of nearly 100 years, grew to the size of about 500 acres. When dad died in 1957, my brother Ed got possession of the farm and held on to it until he died on January 30, 2010. Ed was number 6 of the Stepanich family of 9 children (6 boys, 3 girls). I am number 4. The only two others of the Stepanich family still living are John, number 8, and Fred, number 9.

Today, the Stepanich farm, owned for nearly 100 years by a Catholic family, is no longer the Stepanich farm, nor is it owned by Catholics. It has reportedly been sold twice already since Ed’s death, the larger part to a non-Catholic neighbor farmer to the north and west (Steve Mahaffey), the other part to a non-Catholic farmer to the east (Ed Carstedt).

To get back to earlier history of the Stepanich family — it was to Neodesha that we of the Stepanich family went for shopping and Sunday Mass and also to attend Neodesha high school, after finishing grade school at nearby Brooks country school.

There was no parish school for Catholics in Neodesha. During the earlier and middle 1920’s, we travelled by horse and buggy or by spring wagon, then by a black model T Ford (which dad bought brand new for $400), and then a green model A Ford. Gasoline in those days cost us a whole 5c a gallon.

The horse and buggy and spring wagon came in very handy for mama, who had plenty of garden products and also chickens to sell in Neodesha, thereby making enough money to help buy much of what was needed. And dad, a professional butcher, helped even more by going to Neodesha twice a week to do butchering and meat processing for Neodesha’s Simpson and Bonnell meat market. But dad chose to travel by foot, walking 7 miles along the Frisco railroad tracks to Neodesha after midnight, then returning home late in the afternoon. He did his farming, with horses, the remaining week days.

What was very important for fostering two religious and one priestly vocation in the Stepanich family was the Catholic atmosphere that was maintained in the family. My sister Agnes (we called her Aggie, but mama pronounced it Eggie), two years older than I, became Sister Susanne with the Slovene Franciscan Sisters of Mount Assisi Convent east of Lemont, Illinois, in 1929. She had used to say to me, “I am going to be a Sister and you are going to be a priest.”

I went to Neodesha High School for the freshman year (1929-30), then transferred to the Slovene Franciscan Fathers of Lemont in 1930, and they sent me to the Franciscan St. Joseph College, Westmont, Illinois, 15 miles north of Lemont, for 4 years. Then I entered the Franciscan Order with Lemont’s Slovene Franciscan Fathers on September 2, 1934, taking the name Martin as my religious name, in honor of St. Therese Martin, the Little Flower. And then, after 2 years of philosophy and 4 years of theology, I became Father Martin, and that is what I am always called among Franciscans and the lay people with whom I and the other Fathers work. At home, I had always been called Frank, having been baptized Francis. My aunt Jennie Bambick, mama’s older sister, always said “Frankie,” but she pronounced it as if it were spelled “Frenki,” and she rolled the r.

It is amazing beyond words how God goes about choosing His candidates for the priesthood. Actually, no man is really worthy enough to be a priest, but that is no problem for God, who can and has countless times elevated lowly men to the sublime height of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest.

Just take a look at Our Lord’s first priests, the Apostles. From reading the Gospels we learn of what difficulties Jesus had in getting them to understand fully what He was doing in establishing His Church, His Kingdom of God on earth, and what He wanted them to be. He did not hesitate to scold them for their backwardness and lack of comprehension, and for their lack of sufficient faith in Him. But Jesus knew what to do with them. He had them totally transformed into what He wanted them to be by sending the Holy Ghost upon them.

And how could that Church-persecuting terrorist named Saul of Tarsus have ever been fit for the priesthood? But Jesus made him fit for the priesthood. Near Damascus in Syria, Jesus booted proud Saul off his high horse, and that was the end of the evil Saul and the beginning of Saint Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles.

All through the centuries since then, God has continued choosing those He wanted for the Catholic priesthood. Some young men have given early signs of a priestly vocation, so that sometimes people would say, “ He’s cut out to be a priest,” while others have given no indication at first that they would be fit for the priesthood. In any case, it was always God who did the choosing, As Jesus told the Apostles very plainly, “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you” (John 15.16).

So it wasn’t really a surprise that God went looking (so to speak) for a future priest on dad’s southeast Kansas farm, in the land of coyotes and jack rabbits and civet cats, the land of sunflowers and cockle burrs and osage orange hedge balls. It was there that God found a young nobody named Frank (yes, “Frenki,” as Aunt Jennie would say) working for dad in the midst of plenty of Kansas dirt and dust and dung. Frank learned to work the fields and bring in the crops, and also milk the cows, while helping mama in the garden as well. His favorite among the farm animals was mama’s incomparable fried chicken.

Anyway, in Frank were literally fulfilled these words of Psalm 112 (Laudate Pueri Dominum in Latin) : “He raises the needy from the dust, and the wretched from the dunghill, that He may seat him with princes, even with the princes of His own chosen people.”

Were there any prophetic indications that maybe such a Kansas farm boy had a vocation to the priesthood? To mention it once again, Aggie did like to say to Frank, “I’m going to be a Sister and you are going to be a priest.” And Frank would on occasion play the game of “offering mass,” the way he saw Father Reinschmidt doing it. He would lay a wide board across two chairs, and that was his altar. His younger brothers, Hank and Ed, would “serve” the “mass.” “Father” Frank would even pretend to preach a bit of a “sermon,” warning Hank and Ed to stop being bad boys, but to be good boys.

Taking turns, with other parish boys, in serving Father Reinschmidt’s Sunday Masses was also a big help in fostering a priestly vocation. Since there was no parish school at Neodesha’s St. Ignatius Church, catechism classes were held after Sunday Masses. Some of the parish women helped in teaching catechism. One of them — Nora V. — had trouble pronouncing “Extreme Unction,” and managed only to say “Extre Unction” instead. But that didn’t spoil Frank’s vocation. Another big help was the annual two-week “religious vacation school” in early June, conducted by Sisters of Charity from Wichita.

Late in the 1920’s, the time came for making a definite decision about going to study for the priesthood. To test Frank’s vocation, dad and mama insisted that he go to Neodesha High School for the 1929-30 freshman year. But that didn’t snuff out his vocation. So, a decision had to be made as to where to go for early seminary training. Father Reinschmidt understandably urged Frank to become a secular priest like himself. And the Canon City, Colorado, Benedictine Monastery, where Slovene Father Cyril Zupan, O.S.B., was a prominent monk, also received some consideration.

But the final decision was for going to the Slovene Franciscan Monastery, known as St. Mary’s Seminary, east of Lemont, Illinois. The deciding factor was the Slovene language monthly Ave Maria magazine that made us fairly well acquainted with the Lemont monastery. So, in September, 1930, dad and I made the long tiresome trip by bus, going up to Kansas City, then over to St. Louis, and then up north to Chicago, and finally 20 miles west of Chicago to Lemont.

After 4 years of preparatory seminary training, Frank Stepanich formally entered the Franciscan Order at St. Mary’s Seminary, Lemont, on September 2, 1934, taking the name Martin as his new religious name, in honor of St. Therese Martin, the Little Flower. His folks mistakenly thought that he chose the name Martin because of Uncle Martin Kolbezen in Pueblo, Colorado. Finally, after completing Seminary studies in philosophy and theology, Friar Martin became Father Martin on May 18, 1941. Deo Gratias!

It should be mentioned here that the recent 70th anniversary Mass here in our Bolingbrook house was a High Mass. Fellow Franciscan Father Francis Miller, from Lafayette, Louisiana, came and suggested that it be a High Mass. And it was, a Gregorian Chant High Mass.

* * * *

With my daily prayers for all of you, and with my blessing, most gratefully,

Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D.

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Tragedy and Treason at Christ the King Abbey

Monday, May 30, 2011

TRADITIONALIST FORUMS have been abuzz during the past few weeks over the fate of Christ the King Abbey, in Cullman, Alabama, which ended up in the hands of the Novus Ordo church four months after the death of its founder, Benedictine Father Leonard Giardina.

Rt. Rev. Leonard Giardina OSB

How can one account for this betrayal of all the traditional Catholics who supported the monastery over the years? And who is ultimately responsible for it?

It is a tale of a tragedy that almost inevitably ended in treason.

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FOUNDATION AND WORK
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Father Giardina, formerly a member of St. Bernard Monastery in Cullman, founded Christ the King in the early 1980s.

During the upheaval after Vatican II, his superiors at sent him to Notre Dame for some theological “updating.” Father resisted the brainwashing, left the St. Bernard’s, took a job in a grocery store in Cullman to support himself, and started offering the traditional Latin Mass for a small group of faithful Catholics in the area.

Thanks to the help of a successful businessman, Fr. Giardina was able to obtain land and found a monastery. Word of this new foundation spread, and his monastery soon drew extensive financial support from all varieties of traditionalists throughout the U.S.

Unlike most Benedictine monasteries in the U.S., the monks at Christ the King conducted no active apostolate. They recited part of the day hours of the Divine Office in common, and performed manual labor on the monastery grounds.

Fr. Giardina visited us at St. Gertrude the Great in 1991 to preach at our Forty Hours’ Devotion. As a result of that contact, a number of our parishioners took an interest in the monastery. Some became Benedictine Oblates, and occasionally visited the monastery to make private retreats.

Father steered clear of the Society of St. Pius X and its Benedictine affiliates. During his visit here, he regaled us with a number of amusing anecdotes about his encounters with the rather “French-fried” Benedictinism of the latter.

On the other hand, Fr. Giardiana was studiously coy about revealing his position on the question of the pope. As far as I know, he never made any public statements one way or the other.

Fr. Giardina’s monastery newsletter, Speculum, moreover, routinely printed a denunciation of traditionalists who engage in “controversy” and “sterile polemic.” Such questions, readers were assured, were of no interest to monks, who only sought to be “spiritual.”

Father’s caginess on the pope question and his repeated “We’re-too-spiritual-for-controversies” protests, though, struck me as nothing more than a clever two-pronged fundraising ploy:

(1) Say absolutely nothing about the pope, so you can hit up all categories of traditionalists for donations: sedevacantists, SSPX-ers, independents, and Motu types.

(2) Play up the “I’m-only-a-humble-unworldly-monk” routine.

On the latter point, having spent some time as a monk myself, I am well aware how some of the sons of St. Benedict ham up the “humble monk” shtick whenever they sniff the scent of a potential big benefactor.

The double formula was a gold mine for Christ the King Abbey. Fr. Giardina played it to the hilt, and the bucks rolled in.

But in the long run, it sowed the seeds for abbey’s surrender to the modernists.

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FR. GIARDINA AND SEDEVACANTISM
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In the 1990s, we heard stories that Fr. Giardina followed the “material-formal” thesis on the question of the pope. This thesis originated with Bp. Guérard des Lauriers, and in the practical order amounts to the same position as sedevacantism.

Naturally, Fr. Giardina said nothing whatsoever publicly about his adherence to this position, so the monastery’s delicate fundraising ecosystem remained undisturbed.

Nevertheless, Bishop Robert McKenna, who also adheres to the material-formal thesis, ordained several priests for Christ the King.

Bishop McKenna also formally blessed Fr. Giardina as an abbot. The night before the ceremony, Fr. Giardina assured Bp. McKenna that he did not mention the name of John Paul II in the Canon of the Mass.

The number of parishioners who regularly assisted at Mass at the monastery chapel was between 60–100. Most were sedevacantists.

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MY 2007 VISIT TO THE ABBEY
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In 2007 Fr. Giardina contacted me and invited me to spend a few days at the abbey. This came as quite a surprise, because of my own reputation as both a sedevacantist and, needless to say, a controversialist.

The reason I was given for the invitation was this: Fr. Giardina wanted to find a way of publicly announcing that Christ the King Abbey was indeed sedevacantist. So, photos of yours truly, taken at the monastery with Father Abbot, would be published in the monastery newsletter as a way of beginning to break the news gently to friends and benefactors.

I figured that, at long last, Fr. Giardina had finally come around.

I spent a few pleasant days at the abbey after Pentecost, was duly photographed with the abbot and had a number of very positive discussions with some of the monks about the sede vacante question. It all seemed to go very well.

I also broached the topic of insuring that the monks received a proper formation in Latin, philosophy and theology before ordination. Church law prescribes that all priests, even those who will not pursue an active pastoral apostolate, receive a full seminary formation.

Though the young monks were of very good will, they had been ordained with very little intellectual formation. They knew little theology and less Latin, but they were aware of this shortcoming and wanted to correct it.

I told Fr. Giardina that if he wanted, I would investigate some possibilities for arranging for the monks to get some proper classes, perhaps via video links. I also expressed my fear to him that, without a proper theological formation, his monks could easily be gulled into joining the Conciliar Church once he was dead.

Father was agreeable to my proposal, and said he would let me know.

So, I left the monastery feeling quite optimistic.

But nothing whatsoever came of my visit. Father never got back to me on the question of classes for the monks, and he never published any announcement about the pope question. The matter died.

In fact, the news eventually got worse. Over the past few years, lay visitors to the abbey who inquired whether the monks acknowledged Benedict XVI as pope in the Canon of the Mass were firmly refused an answer.

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DIVISION AND DEATH
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It now appears that the younger monks were divided on the question of the pope, though their common esteem for Fr. Giardina held the community together as long as he was alive.

As Fr. Giardina’s health began to fail in old age, the divisions became more pronounced.

Father Sebastian Glentz, one of the two monks who turned the monastery over to the Novus Ordo church, said, “We did not discuss the issue; we prayed about it. Behind the scenes, our community was divided.”

Fr. Glentz had for some time been engaged in behind-the-scenes contact with the Novus Ordo authorities. He claimed that in December 2010 Fr. Giardina had given him permission to do so. But another monk later disputed whether by this time Fr. Giardina, who had become quite feeble, truly understood what was going on around him.

By late 2010 the monastery was down to five monks: two sedevacantist priest-monks, Fr. Giardina, Fr. Glentz and Fr. Michael Sauntner, who also favored joining the Novus Ordo.

Since Fr. Giardina had put Frs. Glentz and Sauntner in control of the civil corporation that owned the monastery property, they were able to engineer the expulsion of the two sedevacantist monks from the monastery in December 2010.

On January 7, 2011, Fr. Giardina died and was buried with a Low Mass.

In early March, Fr. Glentz and Sauntner closed the monastery church to the public, and placed a statement in the parish bulletin announcing their intention to defect to the modernists.

On May 1, the Bishop of Birmingham received the vows of Frs. Glentz and Sauntner as “canonical hermits” of the diocese.

Clergy from the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, a group in the Archdiocese of Chicago that offers both the Novus Ordo and the traditional Mass, have been installed in the monastery to assist Frs. Glentz and Sauntner during their “transition.”

The tragedy had played out, and the treason was complete.

The betrayed laity who assisted at Sunday Mass at the monastery chapel have now abandoned it. Fortunately, the CMRI Fathers were able to set up a mission in the area immediately.

Benefactors of the monastery — and not just the sedevacantists — now rightly believe that they have been hoodwinked and cheated. They donated generously to Christ King Abbey precisely because it had NO connection with the Novus Ordo. But now the fruits of their sacrifices have been turned over to the service of the Robber Church.

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WHY DID IT HAPPEN?
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Understandably, traditionalists have loudly denounced Frs. Glentz and Sauntner for handing the monastery over to the false religion of Vatican II. But in large measure, this is to misplace the blame.

For how could Fr. Glentz and Sauntner have been expected to resist the blandishments of well-educated and smooth-talking Conciliarists (a former bureaucrat from the Roman Curia among them) if they themselves had no formation in traditional Catholic theology?

Fr. Sauntner in particular is an extremely simple man. In a normal monastery, he would have remained a lay brother all his life and never been ordained. How could someone as child-like as he see through the deceptions of some curial crocodile with a doctorate in canon law?

Or how could Frs. Glentz and Sauntner have been expected to worry about affiliating their insitution with the poisonous errors of the Conciliar Church if their beloved Fr. Giardina had been saying for decades that monks should have no interest in “sterile polemics” about such issues?

Or how could Frs. Glentz and Sauntner have been expected to resist an offer to “come under obedience to the Pope” if Fr. Giardina kept a total public silence on the the question of the pope and refused to discuss it?

Or how could Frs. Glentz and Sauntner have been expected to at least seek the advice of other traditionalist clergy about the step they were going to take if Fr. Giardina (as one of the sedevacantist priest monks said) had been depicting all other traditionalists, rather than the Conciliar Church, as “the real enemy”?

The primary responsibility for the tragedy and the treason of Christ the King Abbey, one must sadly conclude, lies not with these men, but with Father Leonard Giardina.

This, I know, is a severe judgment on a kind priest who had many virtues.

But it was not Fr. Giardina’s virtues that led to his monastery ending up in the clutches of the Robber Church. It was Fr. Giardina’s refusal to educate his monks as the Church required, his refusal to address the issues of the day, his refusal to adopt a clear position on the question of the pope and his portrayal of other traditionalists — rather than the modernists — as the real enemy.

What he failed to do and the consequences should serve as a sobering lesson and warning for other traditionalists. Christ the King Abbey is one of so many traditionalist institutions that began in resistance, operated without coherent theological principles, and therefore ended in surrender.

In a 2003 article, Untrained and Untridentine: Holy Orders and the Canonically Unfit, I outlined the requirements church law and the popes had laid down for proper seminary training, and I discussed at some length its importance for traditional Catholic clergy.

I also listed objections that had been made against insisting on this training, including one I drew directly from Fr. Giardina’s newsletter — in essence, that clerical education leads to pharisaism and pride. Fr. Giardina’s objection, together with my response, were as follows:

I. Sterile Polemic. “You are engaging in sterile intellectual polemics in which we have no interest. Your comments are uncharitable, unspiritual and divisive. As a priest, you should keep them to yourself. You are like the Pharisee who boastfully looked upon himself as someone special above the rank and file of the unworthies of the world!”

Response: Here is Pius XI on our responsibility to speak out against an ill-trained clergy: “What a terrifying account, Venerable Brethren, we shall have to give to the Prince of Shepherds, to the Supreme Bishop of souls, if we have handed over these souls to incompetent guides and incapable leaders.”

And so it was to “incompetent guides and incapable leaders” that Fr. Giardina entrusted his life’s work. And they in turn, handed it over to the wolves.

A terrifying account, indeed, for any man to have to render to the Prince of Shepherds.

We should therefore be solicitous to pray for the repose of the soul of Father Leonard Giardina. Most especially, we should to have many Masses offered for his soul — for the Masses offered for him in the monastery he founded will be no Masses at all.

May God grant Fr. Giardina eternal rest.

And may He now smash the walls of Christ the King Abbey down into the dust.

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Salza on Sedevacantism: Same Old Fare

Monday, April 11, 2011

IN 2005 Catholic Family News and The Fatima Crusader published “Opposing the Sedevacantist Enterprise,” a lengthy anti-sedevacantist tract by Christopher Ferrara, a New Jersey lawyer who has also written extensively for The Remnant and other traditionalist publications.

Improving the leftovers?

Mr. Ferrara’s pompous pronouncements provided an irresistibly juicy target. I responded with Sedevacantism and Mr. Ferrara’s Cardboard Pope (August 2005) and Resisting the Pope, Sedevacantism and Frankenchurch (November 2005).

Now comes another lawyer, John Salza, from my native Milwaukee, to plead the same case with the same arguments in the same forum, this time around with an article entitled “Sedevacantism and the Sin of Presumption” (Catholic Family News, April 2011).

Mr. Salza, it seems, has not bothered to read either my responses to Mr. Ferrara’s arguments against sedevacantism or those of other writers who weighed in at the time, despite the ready availability of all this material on the internet (yes, even in Milwaukee). His seems to be a research-free undertaking, launched with the aid of a vernacular paraphrase of the Code of Canon Law.

Consequently, Mr. Salza does nothing more than recycle the same mythical objections to sedevacantism that I and others have answered over and over for at least twenty years.

Though in court a judge would promptly cut off a lawyer who tried this — “Asked and answered, counselor. Move on.” — this apparently did not occur to the Editor of Catholic Family News.

So, we will need to repeat our previous responses to these stale objections as we point out two of Mr. Salza’s most egregious errors: (1) How he confuses the sin of heresy with the canonical crime of heresy, and (2) How he mistakenly assumes that before one can conclude someone is a heretic, one must engage in some sort of mind-reading.

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1. CRIME AND SIN CONFUSED.
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Mr. Salza devotes six columns of his eight-column article to the passages in the Code of Canon law that pertain to heresy. He serves up a disorganized little sampler of his thoughts on canonical concepts such as “notoriety,” pertinacity, due process, legal presumptions, “habitual inculpable ignorance,” “inadvertence,” and of course, required “canonical warnings.”

On the latter, he points to canon 2314 as a gotcha quote that would supposedly require canonical warnings before a heretical pope would lose office. No warning, no heresy, no sedevacantism.

All the technical lingo, we suppose, is meant to impress the groundlings. But Mr. Salza has committed a category error. For the principles, criteria and processes he discusses pertain to the canonical crime of heresy (heresy as an criminal offense against canon law) and not to the sin of heresy (heresy as a grave sin against divine law).

The distinction is easily grasped by considering abortion. The act has a two-fold aspect: as a sin against divine law (Thou shalt not kill) that brings with it the loss of sanctifying grace, and as a canonical crime against church law (canon 2350) that brings with it certain canonical penalties. One may commit the sin of abortion without necessarily fulfilling all the legal conditions required for the canonical crime of abortion.

In the matter at hand, when canonists and theologians say that “heresy” automatically deprives a pope of his office, they are referring to the sin of heresy, not to the canonical crime of heresy.

So all the rigmarole that Mr. Salza trots out from canonical criminal proceedings about pertinacity and the need for “warnings” to the post-Conciliar popes is irrelevant to refuting the sedevacantist case.

This much is evident from the canonist Michel’s discussion of the nature of heresy when he says that the “pertinacity” that must be present for the sin of heresy “does not of necessity include long obstinacy by the heretic and warnings from the Church. A condition for the sin of heresy is one thing; a condition for the canonical crime of heresy, punishable by canon laws, is another.” (“Héresie, Héretique,” Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique [Paris: Letouzey 1913–1950] 6:2222)

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2. THE MIND-READING MYTH.
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Having wrapped his canonical red herring in six columns of newsprint, Mr. Salza then takes one column to dismiss the sedevacantist argument based on divine law (one I have frequently made) as “nonsensical, it also does nothing for their case.”

Underlying this claim is Mr. Salza’s assumption that, to be able to impute even the sin of heresy to anyone, a Kreskin-like ability to read minds is required. No moral imputability is possible, because one is “dealing with the Pope’s heart and mind… judging his internal dispositions… a Pope may have a mental reservation…” and a one ends up “arrogat[ing] to oneself the authority to determine a Pope’s level of malice or lack of ignorance.”

This claim is absurd. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, such mind-reading is not required to establish the existence of sin of heresy. Again, we turn to the canonist Michel:

“Because the act of heresy is an erroneous judgment of intelligence to commit the sin of heresy it suffices to knowingly and willingly express this erroneous judgment in opposition to the Church’s magisterium. From the moment that one sufficiently knows the existence of the rule of the faith in the Church and that, on any point whatsoever, for whatever motive and in whatever form, one refuses to submit to it, formal heresy is complete.” (Ibid. 6:2222)

Nor is the type of mind-reading Mr. Salza envisions required to establish even the canonical crime of heresy. In canonical penal procedure, any act that signifies heresy establishes the presumption of heretical depravity:

“The very commission of any act which signifies heresy, e.g., the statement of some doctrine contrary or contradictory to a revealed and defined dogma, gives sufficient ground for juridical presumption of heretical depravity… [E]xcusing circumstances have to be proved in the external forum, and the burden of proof is on the person whose action has given rise to the imputation of heresy. In the absence of such proof, all such excuses are presumed not to exist.” (McDevitt, The Delict of Heresy, CU Canon Law Studies 77. [Washington: 1932] 35. My emphasis)

This also shoots down arguments Mr. Salza made earlier in his article when he claimed that Benedict XVI cannot be guilty of heresy because:

“A person can make heretical statements while maintaining orthodox internal dispositions, that is, he may not necessarily believe what he says, [!!] based on many factors (peer pressure, misplaced zeal, emotional imbalance, even diabolical disorientation).… Pope Benedict confessed that what he says and what he believes may be two different things (evidence that he may be laboring under inculpable inadvertence or error of mental reservation).”

As an attempt to exculpate Benedict XVI, this scenario is hilarious: The Pope cannot be a heretic because (1) he says things he doesn’t believe and (2) what comes out of his mouth may have no connection with what’s in his head.

However, “hypocrisy/robot mouth” is not one of the defenses recognized by canon law. Boiled down into non-technical language, these are limited to: I was crazy, I was stupid, I was daydreaming, heretics forced me to get drunk, someone twisted my arm, I got really ticked, and finally, self-defense — which works out to something like “I ducked down to kiss that Koran because the imam took a swing at me.” So, as defense counsel for John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Mr. Salza would be stuck with one of these.

And if Mr. Salza still wants to plead ignorance as a defense for his distinguished clients (both doctors of sacred theology, please note) he should be aware that:

“If the delinquent making this claim be a cleric, his plea for mitigation must be dismissed, either as untrue, or else as indicating ignorance which is affected, or at least crass and supine… His ecclesiastical training in the seminary, with its moral and dogmatic theology, its ecclesiastical history, not to mention its canon law, all insure that the Church’s attitude towards heresy was imparted to him.” (McDevitt, 48. My emphasis)

Bottom line: mind-reading is not required before you are permitted to conclude that someone is a heretic.

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There are other errors in Mr. Salza’s article that one need mention only in passing:

• The passage in St. Thomas which Mr. Salza cites in footnote 3 (to Summa II–II, Q 21, art 1–2) has nothing whatsoever to do with the assertions about heresy that Mr. Salza makes in his main text.

• Mr. Salza’s comments on canon 188.4 (automatic loss of ecclesiastical office due to public defection from the Catholic faith) confuse tacit resignation, penalties and criminal procedure.

• Mr. Salza accuses sedevacantists of “the sin of presumption” when he in fact appears to mean “rash judgment.”

As an alternative to sedevacantism, he serves up the same old and moldy dishes from the SSPX/Remnant buffet table: the out-of-context “resistance” quotes from Bellarmine and others, the pope-as-bad-dad scenario, and Paul resisting Peter. None of these leftovers has been rendered any more palatable by the dash of Salza.

Though all lawyers are schooled in how to argue effectively, the good ones do their research and make every effort to understand their opponents’ arguments. Mr. Salza has not done so here.

Catholic Family News readers should therefore disabuse themselves of the notion that Mr. Salza’s “Sedevacantism and the Sin of Presumption” is an effective or convincing response to the sedevacantist case.

For the one thing Mr. Salza’s article has demonstrated is the unlikelihood of his future success in the exciting and challenging field of canon law.

Filed in Sedevacantism: Objections | | Comments (1)

SSPX vs. Diocesan Priest: Baptism and a Larger Issue

Monday, January 24, 2011

THE FOLLOWING post from “Tridentinist” recently appeared on FishEaters, an Internet forum devoted to issues of interest to traditional Catholics:

We attend the SSPX and also the Traditional Mass offered by my brother, who is a priest, and has come to offer the Traditional Mass in terms of Summorum Pontificum, though he still also says the Novus Ordo. We go to him when the SSPX does not have Mass at our chapel (two Sundays per month). Some SSPX faithful refuse to go, saying they would rather not attend even a Traditional Mass, than any non-SSPX Mass.

We recently had our child baptised by this latter priest. We chose him as he is the baby’s uncle, would baptise the baby in the traditional rite, and indeed was very willing to do so.

However, the SSPX priest was unhappy about this, saying we were compromising our status as “traditionalists” and forgetting the battle for Tradition. We stressed that we only asked this priest to baptise, as he was the baby’s uncle, himself often said the TLM, and would baptise in the old rite. However, the SSPX side of the family refused to attend the baptism of their grandchild/nephew (they miss Mass rather than attend non-SSPX TLMs) and told us it was their duty to shun all association with the mainstream church, old rite or not (the “Novus Ordo instition” as they term it) lest they lose their faith.

Now the baptism is done, but I’d be interested in knowing what people, especially but not only SSPXers, would do in this case. Do you think it was sinful? Or compromising? Or a betrayal of Tradition?

This post is of interest not so much for the practical question it asks (Is an SSPX priest or a diocesan priest preferable as the minister of a baptism in the traditional rite?) but for the larger issue it raises.

The various elements that coalesce in this incident reflect a fundamental problem with the SSPX apostolate that has existed from the beginning: the Society has never really given a coherent answer to the question “Is the Novus Ordo Catholic?” And by “Novus Ordo” I mean not just the New Mass, but the whole new order of doctrine, discipline and worship officially approved by Paul VI and his successors.

This was the crux of the matter in our dispute with SSPX in the early 1980s, and it continues to cause crises within SSPX and departures from its ranks.

Nearly all SSPX departures go “left,” that is, back to the Novus Ordo institution in one way or another, because if you have the idea drummed into you that sedevacantism is “schismatic” and then finally discover all those dogmatic texts insisting that subjection to the Roman Pontiff is necessary for salvation, logic (if not fear for your salvation) will lead you to put yourself under the authority of the man SSPX has been telling you is the Roman Pontiff.

Indeed, I received an e-mail a few days ago from someone informing me that a relative of hers who is a young priest in SSPX is just about to do this. (This is not the sort of stuff that SSPX will discuss and analyze in its publications and web apostolate; the policy is strictly “NON-DICI.”)

Tridentinist’s puzzlement about the SSPX priest and laymen objecting to the baptism by the parish priest is perfectly understandable.

If the only real issue is whether a Catholic is compromising his status as “a traditionalist” or whether he is “forgetting the battle for Tradition,” who gets to say what is traditional and what is not? Why not Tridentinist, just as well as SSPX?

And why object to baptism — in the traditional rite, no less — by a priest who is “in full communion” with the pope? Isn’t the priest’s status merely one that Bishop Fellay is seeking to obtain for the whole Society?

Archbishop Lefebvre, speaking of the disconnect between Paul VI’s words and his actions, famously said “we suffer from this continual incoherence.” The same could be said of the SSPX intellectual disconnect reflected in the case under discussion.

This has been going on for decades, as may be seen from the then-Father Sanborn’s 1984 article The Crux of the Matter.

In one sense, SSPX has a winning formula: on one hand, it can tell skeptical Catholics that it does indeed “recognize” the pope. On the other hand, SSPX is spared the inconvenience of actual subjection to him whom it “recognizes.” Support then rolls in from those who lack the theological sophistication to realize that a Catholic can’t have one without the other. Cha-ching!

So, on the level of principle, the matter of SSPX’s status remains in a state of suspended animation, nourished by the IV drip of “negotiations” and endless, near-Talmudic arguments over the meaning what Bp. Fellay said THIS week.

Meanwhile, the fundamental question — Is the Novus Ordo Catholic? — goes unanswered.

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The Pentecost Hymn, Ecumenism and the Jews

Monday, May 24, 2010

THE TRADITIONAL Catholic liturgy is an anti-ecumenical minefield.

In my 1991 study of the orations (collects, secrets, post-communions) of the Mass of Paul VI, I demonstrated that the post-Vatican II reforms purged from the Missal any language which compromised ecumenism. Hence references in the prayers to notions like the true faith, the true Church, the evils of heresy, the rights of the Holy See, and the blindness of the Jews were dropped. (Problems with the Prayers of the Modern Mass, 22–5)

Such expressions, wrote Archbishop Bugnini, “sounded rather bad” in the ecumenical climate of Vatican II, and “no one should find a motive for spiritual discomfort in the prayers of the Church.” (La Riforma Liturgica, 127).

This principle was applied not just in revising the orations, but throughout the entire liturgical reform, as I demonstrate in my new book Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI (West Chester OH: Philothea Press 2010).

The real hot button texts in the old liturgy, of course, are those that refer to the Jews.

Once Benedict XVI authorized the widespread use of the 1962 Missal in July 2007, various Jewish pressure groups agitated for a change in the Missal’s Good Friday prayer for the Jews. This resulted in the Vatican producing an entirely new text for the prayer in 2008, which was then duly imposed on all groups that offer the old Mass under Vatican or diocesan auspices.

For an excellent overview of the affair, see Bishop Sanborn’s article Genuflecting to the Jews

But in the traditional liturgy, the Good Friday prayer is merely one instance of a text that alludes to the faithlessness and blindness of the Jews. Another is found in the hymn for Matins (a part of the Divine Office) that the clergy sing or recite on the feast of Pentecost (Whitsunday).

The offending text in Latin reads as follows:

Judaea tunc incredula,
Vesana torvo spiritu,
Madere musto sobrios
Christi fideles increpat.

Sed editis miraculis
Occurrit et docet Petrus
Falsum profari perfidos
Joele teste comprobans

A prose translation reads:

Then the Jews, still faithless, are possessed by the spirit of blind anger and hate, and accuse Christ’s sober servants of being drunk with new wine.

But Peter confronts them with his Master’s miracles, and shows the falsity of what the perfidious Jews are saying, proving it to them from the words of Joel. (Connelly, 108)

And here is a verse translation. You can sing it to the tune of O Salutaris — perfect for the next time you’re at an ecumenical gathering, say, or at a meeting of the Southern Poverty Law Center:

But Juda’s sons, e’en faithless yet,
With mad infuriate rage beset,
To mock Christ’s followers combine,
As drunken all with new-made wine.

When lo! with signs and mighty deeds,
Stands Peter in the midst, and pleads,
Confounding their malignant lie,
By Joel’s ancient prophecy. (Britt, 166)

There are at least two considerations here:

(1) The hymn under discussion, Jam Christus Astra Ascenderat, originates in the fourth century. Its language shows that ecumenism Vatican II-style, where the true faith has no real enemies, whether heretic, pagan or Jew, is contrary to the outlook of the early Church. The oldest prayers in the traditional liturgy called a spade a spade.

(2) Sooner or later, some Latin-savvy Jew or modernist will wade through the ’62 Missal and Breviary, and ferret out passages like these — a fairly easy task these days, now that all the texts are on-line.

(The text from St. Augustine chanted at Tenebrae on Good Friday — “You, O Jews, killed [Christ]… with the sword of your tongue” — would really send ‘em ballistic.)

Then the professional anti-Semitism inquisitors (think Abe Foxman and company) will crank up their propaganda machine: A whole new generation of Catholics is now being exposed to these anti-Semitic texts in the many seminaries, schools, convents, parishes, convents and monasteries that now, thanks to Benedict XVI’s 2007 Motu Proprio, follow the pre-Vatican II Missal and Breviary. Something must be done, etc.

Then there will be agitation in the secular and the modernist press to change the texts. In the name of ecumenism, the Vatican will eventually give in. Institutions that enjoy official Vatican approval (such as the Fraternity of St. Peter, the Clear Creek Benedictines, and the Good Shepherd Institute) will then have to undergo some liturgical “renewal” in the name of ecumenism.

All this, of course, takes one very far indeed from the militant spirit of the early Church, which (as is evident from its liturgical prayers) sought to convert or defeat its enemies, rather than appease them.

As for the latter course, the operating principle that the early Church followed could best be summed up as — though we doubt St. Augustine ever said it —“Never feed a live chicken to an alligator, because it keeps coming back for more.”

The traditional liturgy of the true Church, in a word, brooks no compromise with error.

Bibliography

BRITT, Matthew. Hymns of the Roman Breviary. New York: Benzinger 1922.
BUGNINI, Annibale. La Riforma Liturgica: 1948–1975. Rome: CLV Edizioni Liturgiche 1983.
CEKADA, Anthony. The Problems with the Prayers of the Modern Mass. Rockford IL: TAN 1991.
——— Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI. West Chester OH: Philothea Press 2010.
CONNELLY, Joseph. Hymns of the Roman Liturgy. Westminster MD: Newman 1954.
SANBORN, Donald. “Genuflecting to the Jews,” Most Holy Trinity Newsletter, March 2008.

Filed in Liturgy: Misc | | Comments (0)

The Campaign against SGG Last Year: An Outside Perspective

Saturday, February 20, 2010

NOTE: A few weeks ago, I had an e-mail exchange with a couple who had been following the events here at St. Gertrude the Great late last year. It makes a number of excellent points, and they were kind enough to allow me to publish it.

Dear Father,

My husband, Nick and I are traditional Catholics living in Tulsa Oklahoma without benefit of frequent access to a genuine Mass. Over the past few years we have tried to maintain ties to the traditionalist movement through, among other things, accessing articles and sermons posted on the internet, from various sites.

My husband and I have found much edification and inspiration, in your writings, as well as that of Bishops Dolan and Sanborn. Sad to say, it is extremely difficult in this era of the “dumbing-down” of the people to encounter truly educated and articulate writings and speech in secular life, much less in today’s clergy.

Therefore, it has been most distressing to us to see what has been happening to the priests and the parish of St Gertrude’s as a result of the recent onslaught of vicious internet attacks levied by a small group of disgruntled persons. From our perspective as outside observers, it is only obvious what is occurring: insinuations are being trumpeted as fact; statements that should have remained private have been made public and published out of context; the internet is being used as a means of slander and defamation. It also appears to us as if certain individuals are truly suffering from mental issues that only contribute to the paranoia and frenzy with which they seek to destroy SGG clergy and the parish itself.

The Devil is truly having himself a wonderful time at the expense of (i) the SGG clergy (ii) the persons who insist upon continuing a vicious, frenzied, and irrational attack (iii) the dupes (some witting and others not) who are being used to perpetuate the calumnies and (iv) the Church itself… already fragmented and in crisis.

I wish that I could shake some sense into these people; I want to continually rebut and rebuke these internet gossip mongers and yet I know it would be to no effect. Clearly there is no logical dialogue that can be waged with people in the grip of the devil’s delusions.

In any event. my husband and I offer our sincere support and if there is anything we can do to assist the SGG clergy we offer our services (my husband is an attorney and I am a paralegal). We would also like to send you and Bishop Dolan a donation in order to assist you with your dails expenses, such meals etc. What would be the best address for us to send a check?

If we can be of any service to you and Bishop Dolan, please feel free to contact us at ___________________

God bless,

Rose & Nick Manno

—————–

Dear Mr. And Mrs. Manno,

We greatly appreciated your kind and thoughtful letter.

With your permission, I would like to post it on my blog (minus any identifying information), because it sums up a number of important points. If you would be uncomfortable with this, I will understand.

A number of people like yourselves — faithful Catholics isolated from ready access to the Mass and the sacraments — have written to assure us of their prayers and and support. A perspective from someone outside the “battlefield” is a good reminder to us that the little apostolate we have undertaken here, despite its problems, has benefited more that just the Catholics of southern Ohio. And that’s a very encouraging thought.

Your comments on the corrosive effects of the internet were particularly perceptive. This episode has certainly brought home to us the realization that we all now live in a different — and truly nasty — world.

We, like you, reluctantly came to the conclusion that the cause for these events was at least in part the work of the devil, because there was no proportion whatsoever between the supposed cause for the dispute (dissatisfaction with our school on the part of a few) and the rabid, consuming rage against clergy, school and church stirred up among seemingly devout people, most of whom had no direct experience or connection with our school.

Things have settled down, thank God, and we are looking forward to a good Lent next week. I was able to return to finishing the book I have been writing on the New Mass — it will appear in early April — and we are making plans for our customary Holy Week observances.

As for those who have left us, I do not know what they will do ultimately, because it seems that Father Ramolla is in the process of being deported. (The employment status he had with us, it appears, was not transferable.)

I will put you on the list to receive our national newsletter. If you care to contribute from time to time to help Bishop Dolan’s apostolate, that would be appreciated.

May God bless you for your prayers and kind words.

In Christ,

Father Cekada

—————–

Dear Fr. Cekada,

Thanks for your warm reply.

Congratulations on the completion of your book. My husband and I will be very interested in reading it after it is published.

Yes, please feel free to post our e-mail on Quidlibet.

Given their track record so far, I imagine that the gaggle of internet detractors will accuse you of making up the e-mail. Therefore, please feel free to post my and my husband’s name in connection with the e-mail (just not our address and telephone number).

We stand behind what we wrote 100%. The least that we can do is to show you and Bishop Dolan the support that you so justly deserve by permitting our names to be attached to our comments.

We will be sure to send a donation very shortly.

May God continue to bless the parish of SGG and the work that you and Bishop Dolan do.

Sincerely,

Nick and Rose Manno

Filed in Internet attacks against SGG | | Comments (0)

Bishop Fellay, The Three and the SSPX Deal: A Preliminary Analysis

The Leader is Always Right! Fellay, Il Duce, and the SSPX Deal

An SSPX Deal: But Will the Fat Lady Sing?

Short Critique of Article “Regarding the Restored Order of Holy Week”

Fr. Martin Stepanich OFM, STD: Seventy Years a Priest!

Tragedy and Treason at Christ the King Abbey

Salza on Sedevacantism: Same Old Fare

SSPX vs. Diocesan Priest: Baptism and a Larger Issue

The Pentecost Hymn, Ecumenism and the Jews

The Campaign against SGG Last Year: An Outside Perspective

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