LITTLE KNOWN FACTS

 

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

(by a Catholic Prelate)

 

It is, I believe, time to clarify some of the confusion and brouhaha surrounding the recent lifting of the excommunications which the four SSPX bishops incurred in 1988. By now it is commonly known that by a decree of 21^st January, by order of the Supreme Pontiff, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Re, lifted the excommunications incurred by the four bishops because the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated (30^th June 1988) them without papal mandates. Those excommunications were latae sententiae, i.e. censure (commonly confused with a penalty), that follows automatically, by force of the law itself, when the law is contravened. It should be noted that excommunication, in the Catholic meaning, is a censure, rather than a penalty, since it is a medicinal and preventive proclamation of a pre-existing condition which the Church believes should not be followed. Nor does it (necessarily) imply a sinful action has been committed. For example, according to the 1917 Piano-Benedictine Code of Canon Law anyone who dared violate (even by merely setting foot in) the “papal enclosure” of nuns (and some orders of monks) were excommunicated latae sententiae, but were not per se in a state of sin.

 

Moreover, while the censure of excommunication places a person beyond the communion of the Church, in and of itself it does not imply the commission of schism. (One is hardly schismatic for waltzing into the papal enclosure of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns down the road, though the act is so grave that the Church signals against it by the proportionate censure.) Thus, for example, at least until recently, when the abbots of monasteries which were part of the Solesmes Benedictine Congregation gathered at the Abbey of Solesmes for the General Chapter, they always began their sessions by solemnly absolving each other of any possible censures incurred.

 

During the Great Jubilee Year, 2000, declared by Pope John Paul II, the SSPX went to Rome on pilgrimage. If you have ever seen the SSPX in full array, you will understand the impression made on Romans at the sight of hundreds of young men in procession through the streets of Rome, decked out in cassock and surplice. The Roman Curia assigned “spies” at the four basilicas of Rome to listen to the sermons delivered, alternately, by the four SSPX bishops. Such was the edification of all alike that even the most hostile anti-SSPX Curia officials quipped,

 

“If these men are schismatics, we need many more of them in the Church”!

 

It was further remarked that never in the history of the Catholic Church have people excommunicated by a pope, returned to Rome to pray for that pope as the SSPX had in 2000 and indeed do every day. Such was the favourable impression and the edification of the sound doctrine of the SSPX bishops, that Pope John Paul II ordered the President of the Pontifical Ecclesia Dei Commission to reignite the 1988 negotiations between the Holy See and the SSPX. Now one feels a word of warning is due here. When one party agrees to embark upon negotiations, it is not untoward for the other party to pose pre-conditions and conditions. For conditions are the soul of negotiations. Some readers of this essay may have been too young or distracted to have known the complete history (in it chronological order) of the traditional Catholic “movement.” For reasons too complex to explain here, Rome (and I distinguish between the Roman Curia and the Holy See) tends to forego conclusions and prior agreements made with people after people have signed on dotted lines. >From the mid-70s each group of the SSPX which went to Rome to reconcile saw promises it received disavowed.

 

Thus in 2001 when Rome proposed to re-open negotiations with the SSPX, its superior general posed three conditions,

 

1)     Allow unfettered access to the traditional Mass to be celebrated,

2)      Either declare the 1988 excommunications invalid or lift them, for the serenity of the faithful.

      I always forget the third condition.

 

During conversations with the SSPX [...] the Cardinal President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission agreed, in the name of the Holy Father, that there would be no problem in conceding those conditions.

 

Thus while the lifting of the excommunications was an act of the “paternal love of the Supreme Pontiff,” that love was expressed more in the Holy Father’s having agreed to the condition of lifting the excommunications, than in his sole decision to lifting them. This clarity must be re-established, because popular opinion makes it seem that Rome alone has expressed good will, whereas the SSPX is recalcitrant or reluctant to comply. This clarity is all the more important since, parvus error in principio, magnus est in fine (“a small error in the beginning, leads to great error in the conclusion”). In addition, this is one of the ways (tricks) by which the Roman Curia muddles dossiers which might otherwise expose malfeasance in high places. That, incidentally, is why I have noticed that even well-wishers usually express confusion when trying to defend the SSPX. For example, I had to interrupt listening to a BBC radio programme about the “Lefebvre affair.” In the attempt to defend Archbishop Lefebvre, one of the participants claimed (with more zeal than truth) that the Archbishop “concelebrated with the other Council Fathers.”

 

Such was my anger due to this untruth, that I nearly smacked the radio! Apart from the fact that Archbishop Lefebvre would preferred to have drank bleach rather than concelebrate, that practice had not begun until long after the Council Fathers concluded the Council. The Second Vatican Council began and ended (in both senses of the word “end”) with the traditional Roman Rite. The Novus Ordo is, therefore, an [...] 'after-shock' of the Council, [...] a mere palliative measure.

 

Stay tuned for my next episode when I will shed light upon the real reasons behind the manipulation of the Bishop Williamson “scandal.” Suffice it to say for now that Rome acted recklessly when Frau Merkel, the unangelic Chancellor of Germany, dared to question a reigning Pontiff in the public forum. Had I sat anywhere near the throne of Peter, I would have informed that lady of hidden virtue that even by her standards, the scale of priorities should favour a bishop who appears to question the Holocaust, rather than a German Chancellor whose government presides over the murder of countless unborn babies (by abortion). German Guilt, like collective guilt in general, can play ugly tricks with one’s acting skills, producing poor performances of self-righteousness. Do we not witness this in other societies when, within living memory not even a tear was shed while life was grossly discounted by women being raped, people lynched, children blown to smithereens because of race, yet some of those witnesses of history suddenly champion unborn life?

 

To forget the words Pius XI (whose secretary, Cardinal Carlo Confalonoieri, I was privileged to know) launched at Nazi Germany can only lead to an even more nefarious disrespect for life, i.e. abortion:

 

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honourable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

Mit brennender Sorge

 

On the 70th Anniversary
of the death of Pius XI

 

 

+[...]

 

As robust as his master, Cardinal Confalonieri, Dean of the Sacred College, lived to over 90 years of age. At 90 he could be seen each morning before 6 am taking his daily brisk walk. Body bolt upright, vigorous gait, the tall, slender frame of Confalonieri was quintessentially Lombard.

 

Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri

An insufficiently sung hero