He's a Cardinal, And You're Not

Well, one cardinal isn't prostrating himself before schismatics, and he's getting hell for it.

Mario Francesco Pompedda, a top-shelf canonist and former prefect of the Apostolic Signatura -- the church's supreme tribunal -- put some rational skids on the restoration parade in the Italian press today.... As CWNews reports

Full communion with the Lefebvrists can only be achieved “if the SSPX submits itself to the legitimate authority of the Pope” and recognizes the validity of Vatican II decrees, the Italian cardinal said....

Cardinal Pompedda argued, however, that “the real problem is not the Latin Mass.” He said that the SPPX was founded upon “an attitude of condemnation of the Second Vatican Council.”

Although the meeting between Pope Benedict and Bishop Fellay has generated new optimism about a possible reconciliation, Cardinal Pompedda said that he did not perceive a “new climate between the two parties.” He said, instead, that there is now “hope that the SSPX will really take the steps” that are necessary to reconcile with the Vatican. The cardinal explained that “it was not the Holy See that created the division,” but the defiance of the traditionalist groups. Only an end to that defiance will heal the schism, he said.

Unsurprisingly, the Lawler people are not happy that the Conciliar subterfuge has been interrupted by truth. One commentor raves:

Who is Pompedda? I've never heard of him. The only one I want to hear from is Pope Benedict and not some obscure Cardinal that's never been heard from before and probably will never be heard from again. The Vatican has bent over backwards to reconcile the Orthodox. They should do the same with the SSPX.

And what about proponents of women's ordination? The Holy See should bend over backwards for them, too? Should the Holy See bend over backward for Frances Kissling? Call to Action? Dignity? John Kerry? What's fair is fair, right?

I love it how the rightward fringe -- while castigating Mahony, Levada, and anyone else who gets in their way but remains in valid communion -- sees Fellay as a valid bishop who's just tragically misunderstood. He's not.

These same people can't accept that Mahony has licit authority over the archdiocese of Los Angeles -- and he actually got that from a Pope. Can't say the same about Fellay & Co. now, can we? Did the Trads raid the cafeteria while the Catholics slept?

It's like those stories about the women who were to be "ordained Catholic priests" on the St. Laurence River. The same people who talk about "Bishop Fellay" were all hopped up screaming for corrections about the festival on the boat, that "it's not an ordination."

But if it's the illicit ordination of someone who, though on a par with an ordained woman Catholic priest, can advance their political agenda -- even if the act was done in the face of the explicit stipulations of canon law and the emphatic pleas of their beloved John Paul the Great -- hism-schism... it's all good and holy. In the process, they imply that JP didn't know what he was talking about and didn't sufficiently bend enough.

So much for the right's claim that everything Wojtyla touched turned to orthodoxy... Apparently, he didn't touch them.

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