London Calling
This week's goodies from the beloved Tablet are up.... And we've got...
An editorial touching on the impending seminary visitations and the (maybe/maybe not) coming doc banning gay sems:
Funny how that Mr. Man James Mason from Sioux Falls has disappeared without a trace from this dialogue. He knows what's best....
And, from the vunderbar Robert Mickens, an account of the Fellay session and its context:
Mickens writes a weekly Letter from Rome that only appears in the print edition of The Tablet. I get to see it, and it invariably makes my week. London's really gotta think about posting the Letter online -- it'd be the best thing for the beat since, literally, God knows when.
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An editorial touching on the impending seminary visitations and the (maybe/maybe not) coming doc banning gay sems:
Some voices in the Church have even suggested that homosexuality itself lies at the root of the problem....
These suggestions coming from the conservative Right have been countered by the argument from more progressive quarters that it was not sexually liberal ideas as such, but the collapse of an over-rigid culture of sexual repression in the 1970s and 1980s that caused some priests, often theologically conservative in themselves, to succumb to sexual temptation. It invariably involved an abuse of power, and many such priests took advantage of the high status of the clergy that was part of a traditional Catholic culture. And there is no evidence that the holding of liberal views on sexual matters correlates with a proclivity towards the sexual abuse of minors. Nevertheless it is confidently expected, as part of the brief of an ongoing investigation into American seminaries ordered by the Vatican, that, in the aftermath of the sexual abuse scandal, consideration should be given to banning homosexually orientated men completely....
[S]ome seminaries in America are said to have such a preponderance of gay men that it has begun to affect their whole culture. Whether displayed by an overtly “camp” style or not, and whether accompanied by clandestine sexual activity or not, this preponderance is likely to be a disincentive to men who are not gay. Ideally, the priesthood would have the same proportion of homosexually to heterosexually orientated men as the community it exists to serve. Achieving that healthy mix is a reasonable aim: the simplistic witch-hunting of gay priests is certainly not.
Funny how that Mr. Man James Mason from Sioux Falls has disappeared without a trace from this dialogue. He knows what's best....
And, from the vunderbar Robert Mickens, an account of the Fellay session and its context:
[O]n Tuesday, Cardinal Francesco Pompedda, the former prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, told the Italian daily La Stampa that the Society of St Pius X could only be reconciled to the Holy See if it recognised Vatican authority. Full communion with the Lefebvrists can only be achieved “if the society submits itself to the legitimate authority of the Pope” and recognises the validity of Vatican II decrees, the Italian cardinal said. He added that the traditionalists should explicitly recognise “the validity of papal elections from the death of Pius XII up until today”. Cardinal Pompedda observed that some traditionalists have questioned the validity of papal elections during that period.
The ultra-conservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the Society of St Pius X in 1970 as a means of preserving the use of the Tridentine Mass, which the bishops of the Second Vatican Council – almost unanimously – voted to reform. But the group soon displayed that its attachment to the so-called Old Rite was only one feature of its more serious rejection of some of the major elements of the Council, especially ecumenism and interreligious dialogue....
"The Society of St Pius X … has always disapproved of the indefatigable efforts of Pope John Paul II towards ecumenism, efforts which have led to a weakening of the Faith and of the defence of Truth," Bishop Fellay wrote in a message upon the Pope’s death last April. The Tridentine Mass, in essence, was codified at the Council of Trent as part of the Catholic Church’s answer to the Protestant Reformation.
Mickens writes a weekly Letter from Rome that only appears in the print edition of The Tablet. I get to see it, and it invariably makes my week. London's really gotta think about posting the Letter online -- it'd be the best thing for the beat since, literally, God knows when.
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posted by Rocco Palmo at 09:40
2 Comments:
On the subject of the SSPX, one should take a look at some of the FAQ's before deciding how best this organization may be reconciled. Here's one sample to wet your whistle.
SSPX on the Jews:
"St. Matthew’s Gospel states very clearly, not only that Pilate considered Jesus innocent of the accusations made against him, but also that the whole people of the Jews took the responsibility of his murder upon their own heads. Indeed, to Pilate’s statement: "I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it," the response is immediate: "And the whole people answering, said: His blood be upon us and upon our children." (Mt 27:24, 25) The Gospel teaches us, therefore, that the Jewish race brought upon themselves the curse that followed the crime of deicide.
However, in what does that curse consist. Surely it cannot be that there is a collective guilt of the Jewish race for the sin of deicide. For only those individuals are responsible for the sin who knowingly and willingly brought it about. Jews of today are manifestly not responsible for that sin. The curse is of a different nature, and corresponds to the greatness of the vocation of the Jewish people as a preparation for the Messias, to the superiority of their election, which makes them first in the order of grace. Just as the true Israelites, who accept the Messias, are the first to receive "glory, honor and peace to every one that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rm 2:10), so also are the first to receive the punishment of their refusal of the Messias: "Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek" (Rm 2:9). The curse is then the punishment for the hardhearted rebelliousness of a people that has refused the time of its visitation, that has refused to convert and to live a moral, spiritual life, directed towards heaven. This curse is the punishment of blindness to the things of God and eternity, of deafness to the call of conscience and to the love of good and hatred of evil which is the basis of all moral life, of spiritual paralysis, of total preoccupation with an earthly kingdom. It is this that sets them as a people in entire opposition with the Catholic Church and its supernatural plan for the salvation of souls."
http://www.sspx.org/Catholic_FAQs/jews_guilty_of_deicide.htm
This the "official" position of the SSPX, folks.
Jeff writes:
"But of course, it's just blind hatred or ill-concealed homosexual tendencies on the part of the critics themselves that could cause anyone to even question the propriety of having large numbers of homosexuals in seminaries. So don't bother to look..."
Sorry, but I just couldn't resist.
Guess what? Underneath that oh-so-easy and obvious layer of "homosexualism" lay a huge core of "clericalism"...
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