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Vatican newspaper praises Calvin and Rousseau

Fri Jul 03, 2009 6:09 pm (GMT -5)
Vatican newspaper praises French Protestant John Calvin

July 3, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g04_DpWhHdLU7EQLn2c5dkKiEE_Q

VATICAN CITY (AFP) � The Vatican newspaper Friday praised influential French Protestant John Calvin, a critic of the Roman Catholic Church, hailing him an "extraordinary" figure.

The Osservatore Romano, on the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth, said it recognised the theologian as a Christian who had a major impact on European life.

"Considering the strength of arguments against him, we think it necessary to point out that Calvin is a Christian," the daily paper said of the man who played a major role in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

The paper ranked Calvin alongside 18th century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau for his influence on modern European life.

The pair were the "only two men who influenced some Europeans to change course and were strong enough to lead them in a new direction," it wrote.

The "mark left by the reformer was deep," the Osservatore Romano continued, praising Calvinism as a "ingenious creation" which resisted "all the changes or revolutions of modern life."

Calvin, who lived in the 16th century, broke with the Roman Catholic Church and became one of its most ardent critics and helped the Reformation to take root across Europe.

He was a contemporary of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther.

Calvin's major work is The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) which advocates a strict form of Protestantism.

Pope Answers Longtime Invite to Visit Rome Synagogue

Thu Jul 02, 2009 8:32 pm (GMT -5)

Pope Answers Longtime Invite to Visit Rome Synagogue

Thursday, July 2, 2009 3:33 PM
By: Edward Pentin
Link to Original

Pope Benedict XVI will visit Rome�s synagogue this fall, although a date has not been set.

The visit, which is expected in November, has been �openly discussed and can be confirmed,� said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman.

The Jewish place of worship across the Tiber River belongs to the oldest Judaic community in Europe and is one of the oldest continuous Jewish settlements in the world, dating back to 161 B.C.

It also was the venue for Pope John Paul II�s historic visit in 1986, when he became the first pontiff ever to set foot inside a synagogue. His gesture helped confirm a path of friendship between Christians and Jews, in the spirit of Nostra Aetate, the declaration of the Second Vatican Council that sought to improve relations between the Roman Catholic Church and non-Christians.

Chief Rabbi Riccardo di Segni is �very pleased� at the news, synagogue officials said.

The invitation to visit the synagogue has been on the table for more than three years but has it come to fruition only now, perhaps because of recent tensions in Catholic-Jewish relations.

The Pope has been trying to steer relations back on course, thanking certain Jewish leaders for their understanding following the lifting of the excommunication on the Holocaust-denying, Lefebvrian Bishop Richard Williamson, and decrying anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial during his recent trip to the Holy Land.

Describing John Paul II�s 1986 visit, the Italian newspaper Il Giornale wrote: �No trip of this pilgrim Pope to any continent was so long as the one he made today; the short distance between the Vatican palace and the synagogue of Rome took two thousand years to cover.� However, the visit didn�t go down well with some Catholics who felt that John Paul had too readily overturned 2000 years of papal and Church conduct with the Jewish religion.

Details of Benedict XVI�s visit might be made public before he departs for his July 13-29 vacation in northern Italy.

Nuns in the U.S. Are Facing Scrutiny by the Vatican

Thu Jul 02, 2009 12:10 am (GMT -5)

Nuns in the U.S. Are Facing Scrutiny by the Vatican

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
The New York Times
July 1, 2009
Link to original

Mother Mary Clare Millea has been appointed by the Vatican to study the activities of some orders of nuns in the United States.

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.

Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming. But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining � to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Sister Sandra M. Schneiders has urged
fellow nuns not to participate in the study
that is being conducted by the Vatican.

In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests.

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

�They think of us as an ecclesiastical work force,� said Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California. �Whereas we are religious, we�re living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet.�

The more extensive of the two investigations is called an Apostolic Visitation, and the Vatican has provided only a vague rationale for it: to �look into the quality of the life� of women�s religious institutes. The visitation is being conducted by Mother Mary Clare Millea, an apple-cheeked American with a black habit and smiling eyes, who is the superior general of her order, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and lives in Rome.

In an interview in a formal sitting room at her order�s United States headquarters in Hamden, Conn., Mother Clare said she had already met one-on-one with 127 superiors general of women�s orders, many in that room but also in Chicago, Los Angeles, Rome and St. Louis. She is preparing questionnaires to send to each congregation of women and recruiting teams of investigators, mostly nuns and some priests, who will make visits to congregations that she selects. The visitation focuses only on nuns actively engaged in working in society and the church, not cloistered, contemplative nuns.

Mother Clare�s task is to prepare a confidential report to the Vatican on the state of each of about 340 qualified congregations of nuns in the United States, as well as a summary with her recommendations, all of which she hopes to complete by mid-2011.

The investigation was ordered by Cardinal Franc Rod�, head of the Vatican office that deals with religious orders. In a speech in Massachusetts last year, Cardinal Rod� offered barbed criticism of some American nuns �who have opted for ways that take them outside� the church.

Given this backdrop, Sister Schneiders, the professor in Berkeley, urged her fellow sisters not to cooperate with the visitation, saying the investigators should be treated as �uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house.� She wrote this in a private e-mail message to a few friends, but it became public and was widely circulated.

Mother Clare said she was aware that some women�s institutes �weren�t happy� to hear of the visitation, but that so far about 55 percent had responded in person or in writing.

�It�s an opportunity for us to re-evaluate ourselves, to make our reality known and also to be challenged to live authentically who we say we are,� she said.

Each congregation of nuns will be evaluated based on how well they are �living in fidelity� both to their congregation�s own internal norms and constitution, and to the church�s guidelines for religious life, Mother Clare said. For instance, if a congregation�s stated mission is to serve youth, are the nuns doing that? If they do not live in a convent, are they attending Mass and keeping the sacraments? Are their superiors exercising adequate supervision?

�There�s no intention to make us all identical,� she said.

Church historians said that the Vatican usually ordered an apostolic visitation when a particular institution had gone seriously astray. In the wake of the priest sexual-abuse scandal, the Vatican ordered a visitation of American seminaries. It is now conducting a visitation of the Legionaries of Christ, a men�s order whose founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, sexually abused young seminarians, fathered a child and was accused of financial improprieties. He died in 2008.

But the investigation of American nuns surprised many because there was no obvious precipitating cause.

Sister Janice Farnham, a part-time professor of church history at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, said, �Why are the U.S. sisters being singled out, when women religious in other countries are struggling with many issues about the quality of their lives, in the Church and in their societies?�

The visitation could result in some communities of nuns� being ordered to make changes, but judging from how the Vatican handled previous visitations, those consequences may never become public.

The second investigation of nuns is a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization that claims 1,500 members from about 95 percent of women�s religious orders. This investigation was ordered by the Vatican�s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is headed by an American, Cardinal William Levada.

Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to �promote� the church�s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.

The letter goes on to say that, �Given both the tenor and the doctrinal content of various addresses� at assemblies the Leadership Conference has held in recent years, the problem has not been fixed.

The Leadership Conference drew the Vatican�s wrath decades ago when its president welcomed Pope John Paul II to the United States with a plea for the ordination of women. But several nuns who have attended the group�s meetings in recent years said they had not heard anything that would provoke the Vatican�s ire.

Officers of the Leadership Conference refused interview requests, but said in an e-mail message that they had one meeting in late May with the investigators, Bishop Leonard P. Blair, of the Diocese of Toledo, and Msgr. Charles Brown from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, who voiced the Vatican�s concerns. (Bishop Blair declined to comment). In the fall, they said, they will meet again to respond to the concerns.

�We are looking forward to clarifying some misperceptions,� Sister J. Lora Dambroski, president of the Leadership Conference, said in the e-mail message.

Besides these two investigations, another decree that affected some nuns was issued in March by the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The bishops said that Catholics should stop practicing Reiki, a healing therapy that is used in some Catholic hospitals and retreat centers, and which was enthusiastically adopted by many nuns. The bishops said Reiki is both unscientific and non-Christian.

Nuns practicing reiki and running church reform groups may have finally proved too much for the church�s male hierarchy, said Kenneth Briggs, the author of �Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church�s Betrayal of American Nuns,� (Doubleday Religion, 2006).

Mr. Briggs said of the various investigations: �For some in the leadership circles in Rome and elsewhere, it�s a piece of unfinished business. It�s an effort to bring about a re-establishment of a very traditional, very conservative set of standards for what convent life is supposed to be.�

President Obama Meets With Catholic Press on Thursday

Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:10 pm (GMT -5)
President Obama Meets With Catholic Press Tomorrow [Thursday July 2nd]

Posted by Tim Drake
National Catholic Register
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
http://www.ncregister.com/daily/president_obama_meeting_with_catholic_press/

Tomorrow morning at 10:45 Eastern time the president is hosting a roundtable at the White House for members of the Catholic press.

The National Catholic Register�s publisher, Father Owen Kearns, will be among eight religion reporters and editors in attendance at that gathering.

The purpose of the gathering, according to Chris Hensman, press secretary with the National Security Council, is a �preview of the president�s upcoming visit with Pope Benedict XVI.� The president is meeting with the Pope on July 10.

Father Kearns just received the invitation to the meeting yesterday via e-mail. At this point, there isn�t a complete list of the media who will be in attendance, but our understanding is that it�s strictly Catholic print media, not radio or television.

According to Father Kearns, the meeting is unprecedented. He has not previously met a sitting U.S. president, nor has he been previously invited by the president to a White House gathering for members of the Catholic press.

When Father Kearns asked the purpose of the roundtable, he was told, �It�s for the president to inform us, to listen to concerns, and to answer questions.�

The meeting is not a press conference.

�It sounds like what we would call a listening session,� said Father Kearns.

We�ll have an update about the meeting on the blog tomorrow.

Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accep

Wed Jul 01, 2009 7:20 pm (GMT -5)
Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation

By John-Henry Westen

RECIFE, Brazil, July 1, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This morning, the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the metropolitan archbishop of Olinda and Recife. The pope appointed Bishop Fernando Antonio Saburido as his successor. Pro-life activists around the world are very familiar with Archbishop Cardoso for his heroic defense of the unborn despite criticism he received even from Archbishop Salvatore (Rino) Fisichella, the President of Pontifical Academy for Life.

The acceptance of his resignation at this time has raised many questions; however, there is no evidence to indicate that it was undertaken as a punitive measure. The Vatican announcement merely states that the archbishop's "resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit." Bishops are required to submit a letter of resignation to the Pope on the completion of their 75th year, but accepting the resignation is at the discretion of the Pope. Archbishop Cardoso just turned 76 yesterday.

For his ardent defense of the lives of unborn twins, Archbishop Cardoso has been vilified in the media since February of this year. The media pounced on the archbishop due to his action in the very hard case of a nine-year-old girl who was raped by her step-father and was carrying twins.

The priest involved and Archbishop Cardoso himself did everything in their power to work with the family and the child to assist them with their needs and also to save the lives of the twins she was carrying. An international abortion lobby group was pushing the family to have the girl abort, apparently seeing the case as a golden opportunity to press for legal abortion in the nation. As a last-ditch effort to save the lives of the unborn twins, after the girl was moved by pro-abortion activists to an unknown location, the archbishop announced that those involved in procuring the abortions would suffer an automatic excommunication.

The international anti-life media jumped on the announcement, portraying the archbishop as heartless and cruel. At first the archbishop was defended by his confreres in the episcopate locally and also by the Vatican's Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops Cardinal Battista Re.

However, the relentless media attacks and falsifications, coupled with public denunciations from political leaders including Brazil's health minister as well as its President, began to affect even his brother bishops.

The most devastating rejection of Archbishop Cardoso's actions came from the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life in the pages of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Without ever having consulted his brother Archbishop in Brazil, Archbishop Fisichella launched what has been seen as a scathing attack on Archbishop Cardoso.

Fisichella's Vatican newspaper article implied that Archbishop Cardoso had not been caring enough for the rape victim, that he had "hastily" announced the excommunication and defended the abortionists from excommunication. Criticism from other bishops around the world followed with two French bishops and a Canadian cardinal chiming in.

When Archbishop Cardoso requested that he be permitted to defend himself in the pages of the Vatican newspaper, and correct factul errors present in Fisichella's article, his request was declined.

The world's pro-life movement followed the story closely and were, especially due to this persecution, all the more endeared to Archbishop Cardoso. Human Life International put those sentiments into reality in April as it presented Archbishop Cardoso with a prestigious award recognizing his valiant defence of life.

The award was presented by Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro-Car�mbula, JD, STD, head of HLI's bureau in Rome. LifeSiteNews.com spoke with Monsignor Barreiro about his reaction to Archbishop Cardoso's resignation.

"It is regrettable that his resignation has been accepted without an official clarification that defends him against the unjust accusations leveled against him by Archbishop Fisichella in his article of March 15," said Monsignor Barreiro. "Nevertheless it would be an act of justice if, even after the retirement of Archbishop Cardoso, that those clarifications would be published for two reasons.

Firstly, "To clarify the confusions created by Archbishop Fisichella with regard to extreme cases. It should be made absolutely clear that under no circumstances is an abortion permitted." And, secondly, "A clarification that would underline that Archbishop Cardoso and his archdiocese paid the best pastoral care to the young girl who eventually suffered the abortion."

URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09070106.html

Pope denounces usury

Wed Jul 01, 2009 6:43 pm (GMT -5)

News Briefs
Pope denounces usury
July 01, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI referred to usury as a "social blight" and a "humiliating form of slavery" during a July 1 audience with members of the Italian National Anti-Usury Council. The Holy Father said that government should provide support and assitance for families "who find the courage to denounce" loan sharks.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

* The state must support victims of usury (VIS)

THE STATE MUST SUPPORT VICTIMS OF USURY

VATICAN CITY, 1 JUL 2009 (VIS) - Among his greetings at the end of the general audience, celebrated this morning in St. Peter's Square, the Pope addressed representatives of the Italian National Anti-Usury Council, whom he thanked for the "important and much appreciated work you carry our with victims of this social blight.

"My hope", he added, "is that there be a renewed commitment on everyone's part effectively to combat the devastating phenomenon of usury and extortion, which constitutes a humiliating form of slavery. On the part of the State may there be no lack of appropriate aid and support for families in difficulties who find the courage to denounce those who take advantage of their often tragic situation".

He then turned to address people currently on holiday, expressing his hope that this period will prove "serene and profitable for everyone" To the people who, for various reasons, "are unable to enjoy a vacation", he said, "goes my hope that you may not lack the solidarity and closeness of your loved ones".

Finally, "my special thoughts go to young people who are currently sitting examinations, I assure them all of a mention in my prayers".
AG/USURY HOLIDAYS/...VIS 090701 (210)

Benedict XVI urges state aid for victims of extortion

Vatican City, Jul 1, 2009 / 11:06 am (CNA).- As typically done following his Wednesday general audience address, Pope Benedict gave public greetings to groups who were present. Today the Pope singled out an Italian group dedicated to helping those victimized by usury.

The Holy Father thanked the Italian National Anti-Usury Council for their "important and much appreciated work."

Both usury, the act of charging exorbitant interest on a loan, and the use of extortion, were condemned by the Pope.

"My hope," he added, "is that there be a renewed commitment on everyone's part effectively to combat the devastating phenomenon of usury and extortion, which constitutes a humiliating form of slavery. On the part of the State may there be no lack of appropriate aid and support for families in difficulties who find the courage to denounce those who take advantage of their often tragic situation."

People who are vacationing were also mentioned by Benedict XVI, who said he hopes that their holiday will be "serene and profitable for everyone." To the people who, for various reasons, "are unable to enjoy a vacation," he said, "goes my hope that you may not lack the solidarity and closeness of your loved ones."

Finally, "my special thoughts go to young people who are currently sitting examinations, I assure them all of a mention in my prayers."

Making a Monkey Out of Darwin

Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:11 am (GMT -5)

Making a Monkey Out of Darwin

by Pat Buchanan
June 30, 2009
Link to Original

"You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world of science," wrote Thomas Huxley. "Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be."

As "Darwin's bulldog," Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master's theory gospel truth in Great Britain.

He is quoted above for two reasons.

First is House passage of a "cap-and-trade" climate-change bill.

Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths -- or a fearmongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.

The second is publication of "The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold," by Eugene G. Windchy, a splendid little book that begins with Huxley's lament.

That Darwinism has proven "disastrous theory" is indisputable.

"Karl Marx loved Darwinism," writes Windchy. "To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution."

"Darwin suits my purpose," Marx wrote.

Darwin suited Adolf Hitler's purposes, too.

"Although born to a Catholic family Hitler become a hard-eyed Darwinist who saw life as a constant struggle between the strong and the weak. His Darwinism was so extreme that he thought it would have been better for the world if the Muslims had won the eighth century battle of Tours, which stopped the Arabs' advance into France. Had the Christians lost, (Hitler) reasoned, Germanic people would have acquired a more warlike creed and, because of their natural superiority, would have become the leaders of an Islamic empire."

Charles Darwin also suited the purpose of the eugenicists and Herbert Spencer, who preached a survival-of-the-fittest social Darwinism to robber baron industrialists exploiting 19th-century immigrants.

Historian Jacques Barzun believes Darwinism brought on World War I: "Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens -- all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate."

Yet a theory can produce evil -- and still be true.

And here Windchy does his best demolition work.

Darwin, he demonstrates, stole his theory from Alfred Wallace, who had sent him a "completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection."

"All my originality ... will be smashed," wailed Darwin when he got Wallace's manuscript.

Darwin also lied in "The Origin of Species" about believing in a Creator. By 1859, he was a confirmed agnostic and so admitted in his posthumous autobiography, which was censored by his family.

Darwin's examples of natural selection -- such as the giraffe acquiring its long neck to reach ever higher into the trees for the leaves upon which it fed to survive -- have been debunked. Giraffes eat grass and bushes. And if, as Darwin claimed, inches meant life or death, how did female giraffes, two or three feet shorter, survive?

Windchy goes on to relate such scientific hoaxes as "Nebraska Man" -- an anthropoid ape ancestor to man, whose tooth turned out to belong to a wild pig -- and Piltdown Man, the missing link between monkey and man.

Discovered in England in 1912, Piltdown Man was a sensation until exposed by a 1950s investigator as the skull of a Medieval Englishman attached to the jaw of an Asian ape whose teeth had been filed down to look human and whose bones had been stained to look old.

Yet three English scientists were knighted for Piltdown Man.

Other myths are demolished. Bird feathers do not come from the scales of reptiles. There are no gills in human embryos.

For 150 years, the fossil record has failed to validate Darwin.

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists," admitted Stephen J. Gould in 1977. But that fossil record now contains even more species that appear fully developed, with no traceable ancestors.

Darwin ruled out such "miracles."

And Darwinists still have not explained the origin of life, nor have they been able to produce life from non-life.

The most delicious chapter is Windchy's exposure of the Scopes Monkey Trial and Hollywood's Bible-mocking movie "Inherit the Wind," starring Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow.

The trial was a hoked-up scam to garner publicity for Dayton, Tenn. Scopes never taught evolution and never took the stand. His students were tutored to commit perjury. And William Jennings Bryan held his own against the atheist Darrow in the transcript of the trial.

In 1981, Gould had this advice for beleaguered Darwinists:

"Perhaps we should all lie low and rally round the flag of strict Darwinism ... a kind of old-time religion on our part."

Exactly. Darwinism is not science. It is faith. Always was.

Fellay: �We did not have an explicit order not to do this�

Mon Jun 29, 2009 5:17 pm (GMT -5)

Click Logo To Link Original

June 29th, 2009
GUESTVIEW: Felley ordains SSPX priests, hints timid opening
Posted by: Tom Heneghan

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors� alone. Nicolas Sen�ze is deputy editor of the religion service at the French Catholic daily La Croix and author of La crise int�griste, a history of the SSPX. He wrote this for FaithWorld (translation by Reuters) after covering the ordinations in Ec�ne for La Croix.

Bishop Bernard Fellay has gone and done it. On the morning of June 29, before crowds of the faithful gathered on the large meadow outside the Saint Pius X seminary in Ec�ne, Switzerland, the Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX) ordained eight new priests. Just like Bishop Alfonso de Galaretta did on Friday in Zaitzkofen, Germany, and Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais 10 days ago in Winona, Minnesota in the United States. They went ahead and ordained these men despite the Vatican�s declaration that the ordinations were �illegitimate�, i.e. illegal according to the law of the Roman Catholic Church.

Was this a provocation by the SSPX against Pope Benedict, whose flag flies above the seminary? Absolutely not, a very self-confident Bishop Fellay responded to journalists who had journeyed to this Swiss Alpine village for the ceremony. �There is a tacit tolerance from Rome,� said the Swiss-born bishop, whose 20-year excommunication was lifted in January along with the three other bishops drummed out of the Church in 1988. �We did not have an explicit order not to do this. I have contacts with Rome, I�m not just making this up out of thin air. Rome knows this is not a provocation on our part.�

In any event, for Bishop Fellay, the SSPX is in the �state of necessity� which canon law mentions when it allows derogations from Church rules. �If everything went well in the Church, our gesture would have been disobedience. But all is not well in the Church,� he said calmly. �We see such scandals at Mass, we hear sermons so contrary to the faith!�

This is the same �state of necessity� that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre invoked in the 1970s and 1980s, when he went ahead with priestly ordinations without having the power to do so. At the time, the SSPX, which had been dissolved by the bishop of Fribourg with the endorsement of Pope Paul VI, had no official status in the Church. Pope John Paul had asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to settle the Lefebvre case. The CDF prefect at the time was named � Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Early this year, the same person, who became pope in 2005, lifted the excommunications pronounced after the collapse of the talks he had conducted in 1988 with Archbishop Lefebvre. Again, the case will now be entrusted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - a sign that the differences with these fundamentalists are primarily theological. But that means there is also a red line not to cross � the fundamentalists must accept the authority of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the post-conciliar magisterium of the popes.

�The biggest problem is philosophical,� Bishop Fellay observed. �Two philosophies meet: the classical scholastic philosophy and modern philosophy. The pope is very eclectic and we feel that he has been marked by a subjective philosophy � less when he talks about morality than when he speaks in the abstract. Our scholastic philosophy is more objective.�

So Bishop Fellay thinks that Rome and Ec�ne may speak �about the same thing, but differently.� This is a timid opening, but it must be appreciated for what it is. Only a little while ago, the SSPX Council firmly rejected Vatican II as a council tainted by error.

In essence, Bishop Fellay is saying that the fundamental issue is less the Council itself than its interpretation. �There are differences of position within the Catholic Church that are larger and more serious than those we have with Rome,� he said. �The Council texts opened the door to interpretations. It may be necessary that the pope clarifies them, as Paul VI did on collegiality. But when the pope condemned the hermeneutic of discontinuity, he condemned 80% of what is happening in the Church!�

What�s your opinion? Is 80% of what goes on in the Catholic Church wrong?
_________________
IN CORDIBUS JESU ET MARI�

SECRETMAN

Article Reveals How Legionaries Defeated the Vatican�s First

Thu Jun 25, 2009 9:40 am (GMT -5)

Click Logo To Link Original

Article Reveals How Legionaries Defeated the Vatican�s First Investigation 50 Years Ago
6/24/2009 - 9:26 AM PST
Catholic PRWire

What Pope Benedict XVI is Cleaning Up: Article Reveals How Legionaries Defeated the Vatican�s First Investigation 50 Years Ago

NEW YORK (June 24, 2009) - Analyzing secret archival documents never before available in English, a new article on Cassandra (cassandrajonesing.blogspot.com) tells how the now well-publicized double life of Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, was known to Church authorities more than 50 years ago.

Even after commissioning a first investigation, conducted in 1956-8, the Vatican ignored its conclusions that the order be reformed and Maciel removed as superior. The Legionaries have now prompted Pope Benedict again to investigate, as announced March 31.

The article, �The first apostolic visitation of the Legionaries of Christ: 1956-1959,�

http://cassandrajonesing.blogspot.com/2009/06/first-apostolic-visitation-of_23.html

draws on files obtained and published in Spanish by Fernando M. Gonz�lez in �Los Legionarios de Cristo; testimonios y documentos in�ditos� (2006). The documents have not appeared before in English nor have they been studied in relation to the current investigation in any language.
_________________
IN CORDIBUS JESU ET MARI�

SECRETMAN

AQ Exclusive: The current status of Bishop Williamson

Wed Jun 24, 2009 10:11 pm (GMT -5)

Angelqueen Exclusive

What's the status on Bishop Williamson?

Or: How to get sucked up and ejected by a global cyclone, then dust yourself off and go happily with God

I spoke earlier today with Bishop Williamson for the first time since he was so abruptly whisked away to his secure and somewhat undisclosed location across the pond.

What I immediately picked up on was how lighthearted and �chipper� (his term) he sounded. This was truly refreshing, as before I was able to contact him, I was concerned that the events of earlier this year or the following relocation might have taken a toll on him in a personal sense. Thankfully this was not at all the case. In fact just the opposite � he was as jovial and laidback as I�vei ever heard him; more so even.

To ensure that my impressions wasn�t due to simply catching him at a good time, I pried further in every which way I could (without coming across as overtly nosey) to discover if the general well-being I was attributing to him was misconstrued on my part. After sufficient interrogation, it became clear to me that His Excellency most certainly is doing very well and is in very good spirits.

He related that he�s �very well taken care of,� �among friends� and on a personal level, he�s very content with his circumstances. He indicated that although he would be happy anywhere where he can labor in the Lord�s garden (and that he would probably be happier with a larger plot in that garden) - one of the welcome consequences of his �relocation� was being his native country, which he said he loves. He offers many Masses and prays much.

I couldn�t help coming away with the impression that His Excellency was not altogether unlike a high-ranking officer in a corporation who escaped the stresses of corporate management for some quality time in the tropics. Or perhaps a hardened war veteran on some well deserved R&R.

I�m not sure if it�s intentional on his part, or just a natural virtue of his character, but he was as always (and as most who know him will attest), very disarming and easy to converse with. I always start off with him in the demeanor of a Catholic lay person speaking to a Catholic bishop but quickly wind up in the demeanor of a Catholic lay-person having an interesting conversation with good-natured friend over a beer. I blame my inability to maintain formalities entirely on him.

Despite the fact that we hadn�t spoken since His Excellency became the global flaming effigy and unwitting patron saint of multinational SSPX detractors� efforts to derail the lifting of the excommunications, we didn�t speak much about all of that. Suffice to say that when we did touch on it, I picked up not a single inkling of him having a single drop of animosity toward anyone over the colossal FUBAR. Any disagreements he had with anyone (whether in the SSPX or amongst the rest of the millions) were purely cerebral. Though he should have every right to feel bitter or indignant over being set-up, sandbagged then dragged around in such a way, he�s not at all. Not a trace vindictiveness or even righteous indignation, he simply had a bone to pick with them strictly on an intellectual level.

Amazing.

I told His Excellency that his writings on Dinoscopus over the last several months were all, nearly universally, well received, and that my only problem with them was his regular use of Heiner�s forum to plug Beethoven. He then asked what my particular issues were with the venerable Ludwig, so I told him that I was given to Baroque, and never cared for all of that �big,� pomp ridden, pretentious orchestral, Northern European stuff - though I could understand why a cultured Englishman such as himself would go for that type of thing. I didn�t mention that Beethoven was extremely piano-centric and that I absolutely deplore piano music.

Perhaps I shouldn�t have said all that, because he then immediately declared me heretic. That�s not good, because although I�m ignorant of what canon says about being so directly declared a heretic by a Catholic bishop, I believe I may now be excommunicated. However, the good news is that there�s a chance that it may be lifted, because I discovered that he, like me, loves Vivaldi. This may be grounds for future doctrinal discussions. Of course I�ll first insist on the reinstatement of the traditional baroque to the state it was before the modernists had their way with it during the classical period.

The next time we speak I�ll let him know that despite my reservations, I will try to interpret Beethoven in the light of tradition.

So, to sum up, His Excellency was as enlightening, as plucky and as mirthful (as usual, he brought me to laughter on several occasions) as ever. His resilience was inspiring, and his lightheartedness was infectious, to the point where I've been in a lighthearted mood since speaking with him.

God be with you Bishop Williamson.