Wednesday, 18 April 2012

On Reverence in Church and Catholic Maturity

I am totally sick of older men and women talking in Church before, during, and after Mass. I have come to several conclusions concerning this lack of respect and reverence for God. The icon which comes to my mind is the Burning Bush. Moses heard God and took off his sandals as he was on holy ground. Moses knew that God was the Almighty, the All Holy. He responded as an adult to the anxiety of being a human in the Face of the Living God. The response is one of awe and silence. If God is present, one should only feel gratitude. Only in our nakedness before God can we really be respectful.

Why so many adults talk in Church, (and gossip, that is talk about other people's business), is that they have not grown up into the virtuous life. Why do so many adults fight the normal process of spiritual maturation? They want to make God into their own image and likeness. They do not want to encounter the Other. St. Augustine said, "Let me know myself, God and I will know You."

This lack of self-knowledge shows a lack of repentance and reflection. Also, the basics of the faith need to be learned by the adult community.

I am not sure I can continue to go to some Novus Ordo Masses where the priests allow and even encourage talking before and after Mass. The Presence of God demands our reverence.

On the French SSPX site

http://laportelatine .org/accueil/accueil.php

On the French SSPX site.

And from DICI on the CDF and Fellay Today

Press the Mother House of the Society of St. Pius X (April 18, 2012)

18-04-2012
Filed under News , Rome , Tradition

The press announced that Bishop Bernard Fellay sent a "positive response" to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and therefore the doctrinal issue is now resolved between the Holy See and the Fraternity of Saint Pius X.
The reality is another.
In a letter dated April 17, 2012, the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X [...]

Official from Catholic New Service Online

SSPX-RESPONSE Apr-18-2012 (710 words) xxxi

Vatican says traditionalists' response marks 'step forward' in talks

Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the Society of St. Pius X, is pictured in a 2004 file photo. (CNS/Catholic Press Photo)

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In what the Vatican described as an encouraging "step forward," the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X has revised its response to a Vatican document laying out certain basic doctrinal principles and criteria for interpreting church teaching.

The latest response submitted by Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the society, arrived at the Vatican April 17. It will be examined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then "placed under the judgment of the Holy Father," said a brief communique from the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei," which is handling the Vatican's discussions with the SSPX.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters April 18 that a curial official who read Bishop Fellay's response said it was "substantially different" from one he submitted in January; the doctrinal congregation and Pope Benedict XVI had determined Bishop Fellay's first response was "insufficient" for healing the breach between the society and the Catholic Church.

Father Lombardi said that because Bishop Fellay's latest response "asked for changes" in the text of the "doctrinal preamble" the Vatican asked him to sign last September, "the changes must be examined" and then submitted to the pope for his final evaluation.

The society's response will be examined quickly and given to pope, probably within "a few weeks," he said.

"We cannot consider the matter concluded," Father Lombardi said, but "we can say it is a step forward and more encouraging" than Bishop Fellay's previous response.

Father Alain Lorans, spokesman for the society in Paris, told the French news agency APIC April 18 that because Bishop Fellay proposed different clarifications or changes to the Vatican document, the matter "is still in a study phase."

"All is not settled yet" and will not be until the congregation and the pope make their judgment, Father Lorans said.

The text of the "doctrinal preamble" has not been made public by the Vatican or the society, but the Vatican had said it "states some doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of Catholic doctrine necessary to guarantee fidelity" to the formal teaching of the church, including the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.

When the Vatican's doctrinal discussions with the society began in 2009, both sides said the key issues to be discussed included the concept of tradition in general, as well as the Second Vatican Council's teaching on the liturgy, the unity of the church, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue and religious freedom.

After a two-hour meeting March 16 between U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the doctrinal congregation, and Bishop Fellay, the Vatican announced that the society's first response, delivered in January, was insufficient and said Bishop Fellay would have another month to draft a new response.

In a formal communique published after that meeting, the Vatican said it gave the society more time in order to "avoid an ecclesial rupture with painful and incalculable consequences."

"In compliance with the decision of Pope Benedict XVI," the communique said, Bishop Fellay was given a letter signed by Cardinal Levada explaining that "the position he had expressed is not sufficient to overcome the doctrinal problems that are at the basis of the fracture between the Holy See and the society."

At that time, Father Lombardi would not give examples of the points on which the Society of St. Pius X and the Vatican still differed since the original preamble was never published. He said the additional month given to the society showed "the case is not closed," although the March letter to Bishop Fellay made it clear that the consequence of "a non-acceptance of that which was foreseen in the preamble" would be "a rupture, something very serious for the church."

Pope Benedict's efforts to bring about a reconciliation with the traditionalist group included lifting the excommunications imposed on Bishop Fellay and other SSPX bishops after they were ordained without papal permission; establishing a Vatican committee for doctrinal talks with society representatives in 2009; and drafting the "doctrinal preamble" to explain the "minimal, essential" elements on which the society would have to agree for full reconciliation, Father Lombardi had said.

In late November, Bishop Fellay had said, "This doctrinal preamble cannot receive our endorsement, although leeway has been allowed for a 'legitimate discussion' about certain points of the (Second Vatican) Council."

END

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Musings on conversions with Marxists....

I must say that studying Gramsci and other Marxists, especially of the European variety, that their writings are so boring. Materialism, the view of life which excludes the supernatural, is simply boring. However, I must enter the fray for the sake of Western Civilization and the New Evangelization and do my little bit. Reasonable arguments need a common basis, or at least, an opening to the understanding of language, or the vocabulary of each group's beliefs. We are all part of the same world, and how we look at life depends on our philosophical basis, on the Truth.

If we can convince someone that there is a soul, eternal life, the Resurrection evangelium, we must use Reason which reaches out to the imagination of those with whom, I hope, we are in conversation.

This takes training, intellectual training. Perhaps one teacher, one professor in a seminary will inspire his students to begin to think that it is important to be able to enter the conversation, with the goal of conversion.

"What is Truth?" said Pilate. Apparently, he stayed in darkness. If we can move people to begin, just begin to believe in Christ, materialism melts away into an acceptance of the spiritual.

As a poet, I understand that the spiritual world enters into the material world even for pagans, who do not realize how, in what manner, their art reflects the presence of the soul and not merely a secular humanism.

The problem today is the same as the problem in ancient times-the event of the Resurrection and the fact of the empty tomb.

From Rorate Caeli!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!On the SSPX

Lefebvrists: the positive response has arrived
17.09.2012 (1900 GMT - 2100 Rome)

The Superior of the Society of Saint Pius X has signed the doctrinal preamble proposed by the Holy See, even if with some slight modifications

ANDREA TORNIELLI
CITTÀ DEL VATICANO

The response of the Society of Saint Pius X has arrived in the Vatican and it is positive: according to the informal information gathered by Vatican Insider, Bishop Bernard Fellay would have signed the doctrinal preamble that the Holy See had proposed last September as a condition to reach full communion and canonical regularization.

An official confirmation of the received response should take place in the next few hours. From what has been learned, the text of the preamble sent by Fellay proposed some non-substantial modifications regarding the version delivered by the Vatican authorities: as it may be recalled, the same Ecclesia Dei Commission had not willed to make the document (of [only] two, yet complex, pages) public, precisely because the possibility remained of introducing eventual small modifications which would not, nonetheless, distort its meaning.

The preamble contains, subtantially, the "professio fidei", the profession of faith [Rorate note 1] required of those who are put in charge of an ecclesiastical position. And it thus establishes a "religious submission of will and intellect" be given to the teachings that the Pope and the College of Bishops "enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium", even if not proclaimed and defined in a dogmatic sense, as in the case of the greater part of the magisterial documents. The Holy See has mentioned repeatedly to her partners in the Society of Saint Pius X that signing the doctrinal preamble would not mean putting and end "to the legitimate discussion, study, and theological explanations of specific expressions or formulations present in the documents of the Second Vatican Council."

The text of the preamble, with the modifications proposed by Fellay, and signed by him as Superior of the Society of Saint Pius X, will be presented to Benedict XVI, who, on the day following his 85th birthday and on the even of the seventh anniversary of his election, receives a positive response from the Lefebvrists. A response long expected and desired by him, who, in the next few weeks, will put an end to the wound opened in 1988 with the illegitimate episcopal ordinations celebrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

It is not ruled out that Fellay's response be examined by the Cardinals of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the next "Feria Quarta" [Wednesday] meeting, which should take place in the first half of May. Meanwhile, some further weeks will be needed so that a canonical arrangement can be established: the most probable proposal is that of establishing a "personal prelature", a legal figure introduced in the Code of Canon Law in 1983 [Rorate note 2] and up to now used only by Opus Dei. The prelate depends directly of the Holy See. The Society of Saint Pius X will continue to celebrate Mass according to the ancient Missal, and to form its priests in its seminaries. [Source, in Italian]

Wake up time!

Read this blog from January of this year and you will see a theme. Thankfully, some Catholics in the United States are waking up to the Marxist ideology, including definitions and language of the Obama administration, which I have been writing about since the Summer of 2008. It is never to late to learn and DO something about Black Liberation Theology, which I have written about on this blog off and on for months.

In addition, unless Catholics really stop playing footsy with communism, socialism, and all false religions, the game will be up for the Catholic Church.

These same issues were being discussed between the wars, in the 1920s and 1930s. How did Americans and even the British become so stupid about the far left? Hope for democracy is no excuse for ignoring the undercurrents of radical political agendas.

Blame the education systems, which were taken over by the liberals in the interim between the wars. I sincerely pray that more Church leaders wake up to the lateness of the day regarding the real enemy within. The language of POTUS is purposefully divisive, as it serves him and his party to create division in the States. The same is true for Cameron in GB. As these leaders push the envelope in order to get their agendas enshrined in law, they may be surprised at the depth of opposition, such as the 40,000 people who have signed a petition against civil unions in GB. It is never too late to wake up....

Etheldredasplace