Arthur Roche has recently decreed that the Old Pontifical cannot be used for Confirmation.
The facts are totally beyond dispute. As Roche explains, in his best school-masterly tones, "it should be remembered that the formula for the Sacrament of Confirmation was changed for the entire Latin Chrch by Saint Paul VI with the Apostolic Constitution Divinae consortium naturase (15 August 1971)". (I can just imagine Roche giving Bloggs minor a cuff around the ear, like the Chaplain in the film If ....)
Indeed; it should be remembered. That's quite simple, then. No room for controversy there. Fancy ... Papa Ratzinger not knowing that!!
How silly, perverse, and ignorant he was to decree (7 July 2007) that "Ordinaries are given the right to celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation using the earlier Roman Pontifical, if the good of souls would seem to require it".
Daft, ignorant old man! All those stupid - if innumerable - books and articles he wrote! Incredible, that he hadn't read and couldn't even find copies of the Acta of S Paul VI! Just imagine the poor chap hobbling round all those libraries in Rome looking for them and, everywhere, the same brush-off: "Sorry, Old Man, we don't have room on our shelves for that sort of stuff!".
And how absolutely wet he was to allow bishops to take account of "the good of souls"! What on earth do bishops know about the good of souls?
Clearly, we now need stronger hands upon the tiller! Thank Goodness we now have men of the intellectual and moral calibre of Jorje Bergoglio and Arthur Roche to set us on the right track!
Outrageously, the English Bishops were prepared to act on Ratzinger's flawed "decree" and go around doing Traddy Confirmations!!! However can they have been so misguided! They need to be strictly disciplined for conniving in Ratzinger's apostasy!
Joking and irony aside: I think a pastoral need has opened out here like a great big gaping hole. I don't know if Cardinal Burke will be willing to traverse the continents administering Confirmation according to the Usus Authenticus of the Roman Rite ... but, if he isn't, will the aging bishops of the SSPX be able to hear God's call to go round doing so? The world is a big place.
How much longer can the Church avoid the necessity for more Episcopal Consecrations, even if they do have to take place sine Mandato Apostolico?
The time, surely, has passed for Rigidity and Legalism. The God of Surprises wonders if we shall step up to the plate.
11 comments:
If Benedict's original was merely to extend a reconciliatory hand to the SSPX can we now assume that this hand has been withdrawn? Can we further assume that their bishops are de facto excommunicated again?
Could it be that Providence allows all this to justify new ordinations of traditional bishops sine mandato?
Trads should go consacrate some bishops in China, I heard it's totally ok to do that without papal mandate, there!
Dear Father. The social stricture "Never punch down" has become popular to the point of becoming trite but if the authorities in Rome were not punching down some might think they had run oft to a monastery or taken a vow of silence.
Bergoglio has failed to defeat the trads, he is failing to defeat the trads, and he will fail to defeat the trads but now as his reign is nearing its end he is becoming ever more strident, demanding and abusive and he seems to be doing everything in his power to crush the trads.
We have a father who hates us and strives to destroy us.
I never though I'd live to see such a fearful moral monster occupying the highest rank of the Catholic Church but he is making it crystal clear all of his talk about welcoming challenges was just rhetoric devoid of content or intent.
He is the Vicar of His own will. He is panicked and punishing because he intuits, if not understands, where the momentum lies in the Church . It lies with tradition.
Dear Father. We have as Pope who we have owing to choices made by past pontiffs.
Decree Concerning Reform (Trent)
The same holy council, continuing the matter of reform, decrees that the following be ordained in the present session.
Chapter I
Norms Of Procedure In The Election Of Bishops And Cardinals
If in all ecclesiastical grades a prudent and enlightened attention is necessary in order that in the house of the Lord there be nothing disorderly and nothing unbecoming, much more ought we to strive that no error be committed in the election of him who is constituted above all grades. For the state and order of the entire household of the Lord will totter if what is required in the body be not found in the head. ...
Finally, the same holy council, moved by so many very grave afflictions of the Church, cannot but call to mind that nothing is more necessary to the Church of God than that the holy Roman pontiff apply that solicitude which by the duty of his office he owes the universal Church in a very special way by associating with himself as cardinals the most select persons only, and appoint to each church most eminently upright and competent shepherds; and this the more so, because our Lord Jesus Christ will require at his hands the blood of the sheep of Christ that perish through the evil government of shepherds who are negligent and forgetful of their office.
That version of Benedict XVI's intentions is an arrant falsehood propagated by the likes of the egregious Roche. Benedict made it very clear that his purpose was to end the perverse and debilitating mentality that set the Church at war with its own past. 'What was once sacred is always sacred.'
Utterly ultra vires.
AvB.
It seems to me that in the years following the Council, as the liberals disregarded, derided and flouted the various decrees and pronouncements coming out of Rome trying to hold the line a new vein of tradition was established. A tradition of principled opposition to (what was seen as) an overweening and retrograde authoritarianism. Perhaps now is the time to put the shoe on the other foot.
Yes, there can be no doubt that the recent pontiffs---even one we on this blog love and with reason admire, Benedict XVI---are responsible, in violation of the very pertinent magisterial teaching of Trent, for the naming of bad shepherds all around the world, including the crucial appointment of cardinals who in turn elect the Supreme Pontiff. So, the election of a Jorge Mario Bergoglio was inevitable. Thanks to Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque for this illuminating citation from the Council of Trent. High time the SSPX bishops conceive of their mission as a broader one and begin giving the Catholic beleaguered people worthy shepherds. And to those legalistic, rigid papolators: enjoy your tea with Alice in Wonderland and leave your silly (and destructive) pontificating aside---not many are listening these days.
To be fair to the popes (including John-Paul II and Benedict XVI), I think we should cut them a bit of slack over episcopal appointments. The overwhelming proportion of episcopal appointments are theirs in name only, as they would not know the diocese or the candidates on the terna from the proverbial bar of soap and simply have to trust that they are being well advised. One can only hope that the Congregation for Bishops is better than the Secretariat of State, on which Cardinal Pell's prison writings make very interesting reading. And much depends on who gets the ear of the nuncio in the country concerned.
Dear PM. To be fair to the popes (including John-Paul II and Benedict XVI), I think we should cut them a bit of slack over episcopal appointments. The overwhelming proportion of episcopal appointments are theirs in name only, as they would not know the diocese or the candidates on the terna from the proverbial bar of soap and simply have to trust that they are being well advised,
Your comment cuts enough slack to cover Wembley Stadium.
Because a Pope has to rely on his advisers does not mean he is not responsible for both choosing them and continuing to accept their advice (as if they had not been given marching orders) despite the numerous and sustained protests from the faithful over the choices being made.
Paul VI, who said Jesus was an innovator as a way to justify his love of novelty, appointed Abp Jean Jadot as Apostolic Delegate to our sad country and upon his death he was "credited" by The National Catholic Reporter as being responsible for creating the "Pastoral Church" here.
One reads his list of appointees and discovers his head aches, certainly with less intensity that did the head of Trotsky, but one's heart also aches because his appointments set the hearts of progressives soaring.
Us Catholics, so, um, undervalued by Bergoglio, referred to the appointments as Jadot boys but we knew whose hand ultimately rocked the cradle of the emerging Pastoral Church - he was the rock on earth.
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