A pity that PF has (we learn) decided not to visit Glasgow after all. An opportunity missed! It is my favourite Scottish city; the Pollock Gallery rivals the V & A; the Hunterian is a most admirable museum; the University is a papal foundation; I once went and read a paper to a university society there and was most hospitably entertained ... being taken afterwards to galumph over the remains of the Antonine Wall. It also possesses a magnificent Greek Orthodox Cathedral, where the presiding priest is a former academic colleague of mine, Fr Mark Mitchell, a very fine Classicist ... a very fine Byzantinist ... and, I am confident, a very fine priest.
What more could a Roman Pontiff ... or any visiting Argentinian ... want than Glasgow?
News spread yesterday (Remnant; Rorate Caeli) about the researches done by Diane Montagna into the genesis of Traditionis custodes. I have met Diane on a number of occasions, and judge her to be a superb and honest investigative journalist with good sources. The details and the conclusions she offers paint a picture of an institution mired in chronic mendacity.
And this morning, reports suggest that PF is today inaugurating his Synodal Process.
Heady days!
I think a Woman From Mars would be perplexed about this process of 'synodal' consultation. It is supposed to be so very open ... open to those on peripheries ... to the lapsed ... to those, even, who are outside the Church. Yet, in Traditionis custodes, PF has just done his imaginative best to strangle one of the Catholic Church's most lively and dynamic tendencies ... one that seems to attract the elderly and the young and the very young; the learned and the unlettered. The WFM would, surely, marvel at an 'open consultation' immediately preceded by a violent attempt to close off and preclude one particular possible direction of travel.
I am surprised that nobody seems even to be discussing the integration into PF's 'Synodal' process of those who favour a liturgical tradition which, as Benedict XVI made clear, has never been canonically abrogated; laics and clerics who could make their own distinctive contribution to the multifarious contributions which will be made by favoured papal cronies.
And, as for peripheries, I wonder about the members ... including very many women ... who have been ejected without mercy from religious houses because they have been judged by 'infallible' Bergoglian Visitors to 'lack a vocation'. What members of what synodal structures have been allocated to hear and listen to the sacked nuns and friars of the Bergoglian ecclesial landscape? And to the lay people deprived of their ministry?
Or are all these officially now a category lower even than the furthest of the most distant peripheries?
Lower even than pedophile cardinals, bishops, and priests?
Unpersons?
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Have the SSPX been offered a role in the synodal process?
9 comments:
Very powerful and moving, Father
Readers will surely want to meditate on the words of the HF to the St Irenaeus Joint Orthodox-Catholic Working Group, delivered on 7 October 2021: “I was struck by what you said about your specific task: to seek together ways in which the different traditions can enrich one another without losing their identity. I also found interesting your statement about interpretation as Gegensätze. I liked that. Thank you. It is good to cultivate a unity enriched by differences that will not yield to the temptation of a bland uniformity, which is never good. In this spirit, your discussions center on appreciating how differing aspects present in our traditions, rather than giving rise to disagreements, can become legitimate opportunities for expressing the shared apostolic faith.”
"Motus in fine velocior"
Motus in fine velocior indeed.
Mr Critchley: Indeed. Actually, it might be a good idea if the HF could meditate on his own words.
I read the pastoral letter regarding the 'synodal process' - once, twice, three times - and am still none the wiser. It reminds me of those when a minister of the Blair government would suddenly call for a 'nationwide discussion' on some matter so obscurely framed as to be an enigma. Eventually some radical legislative bill would be passed aided by the government's large majority, and it would turn out we had had the 'nationwide discussion' quite painlessly, even unaware it was happening at all. Luckily, the government 'knew' that we had come to whatever conclusion the Labour-controlled Lower and Upper House swiftly voted through.
So I have every confidence we shan't need much timewasting conversation about whichever surprising conclusions the future synod is already scheduled to arrive at on whichever future date has also been decided. It will be found to be the result of our collective 'process of discernment of the Holy Spirit', a process of which we shall - understandably - remain in blessed ignorance.
Perhaps it is for the best, one rememberers Pius II's ill fated Scotian getaway! On the other hand, er...
It is indeed curious that the workings of the Holy Spirit never appear to surprise PF - just us.
What a strange set of priorities the Holy See has. More horrendous revelations about clerical abuse-this time in the Eldest Daughter of the Church-but the obsession of the Occupant of the Vatican is to crack down on the liturgical practices hallowed by centuries of use. I can only hope that organisations whose charism this is will be taking steps to transfer their property into the hands of trustees so that the church authorities cannot get their hands on it. One would hate to see the fruits of the Warrington Appeal for example grabbed.
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