From a private letter to me from Prebendary Michael Moreton (7 November 2001);
"I regard the Roman canon as part of the complex of traditions which characterised the life of the Church as it emerged from the centuries of persecution: a shared rule of faith in the creeds, a shared rule of what constituted Scripture, a shared rule of holy order, and a shared rule of prayer. I do not believe that any part of the Church in later centuries has any authority to alter these canons."
From Cardinal Ratzinger:
"Rites ... are forms of the apostolic Tradition and of its unfolding in the great places of the Tradition. ... After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters ... the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition."
So much, then for Bergoglianist autocracy. In passing on, we can applaud the insight and determination of the Moscow Patriarchate in resisting papist ambitions in the See of Constantinople.
But if the hyperuebersuperultrapapalism of Bergoglianity will not serve God's People, what will? Conciliarism? You just have to be joking. After the fiasco of Vatican II (yes; genuine, valid, canonical Ecumenical Councils can be disasters for the Church, as both S John Henry Newman and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had no trouble discerning)? And, on the other side of the fence, how about the megafiasco of the 'Great and Holy Council' a few years ago in Crete? 'Nuff Said!
HOLY TRADITION.
Holy Tradition, which, of course, has Holy Scripture as one of its ruling structures.
Holy Tradition, the foremost manifestation of which, day by day, is in the Liturgy.
Holy Tradition is our truest Mistress.
Holy Tradition is the ultimate and over-ruling auctoritas in the life of the Household of God.
No auctoritas can subsist in enactments which manifestly subvert Holy Tradition.
