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Quote from: Pax Vobis

Last Tradhican,

Forgetting for a moment the large-scale changes to the Holy Week liturgy, I don't see how the 1962 missal leads, in any way, to the novus ordo or modernist rome.  I'm a big fan of Fr Wathen (and it seems you are too) and he 'wrote the book' (pun intended) on the evils of the novus ordo, yet he didn't have any (major) problems with the 1962 missal.  Even one of his 'email sermons' covered this direct topic:  Is the 1962 missal wrong to use?  He said, basically, no.  It's not perfect but it's not a danger to the Faith, as there are bigger things to worry about.  

If you disagree, why?  I'm curious.

I agree with Fr. Wathen (in bold).

I also agree with the article I posted: "SSPX liturgical position, grounded in the Bugnini 1962 transitional extra-ordinary form of the Novus Ordo Missal, will make it impossible to resist the Reform of the Reform".

As Fr. Wathen said: "there are bigger things to worry about", so let's keep this thread on the subject of: "The doctrinal position that holds that dogma is not a definitive expression of our Faith, a formal object of Divine and Catholic Faith, but rather a human expression open to endless theological refinement, will undermine any possible opposition to Ecuмenical Ecclesiology".

Perhaps the Footnotes for the letter link posted by Cantarella would help? The question of liturgy and EENS are related in that both are the subjects of dogma.  The SSPX does not respect dogma as dogma and that fact is seen in both these questions.  Dogmas address our immemorial traditions because it is by our immemorial traditions that the Faith can be known and communicated to others.  

It is also a problem with every discussion on CathInfo.  If any Catholic argument is taken to its first principles it will always end up with dogma, and then, to questions about the nature of dogma itself.  What dogma is.  And when the argument gets to this important question it is filed away under "Feeneyism."

Msgr. Annibale Bugnini, an alleged Mason, directed the liturgical reform from 1948 until 1976.  The 1962 Missal, issued at the mid-point of his liturgical tenure, existed only about 2½ years.  It was regarded by Bugnini, who took credit for its authorship, as only a transitional Missal toward his ultimate goal of the Novus Ordo.  Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificuм said that the relationship of the 1962 Missal to the Novus Ordo is one of organic development, that “They are, in fact two usages of the one Roman rite.”

    This is true statement for Bugnini said in his book, The Reform of the Liturgy, 1948-1976, that the first principles of liturgical reform adopted by his commission, first principles that were novel, artificial ideological constructs, guided his work and remained absolutely consistent throughout his entire tenure.  The first principles guiding the formation of the 1962 Missal are the same principles that would give us the Novus Ordo.  When Bugnini was asked if the 1962 Missal represented the end of his liturgical innovations he said, “Not by any stretch of the imagination. Every good builder begins by removing the gross accretions, the evident distortions; then with more delicacy and attention he sets out to revise particulars.  The latter remains to be achieved for the Liturgy so that the fullness, dignity and harmony may shine forth once again” (The Organic Development of the Liturgy by Fr. Alcuin Reid).  Thus such feasts as the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the Chair of St. Peter at Rome, the Finding of the True Cross, St. John before the Latin Gate, and many, many other liturgical changes, considered “gross accretions and evident distortions” by those who would eventually give the Church the liturgical “fullness, dignity and harmony” of the Novus Ordo, were done away with in the 1962 Missal.

    It is a fact that the 1962 Missal has never been afforded the standing of Immemorial Tradition by Rome.  Every papal docuмent touching upon this Missal treats it entirely as a subject of Church discipline governed entirely by human positive law first under the norms of Ecclesia Dei as an Indult and now under the restrictive legal stipulations of Summorum Pontificuм as a grant of privilege by positive law.  At no time in the history of the Church has an immemorial liturgical tradition been reduced to the status of an Indult, which is the permission to do something that is not permitted by the positive law of the Church.  This constitutes presumptive proof that Rome does not regard the 1962 Missal as the Immemorial Roman Rite.

    The 1962 Bugnini transitional Missal was adopted by the SSPX in 1983 as their liturgical standard.

 

 [ii]  It perhaps one of the greatest errors of the last century that Catholics have regarded the Liturgy as entirely a matter of Church discipline and forgotten its essential relationship with Catholic dogma.  This error is refuted by the following quotations:


    "However, the term disciplina in no way applies to the liturgical rite of the Mass, particularly in light of the fact that the popes have repeatedly observed that the rite is founded on apostolic tradition (several popes are then quoted in the footnote).  For this reason alone, the rite cannot fall into the category of 'discipline and rule of the Church.'  To this we can add that there is not a single docuмent, including the Codex Iuris Canonici, in which there is a specific statement that the pope, in his function as the supreme pastor of the Church, has the authority to abolish the traditional rite.  In fact, nowhere is it mentioned that the pope has the authority to change even a single local liturgical tradition.  The fact that there is no mention of such authority strengthens our case considerably.
    "There are clearly defined limits to the plena et suprema potestas (full and highest powers) of the pope.  For example, there is no question that, even in matters of dogma, he still has to follow the tradition of the universal Church-that is, as St. Vincent of Lerins says, what has been believed (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab ominibus).  In fact, there are several authors who state quite explicitly that it is clearly outside the pope's scope of authority to abolish the traditional rite."

Msgr. Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy

 

    "Liturgy and faith are interdependent.  That is why a new rite was created, a rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology”.

Msgr. Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy


    Further evidence that the immemorial Roman Rite, our “received and approved” rite, is not a matter of simple discipline:
    The Tridentine Profession of Faith of Pope Pius IV, Iniunctum Nobis, prescribes adherence to the “received and approved rites of the Catholic Church used in the solemn administration of the sacraments.”  The “received and approved rites” are the rites established by custom, and hence the Council of Trent refers to them as the “received and approved rites of the Catholic Church customarily used in the solemn administration of the sacraments (Sess. VII, can XIII).  Adherence to the customary rites received and approved by the Church is an infallible defined doctrine: The Council of Florence defined that “priests…. must confect the body of the Lord, each one according to the custom of his Church” (Decretum pro Graecis), and therefore the Council of Trent solemnly condemned as heresy the proposition that “ the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church customarily used in the solemn administration of the sacraments may be changed into other new rites by any ecclesiastical pastor whosoever.”

Fr. Paul Kramer, The ѕυιcιdє of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy


    Pope Pius XII  said regarding the error of liturgists:

    “They wander entirely away from the true and full notion and understanding of the Sacred Liturgy, who consider it only as an external part of divine worship, and presented to the senses; or as a kind of apparatus of ceremonial properties; and they no less err who think of it as a mere compendium of laws and precepts, by which the ecclesiastical Hierarchy bids the sacred rites to be arranged and ordered."

Pope Piux XII,  Mediator Dei

 

    “‘Lex orandi, lex credendi’ -- the law for prayer is the law for faith”, and, “In the sacred liturgy we profess the Catholic faith explicitly and openly”….. “The entire liturgy, therefore, has the Catholic faith for its content, inasmuch as it bears public witness to the faith of the Church.”

Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei

 

    Pope Benedict XVI, said in his book, Spirit of the Liturgy:
    The Liturgy cannot be compared to a piece of equipment, something made, but rather to a plant, something organic that grows and whose laws of growth determine the possibilities of further development.  In the West there has been, of course, another factor involved.  This was the Papal authority, the Pope took ever more clearly the responsibility upon himself for the liturgical legislation, and so doing foresaw in a juridical authority for the forth setting of the liturgical development.  The stronger the papal primacy was exercised, the more the question arose, just what the limits of this authority were, which of course, no-one had ever before thought about.  After the Second Vatican Council, the impression has been made that the Pope, as far as the Liturgy goes, can actually do everything he wishes to do, certainly when he was acting with the mandate of an Ecuмenical Council.  Finally, the idea that the Liturgy is a predetermined ''given'', the fact that nobody can simply do what he wishes with her, disappeared out of the public conscience of the Western [Church].  In fact, the First Vatican Council did not in any way define that the Pope was an absolute monarch!  Au contraire, the first Vatican Council sketched his role as that of a guarantee for the obedience to the Revealed Word.  The papal authority is limited by the Holy Tradition of the Faith, and that regards also the Liturgy.  The Liturgy is no ''creation'' of the authorities.  Even the Pope can be nothing other than a humble servant of the Liturgy's legitimate development and of her everlasting integrity and identity.

Pope Benedict XVI, Spirit of the Liturgy

 

 [iii] When Pope Nicholas II ordered the suppression of the Ambrosian Rite, he was opposed by the Catholics of Milan who refused his order.  This order was subsequently overturned by Pope Alexander II who declared it to have been “unjust.”  Further, human law, even the highest form of human law imposed by the pope, has all the limitations of every human law.  That is, it must be a promulgation of reason, by the proper authority, promoting the common good, and not in any way opposed to Divine or natural law.  As St. Thomas has said, an ‘unjust law is not a law.’  St. Thomas lists three principal conditions which must be met for any human law to be valid: 1) It must be consistent with the virtue of Religion; that is, it must not contain anything contrary to Divine law, 2) It must be consistent with discipline; that is, it must conform to the Natural law; and 3) It must promote human welfare; that is, it must promote the good of society (Fr. Dominic Prummer, Moral Theology).  These criteria, required for the validity of any human law, make the suppression of immemorial tradition all but impossible to legitimately effect.  The pope has no authority to bind an unjust law and therefore the Catholics of Milan were completely within their rights to refuse the order of Pope Nicholas II.  And we are, like them, within our rights to refuse any of liturgical innovations that overturn immemorial custom.

The likes of +Lefebvre, +Fellay, +Sanborn, +McKenna, and the majority of Traditional bishops and priests have said and teach in their seminaries that people like Hindus and Muslims could be saved without having to profess the Faith, and without conversion before death or intending to receive Baptism, the ecclesiological implications of this fact is a time bomb ticking inside the entire traditionalist movement's arc.

Problem with that ecclesiology for a Traditional Catholic is that, if you hold it, you must say that there's no error in Vatican II and therefore no justification for the Traditional movement.  That's why this belief that anyone can be saved without the need for belief in the Christ and the Holy Trinity, (nor a need for explict desire for baptism, nor baptism of blood, nor a perfect act of contrition). is THE burning issue for Traditional Catholics.  If I accepted the ecclesiology held by most Traditional Catholics,  I would be forced to renounce Traditional Catholicism, sedevacanteism and accept Vatican II and the conciliar popes.  I could apply a hermeneutic of continuity to V2 that makes V2 look like Trent ... again, assuming their ecclesiology. This change was inevitable for the SSPX since they have been teaching "salvation without belief in the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity" for years in their seminaries.

So if these can be saved, it must mean that they are within the Church before they die.  Consequently, the Church now consists not only of true actual Catholic members of the Church but also of various Protestants, Hindus, Muslims, etc.  Now you clearly have subsistence ecclesiology, where the central visible core of the Church consists not only of the actual/public (and perhaps in voto) members while you have various invisible members, not co-extensive with the Body of the Church, who are yet within it ... to varying degrees.  Now suddenly you have various degrees of partial communion with this subsistent core depending on how close doctrinally you might be (materially) to the fullness of Catholic doctrine.  Now these are truly separated brethren, brethren because they are within the Church (if they can be saved) and separated because of their material separation from the visible Church.  Now, when their intention to do the will of God itself pleases God and becomes salvific, since they have a right to please God and save their souls, they clearly have a right to follow their even erroneous consciences (since doing so pleases God and saves their soul).

It is incomprehensible how Traditional Catholics cannot see this ... except due to some cognitive dissonance on their part.

If this implicit-faith ecclesiology is tenable, then Vatican II does NOT teach error or heresy but simply adopts this opinion as that of the Church.  Since when is adopting a probable opinion tantamount to heresy?

If the dogmas on EENS, and the dogmatic Athanasian Creed (which are all clearly defined DOGMA, clearer than ANY "evidence" the sedes and SSPX and indulters debate about), can be turned by the SSPX and the Sedevacantes Bishops into that Hindus and Muslims can be saved without explicit belief in the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, then  I would be forced to accept that there are no fixed dogmas and every theological opinion is as good as another. I can then start going to my local Novus Ordo mass, all NO priests are valid, all conciliar popes are popes, I can move to wherever I like to live and not be stuck in the town that I live in only because their is an SSPX chapel nearby.

1. Wrong premise and wrong conclusion. What is true firstly is that there is no strict heresy in Vatican II's ecclesiology and that, therefore, the errors in the Church today coming from it can and should be resisted from within, that is, with canonical standing in the Church, like the SSPX now has.

With regard to EENS, in the first place, the dogma states this - heretics, schismatics and infidels who finish this life obstinate and unrepentant in the mortal sin of heresy, schism and infidelity respectively die outside the Church and are lost. It states this much and this much only. It doesn't state - no matter how much Dimond/Feeneyites and other rigorists wish it - that those also, for instance, in material heresy or schism are also schismatics and heretics properly and formally so called. Sacred theology, going back to St. Thomas, also distinguishes positive (which is self-willed and mortally sinful) and negative infidelity (which is not) just like material and formal heresy.

2. Now, with regard to those excused by invincible ignorance from the sin of heresy or schism, we must consider first separated Christians who believe in Christ and the Triune God. If they are excused from sin by an ignorance which is inculpable, they are not formal heretics or schismatics, and consequently can belong to the soul of the Church by implicit desire, if they believe in and love God One and Triune with all their heart, and strive sincerely to do His will as best they can, Pope St. Pius X and several others bearing witness. Thus, they can be incorporated in the Church.

Secondly, with regard to non-Christians, the doctrine that there is no salvation without the Catholic Faith (which requires, at a minimum, explicit faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation), together with the fact that "God wills all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth" means that He will provide for the sincere non-Chrstian who seeks the truth with his whole heart the means to come to the knowledge of Christ and be saved. Fr. Mueller, in a catechism approved by Rome, expressly teaches this.

3. None of this denies the literal sense of the dogma, which is that all who die as heretics, schismatics and infidels properly and formally so called are lost. The dogma is speaking about formal heretics and not about so called "material schismatics" who are not really schismatics at all since the will, and therefore the sin, of schism is not really present with regard to its interior effects. And so, likewise, for heresy and infidelity.

I like how the most stubborn Feeneyite/Dimondite posters here nonentheless say, "If I am wrong (about the Pope/modern crisis etc), I hope God judges me to be sincere and inculpable, because I sincerely love Him and desire to do His will" while denying precisely the same to those far less guilty than they. An Orthodox Christian, born in a separated Church, but nonetheless desiring to serve the Triune God and belong to His true Church with all his heart, is within the Church by virtue of that very desire. In a similar state exactly, are sedevacantists, Feeneyite/Dimondites and other modern heretics/schismatics/dissenters, if, known to God, they err in good faith and are not obstinate in their error. But since God judges every man by his own standard, as St. James admonishes, and if you insist that every person in heresy or schism is a formal heretic or formal schismatic, then you yourselves risk being judged by God as exactly that, as formal heretics and schismatics yourself.