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Offline X

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USA Bishops Approve SSPX Weddings
« on: March 21, 2019, 03:57:08 PM »
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  • https://catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/dozens-of-us-bishops-approve-sspx-weddings/

    Dozens of US bishops approve SSPX weddings 
    Michael Warren Davis
     21 March, 2019


    (Getty)

    If an American diocese granted permission for the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) to celebrate nuptial Masses within their territory, you might assume a reasonably well-informed layman would hear something about it. Yet, unless you read the Archdiocese of New Orleans’s newspaper, it probably slipped your notice. On March 9, the Clarion Herald published an article by Fr Garrett O’Brien announcing that “Archbishop Gregory Aymond approved a new policy for marriages witnessed by SSPX priests in our area.”
    According to the archdiocese’s newly updated policy manual, SSPX priests “are able to receive the faculty to witness marriages within the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of New Orleans”. These are contingent on requirements that are common for priests who visit a diocese to celebrate a nuptial Mass: a letter of good standing from his superior, proof that they’re authorised to legally witness a marriage, and the like.
    Many readers may also be surprised to hear of a diocese granting legitimacy to a group that is still considered “canonically irregular” by the Holy See. (I was, anyway.) In fact, Archbishop Aymond acted in accordance with certain provisions set down by of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2017. These provisions “authorise local Ordinaries the possibility to grant faculties for the celebration of marriages of faithful who follow the pastoral activity of the Society”.
    The diocesan spokeswoman explains that Fr Jurgen Wegner, district superior of the SSPX’s United States of America District, reached out to New Orleans last autumn. The archbishop appointed Fr O’Brien, a canon lawyer, to lead the deliberations at their end. The spokeswoman says: “We felt it was important to notify all the faithful in our archdiocese of this new policy. This is due to the fact that some of the faithful might be invited to attend a wedding at an SSPX location”, of which there are two in Archbishop Aymond’s jurisdiction. She adds: “The request for these faculties was made by Fr Wegner in a spirit of cooperation, mutual respect, care for souls and transparency”.
    An SSPX spokesman said that the Society has “visited or contacted some 45 dioceses so far” seeking similar permissions from local bishops. According to the New Orleans’s communications director, Fr Wegner “reported to us that roughly 30 dioceses have created similar policies”.
    The SSPX spokesman puts the number at 40 delegations. If true, this is a revelation in itself. Thirty dioceses out of 200 might not sound like much, but while most Catholics still look on the Society as a fringe group, it has already made significant inroads with US bishops.

    But that still isn’t the end of the story. Their spokesman reports that “several US bishops have visited our priories, chapels, and schools”. They have met SSPX priests, “and even attended our priest retreats and meetings. Most of them are impressed looking at the fidelity and youth of our faithful and priests. If there is any trend,” he adds, “it is one of openness and even warmth towards the SSPX.”
    When I interviewed former SSPX superior general Bishop Bernard Fellay last October, he spoke of an equally promising reception in Rome. Quoting the Holy Father, he told me: “Some people in the Church aren’t happy when I do good to you. I tell them, ‘Listen, I do good to Protestants. I do good to Anglicans. Why shouldn’t I do good to these Catholics?’ He has read the biography of Archbishop Lefebvre, and after that he said to one of our priests, ‘You know, they have treated them badly’.”
    No doubt the warmth is often mutual. One suspects that, as the Society begins to engage more with the broader Church, caricatures inevitably fall away. For instance, I had dinner with a few members of the SSPX last autumn. Bishop Fellay and Fr Wegner presided at one end of the table, and I was seated next to a young priest of Persian extraction. As the evening went on, I noticed this priest hadn’t taken any wine and didn’t touch his dessert. I asked him why. He explained that he was perpetually fasting – offering his abstinence for the conversion of his family back in Iran. I balked. “You never have any dessert?” I asked, trying (and failing) to imagine a life without carrot cake or strawberry rhubarb pie. He shrugged. “Well, there are exceptions.” At just that moment, Fr Wegner kindly pointed to his plate: “Eat, Father,” he ordered. The young priest took a bite of his dessert and grinned. “Obedience,” he said cheerily.
    The SSPX are sometimes unfairly described as “rigid” or merely nostalgic, but in general I have not found this portrait accurate. And whatever one thinks of their particular stands, especially their resistance to some docuмents of the Second Vatican Council, the Society’s image is changing at the highest levels of the Church.
    The Vatican-SSPX rift has always principally been theological. Full reconciliation would depend on both parties agreeing to a doctrinal statement, which seems unlikely in the immediate future. But when archdioceses praise the Society’s “spirit of cooperation” and the Pope himself admits that “they have been treated badly”, many will no doubt find it difficult to take seriously their status as “irregular”.


    Offline X

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    Re: USA Bishops Approve SSPX Weddings
    « Reply #1 on: March 21, 2019, 04:17:09 PM »
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  • Note that the announcement comes from the secular press, and not the SSPX.

    The SSPX rejoices to tell the world about its makeover which is winning them acceptance.

    But it’s own people, it does not inform, to preserve the illusion of continuity, even as the whole ship slides quietly into worldly conciliarism.


    Offline King Wenceslas

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    Re: USA Bishops Approve SSPX Weddings
    « Reply #2 on: March 21, 2019, 05:21:47 PM »
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  • SSPX will rue the day they joined the good cop of FSSP and became another good cop. They will be eaten along with the rest of us. Now where is that backhoe so I can dig that underground bunker?

    ABL in 1987:

    Quote
    "I said to him [Cardinal Ratzinger—who became Pope Benedict XVI] 'Even if you grant us a bishop, even if you grant us some autonomy from the bishops, even if you grant us the 1962 Liturgy, even if you allow us to continue running our seminaries in the manner we doing right now —we cannot work together! It is impossible! Impossible! Because we are working in diametrically opposing directions. You are working to de-Christianize society, the human person and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them. We cannot get along together!' Rome has lost the Faith, my dear friends! Rome is in apostasy! I am not speaking empty words! That is the truth! Rome is in apostasy! One can no longer have any confidence in these people! They have left the Church! They have left the Church! They have left the Church! It is certain! Certain! Certain! Certain!"

    ABL - 1989

    Quote
    To stay inside the Church, or to put oneself inside the Church - what does that mean? Firstly, what Church are we talking about? If you mean the Conciliar Church, then we who have struggled against the Council for twenty years because we want the Catholic Church, we would have to re-enter this Conciliar Church in order, supposedly, to make it Catholic. That is a complete illusion. It is not the subjects that make the superiors, but the superiors who make the subjects.

    Amongst the whole Roman Curia, amongst all the world's bishops who are progressives, I would have been completely swamped. I would have been able to do nothing, I could have protected neither the faithful nor the seminarians.



    Offline X

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    Re: USA Bishops Approve SSPX Weddings
    « Reply #3 on: March 22, 2019, 01:40:45 PM »
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  • Note that the announcement comes from the secular press, and not the SSPX.

    The SSPX rejoices to tell the world about its makeover which is winning them acceptance.

    But it’s own people, it does not inform, to preserve the illusion of continuity, even as the whole ship slides quietly into worldly conciliarism.

    Note also the clever strategy the US District implements by handling outreach with the dioceses directly itself, rather than delegating it to the local SSPX pastors:

    In this way, plausible deniability is afforded them: Should they ever be asked if they received orders from their superiors to obtain a diocesan delegation, the local priest can honestly respond, “I have never been given any such order.”

    And to keep that conscience clean and quiet, it is not even clear the local pastors are aware of their superiors’ activities.

    One more important insight nobody is commenting on:

    Recall that the pastoral guidelines suppose as the norm the marriage having the consents witnessed by a “fully regular” priest, whereas a delegation to the SSPX priest represents the exception.

    So, if Fr. Wegner and the US District are feverishly contacting all the US dioceses, in an attempt to make the new exception the de facto norm, and are currently in negotiations with 40 of them, what does that mean with regard to the other 160?  Are they refusing to play ball?

    Probably not.  A smart modernist will continue to give the delegations to the SSPX, to build a psychology of dependence upon and around the process.  

    Gradually, the thought of performing a marriage without one will become a horrifying thought for an SSPX priest (as confessions based upon ecclesia supplet are now becoming), and by that time, coupled with more and more SSPX-diocesan interaction, the laity will no longer be shocked when the conciliar priest pays a visit to the SSPX chapel.

    After all, what objection could any SSPX priest or faithful have, if Fr Pagliarani has already fully inserted the Society into the conciliar church?

    Offline AJNC

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    Re: USA Bishops Approve SSPX Weddings
    « Reply #4 on: March 26, 2019, 03:48:49 AM »
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  • https://catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/dozens-of-us-bishops-approve-sspx-weddings/

    Dozens of US bishops approve SSPX weddings
    Michael Warren Davis
     21 March, 2019


    (Getty)

    If an American diocese granted permission for the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) to celebrate nuptial Masses within their territory, you might assume a reasonably well-informed layman would hear something about it. Yet, unless you read the Archdiocese of New Orleans’s newspaper, it probably slipped your notice. On March 9, the Clarion Herald published an article by Fr Garrett O’Brien announcing that “Archbishop Gregory Aymond approved a new policy for marriages witnessed by SSPX priests in our area.”
    According to the archdiocese’s newly updated policy manual, SSPX priests “are able to receive the faculty to witness marriages within the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of New Orleans”. These are contingent on requirements that are common for priests who visit a diocese to celebrate a nuptial Mass: a letter of good standing from his superior, proof that they’re authorised to legally witness a marriage, and the like.
    Many readers may also be surprised to hear of a diocese granting legitimacy to a group that is still considered “canonically irregular” by the Holy See. (I was, anyway.) In fact, Archbishop Aymond acted in accordance with certain provisions set down by of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2017. These provisions “authorise local Ordinaries the possibility to grant faculties for the celebration of marriages of faithful who follow the pastoral activity of the Society”.
    The diocesan spokeswoman explains that Fr Jurgen Wegner, district superior of the SSPX’s United States of America District, reached out to New Orleans last autumn. The archbishop appointed Fr O’Brien, a canon lawyer, to lead the deliberations at their end. The spokeswoman says: “We felt it was important to notify all the faithful in our archdiocese of this new policy. This is due to the fact that some of the faithful might be invited to attend a wedding at an SSPX location”, of which there are two in Archbishop Aymond’s jurisdiction. She adds: “The request for these faculties was made by Fr Wegner in a spirit of cooperation, mutual respect, care for souls and transparency”.
    An SSPX spokesman said that the Society has “visited or contacted some 45 dioceses so far” seeking similar permissions from local bishops. According to the New Orleans’s communications director, Fr Wegner “reported to us that roughly 30 dioceses have created similar policies”.
    The SSPX spokesman puts the number at 40 delegations. If true, this is a revelation in itself. Thirty dioceses out of 200 might not sound like much, but while most Catholics still look on the Society as a fringe group, it has already made significant inroads with US bishops.

    But that still isn’t the end of the story. Their spokesman reports that “several US bishops have visited our priories, chapels, and schools”. They have met SSPX priests, “and even attended our priest retreats and meetings. Most of them are impressed looking at the fidelity and youth of our faithful and priests. If there is any trend,” he adds, “it is one of openness and even warmth towards the SSPX.”
    When I interviewed former SSPX superior general Bishop Bernard Fellay last October, he spoke of an equally promising reception in Rome. Quoting the Holy Father, he told me: “Some people in the Church aren’t happy when I do good to you. I tell them, ‘Listen, I do good to Protestants. I do good to Anglicans. Why shouldn’t I do good to these Catholics?’ He has read the biography of Archbishop Lefebvre, and after that he said to one of our priests, ‘You know, they have treated them badly’.”
    No doubt the warmth is often mutual. One suspects that, as the Society begins to engage more with the broader Church, caricatures inevitably fall away. For instance, I had dinner with a few members of the SSPX last autumn. Bishop Fellay and Fr Wegner presided at one end of the table, and I was seated next to a young priest of Persian extraction. As the evening went on, I noticed this priest hadn’t taken any wine and didn’t touch his dessert. I asked him why. He explained that he was perpetually fasting – offering his abstinence for the conversion of his family back in Iran. I balked. “You never have any dessert?” I asked, trying (and failing) to imagine a life without carrot cake or strawberry rhubarb pie. He shrugged. “Well, there are exceptions.” At just that moment, Fr Wegner kindly pointed to his plate: “Eat, Father,” he ordered. The young priest took a bite of his dessert and grinned. “Obedience,” he said cheerily.
    The SSPX are sometimes unfairly described as “rigid” or merely nostalgic, but in general I have not found this portrait accurate. And whatever one thinks of their particular stands, especially their resistance to some docuмents of the Second Vatican Council, the Society’s image is changing at the highest levels of the Church.
    The Vatican-SSPX rift has always principally been theological. Full reconciliation would depend on both parties agreeing to a doctrinal statement, which seems unlikely in the immediate future. But when archdioceses praise the Society’s “spirit of cooperation” and the Pope himself admits that “they have been treated badly”, many will no doubt find it difficult to take seriously their status as “irregular”.

    Maybe this will make annulments easier for SSPXers.


    Offline Geremia

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    Re: USA Bishops Approve SSPX Weddings
    « Reply #5 on: May 16, 2019, 12:23:13 PM »
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  • Note that the announcement comes from the secular press, and not the SSPX.
    It's a Novus Ordo publication.
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