The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

The "Triple Biretta"
- a response to a sede "counter-attack"

August 13th, 2006

Promulgating new Library Rules using the "Triple Biretta"

A while ago a bloguiste from the UK wrote that I had "worn many hats" in my ecclesiastical career. Eager not to disillusion my detractor I upload for your amusement the picture above. It was taken sometime around 1992 at the SSPX seminary in Winona. As prefect for the seminary library I had issued some new and highly contentious rules. What the flap was all about now escapes me. Some seminarians suggested that the rules were not "sufficiently promulgated". Thus to forestall the objectors we convoked the First "Ecumenical Council of Winona" and solemnly proclaimed the new rules (in finest Latin) anathematizing any and all who rejected the new rules. Unfortunately for a while the library had its first "Anti-Prefect" since I was forced to excommunicate one of my coadjutors for leading a brief schism. For the "promulgation" the "Triple Biretta" was used to emphasize the solemnity of the occasion. You see I have indeed worn "many hats" in my ecclesiastical career. (Believe me trying to balance three birettas was no easy task). Seminarians from those far off days will remember the event with not a little humor. A priest friend visited me the other day and even he remembered hearing the tales of the event. Interestingly enough the photograph was taken by fellow-classmate Robert Neville who has likewise been transported to the "purple" in the Thuc line. I mention all of this since I received an e-mail communication this morning from (as I suspect) the original detractor himself.

In the last column I said this: The sedes are losing the "faith" - i.e. they're beginning to believe that Benedict XVI is the Pope. This morning in my e-mail in box I found a message with the ominous subject line: "Ratzinger's credentials.....". "Oh no !" I thought, "Things can only get worse from here..." They did - a lot worse !

He is a pope of sorts ..... and quite clearly does not have the full recognition of traditionalists who have decided to withhold obedience to the modern church and her dioceses by providing alternative places of worship contrary to the wishes of modern popes. The passage of time and the continuing modernist agenda will in fact harden the position of traditionalists who will always question the episcopal credentials of popes and bishops as being products of the new religion. The SSPX is not united on this issue and it is inhibiting their negotiation intentions with modern Rome. That a heretical theologian would one day be crowned is not hard to imagine given the general decline and protestantisation that is the conciliar church. All these current negative features are hardly going to make traditionalists proclaim Ratzinger a true and worthy successor to Peter! Unfortunately, he sits on the real estate ..... and possession is nine-tenths of the law. But the remaining one-tenth raises doubt sufficent to save the Church.

This morning I referenced this e-mail in a brief fashion at both Masses since it served to illustrate a point I frequently make to our people and the Gospel today was all about it as well: the Pharisee and the Publican: one the hypocritical holier-than-thou religious bigot (in modern terms today's Traddie Catholic - those of the worst kind with a million opinions of their own usually totally divergent from authentic Catholic doctrine), the other a sinner in need of God's forgiveness and aware of his own unworthiness in God's sight. Our Lord draws the moral from the story: the bigot loses out, the sinner is forgiven. But to business - let us parse the brief missive:

He is a pope of sorts ..... and quite clearly does not have the full recognition of traditionalists who have decided to withhold obedience to the modern church and her dioceses by providing alternative places of worship contrary to the wishes of modern popes.

Not quite ! Either he is the Pope or he is not the Pope but he certainly is not a Pope "of sorts". Next, Pope Benedict's power to govern does not come from his electors, nor from the assent of the people but once he accepted the designation of the Cardinals directly and immediately from God. This was Tissier's mistake when he suggested in his original outburst that the "Church supplies" Ratzinger the papacy despite his "heresies" (according to Tissier). What course in De Ecclesia did he study ?

The decision to "withhold obedience" constitutes the crime of schism for we read in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (which I assume the author of the message considers still to be in vigor):

"If one, after the reception of baptism, while retaining the name of Christian, pertinaciously… refuses submission to the Supreme Pontiff or rejects communion with the members of the Church subject to the latter, he is a schismatic." CANON 1325.2,

Our interlocutor continues:

The passage of time and the continuing modernist agenda will in fact harden the position of traditionalists who will always question the episcopal credentials of popes and bishops as being products of the new religion. The SSPX is not united on this issue and it is inhibiting their negotiation intentions with modern Rome.

The hardening of the position of a few trads is readily apparent. Tissier's outbursts have all demonstrated that in some SSPX quarters the schismatic tendencies are rife. Then the unfortunate dichotomy which is standard Trad fare: "modern Rome" versus "Eternal Rome". As I mentioned my priestly visitor the other day and I had a protracted conversation on this and other points. I told him that I really wondered how we had both fallen for this distinction which the SSPX regularly serves up. They create a false tension between their disobedience and call it attachment to the "Rome of all time" and on the other side they speak of "modernist Rome" that has fallen into error. It was an axiom of the treatise De Ecclesia that Rome could not fall into error as a sine qua non condition of her claim to the mark of holiness. All the other primatial sees have fallen into error, it was ever Rome's glory that she could not and has not failed. For Trads to maintain she has fallen is to miss the mark totally. Interestingly enough another mark of the Church is called into question by the above snippet by the phrase: "The SSPX is not united on this issue" so the Society of St Pius X lacks unity ? They cannot be the Church then, can they ? (Obviously logicians will see I am taking the term "united" in an equivocal sense - for the sake of humor I add.)

That a heretical theologian would one day be crowned is not hard to imagine given the general decline and protestantisation that is the conciliar church.

Wait a minute - no "heretical theologian" (from Tübingen or elsewhere) could ever be elected Pope. From the last column the quotation from St. Robert Bellarmine again:

5th Opinion: "If he was to fall into a manifest heresy, the pope would ipso facto lose his pontificate". Some authors say that the pope would lose his pontificate ipso facto at the very moment when his heresy becomes external; some others maintain that the heretical pope would lose his pontificate only when his heresy becomes notorious and publicly spread. Among the 5 opinions studied by St. Robert Bellarmine, this 5th opinion appears to be the most probable.

Here I clearly agree in principle with the sedes - if Ratzinger were a heretic he would not be a Pope. The problem (for sedes) is they cannot prove their case either theologically or canonically.

All these current negative features are hardly going to make traditionalists proclaim Ratzinger a true and worthy successor to Peter! Unfortunately, he sits on the real estate ..... and possession is nine-tenths of the law. But the remaining one-tenth raises doubt sufficent to save the Church.

The Pope does more than occupy "real estate" he was elected to the office of Successor to Saint Peter and accepted the election. God supplied him directly with the authority. If you have a problem with understanding how authority to govern in any society is derived according to Catholic teaching, Pope Leo XIII handles the question in Libertas praestantissimum. As to the "one tenth" remark I have absolutely no idea what you mean. In any case I refer you back to the analysis of sedevacantism which I gave in the last column where I wrote:

The problem is manifold:

1/ It's their word against yours.

2/ It's their personal opinion.

3/ Sedevacantists usually acknowledge they cannot bind you in conscience to their OPINION but...

4/ They turn round and completely invent mortal sins of their own choosing: viz. It is a mortal sin to assist at a Mass in union with a false Pope.

5/ The position that Benedict XVI is not the Pope has not been declared by any canonical authority other than the world of subjective imagination in which these people live.

+TF