German bishops tell 'Spiegel'
they feel abandoned by the Vatican
in their anti-FSSPX offensive
ROME, June 13 (Translated from Apcom)- According to the German weekly magazine
Der Spiegel, after a few conversations with the Vatican, the Lefebvrians will celebrate the ordination of three new priests at the end of June in Bavaria more grandly than earlier planned, with the an open-air Mass which will be led by FSSPX Superior-General Mons. Bernard Fellay, who is coming to Zaitkofen, near Regensburg, from Switzerland.
Expected to attend are at least 1,000 German traditionalists who belong to the FSSPX.
In the past weeks, several German bishops had protested the ordination, claiming that it was a deliberate provocation to the Vatican.
[The ordinations were scheduled even before the controversial lifting of the FSSPX bishops' excommunication last January. The FSSPX bishops have been ordaining priests since their 1988 excommunication without any protest from the Vatican.]
Spiegel claims that during his visit to the Vatican two Fridays ago, Mons. Fellay "did not get any signal that the forthcoming ordinations were in violation of canon law".
The magazine says the protesting German bishops feel 'abandoned' by the Vatican in their stand against the Lefebvrians.
Neither the Bishop of Regensburg, Mons. Gerhard Mueller, nor the Bishop of Fulda, Mons Heinz Josef Algermissen, who wrote the Pope asking for instructions on how to treat the Lefebvrians, have not received any answers.
They think it is because the formal transition of competence over the Lefebvrian issue only became formalized this week
[announced only, because the Motu Proprio that effects that changeover still has to be published].
{Trying to put the best face on it, eh? Can't they take a hint? The fact that Fellay himself was not explicitly prohibited by the CDF from proceeding with the ordinations is the best answer they can get - it also saves them from the direct embarrassment of a written Vatican putdown.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/06/2009 02:53]