At the CDF, new Prefect says
the dogmatic content of Vatican II
cannot be 'negotiated' with the FSSPX
by David Kerr
Rome, Italy, July 24, 2012 (CNA/EWTN News) - Although the new head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is optimistic about reconciliation with the Society of St. Pius X, he says that the teachings of the Church – including the dogmatic content of the Second Vatican Council – will never be up for re-negotiation.
“The purpose of dialogue is to overcome difficulties in the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller told CNA July 20, “but we cannot negotiate on revealed faith, that is impossible. An Ecumenical Council, according to the Catholic faith, is always the supreme teaching authority of the Church.”
[Except that what the FSSPX are disputing is not exactly 'revealed faith' per se - religious freedom, inter-religious dialog, ecumenism and collegiality are all modern cencepts, even if they can be derived from and supported by Biblical passages. Obviously, I have no theological grounding at all for raising the question, so I have been meaning to research if Cardinal Ratzinger had ever said or written anything about a hierarchy of dogmatic value that would compare the aforementioned 'novelties' of Vatican II with the more basic values about respect for life that are commonly and habitually ignored by contemporary Catholics who consider contraception and abortion on demand as 'basic human rights' - the way he once contrasted the death penalty or just war, though both involve killing, as less clearcut in the moral sense as abortion.
From a commonsense point of view, for an ordinary Catholic like me who am theologically illiterate, how does one compare the offense committed by a Lefebvrian who refuses to preach ecumenism (and who may even preach against it), to a woman, say, who habitually undergboes abortion because she can't be bothered to raise a child? Catholic practitioners of contraception and abortion knowingly defy the teaching of the Church - from both Revelation and Tradition, and not just from a recent ecumenical council - and openly flaunt their defiance because they consider the teaching obsolete. Without in any way approving the arrogantly offensive formulation of the 'irrenunciable' conditions now set by the FSSPX for reconciliation, why nonetheless is the FSSPX being held to a more rigorous standard that is not demanded at all of the millions of contemporary Catholid dissidents who claim to follow their 'conscience' and not what the Church says? Why can't the formulation Cardinal Ratzinfer worked out with and accepted by Mons. Lefebvre not be used as the standard today?]
As prefect of the Congregation, Archbishop Muller is also the President of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei,” the Vatican body responsible for dialogue with the Society of St. Pius X.
The commission is currently awaiting an official reply from the society to an offer of reconciliation that would give the traditionalist group Personal Prelature status within the Church. In return the society would have to accept a “Doctrinal Preamble” proposed to it by the Congregation, including full adherence to the dogmatic content of the Second Vatican Council.
In a July 19 statement, the society said it had “determined and approved the necessary conditions for an eventual canonical normalization” at its recent General Chapter, but added that it still rejected “all the novelties of the Second Vatican Council which remain tainted with errors” as well as “the reforms issued from it.”
“The assertion that the authentic teachings of Vatican II formally contradict the tradition of the Church is false,” Archbishop Muller stated.
He added, however, that between various texts of the council there are “gradations” of teaching authority. By way of an example, Archbishop Muller drew a comparison between the council’s document on social communications, “Inter Mirifica,” which carries “less weight” than “dogmatic declarations” like the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “Lumen Gentium.”
[In the agreement with Cardinal Raztinger, Mons. Lefebvre explicitly accepted the critical Section 25 of LG on due respect for the Magisterium of the Church.]
“Whatever is dogmatic can never be negotiated,” he said, while still expressing hope that the members of the Society of Pius X “can overcome their difficulties, their ideological restrictions so that we can work together to proclaim Christ as the Light of the World.”
Although the 64-year-old German is new to his current post at the Vatican, Archbishop Muller has had extensive dealings with the Society of St. Pius X in the past. As Archbishop of Regensburg in the Bavaria region of Germany for the past decade, his diocesan territory included a seminary operated by the traditionalists group.
[Kerr does not mention that the relationship was consistently contentious. Mueller went through a lot of gratuitous mediatic huffing and puffing every year when the FSSPX ordained new priests in their seminary near Regensburg (always more priests thah the diocese itself ordained!). Even after Benedict XVI's 2009 letter to the bishops of the world when he wrote:
Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim him and, with him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?
Benedict's pastoral solicitude is almost palpable in those lines. And yet, my first reservation at the time months ago when Mueller's nomination to be CDF Prefect appeared inevitable was the chilling effect it would have on the rapprochement with the FSSPX. No love lost between them at all! But then the Pope named Mons. Di Noia to Ecclesia Dei, and I thought he was deliberately giving a signal to the FSSPX that they would have a friendly interlocutor at CDF. Now, if only Mons. Di Noia can get Fellay to revert to his mid-June 2012 state of mind, in his rather impressive reply to his three dissident bishop colleagues who oppose any reconciliation with Rome!]
A key problem for Rome in recent discussions seems to be the perception that the Society of St. Pius X often speaks about errors in the conciliar texts themselves.
Instead, the Vatican believes a distinction should be made between what the Second Vatican Council actually said and the sometimes problematic interpretations and applications of its teaching.
“We can all come together and avoid ideological positions if we accept the Word of God present in the doctrine of the Catholic Church,” he said.
The Vatican’s willingness to continue dialogue was indicated last month with the deployment of a high-ranking American archbishop to the commission responsible for the discussions.
On June 26, Pope Benedict switched Rome-based Archbishop Augustine Di Noia from his post as secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship to vice president of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei.”
Archbishop Muller, who took up office in Rome earlier this month, said he is fully committed to working for the reconciliation of all separated Christians.
“Our aim and our task is clear – to promote the unity of all the disciples of Christ in the one Church under the leadership of Jesus Christ and in communion with his vicar, the successor of St. Peter.”
Right now, we must pray that among the graces of the Holy Spirit, the gift of humility may particularly enlighten both the FSSPX leadership and Mons. Mueller.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/07/2012 02:12]