Tradition at War with Tradition?
Plenary Session of the CDF to Decide SSPX Fate
(www.RemnantNewspaper.com) A plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) began meeting Tuesday, January 24th. The purpose is, in part, to deliberate over the Society of St. Pius X’s response regarding the Vatican’s proposed doctrinal preamble.
Acceptance of the preamble was put forward by the Vatican as a precondition to any canonical regularization of the Society.
Members of the CDF who will help decide the Society’s fate include: Cardinal William Levada, “Ecumenical Experts” Cardinals Kurt Koch and Walter Kasper, Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (of balloon Mass fame), along with Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Müller. Looking at this assembly, it seems the Society has as much a chance of being offered “full communion” as the Tea Party being offered an invitation to join the Democratic Party.
...First, the Pope states, “We can see today not few good fruits born of the ecumenical dialogues..." The obvious Traditional response to this statement is to ask: “Such as?”
The Pope fails to mention any specifically in his address. Since the only legitimate fruit of any ecumenical discussion is the conversion of non-Catholics to Catholicism, where is the evidence that this been brought about through ecumenism?
...Unfortunately, the Vatican seems to be using the exact same ecumenical approach towards the Society as it uses towards Protestantism and non-Christian religions.
As we can see from the Assisi debacles and the Catholic-Lutheran joint declaration on salvation, this "unity in diversity" approach always ends in mass confusion, relativism, and indifferentism, despite Vatican attempts at bureaucratic hair-splitting to keep the façade of orthodoxy.
In the final analysis, being “permitted” to be fully Catholic while in full communion with the Church seems to come at the price of admitting that the other novel ways of “being Catholic” invented over the last fifty years are just as legitimate and efficacious as Tradition.
Thus the Mass of Pius V is merely a “little t” tradition, on par with the Charismatic Mass, Folk Mass, and Rock Mass.
Enter relativism. For what the Vatican bureaucrats fail to understand is that only one set of these “little t” traditions fully embodies, encourages, and spreads the true Catholic Faith.
Once the official structures of the Church can bring themselves to admit the path our Catholic ancestors took under guidance of the Holy Ghost over two thousand years is superior to the man-made innovations of the modern era, the true restoration of the Church can begin.
