Some More Ecumenical Thoughts about Fr. Cutié

My friend, Clayton, who blogs at the endlessly useful Weight of Glory (and who, by the way, has gotten into the habit of being right), sent a link to a piece in a Miami concern, regarding the ecumenical ramifications of Fr. Cutié's apostasy.

Here is a snippet:

Even Episcopalians say [the Archbishop of Miami, John C.] Favalora has a point. Bishop Christopher Epting, the Episcopal Church's point man for interfaith affairs, said Friday, "There's no written rule, but it's certainly been the informal understanding between all our ecumenical partners that it's not something one seeks headlines about. It doesn't help us ecumenically."

There's a delicate diplomacy to conversions, with long-established protocols to ensure that interfaith bridges that take decades to build are not burned in a single afternoon. Epting said the Episcopal Church's ecumenical office, which is usually consulted on all conversions, was not informed about the ceremony ahead of time.

"I wish we had been consulted," Epting said. "We will be pursuing this."

I seriously want to know why we are making the possibly tens of thousands of Anglican communicants who would, with their bishops, swim the Tiber in a heartbeat waiting at river's edge out of concern for Ecumenical sensibilities, especially after a stunt like this.

In any case, how is refusing to welcome people into full communion with the One True Church of Jesus Christ 'anti-ecumenical'?

In closing, we cannot forget that the soul of a man and a priest of Jesus Christ is in mortal peril. Please, pray and do works of mercy for his conversion.

Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei Under Control of CDF

The Italian daily Il Foglio Generale is reporting on Pope Benedict XVI's surprise letter to the world's bishops re. the SSPX.

Check Rorate for updates.

SSPX - AP's Nicole Winfield Reports

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican on Wednesday demanded that a prelate who denied the Holocaust recant his positions before being fully admitted as a bishop into the Roman Catholic Church.

It also said Pope Benedict XVI had not known about Bishop Richard Williamson's views when he agreed to lift his excommunication and that of three other ultraconservative bishops Jan. 21.

The Vatican's Secretariat of State issued the statement a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the pope to make a clearer rejection of Holocaust denials, saying there had not been adequate clarification from the church.

The Holy See on Jan. 24 announced the rehabilitation of four bishops excommunicated in 1988 after being consecrated without papal consent.

Just days before, Williamson had been shown on Swedish state television saying historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed" during World War II.

Williamson has since apologized to the German-born pope for having stirred controversy, but he did not repudiate his comments, in which he also said only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews were killed during World War II and none were gassed.

Though the Vatican said it did not share Williamson's views, Jewish groups voiced outrage at his rehabilitation and demanded the prelate recant.

Williamson and the three other bishops were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who in 1969 founded the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, including its outreach to Jews.

The Vatican said Wednesday that, while Williamson's excommunication had been lifted, he still had no canonical function in the church because he was consecrated illegitimately.

"Bishop Williamson, in order to be admitted to episcopal functions within the church, will have to take his distance, in an absolutely unequivocal and public fashion, from his position on the Shoah, which the Holy Father was not aware of when the excommunication was lifted," the statement said. The Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

Jewish groups welcomed the Vatican statement, saying it satisfied their key demand.

"This was the sign the Jewish world has been waiting for," said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.

Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, thanked Merkel for her "righteous comments" and said the process to heal the "deep wound that this crisis caused to the Catholic-Jewish dialogue" could now begin.

Williamson's interview on Swedish state TV was aired Jan. 21. The decree lifting his excommunication bore the same date, although it was not announced until three days later. The broadcaster said the timing was a coincidence, but Williamson has expressed his views about the Holocaust previously.

Wednesday's statement was a remarkable turnabout by the Vatican, which had considered the Williamson case "closed" after Benedict issued a lengthy denunciation of Holocaust deniers last week and the society itself distanced itself from Williamson's views.

On Jan. 28, the pope said he felt "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews, and warned against any denial of the full horror of the Nazi genocide.

The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, cited those comments Tuesday in telling the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference Avvenire that, as far as he was concerned, "the question can be considered closed."

Yet the pressure continued, including from Roman Catholic leaders in Benedict's native Germany and Merkel's comments Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear if the Vatican's newest statement Wednesday satisfied Merkel.

"The chancellor has spoken and has nothing to add to her comments from yesterday," her spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm told reporters in Berlin.

In addition to its demand of Williamson, the Vatican also said society as a whole must fully recognize the teachings of Vatican II and of all popes who came during and after it in order to have a legitimate canonical function in the church.

There was no answer to several calls placed Wednesday to Williamson's home in La Reja, Argentina.

End to Blogging Hiatus in Sight

All: I have been off the radar for a week, due to some heavy work - most of it expected, but some of it not, and so... you know the story. Also the SSPX situation, the Vatican's handling of it, the SSPX's response to it, the world's misunderstanding of it, etc., are all on my mind and I do not want to open my mouth until I am sure I can be completely committed to what will come out. Bear with me.

L.D.

A Point of Ecumenism, Sacramental Theology, Theological Anthropology, etc., all in 5 Paragraphs (or thereabouts)

Fr. Zuhlsdorf's What Does the Prayer Really Say? blog had the following post up yesterday (I saw it right before retiring last night), which has occasioned a moment of specific clarity in my thinking on a question that has been with me for as long as I can remember.

Before beginning, though, an appeal: "Fr. Z" as he is often styled, is way out in front of the 2008 Weblog Awards religious blog category, thanks in part to the votes I have cast for him in the "best religious blog" category; other Catholic blogs are in the 2nd and third positions. It is important that Catholics continue to dominate the religious blogosphere, so keep voting - once per 24h cycle.

Now, here goes...

Christians receive the faith in baptism. Those validly baptized in Churches and ecclesial communities not fully united to Rome also receive the faith, whole and entire, when they receive the sacrament of Baptism.

Christians therefore have an innate desire for the font of the fullness of the truth into which they have been reborn. They can be confused, deluded, taught to deny that the font really is the font. They cannot, however, as Christians, cease to desire it.

This, it seems to me, is the truth of faith behind, or beneath, the late Fr. Neuhaus' affirmation:

I became a Catholic in order to be more fully what I was and who I was as a Lutheran.

I understand that this is not the formulation that Fr. Zuhlsdorf might have chosen for his 25-word answer to the question, "Why did you become Catholic?" It does, however, explain the structure of the experience that occasioned the expression.

It also has the advantage of underpinning the other lines of Fr. Neuhaus' essay that Fr. Zuhlsdorf quotes, saying he can resonate with them:

Mine was a decision mandated by conscience. I have never found it in his writings, but a St. Louis professor who had been his student told me that the great confessional Lutheran theologian Peter Brunner regularly said that a Lutheran who does not daily ask himself why he is not a Roman Catholic cannot know why he is a Lutheran.

This is, indeed an important question. It strikes me that it is an especially advanced formulation of a basic question, indeed, the basic question, that must be at the center of our very being: "Lord, what do You want of me? Where would You have me go?" No one, Catholic or non-Catholic, ought to cease asking this question in every second of every day. no one who asks it assiduously, and listens to the answer, will be forever lost, or so we pray: Utinam hodie vocem eius audiatis / non obdurare corda vestra...