Tectonic Shifts in the Vatican

Earlier this week we said the following:

“We briefly interrupt our series on the New Age to note this possibly landmark day.

It is the fourth anniversary of the implementation of Summorum Pontificum and if rumours reported in the French press (Le Figaro) are to be believed, a day of potential earthquake (English translation here).

If such reports have truth, they suggest nothing less than a tectonic shift – a reversal of Vatican policy in the 46 years since Vatican II.

We shall need to wait and see – and pray.”

For anyone closely following this story over the last days, it should now be apparent why a “tectonic shift” was invoked here ..

However if not, a recent post at the wonderfully and incredibly helpful Rorate Caeli has recently echoed much of our thinking at this website in an almost eerie way. Right down to the title of the post Tectonic Shifts …

I just said this post echoes our thinking.

This is unfair.

It does far more than that – it speaks much more effectively on some important things than we have ever managed to.

We do not normally follow the common web practice of reposting posts, but this post is so pertinent, so useful, so clearly linked to what Kim and I are trying to do at this website that we make an exception.

If either Rorate Caeli or the author object, we apologise and will remove this.

However I would like to stress that I consider this an unusually effective piece of writing.

It deserves to be very widely seen.

In a very succinct way, it sums up history being made before our eyes. It points us to extremely important things in a very, very useful way.

The post now follows. (I have only added some paragraph breaks. There are older generations including people like myself, unused to reading from a computer monitor and I believe this additional white space can help some of us to assimilate the very important points being made here).

Tectonic shifts: For the Roman Curia, the end of the “super-Council”

A guest-post by Côme Prévigny

In 1988, addressing the Chilean bishops, Cardinal Ratzinger affirmed, “The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of ‘superdogma’ which takes away the importance of all the rest.”

While affirming his remaining attachment to Vatican II, Benedict XVI, on this September 14, 2011, brought down the taboo of the Council.

For while no Pope could free a Catholic from the decisions of dogmatic Councils, the Pope, by way of the text of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, liberates the souls from those of a pastoral Council.

From now on, one may be of the Church without holding on to the controversial points of Vatican II.

In 2007, the helmsman of the Church had already undermined the monopoly held by the Novus Ordo. Four years later, he removes from the Conciliar doctrine its non-negotiable character and its exclusivity. It is not any longer the alpha and the omega of the life of the Church; that life is now once again refocused on its object: Faith.

It is true that, in small steps, the Catholic world, and the Curia in particular, faced with what John Paul II called the “silent apostasy”, have allowed themselves to be interested in the Traditional world, once exiled and condemned, now increasingly esteemed.

A French bishop said a while ago that he felt forced to bow to this movement, because the youth was present in it. In Rome, the major master of ceremonies lifts from the dust the traditional ornaments of which the Supreme Pontiffs, from Pius IX to Pius XII, made use. In the doctrinal domain, some parallelism is to be found, even though it is less evident.

After Benedict XVI accepted to discuss the Vatican II texts with the Society of Saint Pius X, some prelates, especially the younger ones, decided to find out in the archives what was unanimously believed before the Council.

Very slowly, the phenomenon begins and widens, to the detriment of the aggiornamento… And voices rise up in Italy denouncing the spirit of the Council, which has not let fresh air in, but rather a freezing gust.

These voices are those of a Monsignor Gherardini and of the author of his preface, Bishop Oliveri. Those of a Roberto de Mattei or of a Bishop Schneider. All take up their pens and do not hesitate to openly demand that the taboo of the Council be finally shattered.

Is this a sign of the times? Recently, a prelate of the Curia, after having read the book “On priestly holiness” (“La sainteté sacerdotale”), by Archbishop Lefebvre, confided, “I cried after a while because I went through seminary and I had never had the priesthood explained to me as he does there. It is a whole world that opens up for us, for no one had explained to us what the priest was.”

It is a whole world that opens up …”

To this I only want to add for now that I concur that the 14th September of this year showed a powerful sign of the times …

And that soon at this site a major piece is going up that is connected to this.

It will look like a book review.

Those who read it may see that it is both a book review and I hope more at the same time.

The book in question is David Allen White’s biography Horn of the Unicorn.

I hope that my review can not only serve to do some justice to White’s wonderful book, but also justice to the terribly maligned Archbishop Lefebvre, to whom we may owe far more than we will ever realise, these events of 14th September …

Perhaps it can also serve in a tiny way to add to the beauty reported above: “It is a whole world that opens up” …

We will also be referring to Valentin Tomberg in a way that hopefully can clarify for some the meaning of “silent apostasy” in the above.

Update: The review very relevant to all the above has now appeared here.

From Amazon USA:

These are also available in various sub-sections of our Amazon UK store here. Most also have Reviews at this site here.