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Msgr. Pozzo
in the News
A Commentary
on his
Nouvelles de France
Interview |
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6-23-2011 |
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In a
recent interview granted to Nouvelles de France at
the Vatican, the Pope’s spokesman for Tradition said some
words which might profitably feed the curiosity of our
readers, clarifying once again the stakes of the
traditionalist struggle. |
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NDF: Do you know if
the Pope is happy with the application of the Motu
Proprio?
read the answer
> |
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Msgr.
Pozzo stealthily eludes any controversies but his silences
speaks volumes, as extensive as the report Una Voce gave
to the Vatican (www.fiuv.org) |
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Msgr. Pozzo: “It is
necessary, and a duty, to recuperate the principle of unity of
the Liturgy, which precisely justifies the existence of two
forms, both legitimate, which can never be placed in
opposition or alternative. The extraordinary form is not a
return to the past, and must not be understood as a critique
of the liturgical reform wanted by Vatican II. Likewise, the
ordinary form is not a rupture with the past, but its
development at least under certain aspects.”
read the question and full answer
> |
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Msgr. Pozzo
is advancing a few theses:
a) The extraordinary form of the Mass is not a critique of Vatican
II.
He is here
faithfully echoing Pope Benedict XVI, who has entirely
departed from the barrage Pope Paul VI leveled against the
traditional Mass: “Now, if we allow the Mass of St. Pius V
to the SSPX, everything we have gained by the Vatican Council
will be ruined.”1 Paul VI clearly saw a
contradiction between the old Mass and the new Council. Does
Pope Benedict understand the spirit of the new liturgy better
than the Pope who produced it? |
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b)
The two forms of the Mass can never be placed in opposition.
As the Pope
teaches that there are not two Churches (the pre and post-conciliar
Churches) but one, he also affirms that there are not two Masses
(the ordinary and extraordinary rites) but one. For him, the
principle of this liturgical unity (which unites the two forms)
needs to be recovered. Is this wishful thinking or is there a
foundation for such principle of unity? If yes, where is it?
Cardinal Koch
thinks otherwise. On May 14, he stated that “in the long term,
we cannot stop at a co-existence between the ordinary form and the
extraordinary form the Roman rite, but in the future the Church
naturally will once again need a common rite…”
Moreover, if
Msgr. Pozzo rejects any opposition, Cardinal Koch makes no bones
about their differences: “There have been problems, and the
need to revisit Vatican II’s teachings in liturgy and strengthen
certain elements, including the Christological and sacrificial
dimensions of the Mass.” Now, when
he refers to “certain elements” of the Mass including the real
Presence and the sacrificial aspect of the Mass, is Cardinal Koch
referring only to secondary concepts or to something belonging to
the very heart and soul of the Mass? |
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NDF: "The
faithful who ask for the celebration of the forma
extraordinaria must not in any way support or belong to
groups which show themselves to be against the validity or
legitimacy of the Holy Mass or the Sacraments celebrated in
the forma ordinaria or against the Roman Pontiff as
Supreme Pastor of the Universal Church." (Instruction
Universae Ecclesiae, n. 19). Does this remark refer
to the SSPX?
read the answer > |
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Msgr. Pozzo
distinguishes the normative Novus Ordo Missae of 1969, the
perfect liturgical expression of Vatican II, from the later
liturgical applications characterized by doctrinal ambiguity and
deformations, abuses and desacralizations, causing the “crumbling
of the liturgy”. |
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He seems to
ignore that the New Mass itself establishes a model for an
evolving liturgy, allowing for exceptions, diverse canons,
etc. The legislation itself (open to question) is filled with
imprecision and permissions for long periods of time, which
allowed the liturgy to enter into a period of change,
inventions, varieties, in brief, of chaos.2
This was
exactly what Bugnini, the creator of the New Mass, had in
mind:
In our era, a cultural, religious, social and human
evolution is taking place such that one no longer wants to
keep the things of the past. And that is why it seemed to us
necessary to make a rite that is better adapted to the
mentality of the modern world.”3
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Annibale Bugnini,
Creator of the New Mass |
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It has been
said that “in important matters authentic tradition consists
not in restoring what others have done, but in rediscovering the
spirit that brought those things into existence and that would
do other, completely different things at other times.”4
We must strip
from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy
everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our
separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants.”5
Msgr. Pozzo
makes a clear distinction regarding the concept of “Tradition”. It
means either the proper defenders of the integrity of doctrine and
liturgy, or an ideological concept, opposing Vatican II to what
came before Vatican II. Msgr. Pozzo implicitly agrees with the
following theses:
a) There is no opposition between Vatican II and pre-Vatican II teaching.
This is not
quite what Benedict XVI explains in his famous discourse on the
hermeneutic of continuity: |
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The French
Revolution:
which implemented the
principles of Freemasonry:
"Equality, Liberty, Fraternity" |
The
Syllabus of 1864 is pure opposition! But Vatican II’s
Gaudium et Spes brings about a counter-syllabus. The
Council wished to effect the adaptation of the truths of the
Church to the thought of the Age of Enlightenment and of the
French Revolution of 1789, because the latter accepts in
principle the absolute rights of freedom. So, in the mind of
the Pope, the Council intended to accomplish “the synthesis
of fidelity and dynamic… It is precisely in this combination
of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the
very nature of true reform consists…6
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b) The concept of Tradition is flexible.
How can we
explain the Pope’s viewpoint? Only by understanding his concept of
Tradition: “Tradition is not the transmission of things or
words, a collection of dead things. Tradition is the living river
that links us to the origins, the living river in which the
origins are ever present, the great river that leads us to the
gates of eternity.”7 He had expressed it more
bluntly in his earlier years: “Both the Catholic and Protestant
interpretation of Christianity have meaning each in its own way;
they are true in their historical moment... Truth becomes a
function of time... fidelity to yesterday’s truth consists
precisely in abandoning it, in assimilating it into today’s truth.”8
“The truth is whatever serves progress, that is, whatever
serves the logic of history.”9 |
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c) Such a flexible concept of Tradition is legitimated by the
notion of a “living Tradition”. |
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The Pope
understands continuity in the sense of relativism by which one
could overcome contradictions by employing the principle that the
teachings of the Church are expressed in a historical context.
The discourse
of the Pope is coherent, yet contrary to Church’s teaching.
Living contrasts with posthumous. It refers to the
subject and the act of the magisterium: the teachers and the act
of teaching disciples. It does not refer to the object of the
magisterium (the teaching matter or doctrine). Now, objective
Tradition (i.e., dogmas and revealed truths of the Church)
is not living but unchangeable. The preaching can become more
accurate but the dogma does not change. There is progress, not in
the dogma, but in the understanding of the dogma by the faithful
who are better protected against the assaults of error. What
evolution there is can bear only on the mode of belief and not on
the object of belief. This is the ambiguity of the “Living
Tradition” of the modernists who use it to render dogma itself
perpetually evolving with age and circumstances. |
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Msgr. Pozzo. “The doctrinal
deviations and liturgical deformations which took place after
the close of the Second Vatican Council have no objective
foundation in the conciliar documents taken in the whole of
Catholic doctrine.”
read the question and full answer
> |
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Msgr. Pozzo
just quoted the Pope speaking of the “crumbling of the liturgy.”
He is well aware that most Catholics today deny the Real Presence
and the existence of Hell, etc. Rome is well aware of the
dimensions of the crisis. The effects are jumping out at their
face; the hurricane is of cosmic dimensions. |
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NDF: It does not seem
conceivable that a call into question of the Second Vatican
Council may happen. Therefore, where do these discussions
might lead? To a better understanding of this?
Msgr. Pozzo: “They concern a
clarification of points that detail the exact meaning of the
teaching of the Council…
The objective is to show that
we must interpret the Council in the continuity of the
Tradition of the Church.”
read the full answer > |
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For Msgr.
Pozzo, Vatican II is not open to discussion. The Roman
commission would love to have the SSPX's thinkers clarify
things and help it to bridge the gap between pre-Vatican II
doctrine and Vatican II's teaching.
Yet, on the
part of the SSPX, the only reason to discuss doctrine at Rome
is to open the eyes of the authorities to the inner
contradictions of Vatican II's teaching. Bishop de Galarreta
explained this at the beginning of the doctrinal discussions:
…[it] has been clearly agreed upon, the only common and
possible criterion of these discussions is the anterior
Magisterium. This is a conditio sine qua non
(necessary condition) for these discussions...
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Bishop Alfonso
de Galarreta |
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It seems clear that the Roman side at times is
speechless and tries to include the conciliar teaching as
valuable magisterial data. To which we reply: do not bring
Vatican II's teaching into the solution: it is part of the
problem! What we need to find out is whether or not the
pre-Vatican II teaching compared to the Vatican II teaching
enjoys the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ of Benedict XVI. This and
only this could validate the last Council.10
This is the
real Roman dilemma: can we discuss a doctrine without submitting
it to scrutiny from the outside, to measure it against a yard
stick? How can we discuss the value of the conciliar teaching
except by comparing it to Tradition, i.e., to the 20
centuries of Church teachings found in our Catholic Encyclopedias,
Enchiridion and Denzinger?
The Roman
authorities realize the difficulty of reconciling Vatican II's
doctrines with the Church of the past. To remedy this, not only do
they cast aspersion against those who warn about the danger, but
they change the concept of Tradition so as to pretend that all is
wonderful and unchanged under the Roman sky, surrounded by a
moribund Church. It is like a policeman inquiring about an
explosion, laying his hands on the persons who cried “Fire!” and
starting a philosophical discussion to show that this explosion
was not caused by fire, but a breeze. Meanwhile no one
investigates who or what sparked the explosion! |
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NDF: Do you think that
today still, the teaching of the Council has not been properly
applied?
Msgr. Pozzo. “On the whole,
unfortunately I think it is so… There are complex situations
in which we find out that the teaching of the Council is not
yet understood…”
read the full answer > |
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By now, Msgr
Pozzo is getting into deep waters. Vatican II was allegedly a
pastoral and non-dogmatic council so that the message and the
spirit of the Church could be made clear to everybody. Yet, in
fact, after 40 years, “on the whole”, the teaching of the Council
has not been applied? The question deserves being asked: is this
due to the incapacity of the authorities or rather to the lack of
clarity of the trumpet sounding the cry to arms? |
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Frs. Rahner and
Ratzinger (right)
at the Second Vatican Council |
Among those
who were present at the Council, was there Professor Ratzinger,
an active theologian and behind much of the Vatican II spirit
and renewal? What was Cardinal Ratzinger doing as the
doctrinal bulldog of the faith under John Paul II, the Pope of
change and of open rupture with the past? How come no one
seems to have raised his voice before all the heresies,
errors, and wrong interpretations of Vatican II during these
forty long years of eclipse of the true Council? And if no one
has been able to clarify and put in practice the true Council
until now, how can one, out of the blue, say that he has the
true spirit and the power to implement it? |
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According to
Msgr. Pozzo, some have an ideological concept which is deformed
because it rejects that
“the second Vatican Council is part of
Tradition” … “Some still practice a hermeneutic of
discontinuity with Tradition”
(i.e.,
mostly Vatican II teaching).
Msgr. Pozzo
signifies two things which, to him, are evident:
a) Vatican
II is a Council in line with Tradition.
The
“ecumenical” Second Vatican Council, unlike all others, did not
work at clarifying theological problems so as to maintain the
purity of doctrine against heretics. It was aimed at pleasing
heretics, whatever the doctrinal price to pay. Not quite the same,
is it? The term “ecumenical” has radically changed.
Only with an
abundance of ambiguities and behind-the-scenes maneuvering did
they succeed in passing off to the Council Fathers the identity of
contraries: God is the end of the universe and man is the end of
the universe (Gaudium et Spes); error has no rights yet all
sects are allowed to proliferate with papal approval (Dignitatis
Humanae); the Church of Jesus Christ is only the Catholic
Church and is not only the Catholic Church (subsistit in of
Lumen Gentium); truth in matters of religion is the
Catholic Faith alone and it is not the Catholic Faith alone (Unitatis
Redintegratio); the grace of Jesus Christ is received
exclusively through the Catholic Church and it is not received
exclusively through her (Unitatis Redintegratio). So it is
that the Council was only able to implement the incoherent charter
of ecumenism by sacrificing the principles of reason and the
Faith. Vatican II is contradiction, not Tradition!
b) Vatican
II is part of the universal magisterium and enjoys infallibility.
It may come as
a surprise that the same neo-modernist theologians who, on the eve
of the Council, detested the universal ordinary magisterium,
should today be its greatest advocates and invoke its authority at
the drop of a hat. But that was before the storming of the
Bastille! Henceforth the “fundamentalists” have been chained and
scorned as leprous, which has created de facto a universal
modernist consensus.
The
revolutionaries can therefore have a field day celebrating the
universal ordinary magisterium of Vatican II. But can the
universal magisterium contradict itself and remain infallible? Are
we facing an insoluble dilemma? On the contrary, the solution is
very simple. Universality in the context of magisterium does not
signify mere unanimity in space but also in time, according to the
Canon of Lerins: “quod semper et ubique”—always and
everywhere. Take the character of perpetuity away from
infallibility and nothing remains to prevent the Church from
falling prisoner to an ideological mass movement, imposing its
errors by means of a pressure group.11 |
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This is
precisely what occurred at Vatican II. The objective and
eloquent history of the Council, The Rhine Flows into
the Tiber by Ralph Wiltgen, gives proof enough of this
coup d’etat. |
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Msgr. Pozzo:
“…there are certain SSPX objections that do make
sense, because there has been an interpretation of
rupture…
…The essential
point
[of the discussions] is of a doctrinal nature. In
order to reach a true reconciliation, it is necessary
to pass over certain doctrinal problems that are at
the basis of the current fracture…”
read the question and full
answer > |
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Msgr. Pozzo
knows full well that the SSPX holds to the doctrine of Pius XII—to
say nothing of what came before—and that we believe that the
post-Vatican II mainstream teaching contradicts it. If the
doctrines are distinct to the point of constituting a “fracture”,
should we not ask ourselves who is in the right? Is it Pius XII
following 20 centuries of faith or a 50 year old “Conciliar
Church?”12 If one is right, the other is necessarily
wrong. |
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“The
Mass of All Time has never been abrogated.” It took about
40 years to discover—or rather to uncover—this truth. The Mass
of St. Pius V is finally vindicated. Likewise, it took about
the same time to signify that the SSPX was not the schismatic
sect the liberals pretended it was and to take away the mortal
blow of excommunication from its leaders. Will it take another
40 years to come to grip with a dispassionate study of Vatican
II, facing the judgment of the timeless Tradition of the
Church?
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Pope St. Pius V |
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If the time is
not ripe to question Vatican II, it is not ripe either for true
answers to serious problems, problems never seen before in the
heart of Catholic priests and laymen, living in perpetual
contradiction: “An intention to remain faithful to two councils
[Vatican I and Vatican II] which differ so clearly the one from
the other is quite simply untenable. The Council presented
Catholics with a problem so unusual that they only managed to
sidestep it by a certain blindness and surrender of reason.”13
This is why Bishop Fellay’s comment on the Roman discussions is
quite subdued: “What does Rome propose to do with us now?
...the crisis of the Church has certainly not ended. What is our
fate in this crisis? I believe that, at some level, the Good Lord
linked us with this crisis, because we are working for the
restoration of the Church.”14 |
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Footnotes
Jean Guitton, Paul VI secret, in
The Mass of All Time (Angelus Press), p. 263.
Itinéraires,
article of R. Dulac #140, p. 50.
The Mass of All Time, p. 233.
A. Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy (Liturgical Press,
1990), p. 44.
Printed in the March 19, 1965 L’Osservatore Romano and
The Mass of All Time, p. 228.
Discourse 12/22/2005
http://www.beginningcatholic.com/catholic-tradition.html
Catechesis on Catholic Tradition, April 2006. Also,
Benedict XVI: Jesus, the Apostles, and the Early Church
(Ignatius Press: 2007), pg. 28.
Principles of Catholic Theology, Building Stones for a
Fundamental Theology, p. 16 (Ignatius Press, 1987).
Ibid. p. 17.
0
http://www.dici.org/en/news/bishop-de-galarreta%E2%80%99s-comments-of-december-19-2009/
1
One Hundred Years of Modernism, p.275,
Angelus Press MO, 2006.
2
A phrase coined by Msgr. Benigni before Archbishop Lefebvre.
3
Daniel Olivier, Les Deux Visages du Pretre (Fayard, 1971),
p.106.
4
Interview in Gabon, June 2011. |
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