In its efforts to produce unity with the traditionalist SSPX
(Society of St. Piux X) , the Vatican has adopted a “divide and conquer” strategy,
setting up separate negotiations with different bishops from the group.
Vatican City, May 16, 2012 / 10:25
am.- The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has announced it
will hold separate talks with the superior general of the breakaway
traditionalist Society of St. Pius X and each of its three other bishops to try
and acheive reconciliation…
The 16-person committee – known as
Feria Quarta – met this morning to discuss the modifications made by the
Superior of the Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Bernard Fellay, to a “doctrinal
preamble” prepared last year by the Vatican. The document establishes a framework
for agreement on some key issues of Church doctrine, including acceptance of
the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.
In contrast to Bishop Fellay, the
Society’s three other bishops seem hostile to the idea of reconciliation with
Rome.
Today’s Vatican communiqué said the
situations of the three other bishops “will have to be dealt with separately
and singularly.”
Earlier this month, Bishops Bernard
Tissier de Mallerais, Alfonso de Galarreta and Richard Williamson sent a letter
to Bishop Fellay warning that an agreement with the Vatican would see the
Society “cease to oppose the universal apostasy of our time.”
They also argued that the Second
Vatican Council “did not just include particular errors but represented a total
perversion of the mind, a new philosophy founded on subjectivism.”
Pope Benedict XVI was dismissed by
the three Pius X Society bishops as a “subjectivist.”…
Feria Quarta consists of some of
the Vatican’s senior curial figures, such as Secretary of State Cardinal
Tarcisio Bertone and several bishops from key dioceses, including Cardinal
Christoph Schonborn of Vienna and Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard of Bordeaux. It
is chaired by the Prefect of the Congregation, the American Cardinal William
Levada.
The Society of St. Pius X was
founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve in 1970 as a response to what he
described as errors that had crept into the Catholic Church following the
Second Vatican Council. Its relations with the Vatican became strained in 1988
when Archbishop Lefebrve consecrated four bishops against the orders of Pope
John Paul II.
