THE CATHOLIC HERALD NOVEMBER 11 2011

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SSPX has rejected Vatican preamble, says superior

BY ED WEST

LEADERS of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) have agreed that the doctrinal preamble presented to them by the Vatican is “completely unacceptable”, according to the Society’s district superior in Britain.

In a newsletter posted online and subsequently removed, Fr Paul Morgan said that SSPX superiors had rejected the doctrinal principles set out by the Vatican as the basis for further discussion.

The superiors met last month in Albano, near Rome, but said they would only issue a response to the Vatican after further study.

In an official statement last week the SSPX attempted to play down Fr Morgan’s newsletter, saying that “only the General House of the Society of St Pius X is entitled to make public an official communiqué or authorised commentary on this matter”.

It stated that since the October meeting in Albano, “several comments have been published in the press about the answer that Bishop Bernard Fellay should give to the Roman propositions of September 14”.

In his letter Fr Morgan said it was “disappointing” that the doctrinal statement, handed to SSPX leaders by Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “failed to acknowledge the break between traditional and conciliar teachings”.

“Instead,” he wrote, “it insisted upon the ‘hermeneutic [interpretation] of continuity’, stating that the new teachings included and improved upon the old!

“So it was perhaps not surprising to learn that the proposed doctrinal basis for any canonical agreement in fact contained all those elements which the Society has consistently rejected, including acceptance of the New Mass and of Vatican II as expressed in the New Catechism. Indeed, the document itself conveys the impression that there is no crisis in the Church...

“Hence the stated consensus of those in attendance was that the doctrinal preamble was clearly unacceptable and that the time has certainly not come to pursue any practical agreement as long as the doctrinal issues remain outstanding.”

The Vatican statement listed several principles that the SSPX had to agree with in order to move towards full reconciliation with

Rome. It came after two years of doctrinal talks between leaders of the SSPX and officials at the Vatican.

Fr Morgan, who is based at the organisation’s British headquarters in Wimbledon, south-west London, and was ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988, was out of the country this week and so was unable to comment.

The founder of the SSPX, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was excommunicated in 1988 after ordaining bishops against papal orders. The Vatican in 2009 opened a series of doctrinal talks with the Society in an effort by Pope Benedict XVI to repair the rupture.

On the same day that the Holy See lifted the excommunications of the four bishops, January 21 2009, Swedish television released an interview with one of them, Bishop Richard Williamson, in which he denied that any Jews were killed in gas chambers by the Nazis, and said that only 300,000 died in concentration camps. Last month Bishop Williamson caused controversy once again by writing on his blog that “only the Jews (leaders and people) were the prime agents of the deicide”.

Bishop Fellay has distanced himself from Bishop Williamson’s views, which are not those of the Society, and last month wrote him a letter asking him to keep negotiations with Rome secret and to stop publishing his controversial circular letter. Otherwise, he said, he would have no choice but to begin a canonical process to remove him from the Society.

In the letter, which was leaked online, Bishop Fellay accused

Bishop Williamson of disobedience. He said: “You ooze distrust towards SSPX headquarters and the superior general. You cannot help yourself communicating this feeling to those around you. No revolution could do a better job of undermining authority... and this you do in the name of a supposed possible betrayal on the part of the superior general... That is very serious.”

The bishop also said that there was a “network of infiltrators... preparing a breakaway” and that Bishop Williamson was “put forward as the head of this movement. You are the friend of its leaders and you are playing their game.”

In October Bishop Fellay met about 30 of the Society’s officials in Albano, outside of Rome, to review the Vatican’s conditions.

He said it was agreed at the meeting that the Society should continue insisting upon doctrinal issues in its talks with Vatican officials, given “Rome’s persistence in the modern errors”.

At the time that Vatican officials handed the conditions to SSPX leaders Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said that if they were accepted the Pope could establish the Society as a personal prelature – the same structure as Opus Dei. It would give them a worldwide ministry subject directly to the Pope.

In his newsletter Fr Morgan also wrote that the recent interfaith prayer for peace encounter in Assisi, hosted by Pope Benedict XVI, was a “scandal” that “replaces faith with religious liberty as the means to obtain world peace”.

Opus Dei to set up two London private schools

Archbishop Nichols celebrates 65th birthday in the Holy Land

BY ED WEST

OPUS DEI is to sponsor the opening of two secondary schools in the London area, the first of their kind in Britain.

The two schools – independent single-sex schools for boys and girls – are to open in September 2013 in south London, although the exact location is still to be determined and rests upon finding a suitable location.

The schools are being set up by the PACT (Parents, Children, Teachers) Educational Trust, a charity with strong links to the personal prelature. Half of the charity’s board members are members of Opus Dei.

PACT already runs two Catholic prep schools in Clapham, south London, and Purley, in Surrey, and the new schools are partly a response to demand for senior schools from parents at the existing schools.

PACT is bidding on a couple of sites in south London and is said to be looking for a suitable location in areas where Catholic schools are in demand and where there are currently gaps. South-west London, the borough of Richmond-upon-Thames in particular, has a lack of Catholic schools.

Ella Leonard, chairwoman of PACT’s board, said that the schools would be parent-led and that the education would be as affordable to as many families as possible.

She said: “We wanted to go down the free school route, but what became evident was the very strict admissions criteria.”

Free school rules only allow schools to select up to 50 per cent of their pupils, which they felt would limit their ability to set their ethos. Opus Dei’s existing schools currently accept children from other religious backgrounds and Mrs Leonard said that the new schools will “accept people from other faiths and none, as long as the parents accept the ethos”. The new schools will be run with a Catholic ethos according to the principles pf Opus Dei with the organisation’s chaplain, RE teachers and spiritual advice.

Opus Dei operates several schools in the United States: the Heights for boys in Maryland and Oak Crest girls’ school in Washington DC, the Montrose School in Boston and Northridge Prep and the Willows in Chicago. Opus Dei also runs a university, the University of Navarre, established by its founder St Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, which is one of the top higher education establishment in Spain.

The two existing Opus Dei schools fund bursaries for about 15 per cent of pupils, higher than most private schools, and the group hopes to at least match that in the new schools. They also offer discounts for parents who have more than two children and wish to educate them all in the same school.

Mrs Leonard said: “We have many children of other faiths in the schools and we also operate very familyfriendly policies. Families come here for the standard of education.”

She added: “We want to bring up good citizens, welldeveloped human beings. That’s why the education is personalised and popular. Whatever fluffy things a school has in the way of pastoral care is not as good as having a tutor talking about their development, as well as their education, an adult who they can talk to about anything. That’s such a bonus. That takes time and dedication.”

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster holds a baby called Christian in Beit Jala parish church in Bethlehem. The baby was brought to the church 40 days after his birth. The archbishop, who celebrated his 65th birthday during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, said he hoped that every parish in his diocese would set up its own Friends of the Holy Land group Westminster Flickr photostream

Guild of Our Lady of Ransom

(A REGISTERED CHARITY) 31 Southdown Road, London SW20 8QJ

GUILD REQUIEM

Saturday, 26th November 2011

at 11.00 a.m.

in the

CHURCH OF St ANSELM & St CECILIA

KINGSWAY, LONDON W.C.2 Solemn Concelebrated

Mass of Requiem for

The Rev. PHILIP FLETCHER, K.C.H.S., M.A.

and LISTER DRUMMOND, K.S.G.

(Co-founders of the Guild) The Right Rev. Mgr. JOHN H.FILMER, K.C.O.R.

(Master of the Guild 1928 - 1951) The Right Rev. Mgr. LAURANCE GOULDER, M.A.

(Master of the Guild 1951 - 1968) and all other deceased Members and Benefactors especially those who have died in the past year

REQUIESCANT IN PACE A COLLECTION WILL BE TAKEN FOR THE GUILD

THE ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING OF THE GUILD WILL

BE HELD IN THE PARISH ROOM AFTER THE MASS SSADLY THIS WILL HAVE TO BE OUR FINAL ANNUAL REQUIEM

Cafod accuses G20 leaders of procrastinatingBYMADELEINETEAHAN

CAFOD, the overseas aid agency of the bishops’ conference, has criticised the G20 summit for neglecting critical global issues.

Leaders of the economies from the G20 group of nations met in Cannes for two days at the end of last week to discuss the growing financial crisis and to promulgate its final communiqué.

A key agreement among them was that the International Monetary Fund would monitor Italy’s austerity programme but there was a lack of consensus concerning fresh financial help for other struggling countries.

Responding to the final communiqué Cafod’s lead economics analyst Christina Weller said: “The kindest interpretation of the results of the Cannes summit is that it’s a work in progress; a more realistic one is that when it came to critical global issues the richest nations on earth decided to decide later.

“The communiqué is short on substance, ideas and commitments – saved, in part, only by the ambitious agenda of the French presidency which meant some critical issues at least got an airing at the G20 table.

“As a result, the G20 discussed two important reports on innovative financing – the World Bank and International Monetary Fund report on climate finance and the

[Bill] Gates report on innovative finance, but the only real commitment is to return to them again later.

“We are thankful that the door on these issues is still ajar, and perhaps pushed a little wider open, but it isn’t the firm commitment that many were hoping for.”

Ms Weller identified financial regulation and the management of exchange rates as fundamental causes of continuing problems in the global economy but argued that they did not received adequate exposure at the summit.

She said: “We agree that fixing crises in G20 countries matters for the poorest who will suffer from the fall-out; [but] if that is all that the G20 can cover, then its future is not bright.

“Given the brief attention given them, development issues did make a happy appearance in the final communiqué – with sections on food security, climate change and addressing the challenges of development. But there is little for poor nations to celebrate.”

The G20 was established in 1999 to bring together major economies to stabilise the global financial market following the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Since then the G20 has hosted annual finance ministers and central bank governors’ meetings and discussed measures to advance the financial stability of the world.

Dom Cassian Folsom OSB

CIEL UK Annual High Mass and Conference at The Oratory, Brompton Road, London SW7

on Saturday 19 November 2011

12 Noon: High Mass in the Usus Antiquior

Break for lunch

2.30 pm (in St Wilfrid’s Hall): Conference with principal speaker, Fr Cassian Folsom OSB, Prior of the flourishing new Benedictine Abbey in Norcia, Italy.

Fr. Cassian’s topic:

“The Roman Missal, organic growth and development, 1570 to 1962; the changes in the 1970 Missal and the Pope’s motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum”. Our second speaker will be Revd Dr Alcuin Reid, from the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon,

who will speak on “Refining the organic development of the Liturgy the fundamental principle for assessing the reform of the 1970 Missale Romanum”.

(Also, a special one-day outing to the historic and architecturally outstanding chapel at Wardour will be announced for next Spring.)

Cost: £5.00 payable at the door. All are welcome

5.00 pm (in The Little Oratory): Benediction Followed by an informal gathering with wine for all in St Wilfrid’s Hall.

CANTORES MISSAE

Holy Mass November 13th at 10.45am

December 11th at 10.45am St. Bede’s Catholic Church 58 Thornton Road, London SW12 0LF Requiem Mass for 6 Voices by Tomas Luis de Victoria

Director Charles Finch 020 8648 8852 or 078 8617 6227

www.cantoresmissae.co.uk

Classified Recruitment Please turn to Page 19 for vacancies in education, chaplaincy, sales and marketing, and administration