No indeed. This is no ordinary Monday. It begins the week leading up to the SSPX consecration of bishops on Wednesday, July first. In 1988 Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops calling the event Operation Survival. The traditional Mass and sacraments likely would have disappeared without his actions. One could call the Wednesday consecrations Operation Survival Redux. It's a sad thing that the Vatican let it come to this, but the pope and Cardinal Fernandez have shown their willingness to allow and even enable dissent and heresy while they punish orthodoxy.
I began my day with morning prayer and reading from the Credo Catechism by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. I'm in the section on faith, a providential place to be this week.
Fr. John Hardon, S.J. always said that one of the requirements for salvation is faith. The second, he said, was humility. In order to be saved we first have to believe that there is a Savior and that the one who saves us is Jesus Christ. Then we must be little, humble people recognizing our own littleness before Almighty God.
God became man. Let me repeat that. The God of the universe, Who made all things, loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son as a tiny fertilized ovum in the womb of Mary. When you look at Him in the monstrance know that you are looking at God in those first moments after conception. Like us He travelled down the fallopian tubes and took up residence in the body of His mother for nine months.
How is it possible that Almighty God should humble Himself so much that He would become man -- not as an adult, but as a helpless, dependent infant Who needed nourishment at the breasts of a human mother. How could He, Who knew all things, humble Himself to be taught by His foster father, Joseph, how to use all the instruments of a carpenter? No place of honor in the synagogue as one of the educated pharisees. Just a humble, simple layman from a despised area of the country. "Can any good come from Galilee?"
Faith and humility, the prescription for salvation as we walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.
The consecrations this week are not an act of rebellion, but an act of faith. And the humility of the Society is demonstrated in their continuous appeals to Rome begging for a father's ear to listen to their pleas.
So where do we stand? I think Bishop Schneider's Credo Catechism explains clearly the limits of our obligation of obedience when the faith is in danger.
76. Can a layman's sensus fidei ever lead him to reject a teaching of the clergy?
Yes. Alerted by his sensus fidei, the lay faithful may denuy assent even to the teachings of legitimate pastors when these appear evidently contrary to right faith or morals, or undermine their intregrity. St. warned even of bishops who would teach error as "ravening wolves" (Acts 20:29, formulating this prindiple for both clergy and lay faithrul: "Even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a Gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we hav said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a Gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed [anathem sit]!" (Gal 1:8-9
77. Isn't this sinful disobedience, dissent from the Magisterium, and a form of Protestantism?
No. Rather than treat oneself as the ultimate criterion of truth (which is a form of Protestantism), the faithful Catholic faced with a disturbing yet "authorized" teaching merely defers to the superior authority of the universal, perennial, traditional teachings of the Church, rejecting what departs from it.
78. When and how may clergy or laity legitimately resist or admonish their superiors -- even a pope?
"Just as it is licit to resist the pontiff that aggresses the body, it is also licit to resist the one who aggresses souls or who disturbs civil order, or above all, who attempts to destroy the Church. I say that it is licit to resist him by not doing what he orders and by preventing his will from being executed; it is. not licit, however, to judge, punish, or depose him, since these acts are proper to a superior." [St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, De Romano Pontifice, book 2 chapter 29]
No serious Catholic can be happy over the situation in the Church today. But we can be at peace if we cling to the faith as taught by Jesus and the apostles and refuse to accept novelties and errors that undermine the faith. My husband and I will at the chapel this Sunday glorifying God and praying for Holy Mother Church. May she soon be freed from the tyranny of modernism that seems to have a stranglehold on the curia in Rome.
Jesus Christ, Head of the Church, have mercy on us and provide us with a vicar after Your own Sacred Heart.
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