With friends like these...And the "Allen Warning"

This is an introduction to the text below, to which we must add our permanent "John Allen warning": John Allen - popularly known as "the National Catholic Reporter" - is not a reporter, he is an opinion maker, a fellow traveller on a mission. He is nobody's "friend" except Progressivism's, which is why he is the favorite "reporter" of the most "Progressive" "Catholic" paper in the world. As we said six years ago, when Allen wished to spread the notion that there would be no motu proprio because a "consensus" had to be found...: "[Allen] and his sources wish to influence events or to alter the way future decisions are perceived and interpreted, and that is how his words should be read." Allen/NCR has not changed - and neither have his intentions.

We must also be blunt: some movements are not exactly friends with Pope Benedict XVI. They are not his enemies, but, first, most still mourn the end of the Woytilian age and feel they have lost ground to the more "historical families" of the Church during this pontificate. Second, most of them despise the idea of re-interpreting Vatican II, as launched by the Holy Father in his epoch-making address of December 22, 2005 - they go along with it because that is the current Roman tune. Third, one must only look at how Summorum has been welcomed by some working movements: with an ice-cold reception almost everywhere, even though, on paper, few organizations should have adopted more swiftly the "Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite" than the "conservative movements". 

Even pope’s friends a bit leery on Lefebvrites

by John L Allen Jr on May. 04, 2012

 ROME -- Even in Roman circles most sympathetic to Pope Benedict XVI’s overall reading of the Second Vatican Council, it would seem, there’s a bit of anxiety percolating about what it might mean to bring the council’s biggest critics, the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, back into the fold.

At the very least, some of the pope’s defenders appear to believe a clear signal of adherence to Vatican II ought to be the price of admission.

Most recently, that impression surfaced during a May 3-4 conference on the 50th anniversary of Vatican II at Rome’s Opus Dei-run University of the Holy Cross. In the wake of Vatican II, the traditionalist society – popularly known as the “Lefebvrites” after the founder, the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – split from Rome over changes in the liturgy, as well protests over the council’s teaching on ecumenism, inter-faith dialogue and religious freedom. In mid-April, however, the society signed off on a doctrinal preamble submitted by the Vatican as a precondition for reunion.

That could clear the way for ending the only formal schism after Vatican II, perhaps in the form of a personal prelature or other church structure to allow the Lefebvrites some measure of autonomy. The conference at Holy Cross, titled "Vatican II: The Permanent Value of a Reform for the New Evangelization," was, for the most part, a gathering of thinkers vigorously committed to Pope Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of reform … in continuity” for interpreting the council, which he famously outlined in a December 2005 speech to the Roman Curia.

 Like the pope, several speakers distanced themselves from rival readings which, in their eyes, put too much emphasis on Vatican II as having set aside, or overturned, previous Catholic teaching or practice.

... “In the dialogue with those who would like to enter into the Catholic church, it’s impossible not to request ‘an adherence of theological faith to the affirmations of Vatican II which recall truths of the faith’,” [Opus Dei Fr. Johannes Grohe, a church historian at Santa Croce] said, citing a phrase from another Opus Dei cleric, Monsignor Fernando Ocariz, who was part of the Vatican’s negotiating team with the Lefebvrites. The Lefebvrites, of course, are the highest profile group currently involved in a dialogue about entering the church. Grohe argued that a “profession of faith,” a time-honored way to encapsulate core beliefs one must uphold to be considered Catholic, could be updated with a reference to Vatican II.

“A profession of faith which embraces the conciliar tradition from Nicea up to Vatican II would make clear that the teaching of the last council is inserted in the long and fruitful history of the magisterium of the church,” Grohe said. An even blunter call to defend part of Vatican II’s legacy came from Franciscan Fr. David Maria Jaeger, speaking on the council’s document Nostra Aetate, concerning non-Christian religions.

... Given that context, the Santa Croce event suggests it’s not just the usual suspects, meaning broad critics of the Vatican or of Benedict’s papacy, who wonder about the price that could be paid to get the Lefebvrites back. It would also seem to include some of Benedict’s friends.