The Bergoglian camp is in chaos over the Society of Saint Pius X and the episcopal consecrations it has announced for July 1st, with the consequent threat of excommunication from the Vatican.
Enzo Bianchi, former prior of Bose and one of the most influential voices in the progressive camp, has called for dialogue and a search for a solution, urging the Society to accept the Magisterium of the Second Vatican Council while at the same time asking that traditionalists and their attachment to the ancient liturgy be respected.
Cue the uproar.
Theologian Andrea Grillo of the Anselmianum was not pleased, all but accusing Bianchi of betraying the Council. Grillo's thesis runs roughly as follows: if the Tridentine liturgy was reformed, it is because the Vetus Ordo needed to be superseded in favor of the Novus Ordo, and therefore Catholics must conform to the changes and not remain fixed in the past. Grillo also criticizes Bianchi's appeal to the Lefebvrians on the grounds that, having rejected all the conciliar documents and having founded their very existence on that rejection, it is entirely pointless to ask them to revisit that position and perhaps accept the conciliar texts as a mere formal act while persisting in substantive critique. Grillo was further stung by Bianchi's accusation directed at the hardliners — those who want no concessions to traditionalists and would like to prohibit the Vetus Ordo entirely. The theologian boasts of being intransigent, just as Paul VI, John Paul II, and Francis were — conspicuously omitting any mention of Benedict XVI, the author of Summorum Pontificum, which Grillo has always criticized and whose cancellation he has long called for.
Coming to Bianchi's defense is historian Alberto Melloni, one of the foremost proponents of the hermeneutic of discontinuity of the Second Vatican Council and of the Rahnerian camp. Melloni accuses Grillo of playing into the hands of the Council's enemies by insisting at all costs on imposing a kind of "conciliar Syllabus," thereby contributing to the polarization of the conflict around the question of the ancient liturgy — which is, he argues, merely the lesser problem compared to the positions of those who reject the Council outright.
In short, the Bergoglian front is clearly divided on the crux surrounding the relationship with the Society of Écône, and several aspects merit closer examination.
Bianchi, who was highly critical of Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum — which liberalized the use of the ancient missal — today assumes the role of the moderate, convinced, as everyone is, that common sense can prevent a rupture and schism on the part of Lefebvre's followers, provided that intransigence on both sides gives way to dialogue. Bianchi's position is essentially that the faithful of the Latin Mass must not be demonized, because the two rites — Tridentine and conciliar — are not in conflict with one another, given that until the last century Catholics, himself included, celebrated the Eucharist in precisely that ancient form.
And evidently Bianchi — perhaps already disillusioned with Bergoglio over his personal vicissitudes, which led him to leave Bose in a dispute with his successors and with the Vatican — must have convinced himself that not all traditionalists can be dismissed as a band of nostalgists, still less that the Mass can be turned into an instrument of division and ecclesial rupture.
Grillo, by contrast, remains entrenched in a thoroughly ideological vision of the Council, treated as an absolute and unquestionable dogma to be accepted at all costs — forgetting that both Paul VI and John Paul II challenged distorted and erroneous interpretations of it, which demonstrates that the Council is not synonymous with absolute perfection but presents many controversial and certainly debatable aspects. Wojtyla himself sought to harmonize positions, regulating the coexistence of the Tridentine Mass and the liturgical reform, and was not intransigent at all. He was certainly a pope very distant from — not to say antithetical to — the vision of the Church championed by the Sant'Anselmo theologian.
Melloni, finally, appears increasingly worried that the debate over the Vetus Ordo, by remaining central to the Church's internal discussion, will delay the fulfillment of that hermeneutic of discontinuity so dear to his illustrious mentor Giuseppe Dossetti — which, under Pope Francis, was finally beginning to be realized.
Granted, demanding that the Society of Saint Pius X accept the Council is effectively a utopian proposition, given that even Ratzinger failed to achieve it, despite having revoked the excommunication of the Lefebvrian bishops and having in practice fully restored the legitimacy of the Vetus Ordo. But it is precisely the intransigence toward lovers of tradition, and the insistence on imposing the reformed liturgy without any exceptions, that is undoubtedly the most powerful weapon one could hand to Lefebvrian propaganda — driving traditionalist Catholics toward the Society and into schism.
The first step to be taken, therefore, is to avert a rupture over the episcopal consecrations by finding a point of convergence — perhaps by authorizing one consecration as a signal of goodwill, in exchange for a commitment to revisiting the Society's anti-conciliar spirit.
In substance, what Ratzinger attempted in 1988.
But, at that time, Lefebvre was still alive, and opposition to the conciliar reforms was still very strong. Today, much water and many people have passed under the bridge, and the conditions may exist for a more objective and less prejudiced examination of the conciliar texts.
If, after all that, the Lefebvrians proceed with the consecrations regardless, then the responsibility for the rupture will be theirs alone — as it was at the time of John Paul II's excommunication.
But for Rome to follow the intransigent positions of those who regard any concession to the Society as a betrayal of the Council would, at this point, be a colossal mistake.
[Source, in Italian]
