EXCLUSIVE: BISHOP ATHANASIUS SCHNEIDER INTERVIEW WITH RORATE CAELISSPX; Women and foot washing; consecrating Russia; anti-pastoral bishops and much more

Last week, Rorate Caeli interviewed His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider, one of the most visible prelates working on the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass and faith, on numerous topics. 

In this wide-ranging interview, His Excellency thoughtfully expounded on issues critical to the Church in this great time of crisis. Read the entire interview so you don't miss His Excellency's thoughts on the current status of the SSPX, women's participation in the Mass and the washing of women's feet, whether Russia was ever truly consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Summorum Pontificum and anti-pastoral bishops and much, much more. 

All may reprint/repost this interview -- but you must credit Rorate Caeli. 

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*NB: words in bold by Rorate for emphasis:

POST-SYNOD CHURCH & UNBELIEVERS IN THE HIERARCHY

Rorate Caeli: In the recent Synod, we will not know the legal impact it will have on the Church for some time, as it’s up to Pope Francis to move next. Regardless of the eventual outcome, for all intent and purposes, is there already a schism in the Church? And, if so, what does it mean practically speaking? How will it manifest itself for typical Catholics in the pews?

H.E. Schneider: Schism means according to the definition of the Code of Canon Law, can. 751: The refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with those members of the Church who are submitted to the Supreme Pontiff. One has to distinguish the defect in belief or heresy from schism. The defect in belief or heresy is indeed a greater sin than schism, as Saint Thomas Aquinas said: “Unbelief is a sin committed against God Himself, according as He is Himself the First Truth, on which faith is founded; whereas schism is opposed to ecclesiastical unity, which is a lesser good than God Himself. Wherefore the sin of unbelief is generically more grievous than the sin of schism” (II-II, q. 39, a. 2 c). 

The very crisis of the Church in our days consists in the ever growing phenomenon that those who don’t fully believe and profess the integrity of the Catholic faith frequently occupy strategic positions in the life of the Church, such as professors of theology, educators in seminaries, religious superiors, parish priests and even bishops and cardinals. And these people with their defective faith profess themselves as being submitted to the Pope. 

The height of confusion and absurdity manifests itself when such semi-heretical clerics accuse those who defend the purity and integrity of the Catholic faith as being against the Pope – as being according to their opinion in some way schismatics. For simple Catholics in the pews, such a situation of confusion is a real challenge of their faith, in the indestructibility of the Church. They have to keep strong the integrity of their faith according to the immutable Catholic truths, which were handed over by our fore-fathers, and which we find in in the Traditional catechisms and in the works of the Fathers and of the Doctors of the Church.   

Advent and Christmas 2015 Photo-Post

(This post will be updated as we receive more links and pictures.)

1. Messa in Latino has published the following pictures of the Solemn Pontifical Christmas Midnight Mass celebrated by Cardinal Burke at the Ss. Trinitá dei Pellegrini, Rome's personal parish dedicated to the Traditional Latin Mass. 

For the record: Latest FSSP statistics

FSSP Diaconal ordinations, Denton, NE. March 15, 2014. 

Source.

As of October 24, 2015, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter has a total of 421 members (257 incardinated), of whom 262 are priests, 14 are deacons and 145 are seminarians (including postulants but not including the deacons). All the deacons are incardinated in the FSSP. Of the 262 priest-members, 243 are incardinated, 11 are incorporated "ad annum", 4 are associated and 4 are postulants. Fifteen priests have been ordained this year -- the highest since 2004, when the FSSP had seventeen sacerdotal ordinations. (FSSP has averaged at 11 ordinations per year since 2004). The average age of the membership of FSSP is 37. 

Beautiful Ars Celebrandi Traditional liturgy workshop in Poland - report and pictures, with declarations by Bp. Schneider

On 19 August 2015, at the “Ars Celebrandi” workshop of traditional liturgy [see announcement here], bishop Athanasius Schneider from Kazakhstan celebrated Pontifical Mass and Vespers, and gave a lecture on the proper renewal of the liturgy and due adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. He also answered questions from the participants of the workshops and signed his latest book Corpus Christi.

In his lecture, entitled “The Renewal of the Liturgy and the Perennial Sense of the Church”, which abounded in quotations from the New Testament, the writings of the Church Fathers and the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, His Excellency pointed out that the essential feature of the sacred liturgy is the adoration of God.

Event: Sung TLM in Church of Saint Joseph, Yonkers, NY.

May 20, 2015 - first TLM in St. Joseph, Yonkers in 50 years. 

From our friends in New York we have received the following announcement:

New Polyphonic Mass setting in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado (the FSSP-run Traditional Catholic personal parish of the Archdiocese of Denver) marked the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel with a new Mass setting in which chant and polyphony alternate. Inspired by the work of the 16th-century Spanish priest and composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, sound clips of the new setting can be heard (being sung by the personal parish's choir) on the Denver Catholic website: Sounds a lot like love - Latin parish brings back sacred music for unique feast day Mass.

7/7/7 + 8 - Help Summorum Pontificum do its work

It will rise again, I tell you, [...] the Mass will rise again, as I tell so many who come to me to complain (and they do it, at times, crying); and to him who asks me how I can be so sure of it, I answer (as a "poet", if you would like) bringing him to my balcony and showing him the sun... It will be evening soon and there, in the church of San Domenico [in Fiesole], the friars will sing, at Vespers: Iam sol recedit igneus; but, in a few hours, those same Dominicans, my friends, will sing, at Prime: Iam lucis orto sidere - and thus every day.

The sun, I mean, will rise again, it will shine again after the night, to brighten up the earth from the sky, because...because it is the sun, and God thus established it for our life and comfort. Thus, I add, it is and thus it will be with the Mass - the Mass which is "ours", Catholic, of all times, and of all people: our spiritual Sun, so beautiful, so saintly, and so sanctifying - against the delusions of the bats, driven out [of their hiding places] by the Reform, [who believe] that their hour, the hour of darkness, will not end.

And I recall: on this large balcony of mine we were several in a past year, watching the total solar eclipse. I remember, and I almost seem to feel it again, the feeling of coldness, of sadness, and almost of disillusion in watching it, in feeling the air darken and freeze, little by little. I remember the silence in the city, while the swallows... while the birds disappeared, frightened, and the repugnant chiropters appeared, flying in the sky.

To him who said, when the sun was entirely covered: -"What if it were not visible anymore?" - a thought to which none answered, almost as if not realizing the joke in it... The sun is visible anew, in fact, the sun rises again, after a brief daytime night, as beautiful as before and, as it seems, more than before, while the air is filled again by swallows, and the bats go back into hiding.

As before, luminous and beautiful, and yet being the same, the sun seems greater than it was before, as in ... the Gospel [lesson] of the lost and found drachma.

As it was before, and greater than it was before: thus it will happen with the Mass, thus the Mass will seem to our eyes, guilty of not having esteemed it worthily before the eclipse; our hearts guilty for not having loved it enough.

Tito Casini

Nel fumo di Satana: verso l'ultimo scontro

Florence, 1976 (reposted)

_________________________________________

It has been eight years since His Holiness Pope Benedict XVl  blessed the Church and the world with the great gift of Summorum Pontificum.

Summorum Pontificum Conference in Rome - June 13-14 - Signs of Hope for the future

Sunday, June 14, at the Chapel of the Most Blessed Sacrament, in the Vatican Basilica, Cardinal Velasio de Paolis, one of the Cardinals who authored the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ, celebrated Pontifical Mass for the pariticipants of the Summorum Pontificum conference, which we advertised here in Rorate a few months ago. The Pontifical Mass was the closing act of the conference organized at the Angelicum (the 4th Summorum Pontificum Conference), organized by Father Vincenzo Nuara, OP, of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, with the assistance of Father Marino Neri.

300 people were present at the various panels, given by Cardinal Burke (on Tradition as a foundation of Catholic liturgy), Prof. Giovanni Turco, of the Universiy of Udine (the Virtue of Religion and True Worship in Saint Thomas), Bp. Athanasius Schneider (pictured below, on Communion and Sacrifice), Msgr. Marco Agostini, Pontifical Ceremoniere (on the Altar in the History of Worship), among others. The conference of Dom Cassian Folsom was particularly helpful in explaining the history of how Benedict XVI had to untie the knot that led to the recognition of both forms, a brilliant tour de force of liturgical law.

Also remarkable was the short intervention of Cardinal Müller on "Tradition as the proper principle of Catholic theology". It contained allusions to the current pre-synodal situation ("it is not the number of bishops favorable to an opinion that matters, but their doctrinal quality.")

(Based on the report of the correspondent of our fellow bloggers at Riposte Catholique, present at the event.)

Traditional Latin Confirmations in Moscow, Russia

The Facebook page of Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce reports that on June 12, 2015, Feast of the Sacred Heart, Msgr. Paolo Pezzi, Latin Archbishop for the Archdiocese of the Mother of God of Moscow, confirmed two teenagers according to the Traditional Roman Rite. The report states that these are most likely the first Traditional Roman Rite Confirmations to be celebrated by an Ordinary Bishop in Moscow since 1936. 

The Rite of Confirmation took place in the basement chapel of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Moscow, where the Traditional Latin Mass is celebrated every Sunday morning. It is currently the only place in the entire Russian Federation where Mass according to the 1962 Missal is celebrated every Sunday, although there is also a celebration (one Sunday a month) in St. Petersburg and occasional celebrations in various places. 

More pictures can be found over there. 

Pope Francis: "Continue the good work in the liturgy begun by Pope Benedict XVI."

The much-anticipated Sacra Liturgia USA conference in New York City began yesterday. Its proceedings can be followed on the official Facebook page for the event.

That page has also posted Robert Cardinal Sarah's Message to the Conference (link), in which argues strongly for the importance of liturgical sanity to any renewal in the Church:

2. Because the Sacred Liturgy is truly the font from which all the Church's power flows, as the Second Vatican Council insists (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10), we must do everything we can to put the Sacred Liturgy back at the very heart of the relationship between God and man, recognising the primacy of Almighty God in this privileged and unique forum in which we, individually and ecclesially, encounter God at work in our world. One cannot encounter God, my brothers and sisters, without trembling, without awe, without profound respect and holy fear. This is why we must rank what Cardinal Ratzinger called "the right way of celebrating the Liturgy, inwardly and outwardly" first amongst our concerns (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2000, p. 9).

Cardinal Sarah continues with an important revelation: 

3. When the Holy Father, Pope Francis, asked me to accept the ministry of Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, I asked: "Your Holiness, how do you want me to exercise this ministry? What do you want me to do as Prefect of this Congregation?" The Holy Father's reply was clear. "I want you to continue to implement the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council," he said, "and I want you to continue the good work in the liturgy begun by Pope Benedict XVI."

My friends, I want you to help me in this task. I ask you to continue to work towards achieving the liturgical aims of the Second Vatican Council (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, I) and to work to continue the liturgical renewal promoted by Pope Benedict XVI, especially through the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis of 22 February 2007 and the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of 7 July 2007. I ask you to be wise, like the householder in St Matthew's Gospel, who knows when to bring out of his treasure things both new and old (cf. Mtt: 13: 52), so that the Sacred Liturgy as it is celebrated and lived today may lose nothing of the estimable riches of the Church's liturgical tradition, whilst always being open to legitimate development (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 23).  

At the end of his message, Cardinal Sarah expresses the hope that he will be able to join the next Sacra Liturgia meeting, to be held on July 2016 in London. He also asks for prayers that he may faithfully exercise the service to which he has been called. 

EVENT: 4th Summorum Conference in Rome (Angelicum, June 13-14, 2015)

Program Below: