SS. Peter and Paul
Roman Catholic Mission
P. O. Box 7352
July 31, 2007
St. Ignatius of Loyola
Bishop
Kevin Rhoades
Diocese
of Harrisburg
4800
Union Deposit Road
Box
2153
Harrisburg,
PA 17105-2153
Dear
Bishop Rhoades,
In the recent article published in the
York Daily Record entitled, Bishop
hopes decree heals rift, there are attributed statements to you that I would
like to address as well as our current situation within the Diocese of
Harrisburg. We were disappointed to have
the term “schismatic” used in describing the members of Ss. Peter and Paul
Roman Catholic Mission. That is an accusation that we deny and believe that
there is insufficient evidence to justify its use especially without a formal
canonical inquiry and judicial determination.
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI does not use the term in reference to
members of the Orthodox Church who formally deny his office and authority. Why then should it be used to describe those
who profess the Catholic faith in its integrity? Your name and that of Pope
Benedict are specifically recited in the canon of the Roman Rite of Mass that
is offered at Ss. Peter & Paul Chapel.
We believe a public retraction is in order.
We are canonically an association of
lay Catholics who function in the manner of a confraternity to work for our own
sanctification and salvation by helping to restore the ecclesiastical traditions
of the Roman rite to this diocese. Our corporate purpose is fixed and very
difficult to change. It is fundamentally very simple: As Catholics we
have by virtue of our Baptism the infused character that empowers us to offer
fitting worship to God who is holy and commands us as our first duty to offer
holy worship. This duty imposed by God generates specific rights to each
Catholic. The worship of God in the external forum must wholly comport
with the doctrinal and moral truths of our Catholic Faith that we believe in
the internal forum because they have been revealed by God who can neither
deceive nor be deceived. This is the faith without which "it is
impossible to please God." The ecclesiastical traditions of our
Church, the most central of which is the traditional Roman Rite of the Mass,
are the perfect outward expression of this holy Faith and no one, of whatever
human dignity, has the legitimate authority to deny any Catholic of these
rights.
This is our claim that has been
submitted to you, to your predecessor, Bishop Dattilo,
and to Rome asking for their authoritative judgment. We are again asking
you to formally submit our claim to the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, asking
of him, by virtue of his office, an authoritative judgment on the validity of
our claim.
The recent Motu
Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, does not address our claim.
The document does however clearly state that the Missal of 1962 was
never illegal. This means that the entire
bureaucratic structure governing the use of the 1962 Missal as an “Indult” was
never properly constituted and is legally null and void for an indult is the permission to do something not normally
permitted by the law of the Church.
Permission was never needed for a priest to offer, or for a lay Catholic
to attend, the traditional Roman rite of Mass. It was a mistake to say as you
did in your letter of November 18, 2005:
“As diocesan bishop, I have the
faculty from the Holy Father of using an indult on
behalf of priests and faithful attached to the Tridentine
Rite and may allow the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 edition of the
Missale Romanum.
I have done so and extended the use of this indult, allowing a weekly Sunday
Mass at Saint Lawrence Chapel in Harrisburg according to the 1962 edition of
the Missale Romanum. As diocesan
bishop, I do not have the authority to decree that I am not using an indult in this case… I would be open to discussing the use
of this indult for the community in York, however, I
cannot not refer to it as an indult. To do so would
violate my conscience since I would consider it disobedience to the authority
of the Apostolic See.”
It should be a serious matter of
concern to all that in this question regarding the legality of the Roman Missal
we were correct and you, your predecessors, and all the other bishops in this
country were mistaken because the bishop has the grave duty to justly govern
his charges and to not place any impediments whatsoever to the practice of the
Catholic religion.
It is now established that the
formation of our consciences in this question was both certain and true
while yours may have been certain, but was most decidedly not true. It is our position that you as our bishop
have a most serious obligation to ensure that your conscience is truly formed
and if there was any question, you should have, as we requested, referred the
matter directly to Pope Benedict for his authoritative judgment. Furthermore,
if our claim is correct that we as Catholics, by virtue of our baptism, have a
right to all the ecclesiastical traditions of our Church, it behooves you to
know that as well because it imposes upon you a grave responsibility.
At the time of this letter it is clear
that the indult has no legal justification and the Motu
Proprio does not have any legal standing until
September, so just what is it that we are doing by using a perfectly legal
Roman Missal today that justifies the accusation of “schismatic”? If the Roman Missal of 1962, which existed
less than three years, is perfectly legal, a fortiori, the use of the
Missal as of 1955 is more so because the Missal of 1955, besides having been
legally established, has the standing of immemorial tradition. Pope Benedict’s declaration that the 1962
Missal is and always has been legal further means that the decree, Quo Primum, which was republished in the preface of the
1962 Missal, is also perfectly valid:
“…this missal is
hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear
of incurring any penalty, judgment or censure, and may freely and lawfully be
used… Nor are superiors, administrators, canons, chaplains, and other secular
priests, or religious, of whatever title designated, obliged to celebrate the
Mass otherwise than as enjoined by Us. … Accordingly, no one whatsoever is
permitted to infringe or rashly contravene this notice of Our
permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept, grant, direction, will,
decree and prohibition. Should any person venture to do
so, let him understand he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the
Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”
Pope St. Pius V,
Papal Bull, QUO PRIMUM,
Codifying
the traditional Roman Rite of the Mass.
Regarding the comment
that the members of Ss. Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Mission must “accept the
teachings of the Second Vatican Council,” I offer the statement of Pope
Benedict XVI who as Cardinal Ratzinger said to the
Bishops of Chile:
"The Second Vatican Council has
not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as
an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular
Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest
level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had
made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes
away the importance of all the rest."
As far as we know, Vatican II was as our Holy
Father has said, “merely a pastoral council” which should be judged by its
pastoral successes, or its pastoral failures over the past forty years.
Concerning the Novus Ordo,
Pope Benedict as Cardinal Ratzinger has said:
“What
happened after the Council was altogether different: instead of a liturgy, the
fruit of continuous development, a fabricated liturgy was put in its place. A
living growing process was abandoned and the fabrication started. There was no
further wish to continue the organic evolution and maturation of the living
being throughout the centuries and they were replaced -- as if in a technical
production -- by a fabrication, a banal product of the moment. Gamber, with the vigilance of a true visionary and
with the fearlessness of a true witness, opposed this falsification and
tirelessly taught us the living fullness of a true liturgy, thanks to
his incredibly rich knowledge of the sources. As a man who knew and who loved
history, he showed us the multiple forms of the evolution and of the path of
the liturgy; as a man who saw history from the inside, he saw in this
development and in the fruit of this development the intangible reflection of
the eternal liturgy, which is not the object of our action, but which may
marvelously continue to blossom and to ripen, if we join its mystery
intimately.”
Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, from his introduction in the French
edition of Monsignor Klaus Gamber’s book, The Reform of the Roman Rite
Pope
Benedict further addressing the relationship between the liturgy and papal
authority stated:
“After
the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do
anything in liturgical matters, especially if he were acting on the mandate of
an ecumenical council. Eventually, the idea of the givenness
of the liturgy, the fact that one cannot do with it what one will, faded from
the public consciousness of the West. In fact, the First Vatican Council had in
no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On
the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed
Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith, and that also
applies to the liturgy. It is not "manufactured" by the authorities.
Even the pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding
integrity and identity. . . . The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is
at the service of Sacred Tradition.”
Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy
We at Ss. Peter and Paul Roman
Catholic Mission make no judgment regarding this “fabricated liturgy”, this
“technical production,” this “banal product of the moment” other than that it
clearly does not adequately express the Catholic faith as we profess it in its
integrity and is, by every statistical evaluation, harmful to the faith. In your diocese there are approximately
250,000 Catholics. If national studies
accurately reflect the situation in this diocese only about 60,000 of these
attend Sunday Mass regularly. Of this
60,000 only 12,000 have the correct understanding of the Catholic dogma of
transubstantiation, and consequently, the sacrificial character of the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass. It is our belief
that, for example, using a table in place of an altar, distributing communion
in the hand, standing, by female ministers has had something to do with this
and we will not contribute to or participate in anything that is harmful to the
Catholic faith.
As you may recall, The Index of
Leading Catholic Indicators by Kenneth C. Jones was sent to you in October
2005. This book provides all the statistical information necessary for a proper
assessment of the doctrinal and moral decline of the Catholic Church in the
United States and the world over during the past forty years. It is our hope
that this Motu Proprio
will be a first step in arresting this precipitous decline for the glory of
God and the salvation of souls, but we at Ss. Peter and Paul Roman Catholic
Mission who have been most unjustly treated cannot have our trust restored by
the simple publication of a document. It
will take time and deeds to rebuild a trust that has been repeatedly
betrayed. This Motu
Proprio does not recognize or guarantee the right
of any Catholic to the ecclesiastical traditions of our Church and we cannot
place a necessary element of our Catholic faith in jeopardy by submitting it to
the arbitrary will of an authority that has abused its power time and again
over the past forty years.
You as our bishop possess the
authority to establish our community as a confraternity in this diocese for the
reestablishment of the ecclesiastical traditions of our Church. You have nothing to lose and everything to
gain by supporting our Mission. The
members of our Mission hold the Catholic faith and conform our lives to the
best of our power to the holy will of God and this cannot but be a good example
to the other Catholics of this diocese.
Consider it, if you please, as a ‘trial by ordeal’. If God blesses our
efforts and they prove to be successful it will only be to your spiritual
benefit. If what we do is not pleasing
to God we will simply fall on our faces to our own humiliation. We would present no financial burden to the
diocese and, if successful, could become a contributor toward its financial
obligations. We would take the
responsibility for the recruitment of priests to assist our Mission seeking
your concurrence and be wholly responsible for their financial support.
If you do not know, or doubt that you
possess this authority, we humbly request that our claim, as stipulated above,
be personally and formally submitted to our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, by
yourself asking of him his authoritative judgment.
The United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops’ liturgical committee will meet in August. This deliberative body is a bureaucratic creation
and is not a constituted element of authority instituted by Christ for the
governance of His Church. It is our hope
that they will be faithful to the intent of the Holy Father in their advice to
member bishops regarding the implementation of the Motu
Proprio.
However, in our case, we look only to you as our local ordinary and to
Pope Benedict himself from whom we expect, by the
grace of God, to redress these historical injustices.
Sincerely in Christ,
David M. Drew
Chairman
Ss. Peter and Paul Roman Catholic
Mission