I know that Iacobus is at home right now, with nothing to do besides twiddle his thumbs, read AngelQueen, and talk on the phone with his grandmother. I’m not demeaning such pastimes, to be sure, and I myself have spent many an hour in the company of my grandma, but now, I want Iacobus to put his keen mind to work on some questions which are vexing me. Of course, I’d like to hear from the rest of our readers as well.

Last night, I read the latest interview with Bishop Rifan. With each passing day, that prelate strikes me as more and more of a functionary of the Nervous Disorder. (That was the first shot, to get Iacobus’ attention; he reads very quickly, so you need a thing or two to arrest his speeding eyes.) This was the first thing that caught my attention:

Q. Do you think there are sufficient grounds for the Pope to grant the second precondition — lifting the decrees of excommunications (or declaring them null and void) against the bishops of the SSPX and Archbishop Castro de Mayer?

A. The Pope can lift the decree of excommunication, as a sign of benevolence, in order to facilitate the conversations with the SSPX. That was my suggestion [to the Pope] during the conversations.

But it is not all. After this lifting of the decree of excommunications, they will be in the similar condition of the Greek Orthodox, from whom the Pope [Paul VI in 1964] lifted the decree of excommunication too. Afterwards, they will need the canonical regularization and the correction of doctrinal mistakes.

Oh, indeed, will they, Bishop Rifan? And which doctrinal mistakes does Bishop Rifan think are in need of correction? I imagine that those who are not so friendly to the Society will say that the first mistake was a failure of obedience to papal authority, that is, in the consecrations of the bishops. Whether this was a mistake, I don’t know, God knows, but it wasn’t a doctrinal mistake. Indeed, the Society has insisted upon the papal authority when the recent pontiffs have been trying to siphon it off, per impossibile, to various bishops’ conferences around the world; collegiality and all that rot.

Further, if the Pope Benedict does remove the decree of excommunication, neither side is going to say that they were wrong. In the same way that no one said they were wrong when Campos’ canonical situation was officially put in order. I just don’t think that the ordinations were what Bishop Rifan has in mind.

Does he mean the Council? There’s nothing for them to accept, nothing de fide- it happened, it was an unmitigated disaster, and here we are. But perhaps he means by “doctrine” the so-called pastoral doctrines of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. And this is where I become very suspicious. If Bishop Rifan means something like the decree on religious liberty, so-called, what he is referring to as “doctrine” is actually a matter of dogma, but a dogma which the Society defends, and much of the rest of the “Teaching Church”, whatever that is, obscures or outright denies.

So what are these doctrinal mistakes?

Finally, Rifan wanted to reiterate for the interview’s readers the reasons why we do NOT conserve the old rite of the Mass (as opposed to the proper reasons why we do conserve it). These are two of the bad reasons, given by Bishop Rifan, for conserving the old rite. First:

Would it be because we deny the power of the Pope to modify and promulgate liturgical laws? This would be against the Pope’s supreme power dogma!

Down, boy! Of course, as the First Vatican Council says, the pope exercises supreme and absolute power throughout the whole Church and at all times - if only Benedict would do more of this exercising! But the so-called “Pope’s supreme power dogma” (try taking that phrasing of it to an ecumenism conference) isn’t unlimited - he can’t command the sky to fall. Notice another kind of constraint on God’s power: He’s got all the power there is, but He still can’t make a square circle. There are things God can’t do because they can’t be done. And there are things that popes can’t do, besides things like not being able to lift St. Peter’s and set it down on top of Castel Sant’Angelo, because they can’t be done, period. The Pope cannot, for instance, teach error ex cathedra. (At this point, some George Weigel Catholic, not reading carefully, will come along and allege that I’ve denied the “Pope’s supreme power dogma.” And I have, that is, denied some ridiculous reading of it. I hope that that reader finds this painful.)

Now it is a question raised by Msgr. Klaus Gamber what power the Pope has with respect to the destruction of the Roman Mass, whether a pope could sweep away the Mass of tradition, and give another in its stead; Ratzinger wrote the preface to this book. Rifan is attempting to obscure the relevant issue: no one is denying that the pope can modify liturgical practice. But the Novus Ordo Missae is hardly a simple modifcation of liturgical practice.

Second:

Would it be because we just consider the New Mass, or Paul VI’s Mass, invalid, heterodox, sinful, sacrilegious, or not Catholic? These statements would be against Church’s indefectibility dogma and unity of cult dogma, and they have already received the Teaching Church’s anathema. Therefore, it [the Novus Ordo's promulgation] is a universal liturgical law, promulgated by Church’s supreme authority 34 years ago and adopted unanimously by the whole Teaching Church.

Would someone please tell me what the “whole Teaching Church” is and whether it has any authority to adopt anything unanimously or otherwise? Can the “Teaching Church” adopt things on a three-quarters majority? What about two-thirds?

I say nothing about “invalid, heterodox, sinful, or sacrilegious.” All I’m going to say is that any fool who has ever darkened the door of a Lutheran or Anglican church knows that the concoction of Paul VI is an aping of the protestant service. Whether the rituals of heretics and those bent on the destruction of the Church have any place in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a question which I’ll not deign to answer.

And tell me, Iacobus (or someone): what in the world is the “unity of cult dogma”? I know Bishop Rifan can’t mean that this dogma indicates that Mass is said in the exactly the same way on every altar around the world, as though by an army of preprogramed robot priests. If it were as easy Bishop Rifan makes it sound, the unity of cult dogma is denied by the nature of the Novus Ordo Missae which allows for rampant experimention, exploitation, self-expression, spontaneous gestures, movements of the spirit, and the like rot. I mean, if the Novus Ordo could somehow replace the Roman Rite of the Mass (the Mass of St. Pius V), and as I said already, it’s a question whether it could, the successful installment of the Novus Ordo would indeed be the end of the Church’s “unity of cult dogma.”

Presumably, he means by “unity of cult dogma” that the same Sacrifice is offered by every Catholic priest who offers the Sacrifice - and this is true, regardless of the pecularities of time, place, the priest’s haircut, language, etc. But the SSPX has never denied that the Novus Ordo is a valid Mass, only that, very probably, in many particular cases, it is not valid. I think that this is not a huge worry, I mean, that all these putatively valid Masses were actually invalid; as we were discussing here about Baptism, the Church makes it easy for the sacraments to be valid. But it wasn’t for nothing that the old Breviary had this wonderful “Formula of Intention before Mass” - look for it, you won’t find it a new Breviary. It goes:

I wish to celebrate Mass, and to confect the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the rite of the Roman Church, to the praise of Almighty God and of the whole heavenly Court, unto my benefit and the benefit of the whole Church militant, for all who have commended themselves to my prayers, in general and in particular, and for the felicitous state of the holy Roman Church. Amen.

Anyway, that quotation rather distracts me from my dialogue with Iacobus about how wonderful of a character Bishop Rifan is. I am interested to hear thoughts!

(Also, I really liked the commentary here by JAM. He is speculating on what the gesture of good will might be to which Bishop Rifan, in the interview, and Cardinal Ricard, a little while back, have referred.

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