Benedict XVI and the Case Williamson: "The fault was alone the Ecclesia Dei Commission"

The New Interview Book of Benedict XVI: The case of Williamson
was "alone the fault of the Ecclesia Dei Commission

(Rome) Over the recent week book by Peter Seewald with Benedict XVI., which went on sale on September 8, already reported, by many of the leading newspapers. One issue that stands out here is the Williamson case and the Holocaust.

Vatican Radio - German section, the Argentine newspaper La Nacion, whose Vatican correspondent is very close to Pope Francis, and others highlighted, an excerpt of the book, which deals with the case of Bishop Richard Williamson. The Briton Williamson was consecrated a bishop in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without permission of Pope John Paul II. for the Society of St. Pius X.

Pope Benedict XVI. in early 2009, declared the excommunication of the four consecrated Bishops void, but statements of Bishop Williamson even threatened to be a stumbling block for the Pope, who was severely attacked for his gesture. Williamson had made statements on the Holocaust and questioned the figure of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and also the use of gas chambers.

The opinion-leading media generated a storm of indignation, the less directed against Williamson, but was utilized as an additional opportunity by them to attack the little beloved, Benedict XVI. and his understanding of the Church. Benedict XVI. speaks in new interview book of a "huge propaganda war" against the Church.

The Vatican defended the pope at that time by saying that he was unaware of the relevant statements by Williamson who gave an interview for Swedish Television STV. The STV interview had indeed been recorded a few months previously, but was only broadcast in connection with the lifting of the excommunications. Above all, have his decision was unrelated to historical views, but related strictly to spiritual and ecclesiastical matters.

Benedict XVI. said the same to Peter Seewald.

In the interview book Benedict XVI. speaks of the "stupid Williamson case". Seewald on the events of 2009 that the predecessor of Pope Francis defended against criticism that he had lifted the excommunication of the "Holocaust denier" Williamson, who lived at that time in Argentina. Ratzinger now has said that he is not to blame for the Williamson case.

The blame was alone that of the Pontifical Commission erected for communities in the traditional rite in 1988 in the wake of the illicit episcopal ordinations by Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei. They did not inform him about the positions represented by Williamson on the Holocaust. "I see the blame only on this Commission."

Ecclesia Dei was headed at that time by Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who Benedict replaced a few months later with Cardinal William Levada. Officially, Castrillon Hoyos had reached his 80th birthday, and was expecting the change.

In 2012 Williamson was excluded from the SSPX because of "continuing disobedience," after he had spoken out against reconciliation with the Holy See and the canonical recognition of the Fraternity by Rome.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi

Image: MiL

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

Link to Katholisches...
AMDG

Cardinal Levada Gets DUI Having Fabulous Time in Hawaii with "Priest Friends"

Edit: ordinarily, it wouldn't be too worthwhile posting this, but it was interesting to see some of the details of the report and not so much what he did, but where he was doing it.

The Cardinal has retired with his life partner and successor, Archbishop George Niederauer, to some very nice rooms in Long Beech. 

http://eponymousflower.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/cardinal-levada-set-to-retire-with.html?m=1

Here's the report in full:

One of the high-ranking American officials of the Roman Catholic Church was arrested for drunken driving late last week in Kailua-Kona.

The Most Eminent Cardinal William Joseph Levada, 79, of Menlo Park, Calif., was stopped at about midnight Thursday on Hina Lani Street and charged with DUI, according to the police arrest log. He was released from police custody after posting $500 bail about an hour later.

“I regret my error in judgment. I intend to continue fully cooperating with the authorities,” Levada said in an email statement issued Monday by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Levada, the former Archbishop of San Francisco, was appointed as a cardinal, a prince of the church, on May 13, 2005, by Pope Benedict XVI, just weeks after his election as pontiff. He was the first U.S. prelate to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s powerful guardian of doctrine. He now holds the title of Prefect Emeritus of the Conclave of the Faith since his retirement as prefect in July 2012. He also was a member of the conclave that elected Pope Francis in March 2013.

Levada drew fire in 2013 after coming to the defense of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, who was stripped of his public duties over his handling of the priest sex abuse crisis in the church, but still allowed to select a new pope, saying some priest abuse victims groups who have criticized Mahony may never be satisfied with the church’s response to the crisis.

“There are some victims groups for whom enough is never enough, so we have to do our jobs as best we see it,” Levada said at the time, according to Associated Press. “He has apologized for errors in judgment that were made. I believe he should be at the conclave.”

Levada was on vacation with priest friends when the DUI arrest occurred, according to archdiocese spokesman Michael Brown.

He has a court date of Sept. 24 in Kona District Court.

“He’s required to appear at court,” said Sgt. Robert Pauole, who heads the police Traffic Services Section.

A police spokeswoman said in a Monday email Levada was pulled over after a Kona Patrol officer saw him swerve while driving northbound on Queen Kaahumanu Highway north of Kealakehe Parkway.

Levada was driving a 2015 Nissan Altima and was alone in the car at the time, the spokeswoman said. She could not say who the car is registered to or if the car was towed. She also declined to give Levada’s blood-alcohol content, but a 0.08 blood-alcohol level is the threshold for legal intoxication in Hawaii.

Pauole said Levada, who likely has a California driver’s license, would have had his license taken by the arresting officer, but the license would not have been suspended.

“The officer should have given him a four-page document,” Pauole said. “That four-page document is his temporary license for 30 days. He was also supposed to be given a document that would tell him how to contest (the Administrative Driver’s License Revocation Office case) it, in the meantime, in the ADLRO office.

Asked if the car would have been impounded, Pauole replied, “That depends on the circumstances.”

“Sometimes officers will impound it based on the Aliyah law,” Pauole continued, referring to the statute named after Aliyah Braden, a 17-month-old toddler killed by a drunken driver who ran a red light in Kailua-Kona on May 23, 2009. “… That’s based on where it’s parked, if there’s someone else in the car who’s not intoxicated, or he’s able to get someone to come down and pick up the car. It varies depending on the circumstance.”

According to the archdiocese website, Levada, a Long Beach, Calif., native, was ordained a priest in the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 1961.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/catholic-cardinal-arrested-dui

Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.

Pope Assigns Another Controversial Ordinary to a Major Archdiocese

Edit: Old Liberal "crux now" can barely contain its enthusiasm for the next seamless garment, Bernardin, "moderate" appointment by the allegedly misunderstood Pope Bergoglio.

 The new ordinary of San Diego was consecrated by Archbishop George Hugh Niederauer, who retired  with his partner, Cardinal Levada, to a cute residence in Long Beech, California, just outside of Los Angeles, as Pope Benedict's retirement played out.  The average cost of a home in Long Beech is a little less than half-a-million dollars.

Meanwhile, Whispers in the Loggia believes this appointment will be difficult for military retirees and military personnel in San Diego, since he's a peacenik who writes for "America".

[Crux] Robert W. McElroy, an auxiliary bishop in San Francisco and a leader in the Catholic Church’s social justice wing, will be named to head of the Diocese of San Diego Tuesday, Crux has learned.

The announcement will be made official Tuesday morning in Rome, with an installation date of April 15. McElroy, 61, has written extensively about the Church’s social justice mission, promoting Catholic engagement with society that places economic and human rights issues on par with abortion and same-sex marriage.

“We are called to see the issues of abortion and poverty, marriage and immigrant rights, euthanasia and war, religious liberty and restorative justice, not as competing alternatives often set within a partisan framework, but as a complementary continuum of life and dignity,” he wrote in America magazine in October 2013.

Cardinal Dolan Questioned Before Conclave

Edit: in fine agitprop fashion, the media enters the usual slurs. If the occurrence of a crime, which happens in every other aspect of society at a greater rate than it happens within the Catholic Church, has happened on the watch of this Cardinal or that one, taints his career, perhaps that should go for the media as well?

The enemy is powerful and isn’t interested in anything less than complete subjugation of the Catholic Church to the world. It doesn’t matter that Cardinal Dolan has made conciliatory, if cowardly, gestures at St. Francis Xavier Parish in New York, the enemy only regards concessions as weakness. It doesn’t matter whether or not Cardinal Dolan has many positions which are inconsistent with a census Catholicus, or that he has given aid and comfort to the enemy’s political aims during political elections, he still represents the Catholic Faith, however humanly.

Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York, has become the latest cardinal to be questioned over his handling of sex abuse by priests and victims in Ireland, US and Belgium.

Of the 116 cardinals who will gather beneath Michelangelo’s frescoed ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, several are embroiled in controversies connected to the Church’s systemic failure to tackle sex abuse against children by paedophile priests.

The question marks over the cardinals’ management of sex abuse cases are an embarrassment for the Holy See, just as Benedict prepares to resign the papacy next Thursday.

Link to Telegraph...

Someone else who really needs no introduction is Cardinal Mahony, who, despite his own moral challenges and failures in presenting the Catholic Faith throughout the years, is drawing support from his fellow Old Liberal Bishops, in this case, Cardinal Levada.

Levada Thinks Mahony should Vote for Pope

The former archbishop of San Francisco said Monday that Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony has a rightful place among Vatican officials who will choose the next pope, even though Mahony has been battered in recent days by disclosures about his role in covering up clergy sex abuse.

The comments by Cardinal William Levada, a high-ranking Vatican official until recently, came in the wake of a grass-roots campaign to shame Mahony into refraining from participating because of his role protecting sexually abusive priests.

Mahony left for Rome over the weekend after recently released church documents showed he had covered up for other priests who raped and molested children.

Link to ABC News…. With breathtaking shamelessness, Cardinal Mahony writes on his personal blog, as the anti-Catholic ABC writes:

On Monday, Mahony took to social media and his own personal blog to write about persecution and forgiving one's enemies. He said he has a special prayer group for people who "cannot forgive me for my past hurts and offenses," including members of the media, attorneys, protesters and those who "hate and despise me.”

In order for forgiveness to be given, doesn’t there have to be penance as well as contrition?

St. Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa:

I answer that, As stated above (Objection 2; 84, 10, ad 4), to repent is to deplore something one has done. Now it has been stated above (84, 9) that sorrow or sadness is twofold. First, it denotes a passion of the sensitive appetite, and in this sense penance is not a virtue, but a passion. Secondly, it denotes an act of the will, and in this way it implies choice, and if this be right, it must, of necessity, be an act of virtue. For it is stated in Ethic. ii, 6 that virtue is a habit of choosing according to right reason. Now it belongs to right reason than one should grieve for a proper object of grief as one ought to grieve, and for an end for which one ought to grieve. And this is observed in the penance of which we are speaking now; since the penitent assumes a moderated grief for his past sins, with the intention of removing them. Hence it is evident that the penance of which we are speaking now, is either a virtue or the act of a virtue.

Meanwhile, the German Bishops continue their assault on the Catholic Church in their anti-Roman trajectory by “sparking a debate” about the use of an abortifacient against rape.

Cardinal Levada Affirms Apostolic Origin of Clerical Chastity and Celibacy

Here it is as follows from canonist Peters' website. It's unclear what the need for a hereneutic might be. It's pretty simple, isn't it? The teaching of clerical celibacy which is often attacked by Protestants as being unscriptural is not only scriptural, but has a Patristic and Apostolic origin. More surprising is that it should come from the somewhat controversial Cardinal Levada:

1. In general, many of the Church Fathers in the Patristic period engaged in speculative theories about the possible marriage of one or other Apostle. But the Fathers are unanimous in saying that those Apostles who might have been married gave up their marital lives and practiced perfect continence. Cochini calls this “common opinion” of the Fathers an authoritative hermeneutic of the scriptural texts in which reference is made to the detachment practiced by Christ’s disciples, especially Matthew 19: 27 and Luke 18: 28-30.

2. Peter … says to Jesus, “Look, we have left our homes and followed you.” And here is Jesus’ reply: “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.” Cochini comments that the common opinion of the Fathers that the “giving up everything” meant that the Apostles left their wives (if they indeed had been married). This common opinion was the official preaching of the early centuries in major Christian centers, beginning with Clement in Alexandria and Tertullian in Africa. Cochini calls it “the expression of the collective memory of the apostolic Churches with regard to the example left by the apostles for future generations – an argument from Tradition that cannot be overlooked.”

3. Perhaps the most suitable conclusion to this section would be that of Father Cochini, whose meticulous studies allowed him to “conclude that the obligation demanded from married deacons, priests, and bishops to observe perfect continence with their wives is not, in the Church, the fruit of a belated development, but on the contrary, in the full meaning of the term, an unwritten tradition of apostolic origin that, so far as we know, found its first canonical expression in the 4th century.”

Cardinal Levada Set to Retire With Longtime Intimate and San Francisco Colleague

Edit: many elderly retirees think of spending their golden years with a loved one.   Now that Cardinal Levada, a controversial figure in San Francisco, is about to retire, there's a relaxed feel about the prelate.  Perhaps it can be said that the present appointment of a neo-Pelagian Bishop to CDF from schismatic Germany, at least, is a zero sum game?

On the other hand, it's interesting, if not encouraging, to note where the outgoing prelate will  be spending at least some of his time as he retires, and with whom.  Whispers in the Loggia has noted that the Prince of the Church will share a house in Long Beech. The quote from Robert Brown which +Levada read at his brother prelate's golden jubilee was particularly touching.

Speaking of retirement, while the new prefect-emeritus has long been understood as keen to return to the West Coast, Levada will remain a member of several key Curial offices until his 80th birthday in June 2016.[Ugh]
For many years, the cardinal has owned a condo in his hometown of Long Beach, sharing the getaway with his closest friend of nearly 60 years and successor in San Francisco, Archbishop George Niederauer, whose own transition from office is likewise expected in short order.
Referring to the nearing end of their ministries in his homily at the San Fran Mass marking Niederauer's golden jubilee of priesthood in late April, Levada quoted the poet Robert Browning: "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!'"
Having ordained this year's class of priests and transitional deacons just yesterday in his now-former charge, the incoming prefect will take up residence in Rome in time for the Curia's mid-September return from the traditional summer recess. Müller was scheduled to hold a press conference on his appointment as the announcement was made in Rome.

If you read further into the article by Whispers in the Loggia, you'll notice that Rocco insists incredibly that Cardinal Lehman is a conservative.

SSPX: Some Details From the Two Hour Long Discussion

If the problem could be solved by a signature, no one would refuse to sign.

Candidates for Deaconal Ordination
for South American District
© Piusbruderschaft 

(kreuz.net, Vatican) The most recent letter to the Society of St. Pius X from the CDF renewed its request for the General Superior of the Society, Bishop Bernard Fellay, to sign the Dogmatic Preamble.

This was according to Andrea Tornielli at 'vaticaninsider.com'.

The signature of the Preamble is a precondition for the canonical reconciliation.

Tonrielli speculates that Msgr Fellay has been playing for time up until now without breaking the dialog with the Vatican off completely.

On the contrary, the Pope wants clear conditions.

On Friday Msgr Fellay spoke for two hours with the Prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine and the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, as well as the Secretary of the Commission of Ecclesia Dei, Prelate Guido Pozzo.

Msgr Fellay was accompanied by his chief assistant, Father Alain-Marc Nely.

The Church has thrown the Traditional Faith Overboard


The Society Bishop explained, says Tornielli, that the Society has no problem signing with the initial Professio fidei -- Profession of Faith .

Additionally, it recognizes principles represented in the Preamble.

The problem consists not in the principles, rather in their application.

The Church fails in fidelity to the Magisterium -- explained Msgr Fellay, according to Tornielli.

Recognition is in the Drawer


The Vaticanist reported still further that for the Society, in case they accept the Preamble, are ready to complete an offer with a Canonical Structure of an Institute.

It would allow the Society a status of complete independence from the Bishops, which protection is enjoyed by no other traditional group.

There are Effectively Two Different Religions

Tornielli suspects that the problem with reconicliation is not in the text of the Preamble but also as a result of disunity within the Society.

The majority, inclusive of the General Superior, want unity with Rome.  They recognize the primacy of the Papacy with its government as being central to the Faith.

A strong minority of the Society are against the reconciliation.   They call on Rome to finally convert.

Link to original...

Rome Expects Certain Conditions For Reconciliation With SSPX

Edit: apparently there will be ground rules the SSPX will be expected to follow in its resistance to the principles of Vatican II. It's interesting to note, and worth repeating, that many allegedly Catholic Bishops in good standing with the Vatican don't actually follow many principles outlined in the Vatican documents themselves.

This should be interesting.

Also taking into account the concerns and the issues presented by the SSPX regarding the integrity of the Catholic faith considering the hermeneutic of rupture of the Second Vatican Council with respect to Tradition – mentioned by Pope Benedict XVI in his Address to the Roman Curia of December 22, 2005 – the CDF maintains that a fundamental basis of full reconciliation with the Apostolic See is the acceptance of the Doctrinal Preamble which was delivered during the course of today’s (Wed., September 14th, 2011) meeting. This preamble enunciates some of the doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of Catholic doctrine necessary to guarantee fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church and sentire cum Ecclesia (thinking with [the mind of] the Church), while at the same time leaving the theological study and explanation of particular expressions and formulations present in the texts of the Second Vatican Council and of the Magisterium that followed it open to legitimate discussion.

In the course of the same meeting, some elements were proposed regarding a canonical solution for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, which would follow the eventual and hoped-for reconciliation.

Link to The Vatican Today...