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Misa de Diálogo - CXXVI

Rehacer la Iglesia a
la imagen y semejanza del mundo

Dr. Carol Byrne, Great Britain
Ya hemos visto cómo la estructura monárquica de la Constitución de la Iglesia fue derrocada en el Concilio Vaticano II. El Padre Tyrrell encabezó la revolución y el Papa Francisco fue fundamental para llevarla a buen término. Un componente clave de su trabajo fue socavar la supremacía papal y su reemplazo por un sistema democrático de poder compartido.

Francisco, por supuesto, continúa el trabajo de los primeros modernistas y sus predecesores conciliares al desinflar la estatura del Papado a un nivel democrático; afirmó, por ejemplo, que está “en la Iglesia como bautizado” entre los bautizados, y “en el Colegio Episcopal como Obispo entre Obispos”. (1) También reclama nada más que “una primacía de honor para el obispo de Roma”. (¿Cuántos saben hoy que esta designación fue favorecida por el padre Tyrrell?) Sin embargo, es solo un título de cortesía y se entiende comúnmente como el "primero entre iguales", como el que disfrutan los líderes políticos en un país democrático. Se aplica, por ejemplo, al primer ministro británico, que es líder de un gabinete en lugar de ocupar un cargo superior al de sus ministros. Esta redefinición del Ministerio Petrino ha sido aceptada durante mucho tiempo por protestantes y cismáticos. Pero cualquier mención de la doctrina católica de la supremacía papal levanta inmediatamente los pelos de punta como un obstáculo para el “diálogo” ecuménico.

El Papa de la democracia

Tanto Tyrrell como Francis están de acuerdo en pensar que para que la Iglesia se convierta en una sociedad democrática, debe ser descentralizada, con el poder ejecutivo otorgado al pueblo. El Padre Tyrrell declaró:

“La cooperación activa y la responsabilidad por la vida corporativa son lo que constituye la personalidad y la ciudadanía. De tal responsabilidad y cooperación, los laicos, luego el bajo clero, finalmente los mismos obispos, han sido privados por un sistema de centralización. Eso deja al Papa como la única personalidad responsable en la Iglesia, o más bien, fuera y por encima de ella. El fruto es esa completa decadencia del interés en el bienestar del cuerpo por parte de sus miembros pasivos e irresponsables.” (2)

Los reformadores progresistas denuncian la “pasividad” de los laicos y exigen la participación de todos los fieles en la misión de la Iglesia, como consecuencia de la enseñanza neomodernista del Vaticano II. Posteriormente, los Papas Conciliares, que tienen el deber moral de defender la Tradición y mostrar a los neomodernistas que sus herejías serán combatidas y derrotadas, han estado apaciguando a las turbas anticlericalistas.

Tyrrell y Francisco degradan el sacerdocio

Aquí la influencia del P. Tyrrell es primordial:

“El abuso conocido como “sacerdotalismo” surge de la atribución a los funcionarios de una cierta superioridad espiritual meramente en virtud de su oficio, como si el valor de los actos que realizan, meramente en nombre y por el poder de toda la Iglesia, derivara de alguna cualidad inherente de sus almas que los eleva por encima de los laicos en dignidad espiritual”. (3)

Este tipo de pensamiento ha tenido un gran impacto en la actual crisis de identidad del sacerdocio católico desde el Vaticano II, y es en gran parte el resultado de la negación progresista de un “carácter” fundamental impreso en el alma de un sacerdote en su ordenación. Abundan las pruebas que demuestran que esta comprensión de la identidad sacerdotal ya no se reconoce en general que el padere Tyrrell y todos los modernistas se negaron a creer que el efecto del Sacramento de la Ordenación, es decir, configurar al sacerdote con Cristo, Cabeza de la Iglesia, ipso facto lo eleva en dignidad espiritual por encima de los laicos. En Evangelii gaudium, el Papa Francisco se unió al coro de la negación modernista:

“La configuración del sacerdote con Cristo cabeza, es decir, como fuente principal de la gracia, no implica una exaltación que lo sitúe por encima de los demás. En la Iglesia, las funciones no favorecen la superioridad de unos frente a otros”. (4)

El sacerdote es sagrado y divinamente ordenado

El error fundamental en este pasaje radica en no reconocer la naturaleza sobrenatural del sacerdocio, y en reducirlo a un nivel meramente humano y funcional, como representando un papel, y enfáticamente no superior, entre muchos en la Iglesia.

Este fue exactamente el enfoque de Tyrrell, y Francisco lo respaldó en el mismo párrafo:

“El sacerdocio ministerial es [solo] uno de los medios empleados por Jesús para el servicio de su pueblo, pero nuestra gran dignidad deriva del bautismo, que es accesible a todos”.

De manera reveladora, no se hace mención de la dignidad infinitamente mayor del sacerdote que proviene del poder que ha recibido en el Sacramento de la Ordenación para efectuar la Transubstanciación, así como su poder para perdonar los pecados.

En el nuevo paradigma del sacerdocio, el estatus único del sacerdote como representante de Cristo Sumo Sacerdote se equipara a los múltiples “ministerios” desempeñados por los laicos. Así es como el sacerdocio ministerial desde el Concilio Vaticano II ha sido marginado como no merecedor de especial reverencia y engullido dentro de una genérica “gran dignidad” atribuida a todos los bautizados.

Francisco retoma el mismo tema que Tyrrell:

“En virtud de su Bautismo, todos los miembros del Pueblo de Dios se han convertido en discípulos misioneros (cf. Mt 28, 19). Todos los bautizados, cualquiera que sea su posición en la Iglesia o su nivel de instrucción en la Fe, son agentes de evangelización, y sería insuficiente prever un plan de evangelización realizado por profesionales mientras que el resto de los fieles sería simplemente destinatarios pasivos”. (5)

Francisco expresó alto y claro su opinión de que a los laicos se les ha negado el acceso a los cargos ejecutivos en la Iglesia porque “no se les ha dado espacio para hablar y actuar, debido a un clericalismo excesivo que los aleja de la toma de decisiones”. (6)

Este es un ataque obvio a la tradición bimilenaria de la Iglesia, prescrita en el Código de Derecho Canónico de 1917, de que los cargos eclesiásticos y el poder de gobierno estaban reservados “solo a los clérigos”. (Canon 118)

Una jerarquía que se remonta a miles de años

Como resultado del rechazo del Concilio Vaticano II a esta tradición que, ahora se cree, es una injusticia para los derechos de los laicos, la visión del padre Tyrrell de la Iglesia como “un organismo autodidacta y autónomo” (7) se está realizando ante nuestros ojos. El Papa Francisco retoma el mismo tema, invirtiéndolo con una narrativa cargada de emociones sobre la victimización laica a manos de un clero explotador:

“Hay ese espíritu de clericalismo en la Iglesia, que sentimos: los clérigos se sienten superiores; los clérigos se distancian del pueblo. Los clérigos siempre dicen: 'esto hay que hacerlo así, así, así, y tú ¡vete!', sucede cuando el clérigo no tiene tiempo de escuchar a los que sufren, a los pobres, a los enfermos, a los encarcelados: el mal del clericalismo es una cosa realmente horrible; es una nueva edición de este antiguo mal [de las autoridades religiosas enseñoreándose de los demás]. Pero la víctima es la misma: el pueblo pobre y humilde, que espera al Señor”. (8)

Es evidentemente obvio por el tenor de inspiración marxista de esta caricatura anticlerical que Francisco está socavando los cimientos de su propio papado, que se basa en la autoridad que ha recibido para gobernar la Iglesia.

Continuará ...

  1. Francisco, Discurso en la Conmemoración del 50 Aniversario de la Institución del Sínodo de los Obispos, 17 de octubre de 2015.
  2. G. Tyrrell, Medievalismo, p. 102.
  3. Tyrrell, La Iglesia y el futuro, págs. 133-134.
  4. Francisco, Evangelii gaudium, 2013, § 104.
  5. Ibíd., § 120
  6. Ibíd., § 102.
  7. G. Tyrrell, “Lord Halifax Demurs”, The Weekly Register, n. 2680, 3 de mayo de 1901, pág. 550, apud David Wells, La teología profética de George Tyrrell, Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1979, p. 49.
  8. Francisco, “Gente descartada”, Homilía en Casa Santa María, 13 de diciembre de 2016.

Publicado el 10 de mayo de 2023

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Pre & Post Liturgical Movement Attitudes to Minor Orders - Dialogue Mass 109 by Dr. Carol Byrne
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Dialogue Mass - CX

Pre & Post Liturgical Movement Attitudes to Minor Orders

Dr. Carol Byrne, Great Britain
When we compare the traditional view of Minor Orders with the treatment they received at the hands of liturgical reformers in the 20th century, it becomes evident that the two positions stand in dire contrast to each other. To illustrate this point in greater depth, let us turn again to the exposition of Minor Orders made by Fr. Louis Bacuez who modestly introduced his magnum opus as follows:

minor orders

Starting the whittling away of respect
for the Minor Orders...

“This little book is a sequel to one we have published on Tonsure. God grant that those who make use of it may conceive a great respect for Minor Orders and prepare for them as they should! The dispositions with which they approach ordination will be the measure of the graces they receive, and on this measure depends, in a great part, the fruit that their ministry will produce. To have a rich harvest the first thing necessary is to sow well: Qui parce seminat parce et metet; et qui seminat in benedictionibus de benedictionibus et metet. (2 Cor. 9:6)” (1)

Little did he realize that when he wrote these words every vestige of respect for the Minor Orders would be whittled away by the concerted efforts of progressivists with a negative and dismissive attitude towards them; and that the Liturgical Movement, which had just begun when he published his book, would be dominated by influential liturgists discussing how to overturn them.

Long before the term “Cancel Culture” was invented, they presented the Minor Orders as a form of class-based oppression perpetrated by a clerical “caste” and as a form of spiritually empty legalism, and they went to great lengths to make them look ridiculous.

Far from showing due respect, this involves quite a considerable degree of contempt, not only for the generations of seminarians who were formed within this tradition, but also for the integrity of the great institution of Minor Orders that had served the Church since Apostolic times. In fact, so great was their animosity towards the Minor Orders that they could hardly wait to strip them of their essential nature as functions of the Hierarchy and turn them into lay ministries.

A tree is known by its fruits

These, then, were the hate-filled dispositions that inspired the progressivist reform, and would determine the graces received and the fruit to be produced by those who exercise the new lay “ministries” as opposed to, and in place of, the traditional Minor Orders.

Fr. Bacuez, who wrote his book in the pontificate of Pius X, could never, of course, have envisaged the demise of the Minor Orders, least of all at the hands of a future Pope. He was concerned lest even the smallest amount of grace be lost in the souls of those preparing for the priesthood:

blighted fruit

Blighted fruits from a sick tree

“We shall see, on the Last Day, what injury an ordinand does to himself and what detriment he causes to souls by losing, through his own fault, a part of the graces destined to sanctify his priesthood and render fruitful the fields of the Heavenly Father: Modica seminis detractio non est modicum messis detrimentum. (St. Bernard)” (2)

We do not, however, need to wait till the Last Day to see the effects of a reform that deliberately prevents, as by an act of spiritual contraception, the supernatural graces of the Minor Orders from attaining their God-given end: “to sanctify the priesthood and render fruitful the fields of the Heavenly Father.” For the evidence is all around us that the tree of this reform produced blighted fruits.

First, we note a weakening of the hierarchical structure of the Church and a blurring of the distinction between clergy and laity; second, a “contraceptive” sterility resulting in vocations withering on the vine and below replacement level, seminaries and churches closing down, parishes dying, and the decline in the life of the traditional Catholic Faith as seen in every measurable statistic. The conclusion is inescapable: those who planted this tree and those who now participate in the reform are accomplices in a destructive work.

Advantages of the Minor Orders

A substantial part of Fr. Bacuez’ exposition of the Minor Orders is devoted to the inestimable benefits they bring to the Church. These he divided into the following three categories:
  • The honor of the priesthood;

  • The dignity of worship;

  • The perfection of the clergy.
It is immediately apparent that the Minor Orders were oriented towards the liturgy as performed by the priest and his ministers. In other words, they existed for entirely supernatural ends invested in the priesthood.

A significant and entirely appropriate omission was any mention of active involvement of the laity in the liturgy. Fr. Bacuez’ silence on this issue is an eloquent statement of the mind of the Church that the liturgy is the preserve of the clergy.

We will now take each of his points in turn.

1. The honor of the priesthood

“A statue, however perfect, would never be appreciated by most people, unless it were placed on a suitable pedestal. Likewise the pontificate, which is the perfection of the priesthood, would not inspire the faithful with all the esteem it merits, if it had not beneath it, to give it due prominence, these different classes of subordinate ministers, classes inferior one to another, but the least of which is superior to the entire order of laymen.” (3)

toppling statues

Toppling statues has become popular today:
above,
Fr. Serra in central Los Angeles, California

It is an example of dramatic irony that Fr. Bacuez unwittingly chose the theme of a statue supported by a pedestal to illustrate his point. He was not to know that statues of historical figures would become a major source of controversy in the culture wars and identity politics of our age.

Nor could he have foreseen that toppling monuments – both metaphorical and concrete – was to become a favorite sport of the 20th-century liturgical reformers, their aim being to exalt the status of the laity by “active participation” in clerical roles. And never in his wildest imagination would he have suspected that a future Pope would join in the iconoclastic spree to demolish the Minor Orders about which he wrote with evident pride and conviction.

'Don’t put the priest on a pedestal'

However, the revolutionaries considered that esteem for the Hierarchy and recognition of its superiority over the lay members of the Church was too objectionable to be allowed to survive in modern society. The consensus of opinion among them was that clergy and laity were equals because of their shared Baptism, and placing the priest on a pedestal was not only unnecessary, but detrimental to the interests of the laity.

“Don’t put the priest on a pedestal” was their battle cry. It is the constant refrain that is still doing the rounds among progressivists who refuse to give due honor to the priesthood and insist on accusing the Church of systemic “clericalism.”

But the fundamental point of the Minor Orders – and the Sub-Diaconate – was precisely to be the pedestal on which the priesthood is supported and raised to a position of honor in the Church. When Paul VI’s Ministeria quaedam dismantled the institutional underpinnings of the Hierarchy, the imposing pedestal and columns that were the Minor Orders and Sub-Diaconate were no longer allowed to uphold and elevate the priesthood.

The biblical underpinnings of the Minor Orders

Fr. Bacuez made use of the following passage from the Book of Proverbs:

“Wisdom hath built herself a house; she hath hewn out seven pillars. She hath slain her victims, mingled her wine, and set forth her table.” (9: 1-2)

exorcism

An ordination to the minor order of exorcist, one of the seven columns

He drew an analogy between “the seven columns of the living temple, which the Incarnate Wisdom has raised up to the Divine Majesty” and all the clerical Orders (four Minor and three Major) that exist for the right worship of God. In this, he was entirely justified. For, in their interpretation of this passage, the Church Fathers concur that it is a foreshadowing of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass performed, as St. Augustine said, by “the Mediator of the New Testament Himself, the Priest after the order of Melchisedek.” (4)

In the 1972 reform, no less than five (5) of the seven columns were brought crashing down from their niches in the Hierarchy to cries of “institutionalized clericalism,” “delusions of grandeur” and “unconscious bias” against the laity.

To further elucidate the affinity of the Minor Orders to the priesthood, Fr. Bacuez gave a brief overview of the cursus honorum that comprised the Orders of Porter, Lector, Exorcist, Acolyte, Sub-Deacon, Deacon and Priest before going on to explain their interrelatedness:

“These seven powers successively conferred, beginning with the last, are superimposed one upon the other without ever disappearing or coming in conflict, so that in the priesthood, the highest of them all, they are all found. The priest unites them all in his person, and has to exercise them all his life in the various offices of his ministry.” (6)

After Ministeria quaedam, however, these rights and powers are no longer regarded as the unique, personal possession of the ordained, but have been officially redistributed among the baptized. It was not simply a question of changing the title from Orders to “ministries”: the real locus of the revolution was in taking the privileges of the “ruling classes” (the representatives of Christ the King) and giving them to their subjects (the laity) as of “right.”

The neo-Marxist message was, and still is, that this was an act of “restorative justice” for the laity who had been “historically wronged.” For the liturgical progressivists, 1972 was, apparently, the year of “compensation.”

Continued

  1. Louis Bacuez SS, Minor Orders, St Louis MO: B. Herder, 1912, p. x. “He who soweth sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who soweth in blessings shall also reap blessings.”
  2. Ibid., St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Lenten Sermon on the Psalm ‘Qui habitat,’ Sermones de Tempore, In Quadragesima, Preface, § 1: “If, at the time of sowing, a moderate amount of seed has been lost, the harm done to the harvest will not be inconsiderable.”
  3. Ibid., p. 6.
  4. St. Augustine, The City of God, book XVII, chap. 20: "Of David’s Reign and Merit; and of his son Solomon, and of that prophecy relating to Christ, which is found either in those books that are joined to those written by him, or in those that are indubitably his."
  5. These were the four Minor Orders and the Major Order of the Sub-Diaconate.
  6. L. Bacuez, op. cit., p. 5.

Posted December 10, 2021

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Volume IV
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Volume V
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Volume VI
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Volume VII
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Volume VIII
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