doctrine – Communio

Vatican cardinal meets SSPX superior general

The Vatican office organizing the “talks” between the Holy See and the Society of Saint Pius X issued a press release going over some of the areas of concern between the two. William Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith met today for two hours with Bishop Bernard Fellay. Among the issues presented and discussed was the set of principles called the “Doctrinal Preamble” which is outlining the ecclesial solution of bringing the SSPX into full communion with the Catholic Church. Some are thinking that the pastoral solution might be akin to that of a personal prelature like what the Opus Dei is in the Church.

The Doctrinal Preamble gives canonical and ecclesiological guidance for life in the Church, including principles for interpreting Church teaching since the Second Vatican Council, namely ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, religious freedom and the sacred Liturgy. This is understood in the saying: thinking (feeling) with the Church” (sentire cum ecclesiae).

No deadline was given but it is understood that a period of a two to three months is given to understand and pray about the issues at hand. It has been 21 years since the SSPX broke with Catholic Church.

Read the Vatican Radio’s announcement about the meeting.

Cindy Wooden of CNS covered the story.

Archbishop Dolan on 60 Minutes

60 Minutes aired Morely Safer’s interview with Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan tonight. Watch Safer on Dolan.

This is a profile of a man who is interesting and does interesting things. He’s affable, joyable, personable, cigar smoking with an eloquent defense of Catholic dogma and belief.

If you want to know more about what the “American Pope” thinks gay marriage, politics, etc, watch 60 Minutes Overtime.

Morely Safer comes at the interview with what I and others will call a secular, modernist viewpoint and is dismissive of the Archbishop without objectivity nor does he evoke from the Archbishop a clarity of thought. Safer, 79, freely admits that as a man and as a Jewish he wants to know more because “these type of men” are good company. Good. I agree. But I had hoped that Safer would have done a better job getting at substantive theological and philosophical foundations of the Catholic Church.

60 Minutes opened a few interesting doors into the person and ministry of the Archbishop of NY. But the report also veered into sentimentality that is thin as gruel. One does not have to sell church! Clear Catholic teaching is not based on polls and trends. Truth stands on its own two feet.

How tall are your doctrinal walls?

G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “Catholic doctrine
and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. We might
fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the
sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling
themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of
nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the
precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they
were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had
ceased.” Orthodoxy Ch. 9

Reiki & Catholic Faith? the answer is no

The US Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine approved on March 24^th and released on the 25^th the Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy. Read the Guidelines for yourself. I suppose this important stuff; I usually look for liturgical heterodoxy and various heretical teachings first…but the bishops have a point. Since I am not a life force, universal or otherwise, I’ll throw away my Reiki books.