The helm and the compass
On October 14, 2014, Bishop Marcello Semeraro, the Ordinary of the Diocese of Albano (Italy), notified the people of his diocese that since the Society of Saint Pius X was not “an institution of the Catholic Church”, they must not attend its chapels so as not to break communion with the Church. On October 30 the District of Italy of the Society responded properly. On November 3, Bishop Oscar Sarlinga, Ordinary of Zárate-Campana (Argentina) decreed that Catholics in his diocese are not allowed to take part in a Mass celebrated by a priest of the Society of Saint Pius X or to receive any sacrament from him, and he even brandished a threat of excommunication.
In October, Father Wendelin Bucheli, pastor in Bürglen (Switzerland) blessed a partnership between two women, acknowledging that the recent Synod on the Family had reassured him in his decision. It is not forbidden to attend his Mass, nor to receive the sacraments from his hands. No threat of excommunication is weighing on him. The Synod helped him to understand the “positive values” of the homosexual partnership....
On October 30, in an interview granted to the Spanish newspaper Vida Nueva, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, expressed the “truth that many people sense today. They are suffering from a bit of seasickness, because, in their opinion, the ship of the Church has lost its compass.” The prelate even speaks about a “moment so critical that there is a strong feeling that the Church is like a rudderless ship.”
The dismay of those souls is understandable, since nowadays in order to be considered models of “positive values” you have to be divorced-and-remarried or homosexual partners, and the only ones threatened with excommunication are the priests and faithful who are devoted to the two-thousand-year Tradition, that compass and rudder in the storm, when “the boat is taking on water on every side”.
Father Alain Lorans
For further reading :
Italy: Response from the District of Italy to Bishop Semeraro regarding his notification blasting the Society of Saint Pius X
