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Marrying Twice & Sr. Mary Elizabeth
Confession in a N.O. Parish
What can a Traditional Catholic do when there are no visible Latin Mass services available in the area or an opportunity to obtain confession by a Traditional Catholic priest?
R.F.
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TIA responds:
R.F.,
The term “services” you used is not clear. If you meant attending a Novus Ordo Mass, this should be avoided. Not because it is not valid, but because it has flavor of Protestantism.
Regarding absolution for sins in Confession or the Last Rites for a sick, we think you can go and receive them, even at a Novus Ordo parish.
You can find similar questions and responses on this topic that may help you here.
Cordially,
TIA correspondence desk
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Open Letter to Minnesota Canon Lawyer Priest
The open letter below may be of interest to your readers
M.P.
Clergy (unknowingly) Ratify Immoral Practices of No-fault Divorce Proceedings
Dear Fr. McConville,
With the non-profit organization Mary’s Advocates, I work to reduce unilateral no-fault divorce and support those who are unjustly abandoned. From Catholics who properly consented to the essential obligations of marriage, I’ve heard about statements made by our clergy that unfortunately ratify the immoral practices of no-fault divorce proceedings. Please reconsider how you talk about civil courts.
I found your statements in an interview tribunal personnel had with host Patrick Conley on The Rediscover Hour, a production of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis in cooperation with Relevant Radio. In discussing the civil forum, you said this:
"There is something in the civil law called an annulment, but that is a different animal than what we are doing. That is looking at the actual CIVIL exchange of consent. It has some different grounds; some of them overlap with what we do, but it is a different thing."
You indicate that tribunals require a petitioner to get a civil divorce before the tribunal will accept a case challenging the validity of the marriage. The existence of a civil divorce allows you “in good conscience go ahead and look at these kinds of cases without feeling like we are actually breaking up a marriage.” (minute 39:30)
From the perspective of an abandoned spouse, Catholic canon lawyers’ silence prior to and during divorce proceedings feels like the canon lawyers are tacitly condoning marriage breakup. Canon law requires intervention before divorce. Marriages do not breakup by themselves; one or both spouses renege on their marriage promises. If the cause of reneging was invalidity, then the grounds of invalidity are relevant to the obligations of the reneger to the other spouse and children. Unilateral no-fault divorce recognizes none of this.
When Catholics exchange marriage promises in a Catholic ceremony, there is no civil exchange of consent. There is one consent: the consent in the “Order of Celebrating Marriage.” In typical US tribunal marriage nullity cases, it seems you only make judgments about relieving a party from one obligation of marriage: the obligation to be married to only one person until either party dies.
However, there are other obligations of marriage that are invaluable for everyone who says Catholic marriage promises. When you act like there are two marriage consents (both civil and Catholic), the faithful get the impression that the Church doesn’t care about the other obligations and corollary rights of marriage. Those other rights are trampled by no-fault divorce practices in virtually every case.
... hear audio excerpt of priest and read full story here
Bai Macfarlane
Mary's Advocates
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Sr. Mary Elisabeth Explains Resignation from SSPX
M
4th April 2019
Dear Parents,
As promised to some of you, I would like to give you a summary of what has motivated my resigning from the Society of Saint Pius X twenty-five years after having received the habit of the Oblate sisters.
Since the April 2017 acceptation by the Society of the “marriage deal” offered by Pope Francis, I have had the conviction that the Society was no longer protecting the faithful from the modernist Church.
More and more we were told that the Catholic Church and the official Church are one and the same thing, both being visible, whereas the profession of the true Faith is the first criterion for being a member of the Catholic Church, a criterion that modernists bishops, for instance, do not match. I started to feel very uneasy with belonging to the Society, because it meant supporting these new ideas that Archbishop Lefebvre had clearly refuted and against which he had warned us many times in plain language.
I was advised to wait until the next General Chapter of the Society, due to take place in July 2018, before making any life-changing decision. Which I did. There was an expectation that a new Superior General would reverse the doomed course of the Society.
However, I was well aware that the Superior General’s mission is to implement the decisions of the Chapter. Therefore, I waited until the Acts of the Chapter were published to make up my mind. On September 18th we were sent extracts of the Acts of the Chapter. They concerned the marriages, the Society’s relations with Rome and the prelature.
At the end of this reading, all my doubts were gone and I was sure that I had to leave the Society of Saint Pius X if I wanted to remain faithful to the teaching and recommendations of our Founder. The asking of the delegation of the modernist bishops for marriages was made mandatory for all priests of the Society; we were recommended to practice a “charitable attitude” towards any bishop, clergy or faithful without qualification, as long as they were “friendly towards tradition”. This opened the door to anything and everything in terms of collaboration with clergy and laity who were not fully committed to the defense of Catholic Tradition.
You know which fruit these deliberately vague notions bore at Saint Michael’s School when the Headmaster invited the conciliar diocesan bishop to lead the children’s prayer in our chapel, after having collected for him a spiritual bouquet meant at expressing “our gratitude”. Gratitude for what? For having said at an interfaith forum that Catholic Christians do not deny the moral freedom to choose for or against the Truth of Christ1?
A statement which is religious liberty in a nutshell, in total contradiction with Our Lord’s words (Mark, 16-16). Or gratitude for having asked Muslims to pray (to whom?) for us? (1)
But to return to the chronology of the events, on that evening of 18th September I decided to leave the Society. This was however the end of the first week of the new academic year and it was obvious that leaving at that point was not an option. So, for the sake of the children and of you, dear Parents, I decided to stay until the end of the academic year.
One day in February, the Headmaster told me that he had invited the modernist bishop of Portsmouth to come and visit the school. He asked me to organize a spiritual bouquet for him, which I accepted to do, having no notion that it was meant “in gratitude”. I decided nevertheless to prepare the children to be wary of the bishop by telling them that he did a few things that showed he needed prayers and sacrifices like saying the New Mass and distributing Holy Communion in the hand.
At the next staff meeting, Father Brucciani told the staff that not only Bishop Egan was to visit the school, but that he would furthermore lead the children in the prayer of the Rosary in the chapel. I put my hand up and said that I would not go and pray with the diocesan bishop in our chapel.
Although both the Headmaster and the Superior of District spent a lot of time and energy in trying to convince the Sisters that there was no problem with their plan, on 8th March none of the Sisters turned up in chapel for the bishop-led Rosary, as each of them, of her own accord, had decided that she could not in conscience attend that event. This abstention was to trigger more pressure being put on the Sisters.
This would have been something to offer up and I would still be at the school if things had stayed at that.
However, after Bishop Egan’s visit the Headmaster told the children in a sermon on Wednesday that the Bishop of Portsmouth was a man of good will, that he was not bad. Now if you say to a child that a berry is not bad, she will put it in her mouth, because it means it is good, or at least harmless.
But a modernist bishop is not a harmless preacher (see above). He carries about him all of the harmful spirit of Vatican II, destructive of the Catholic Faith. At that juncture, it became clear to me that the children’s trust was captured for the benefit of a person unworthy of it, who had all the trimmings of a Catholic bishop, but not the Faith of a Catholic bishop. How can children discern the fraud? On the other hand, how could the children who knew about the problem of Vatican II understand that one of its faithful spokesmen had led their prayer in our Catholic chapel?
As Father John Brucciani had ordered me a little before not to talk to the children about Bishop Egan, I realized that I would not be able to protect the children’s Faith any more from this subtle poisoning of their Faith and the slow subversion of their trust in either their parents, the Sisters or their priests, depending on whom their limited understanding would bring them to side with.
In such circumstances my presence at the school made no more sense, as I was not there to teach academics in the first place, but to teach the Catholic Faith and foster Catholic spiritual and moral life in my young charges.
Additionally, every day of my presence on campus in the habit of the Oblates of the Society was a tacit approval of the school leadership, which had become at odds with my conscience.
Consequently, I decided to leave the school during the Holy Week, so as to have time to prepare my very young pupils and the whole primary school to my departure. I told the Headmaster unofficially of my decision a little ahead of time of its realization so that he, too, could have some time (five weeks) to get everything ready for the start of Trinity term.
On 25th March I posted my resignation to the Superior General of the Society.
On 27th March, the Second Assistant to the Superior General came to our school, listen to what I had to say about the situation in our school and parish in general and, more specifically, about the “Bishop Egan’s crisis”. He offered me to take back my resignation, which was out of question. His conclusion was that I had to leave “as soon as possible”. The next morning, I was not allowed to go to school in order to avoid creating a stir.
On 30th March I left the school and the New Society of Saint Pius X in order to be able to observe faithfully what I had promised to observe on the day of my engagement in that dearly beloved Society as founded by Archbishop Lefebvre.
At the moment I am most charitably accommodated by faithful of Father King’s Saint Gregory’s Mission in Southport. I can attend Holy Mass daily and prepare my next step in the religious life.
I would like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your truly wonderful support in the last days of my presence at Saint Michael’s School. It helped me go through those painful hours. I was struck by the grief that many of you expressed in one way or another. This made me more aware of the strong bond of charity that unites us in Our Lord Jesus Christ and that we have woven together over the last fifteen years. This bond remains untouched, it has perhaps even gained in strength while we were sharing in the pain of an abrupt separation. I keep you all in my prayers, especially during Holy Mass. Please, keep praying for me, too!
May Our Blessed Lady keep you all in Her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart which will always be our meeting point.
Yours most gratefully,
Sister Mary-Elizabeth
1. See here and here. Note that Bishop Egan wrote “I joined them [the Muslims in the mosque] for Friday prayers.
Posted May 16, 2019
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The opinions expressed in this section - What People Are Commenting - do not necessarily express those of TIA
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WOW: Blue Angels fly over Fort Lauderdale
The Blue Angels Diamond pilots perform the Double Farvel over Fort Lauderdale Beach at the 2019 Fort Lauderdale Air Show.
Gary Morella