{"id":1023,"date":"2009-01-27T10:09:27","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T10:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html"},"modified":"2009-01-27T10:09:27","modified_gmt":"2009-01-27T10:09:27","slug":"from-the-comments-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html","title":{"rendered":"From the comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

I want to highlight this:
\n“The key issue with the lifting of the excommunications is to take all possible measures to prevent these prelates from conferring the episcopacy on a new generation of Lefebvrites. No new bishops and the thing dies.”
\nI don’t think Benedict wants the “thing” to die” in terms of the spirituality and devotion of people associated with SSPX, but he certainly wants them reintegrated into the Church.\u00a0 But the more I think about it, it seems as if lifting the excommunications is, looking at things politically, a means of actually getting more control over the SSPX, just for the reason – as well as the ordination of priests – that this commenter expresses.
\nAs long as they were completely *out* there were no grounds to object or exert any control. But now that the bishops are back “in” in this very limited sense, their own actions are much more constrained, if they indeed want to be fully reunited.
\nWhat do you think?
\nEd Peters with some more canonist views. The SSPX view, even stated in their most recent materials, is that the excommunications were null. He responds:<\/a><\/p>\n

While we await the L’Osservatore Romano<\/em> article that is to offer an account of how Pope Benedict XVI arrived at the decision to lift the excommunication imposed on the four priests who received episcopal orders illicitly (c. 1382) from Abp. Marcel Lefebvre in 1988, the <\/span>materials now coming from the Society of St. Pius X<\/span><\/a> continue, in my opinion, to add to the burden such an article must carry if the remission is to make sense to otherwise well-disposed outside observers.
\nIn the meantime, for the benefit of those who would like to see some responses to the canonical arguments by which the SSPX claims that the 1988 excommunications were never incurred in first place, let me very briefly note the following:<\/span><\/span>
\nMORE<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to highlight this: “The key issue with the lifting of the excommunications is to take all possible measures to prevent these prelates from conferring the episcopacy on a new generation of Lefebvrites. No new bishops and the thing dies.” I don’t think Benedict wants the “thing” to die” in terms of the spirituality…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the comments - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From the comments - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I want to highlight this: “The key issue with the lifting of the excommunications is to take all possible measures to prevent these prelates from conferring the episcopacy on a new generation of Lefebvrites. No new bishops and the thing dies.” I don’t think Benedict wants the “thing” to die” in terms of the spirituality…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-27T10:09:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"From the comments - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"From the comments - Via Media","og_description":"I want to highlight this: “The key issue with the lifting of the excommunications is to take all possible measures to prevent these prelates from conferring the episcopacy on a new generation of Lefebvrites. No new bishops and the thing dies.” I don’t think Benedict wants the “thing” to die” in terms of the spirituality…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2009-01-27T10:09:27+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html","name":"From the comments - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-27T10:09:27+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-27T10:09:27+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/from-the-comments-2.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"From the comments"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}