Defending the 12th century since the 14th; blogging since the 21st.

Catholicism, Conservatism, the Middle Ages, Opera, and Historical and Literary Objets d'Art blogged by a suburban dad who teaches law and writes stuff.


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Who was Cacciaguida? See Dante's PARADISO, Cantos XV, XVI, & XVII.


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Vatican decree lifts excommunication on SSPX bishops. As far as I can tell, this means no more than the mutual lifting of excommunications that took place between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in 1965: neither any longer regards the other as personnally excommunicated, but it does not follow that communion has been reestablished between the ecclesial bodies of which they are the heads. The event of 1965 didn't reunify the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches; the lifting of the Lefebvre excommunications doesn't reintegrate the SSPX into the Catholic Church.

Please correct people whom you hear referring to these whingers -- especially the nutter Williamson -- as being "reinstated." They've been bishops ever since they were (illegally) ordained such, in 1988. So there's nothing to "re"-instate them in. But they aren't being given control of any diocese or dicastery, so they aren't being "instated" in anything. So what's being done? They, personally, are not excommunicated any more, neither more nor less. Hoop de doo.

EDITED TO ADD: Bp. Williamson is already exhibiting arrogance and flippancy in response to what is, in my judgment, the Holy Father's excessive generosity. Fr. Zuhlzdorf has the details.
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:38 PM