Vatican lists core teachings for traditionalists

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican told a group of breakaway traditional Catholics on Wednesday that they must accept some core church teachings if they want to be brought back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican’s chief doctrinal official, Cardinal William Levada, met with the head of the Society of St. Pius X, the latest in Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to reconcile with the group opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The Vatican said it handed over a two-page “doctrinal preamble” listing core principles of church teaching and interpretation that must be accepted by the society. But it said specific issues about Vatican II could be left open to “legitimate discussion.”

A Vatican statement provided no details and the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he didn’t know what core principles the Vatican listed.

If the society does accept the Vatican terms, Lombardi said, the “most plausible solution” would be for it to become a so-called personal prelature — an international religious community that answers directly to the pope. The only other one in existence is the conservative movement Opus Dei.

The Society of St. Pius X was founded by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1969 and split from Rome over the interpretation of Vatican II’s reforms, particularly those which revolutionized the church’s relations with Jews and allowed for the celebration of Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin.

In 1988, the Vatican excommunicated Lefebvre and four of his bishops after he consecrated them without papal consent.

Despite concerns from liberal Catholics, Benedict has made clear from the start of his pontificate that he wanted to reintegrate the group back into the Vatican’s fold, meeting within months of his election with the current head of the society, Bishop Bernard Fellay.

In 2007, Benedict answered one of Fellay’s key demands by relaxing restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass. Two years later, he lifted the excommunication of the four bishops, including that of a Holocaust denier whose rehabilitation sparked outrage among Jews and Catholics alike.

In the years since, the Vatican and the society met eight times to try to work out the theological and doctrinal differences that separated them in a bid to fully reintegrate the society’s members into the church. Those talks led to Wednesday’s set of minimal requirements issued by the Vatican.

The Holy See had previously insisted that the society’s members must “fully recognize” Vatican II as well as the teachings of all the popes who came after it, if they want to be fully reintegrated into the Church. Wednesday’s statement seemed to provide some wiggle room: it said there could be further discussion, study and explanation over “single expressions or formulations present in Vatican II documents and subsequent magisterium.”

Lombardi was asked if, in the minimum requirements, the society will be required to accept the Vatican II document “Nostra Aetate,” which revolutionized the church’s relations with Jews by saying Christ’s death could not be attributed to Jews as a whole at the time or today.

Lombardi said he didn’t know. It is clear from recent public statements by some of the society’s members that they still hold Jews responsible for Christ’s death.

“How can anyone entertain the thought that God will be pleased with the Jews who are faithful to their fathers, who crucified the son of God?” the society’s French superior, the Rev. Regis de Cacqueray, said in a Sept. 12 speech. “How could he give ear to prayers addressed to Allah, whose disciples relentlessly persecute Christians?”

The society says it is upholding true Catholic tradition by rejecting elements of Vatican II’s teachings, and says the Church’s current problems, including a shortage of priests, are a direct result of the 1962-65 meetings.