It is not often that you have seen me write something like this, but in the new number of The Tablet, Robert Mickens has written a pretty fair blurb about the restructuring of the Pont. Comm. Ecclesia Dei.
Here is an example of The Tablet being fairer than NCR, with my emphases and comments.
The anticipated motu proprio to reorganise the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei” finally came out this week. It’s called “Ecclesiae Unitatem” and, as expected, it makes the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the commission’s president by statute. The commission was set up in 1988 after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and another bishop illicitly ordained four men to the episcopacy for the renegade Society of St Pius X (SSPX). They all incurred excommunication. The original purpose of “Ecclesia Dei” was to help bring the priests and lay people loyal to the SSPX back into full communion with Rome. [Along with a couple other things, but that was a main part of the mandate.] Several priests immediately took up the offer and started the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP). Others over the years have used the commission to found new religious groups exclusively devoted to the [so-called] Tridentine Mass. But the SSPX itself has never been interested in returning to “modernist” Rome because of the “unacceptable” changes it accepted following the Second Vatican Council. The stalemate did not show signs of ending until Benedict XVI was elected Pope in 2005. The new Pope displayed greater interest in concerns voiced by the SSPX. His first step was to issue the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” in 2007, which restored the pre-Vatican II liturgy’s place in the universal Church. And in January the Pope lifted the SSPX excommunications. But before the Lefebvrists can be readmitted to full communion with Rome, they have to show they accept Church teachings from Vatican II to the present. [It remains to be seen what sort of acceptance that will be, however.] It will be “Ecclesia Dei”, now under the guidance of Cardinal William Levada, that will verify that. [Or at least organize it.]
