Vatican warns order against ordinations
The reintegration of a traditionalist order into the Roman Catholic Church, on which Pope Benedict XVI had been seen as more hospitable than his predecessor, is not going as smoothly as the two sides hoped.
Benedict and the Vatican were embarrassed earlier this year when it lifted the two-decade excommunication of four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X, only to learn that one of the four was a Holocaust denier.
Now, Reuters reports, the Vatican has warned the order not to go ahead with plans to ordain new priests this month, saying the move could incur disciplinary action.
It was the ordination of the four bishops without the permission of the Vatican in 1988 that led Pope John Paul II to throw the order out of the church. Relations had been strained dating to the order’s founding in 1970 in opposition to changes in the church wrought by the Second Vatican Council.
In a statement, the Vatican said the planned ordinations of 13 priests in Germany, Switzerland and the United States would be considered “illegitimate,” and warned that disciplinary questions regarding the order “remained open.”
The rector of the order’s seminary in Winona, Minn., told Reuters that the ordination would go ahead in spite of the warning.
“Absolutely. We are doing it,” the Rev. Yves Le Roux said. “This is something the Vatican feels it has to say. It’s a political statement but the reality is totally different.”
The Vatican decision to lift the excommunication of the four bishops restored their standing as Catholics, but did not recognize their ordination as bishops. The move, seen as a concession by the Vatican intended to thaw relations, drew international condemnation when the views of Richard Williamson became known.
Williamson had told an interview that he didn’t believe Jews were killed in gas chambers and that no more than 300,000 Jews died in Nazi concentration camps – far fewer than the 6 million generally accepted.
The episode damaged Catholic-Jewish relations. Benedict condemned Holocaust denial, and the Vatican said it had not known of Williamson’s views prior to lifting the excommunications.
