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Friday 27 February 2015

Treating the Neighbors and Strangers Better Than Family?

From Sando Magister:
Last February 9, the basilica of Saint John Lateran, the pope’s cathedral church, hosted the pilgrimage of thanksgiving of the Dominican congregation of the “Most Holy Name of Jesus” of Fanjeaux, France, for the fortieth anniversary of its foundation. In addition to two hundred religious woman, the pilgrimage was attended by 950 of their students and about a hundred teachers and parents. But the Dominicans were not able to celebrate Mass in any church of Rome. The fact is that the sisters in question belong to the female branch of the Lefebvrist community, and that the Mass they wanted to celebrate was the one of the preconciliar rite. It did no good - the sisters say - that their cause was supported by “reiterated requests” from the pontifical commission “Ecclesia Dei.”

The matter is rather unusual in a diocese like that of Rome in which important churches, like Saint Theodore on the Palatine Hill or Saints Vincent and Anastasius at Trevi have been entrusted to Orthodox communities, and where even the parishes host the ceremonies of non-Catholic Coptic or Romanian communities. But this ecumenical inequity should come as no surprise, if one considers that in the Catholic camp there are some - like the prior of Bose, Enzo Bianchi, or the theologian Gianni Gennari - who disparagingly apply the description of “schismatic” only to the Lefebvrists (who are no longer excommunicated but do not yet have a canonical “status” in the Catholic Church), while the Christians of other confessions who formally are no less “schismatic” than the Lefebvrists are amicably called “brothers.”
I don't know anything about these Dominican sisters, but they must be very threatening to someone....

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