Our friend John Sonnen posted a photo of a priest in Rome who is one of the Canons of the Basilica of St. Peter.
What John didn’t mention is that this is the renowned theologian and long time professor at the Lateran University Msgr. Brunero Gherardini, 85.
Msgr. Gherardini has been involved in, for example, the cause of Bl. Pius IX and has also written about the questionable decision to say that the Anaphora of Addai and Mari is acceptable as a valid prayer for consecrating the Eucharist.
Recently, Msgr. Gherardini’s book Vatican Council II: An Open Discussion (Casa Mariana Editrice) stirred some discussion. Gherardini is, as more and more authors these days, questioning the received school of interpretation of the Council, the event and its documents. His book comes with a forward by H.E. Most Rev. Mario Oliveri, Bishop Albenga-Imperia diocese and an introduction by the former Secretary of the CDWDS, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, now in Colombo, Sri Lanka..
Msgr. Gherardini thinks that the Council must be interpreted correctly, that it has been distorted in many respects.
Hopefully, his book will soon be in English.
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Thank you, Father, for citing this priest and the tremendous work he is accomplishing with his new book. He insists, as the Council Fathers themselves insisted, that Vatican II was PASTORAL and was never intended to teach dogmatic truths. The deliberate ambiguitites which some of the documents contain, seem to center on whether the priesthood is sacerdotal and the Mass is a sacrifice, or whether the priest is merely a presider and the mass(sic) is a community meal. These, of course, are the same questions introduced by Luther and answered by Trent. The Modernists/Progressives, as you know, do not accept Trent.
The Modernists/Progressives, as you know, do not accept Trent.
That’s an interesting observation. I was reading a Spanish blog a couple of days ago and one of the comments stated that the modernists are at heart people who reject Trent, not just the mass that came out of that council, but the whole thing.
This means that they see Vatican II essentially as the anti-Trent (before anybody gets excited, I know it wasn’t and it wasn’t intended to be – I merely mean that that’s how some of the Modernist/Progessive people regard it).
Looking at it from this point of view gives some historical perspective to the problems that we are facing now. Also, if we can regard the problems as part of a stream that went underground after Trent and then bubbled up from time to time but was repressed and finally burst forth with the weakening of authority after Vatican II, we can see the profundity of the solution required. I’m looking forward to reading this book.
“That’s an interesting observation. I was reading a Spanish blog a couple of days ago and one of the comments stated that the modernists are at heart people who reject Trent, not just the mass that came out of that council, but the whole thing.”
I’ve definitely found that to be the case. They’ve tended to throw out everything between Trent and Vatican II. If you notice, they’re perfectly fine unearthing things from, for instance, the third century, but if they so much as get a whiff of the sixteenth century they denounce it as medieval, meant as an insult of course, and claim that they’re focused on moving forward and not backward. It’s as if they see Vatican II as undoing all those pesky rules and regulations enforced by Trent. I suspect it’s because they take the common – and much mistaken – view that Trent’s purpose was merely to bring unruly peasantry into line and thus see it as no longer needed for us educated folk (sound familiar?).
And I concur, Fr. Z, hopefully his book will be available in English. I’d be interested to read it.
Boy, Msgr. Gherardini is sure a long drink of water! Either he’s really really skinny, or he’s well over six feet….
Re: liberals unearthing stuff from the third century
But only the stuff they like. I’ll never forget the guy who listened to a whole patristic reading, with St. Clement constantly pointing out that it’s not whether you’re rich, it’s how you use whatever it is that God gives you. And at the end, what was his takeaway? The Fathers say rich people are bad! (I did a faceplant.)
Well, St. Macrina says that steam-powered Greco-Roman automata help prove the existence of the human soul and God. But this is not generally regarded as the _point_ of “On the Soul and the Resurrection”, much less a command that the Voice of the Faithful begin building robots.
Might Msgr. Gherardini’s book be currently available in Spanish?
Indeed I have seen the same with attack and rejection of Trent
Waiting patiently for it.