I saw a piece by the intrepid Marco Tosatti of La Stampa about a “wedding” in Austria that was witnessed at a Benedictine monastery in Kremsmunster, by a woman “priest” (wymyn pryst).
The wymyn was excommunicated 11 years ago, but she regularly participates at liturgical ceremonies with the Benedictines and has done so for 10 years. Apparently every two weeks she does something or other at the one of the altars of the abbey.
The bishop of the place apparently hasn’t said anything about this situation.
And so one needs to ask the question, along with Tosatti:
Now we wait for the Prefect of the Congregation for Religious, the Brasilian Braz De Aviz, so firm and severe with the Franciscans of the Immaculate, for reasons that are still kept rigorously secrete, to manifest his presence.
Does silence imply consent?
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This is why the SSPX is so popular…
The Church can move with lightning speed when it’s time to quash traditionalists but then reverts back to “centuries mode” when it deals with “progressives”.
The Italian story was riffing off a story from the Telegraph.
Of course, the real reason that male priests “concelebrate” with “women priests” is that they know darned well it won’t be valid in the eyes of God if the woman does it alone. (Not that this makes it a good idea, as this softening of the curse is taken as enthusiastic agreement.)
The Telegraph story also says that the mysterious bishop who pretended to ordain this lady and Ohio’s ex-governor’s ex-wife was one Antonio Braschi. I actually have never seen anybody name the name and blame the blame before.
Either the prefect consents or is doing a poor job by being ignorant of these things. Either way it doesn’t look good.
Does silence imply consent?
Absolutely, when one has the power, authority, and responsibility to do so. Which, I suspect, includes at least the Abbot and local Ordinary.
If the report is accurate, it’s nigh on impossible to believe that the Bishop was unaware of the goings-on. His failure to act is reprehensible. Rome’s action, or failure to act, will say much about whether it is only against conservatives that they rail.
Wikipedia says that Romulo Antonio Braschi is not in communion with the Catholic Church. He was never ordained a Catholic bishop.
“In 1975 he set up an Independent Catholic church in Buenos Aires Province. In 1978 this became the Catholic Apostolic Charismatic Church of “Jesus the King”, now present in several European and Latin American countries. He was ordained as a bishop in Munich by Roberto Garrido Padin, a bishop of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church, and Hilarios Karl-Heinz Ungerer, a German bishop of the Free Catholic Church.”
That’s only two bishops, mind you, even if they did count which they don’t. You need three bishops to make a bishop (unless the Pope gives special permission, which he obviously did not).
So all that naming in the article was still pretty much a lying coverup, because they didn’t mention the fact that the guy was a non-Catholic crock, “consecrated” by non-Catholics, and with no power to ordain anybody, even guys.
Okay, so there’s a book by Phyllis Zagano that says, besides this Braschi guy, the Danube bunch were also “ordained priests” by some ex-monk (perhaps I should say monk manque!) from Stift Kremsmunster, named Ferdinand (Raphael) Regensburger. So maybe he has friends with keys? This Kremsmunster place is huge and there are something like 26 parishes that are technically “part of the Abbey,” so you could probably “openly” do things and still have nobody know about them outside your little group of crazies.
Zagano says nobody was saying who “consecrated as bishops” this Mayr-Lumetzburger and Gisela Forster, but it happened in 2003.
Double standard in treatment by the Holy See seems to be the norm these days. Compare and contrast the treatment they’re dishing out to the SSPX and the FFI vs. the other side (which is usually left alone to run wild in their particular churches or getting a slap on the wrist if it’s become so blatantly heretical that it couldn’t be swept under the rug).
Ecclesiastical equivalent of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” at its finest.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
The Orwellian’s “Seven Commandments of Animalism” and its later revision (to rationalize/justify wrongdoings by the leaders) also reflect the moral decay crisis in the Church, for what once was sin is now tolerated. Some characters like the Cat (who voted on both sides in the election), the Sheep (who didn’t understand much of Animalism but blindly supported the ideals espoused by their leader Napoleon, Napoleon’s carefully cultivated cult of personality based on his polished image, Napoleon’s using the puppies to purge his old comrades as perceived enemies and potential threats, the Raven representing false religion, etc. All sound pretty familiar and could be related easily to what’s going on in the Church these days.
You need three bishops to make a bishop
They are not needed in the sense of necessary for validity.
Typically, schismatic “Old Catholic” groups are considered to have valid orders. The Brazilian Apostolic whathaveyou, I’m pretty sure, is considered to have valid orders. Never heard of the “Free Catholic Church” but they might if they got their people ordained by Old Catholics.
You only need one validly consecrated bishop to consecrate another bishop. Three is the traditional format, but the other two are not necessary and can be replaced by priests to maintain the ceremonial decor.
Peregrinator – There’s a lot of stuff that is possible with papal permission in emergencies, but it isn’t possible otherwise; and three bishops is the standard, going back to apostolic times.
Re: the funeral mentioned in the article, there was apparently a big German-speaking stink about this in 2009, when it happened. The bishop and the abbey released a statement saying this (Google Translate version cleaned up):
P. Dr. Bernhard Eckerstorfer, press spokesman:
Kremsmuenster held the funeral of a young woman on 28 May 2009 in the presence of excommunicated “priestess” Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger. She is a friend of the deceased outside the Church and by the express wishes of family members went to the sendoff in the public cemetery in Kremsmuenster. Kremsmünster had to submit to this request of the family.
The Requiem for the dead was said in the collegiate church by the pastor of Kremsmuenster, also at the request of the family. Frau Lumetzberger was present at this ceremony, as often non-Catholic ministers are also. To speak of a concelebrated Mass is inadmissible.
“Regardless of this funeral Abbot Ambros has confirmed in a letter dated 30. 7. 2009 that as for Frau Lumetzberger and also excommunicated “Bishop” Raphael Regelsberger, that they may neither communicate in the Eucharist in Kremsmünster and the abbey parishes; Abbot Ambros has prompted both to return to the community of the Church.”
This German-language blogger says that Mayr-Lumetzberger does a lot of crazy stuff for attention when she’s not making stuff up, and has links to past crazy things, like her making a show of receiving Communion via some smug guy when the bishop of Linz wouldn’t let her receive.
It sounds like she’s the kind of person who might be resorting to Photoshop; or of saying that pictures taken with her crazy bunch somewhere else, or long ago, are recent and at the Abbey.
You can preach that abortion is sacred from Catholic pulpits. You can praise the values of homosexuality and openly commune gay couples. You can prance around the altar in a perfect imitation of pagan worship. You can concelebrate with women “priests”. You can ad lib the mass to your heart’s content. This and so much more is tolerated year after year, decade after decade, wide and far throughout the Church. If, on the other hand, you are just a little too fond of “pre-Vatican II rituals”…watch out…the authorities will utterly destroy you faster than you can blink.
One more thing: she has some kind of photo blog she was doing on bezirk.at, back in 2012, where she would post a picture, and then have some kind of passive-aggressive photo caption if you clicked through. And then some relative of her would post snarky comments saying what the issue behind the passive-aggressive photo was. There are a bunch of photos of some parish in some town called Grein, where apparently the monsignor had incurred her displeasure.
So yeah, she’s exactly the sort of person you wouldn’t want in charge of souls, even were she qualified and a guy.
Any connection between these Benedictines and the Benedictines who nixed Cardinal Burke’s visit?
No. Augustinians nixed Card. Burke.
This is the true source of weird – the Austrian Fruitloop Machine.
My God, their strange…..they really epitomise Chesterton’s fear of a nation going off their head en masse through the practice of logic alone.
It made me smile when I read that she is referred to as ‘Mrs Bishop’ – presumably the German equivalent. Wanting to be a wymyn ‘bishop’ was bad enough but then I read that she has married someone who was a divorced man with children. How sad – she really is mixed up wanting to be a Catholic bishop and wanting to be be married at the same time and marrying a divorce.
The story in The Telegraph which forms the basis for the story in La Stampa is vague on the details and is of dubious accuracy given the fact that it gets so many facts about Antonio Braschi wrong. (He was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church in 1966 but left the Church in 1975 to found his own Independent Catholic Church. His consecration as a Bishop was performed by two bishops not in communion with Rome, one of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church, the other a bishop of the Free Catholic Church, which is an offshoot of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church.) Before jumping to conclusions about the alleged heterodoxy of members of the Austrian Church, I’d need to know more from a more reliable source.
Interestingly, Stift Kremsmünster is in the diocese of Linz in Upper Austria. It’s Bishop is the Most Reverend Ludwig Schwarz, S.D.B. As per Wikipedia (ref: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Schwarz. Forgive me, for I know this is not a scholarly reference), Bishop Schwarz “…..was appointed the Diocesan Bishop of Linz on 6 July 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI…. Schwarz put an end to some of the liberal practices of his predecessor, Maximilian Aichern. Unlike his predecessor, Schwarz is typically unwilling to grant exemptions from ecclesiastical norms.[3] He has enforced Catholic teaching that prohibits baptisms and preaching by lay people, and has been more stringent about norms for the reception of the Eucharist.[4].” If this is indeed the case, it comes as something of a surprise that what has been described above was permitted to take place at all.
Even in the much less likely event that it wasn’t intended to imply consent, it still does ! What else could it imply ?
We only need draw from the wisdom of yet another descendant of the noble Burke lineage for confirmation on that one :
Edmund Burke :
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
So the situation could only be exacerbated further when, say, mediocre, or cowardly, or indifferent,or less virtuous, or undecided, or self-seeking men do nothing.
A little more precision (depending on how reliable the reporting of the telegraph.co.uk would happen to be) :
Apparently, according to an article published today in the Telegraph, she doesn’t do something every two weeks “at one of the altars of the abbey” ,but rather “in Catholic churches up and down Austria- and beyond.”
A moving target is a little more difficult to track down.
link to Telegraph article –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11207449/Meet-the-female-priest-defying-Catholicism-for-her-faith.html
Now here’s the thing. I noticed in Fr Z’s last column on the Case of the Mysterious Disappearing Bishops that all of them were involved in covering up sexual crime.
The nice thing about sexual crime is that everyone knows it’s wrong, and everyone can be quite happy seeing ‘something done’ about those who have failed to prevent it, or have covered it up afterwards. It’s a win-win, right?
So in this case if someone in the monastery was having a relationship with this lady, and if the lady in question was under the age of consent, the local bishop would be in big trouble.
But as it is, she’s only committing sacrilege and causing grave scandal. No biggie.
@Suburbanbanshee :
Hi Suburbanbanshee. Just acknowledging that you referred to the Telegraph article before I did and posted a link to it earlier in the thread.
Thanks for all the info. It’s sad when you think about it : that a person can become so wounded that they trade in all the valid Sacraments for the sacrament of deception . I say sacrament of deception, because she really does appear to believe all the lies and error she tries to spread, by living it all – replete with what would have to amount to a “When you wish upon a star” consecration before unholy
communionconfusion. And this despite the evidence all along, the signs that it isn’t working – sort of X’s all across the board : Ex -nun, ex communicated, married a man who is an ex -husband with an ex -wife . . .I can’t help but imagine what a spiritual disaster it would be for both her as
confessorand the abysmally deluded penitent, were they to try and act out thesacrament of Reconciliationin their fantasy play-world .————————————————————-
BTW guys, on one of the websites, um , honouring, the Danube seven, which works under the motto “Women Can Be Priests” ( . . . and pigs can fly and salamanders can play violin. . . ) one encounters a page where they happily present an article published by National (you know )Reporter roughly 12 years ago – written by none other than (tadaa!!) that famous rapper (well Fishwrapper anyway) John L. Allen Junior. (Now . . . where have we seen that name before?)
http://www.womenpriests.org/called/allen.asp
. . . who is now with Crux ( * doh!* . . . still comes out sounding like “crooks” every time I try to pronounce that word) . Their website says this very well educated journalist (associate editor now at Crux) “was a correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter for 16 years.”
. . . What’s that flushing sound ?
I would like to know more about Dr. Eckerstorfer’s grounds for saying, “Das Stift Kremsmünster hatte sich diesem Wunsch der Familie unterzuordnen” which Suburbanbanshee translates, “Kremsmünster had to submit to this request of the family.”
Peregrinator – There’s a lot of stuff that is possible with papal permission in emergencies, but it isn’t possible otherwise; and three bishops is the standard, going back to apostolic times.
If by “isn’t possible” you mean “isn’t valid,” then I’m afraid you’re wrong. The SSPX bishops, for example, were consecrated by Msgr. Lefebvre with Msgr. Castro de Meyer as co-consecrator (no other bishops participated), and no one (except perhaps for a few cranks) has suggested that they are not true bishops. It takes but one bishop to make another bishop; the permission of the Pope might be necessary for liceity but not for validity.