A Word from the Editor
Ergertshausen, 9th of Dec. 2005
Dear readers,
First of all I would like to thank you for your words of encouragement
for our work in this journal. I have not yet had the time to
reply to all of your letters, but bear with me, eventually you hear
from me. From time to time, it is good to completely put aside brooding
on the current sitation in the Church. And this, though the prospect
before us seems hopeless, what with the bitterness over several
defections in our ranks... Nevertheless, we must put that right out of
our minds in order to meditate exclusively on God and His Revelation.
For it is only with a solid basis of Faith that one will find the
answer to numerous problems cropping up, as well as
the strength to bear with seemingly inextricable situations. With
St. Anselm of Canterbury, we should ask ourselves: Cur Deus homo? Why
was God made man? The answers are:
-in order to fulfill His absolutely holy will and to reveal His love
for us, so that we in turn would respond to this love and lead our
lives according to this Revelation. As St. John says, "we shall be
children of God because we believe in His Name". He also came so that
we, born with original sin and guilty of personal sins would be
redeemed by His propitatiory Sacrifice and death on the Cross,
provided we are humbly disposed to accept His Satisfaction and thus be
reconciled with Him. He Who was sinless assumed our sins in order to
purify us in His Blood. "... in the Son of God, in His Blood, we find
the Redemption that sets us free from our sins." (Col.1,14).On the
Cross He merited the possiblity for us to renew our Covenant with Him.
And by the institution of the Sacraments He enabled us to directly
participate in His divine Life through grace.
If Christ founded His Kingdom in this world, this Kingdom ist however
not of this world. Before His Ascension He had founded His Church
as an Institution, whose mission was to conserve, communicate and
diffuse salvation, which He had put at our disposal...
The government of this Institution (the Church) was committed to Peter,
who was designated as His Vicar on earth. Christ therefore built His
Church on the rock of Peter, while He permanently remained its
invisible Head. And the powers which St. Peter had received are
transferred to the reigning Pope, "Petrus semper vivens"...
It is from him that religious (and lay people) belonging to the
holy Church receive their mandates to act according to
their functions. Without this original papal mandate, delegated
to him, no priest e.g., can say the Mass and no bishop can ordain
priests or consecrate bishops, even though the power of the Order gave
him power to do so.
The mandate extended to the faithful signifies that they only
have permission to receive the sacraments from priests belonging
to the Church or who wish to become part of it as soon as feasible. But
if priests are not in communion with the Church whose government is
confined to (a legitimate) Pope, and if they choose not to modify
their situation, they go the way of sectarianism or schism, and
eo ipso they do not act according to the mandate of the Church any
more. That means that although thanks to the grace of the Order they do
possess the appropriate spiritual powers, they would excercise them
illegitimately and independently without the mandate
necessary! And if the faithful, knowing all this, still approached
such priests in order to receive the sacraments, they would believe
they were acting to their own advantage. In fact, they would be
contradicting the mandate of the Church, and consequently, going
against the will of Christ. And if that were the case, they would be
'stealing' the sacraments as 'outlaws'.
But those who stalk after salvation in such a manner can be assured
that sacraments received like that are inefficacious and devoid of
grace...
So where must we look for the Church in present-day circumstances? How
are the bishops and priests to go about obtaining their mandates
to dispense the sacraments which enable us, through grace, to directly
participate in divine Life? Who will extend their 'Missio' to them for
their pastoral work in these times of the Vacancy of the apostolic See?
At the present time, priests cannot licitly dispense the sacraments;
neither can the faithful licitly receive them except on condition
of anticipating the Restoration of the Church and its restitution as
the Institute of salvation...What counts is that they are resolved to
submit to a legitimate Authority in the future.
Dear readers, in this season of Advent, I urge you to take time out to
meditate on these points so as to rekindle your Faith, and to extricate
yourselves from the swamp of sectarianism lest you are bogged down
in it through your own fault... Let us all humbly draw near to the One
who was born for us at Christmas - the Son of God.
May abundant graces rain down upon you this Christmas! And may God's blessing abide with you the whole of the New Year!
E.Heller
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