No Ixnay On The Stronsay
IN a week that's had a Constantinopolitan share of church divisions - Anglicans snubbing Canterbury and Catholics snubbing Rome - finally a welcome story of rapprochement has emerged. From the Scottish Atlantic wilds of the Orkney Islands, the Transalpine Redemptorists, a monastic order based on Papa Stronsay and hitherto affiliated to the schismatical Society of St Pius X, have successfully petitioned Rome to return to full communion. Their request has been approved and all censures against them have been lifted. This has been announced by the island community's Vicar General, New Zealand born Fr Michael Mary, on the monks' humble (and elegantly templated) blogspot blog. This must surely be the first time in history the reparation of a schism has been declared on this medium. (If only Filioque could have been sorted out in a comments box. Credit to John Zuhlsdorf for predicting a possible blogospherical role in April). Fr Michael acknowledges the community's reconciliation with the Holy See is a direct corollary of Summorum Pontificum, the document sanctioning the return of the Tridentine Mass, issued by Pope Benedict XVI in July 2007.
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This fascinating 17 minute excerpt from a series called Atlantic Britain documents the visit to the Transalpine Redemptorists' Golgotha Monastery on Papa Stronsay by author, adventurer, Etonian and Cambridge man, Adam Nicolson. It begins with a declaration of his atheism in a cell, features no-nonsense philosophical discussions with Vicar-General, Fr Michael Mary, and ends with Nicolson's tears on the jetty when he says goodbye. _____________________________________________________
This story does raise an obvious question: why did this SSPX-aligned group abandon its purposeful aloofness given that it declared in April that it continued to refuse "to follow the Rome of Neo-Modernist and Neo-Protestant tendencies, which became clearly manifest during the Second Vatican Council"? Little more than two months later - and on the same day the SSPX announced its intention to turn down Rome's deadline for reconciliation - it returns to the fold. The April statement provides a clue: however suspicious the Transalpine Redemptorists may be of modern Catholicism, they acknowledge that Pope Benedict has not only acted to right an historical wrong but also that he cannot be expected "to solve all of the problems in the Church first" - that is, as a traditionalists' prerequisite to coming home. Here, unmistakably, is monastic common sense. Here also, perhaps - playing advocate for the Lefebvrists (to account for a persistence their Papa Stronsay allies have abandoned) - is a group for whom failed theologies of a Church in the Modern World are not as problematic. They do, after all, live on an island. Either way, the Golgotha men are a Godsend.
This story does raise an obvious question: why did this SSPX-aligned group abandon its purposeful aloofness given that it declared in April that it continued to refuse "to follow the Rome of Neo-Modernist and Neo-Protestant tendencies, which became clearly manifest during the Second Vatican Council"? Little more than two months later - and on the same day the SSPX announced its intention to turn down Rome's deadline for reconciliation - it returns to the fold. The April statement provides a clue: however suspicious the Transalpine Redemptorists may be of modern Catholicism, they acknowledge that Pope Benedict has not only acted to right an historical wrong but also that he cannot be expected "to solve all of the problems in the Church first" - that is, as a traditionalists' prerequisite to coming home. Here, unmistakably, is monastic common sense. Here also, perhaps - playing advocate for the Lefebvrists (to account for a persistence their Papa Stronsay allies have abandoned) - is a group for whom failed theologies of a Church in the Modern World are not as problematic. They do, after all, live on an island. Either way, the Golgotha men are a Godsend.
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