Q&A
From the September AD 2010
Our Lady of the Rosary
Parish Bulletin
ON THIS PAGE:
The Number of the Apostles?
Thuc Bishops?
Malankara Rite Mass?
[ Q&A ARCHIVES ]
Question:
It appears that the Litany of the Saints lists thirteen, not twelve
Apostles, from Saint Peter to Saint Matthias. Possibly Saint Peter and
saint Simon are one and the same? And what happened to Nathaniel? Has he
got an alias too? (AH, New York)
Answer:
Believe it or not there are fifteen men identified as Apostles. Counting
Judas of the original twelve, Matthias makes thirteen, Paul makes fourteen,
and Barnabas makes fifteen. Barnabas (June 11) is the only one with a third
class feast. Timothy, Silas and Apollos might be counted as well, but that
might be stretching a bit. A number of people are called “apostle to the
_____s”; that is to a particular nation or group of people. Mary Magdalen
is often called “apostle to the Apostles,” probably because she brought the
news of our Lord’s resurrection Simon the Apostle is also called Simon the
Zelot, and is not Simon Peter. Nathaniel seems to be Bartholomew in the
Gospels other than John. Bar‑Tholomew is a patronymic, which suggests that
they all had aliases beginning with “Bar”—Simon Bar-Jona, Jesus Bar-Joseph,
etc.—“Bar‑So-and-so” meaning “son of so-and-so.”
Question:
I recently read a
passing reference to a controversy concerning “Thuc Bishops.” What are
“Thuc Bishops,” and what is the controversy? (JA, Port St. Lucie)
Answer:
Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục (6 October 1897–13 December 1984), was the
Archbishop of Huế in Vietnam. His younger brother, Ngo Dinh Diem, was the
first president of South Vietnam until his assassination in November of
1963. After Vatican Council II Archbishop Thuc remained in exile, first in
Italy and later in France. To understand the nature of the “controversy,”
one must understand the state of the Catholic Episcopate after Vatican II.
One of the first to
call attention to the theological confusion spawned by the Council was
Father Gommar A. De Pauw, J.C.D., (1918-2005) a professor of Theology and of
Canon Law at Mount Saint Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and a
former “peritus” at Vatican II. Fr. De Pauw organized the Catholic
Traditionalist Movement in March of 1995. Cognizant of the need for a
bishop, both as a protector, and to supply the Sacraments which simple
priests cannot confect (especially the ordination of priests and
consecration of bishops), in 1966 Father De Pauw enlisted the Most Reverend
Blaise S. Kurz, O.F.M., (1894-1973) Prefect-Apostolic of Yungchow as
Moderator of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement. To the best of this
writer’s knowledge, Bishop Kurz ordained one priest for the movement before
he died in 1973—Father Gunther Storck, who would later become part of the
“controversy.”[1]
Digression
Sede-vacantism
(from the Latin “the chair being empty”—the “chair” being the Chair of
Peter) has a superficial appeal to those who cannot explain how the post
conciliar Church could have been afflicted by so many doctrinal and
moral difficulties.[2]
The root of it is found in an exaggerated understanding of papal
infallibility, which is exercised, according to Vatican I, under
precisely defined conditions, when the Holy Father speaks about a matter
of faith or morals as the authoritative head of the Church, declaring
something in which all Christians must believe.[3]
Too many Catholics fail to make the careful distinctions made by Vatican
I. Their understanding of papal infallibility is something like “the
Pope can never be wrong, or even “the Pope can do no wrong.”
Given this
invalid premise one can reason:
● “The Pope can
make no error/do no wrong,”
● “X has made a
lot of errors//done a lot wrong,”
● “Therefore X
cannot be the Pope”
From the same
invalid premise one can also reason:
● “The Pope can
make no error/do no wrong,”
● “X is the Pope,
● “Therefore all
that X does must be correct/good.”
The second
syllogism describes the thinking known as “papalatry, or “Pope worship.”
The false premise
is usually buttressed with arguments from canon law, but these rarely
stand up to scrutiny.
Whatever one may
think of sedevacantism, at least it did not appeal to wild theories
about the “real pope” being abducted and being replaced by an actor who
was his double!
Another early participant in the Traditional Catholic movement was
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) who had been Apostolic Delegate in
West Africa and Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers. In November
1970 Bishop François Charrière of Fribourg, Switzerland established a pious
union led by Archbishop Lefebvre, and known as the Society of Saint Pius X.
The Society established a traditional seminary at Ecône, Switzerland in
1971. Although the Archbishop trained and ordained a large number of
priests at Ecône, for nearly twenty years—until three years before his
death—he consecrated no bishops to continue the work of the Society. Some
of his priests would become part of the “controversy”—the controversy of
sede-vacantism—the argument that the post Vatican II Popes were really
antipopes.
Archbishop Lefebvre did not accept sedevacantism, and went on to consecrate
four bishops in 1988. Likewise, we Old Roman Catholics do not accept
sedevacantism, and our Archbishop was consecrated in 1975, and his auxiliary
in 2007. Benedict XVI is the Pope.
Archbishop Thuc entered the “controversy” when, at El Palmar de Troya in
Spain, he consecrated Fr. Clemente Domínguez y Gómez (1946–2005) as bishop
in 1976. Domínguez claimed to have had visions of the Blessed Virgin in
which she denounced the “progressivism” of the Modernist Church. Domínguez
also claimed to have a vision of Jesus, together with Peter and Paul, who
told him that by divine commission he would succeed Paul VI as Pope!
Domínguez took the name “Pope Gregory XVII.” (Not to be confused with Jean
Grégoire de La Trinité, who proclaimed himself Pope Gregory XVII in
Canada—no, I am not making this up!)
In
May of 1981 Archbishop Thuc consecrated Michel Louis Guérard des Lauriers
(1898-1988), a former professor at Ecône and author of a
theory—“sedeprivationism”—that Paul VI held the papacy “materially” but not
“formally.” Des Lauriers agreed to accept to accept sedevacantism and was
consecrated.
A
large number of bishops—some sedevacantists and some not—derive their Holy
Orders from Archbishop Thuc.[4]
Some of his “controversy” lies in the efforts of his supporters and
detractors to prove that his episcopal consecrations were, respectively,
valid or invalid. Some of this revolved around the man’s alleged
insanity, and some around an alleged lack of qualified witnesses.
Jealousy rather than theology seems to have been at the root of the claims.
In that their opponents were often men who had been ordained by Archbishop
Lefebvre, Archbishop Thuc’s proponents retaliated by publicizing the fact
that Lefebvre had been ordained and consecrated by one Achille Leinart, who
was a Freemason—as though this would invalidate Lefebvre’s priesthood,
episcopate, and ability to ordain. (The Talleyrand episode demonstrates the
fallacious nature of this claim.[5])
In any event many of the men who owe their priesthood to Archbishop Thuc
have gone on to serve the Church well in Its current time of need.
Question:
The announcement said
that at the end of the clergy’s continuing education session in Saint
Petersburg there would be a Mass in the Malankara Rite. What is the
Malankara Rite?
Answer:
When our Lord celebrated the Last Supper, He gave the Apostles the
essentials of the Mass—the offering of bread and wine, the separate
consecration of the two, and the reception of His true body and blood in
Holy Communion. The Apostles would embellish these essentials with customs
taken from Judaism (like the Scripture readings of the synagogue, and the
praying of the Psalms, and with the languages and customs of the
Mediterranean world. This world encompassed a vast territory, ensuring some
variation it the rites established by the Apostles in the lands they
evangelized.
Tradition has it that Saint Thomas the Apostle set out for India in 52 AD,
hoping to preach to the Jewish diaspora in Kerala, on the Malabar Coast
along the southwest tip of the Indian sub-continent. He established
churches in a number of cities, among which the Christian community of
Niranam claims to be the first. He was martyred at Mylapore on the
(eastern) Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. In 232 AD the relics of
the Apostle were taken from India to the city of Edessa, in modern day
Turkey, near the Syrian border. Much later, in 1258, the relics were moved
briefly to the Greek island of Chios, and then to Italy, where they are now
venerated at Ortona, on the Adriatic Coast.
The Indian Church continued, generally receiving Its bishops from the
Patriarch of Chaldea, but from time to time they received men tainted with
the heresy of Nestorius,
[Update]
which held that Mary was the mother of the human Christ but not the mother
of God. This Nestorian connection alarmed western missionaries when they
discovered the Saint Thomas Christians in the middle ages. Conquest by the
Portuguese around 1500 gave Jesuit missionaries of the Latin Rite the upper
hand in dealing with the indigenous hierarchy. One of the last Syrian
bishops sent to India, Mar Joseph Sulaka renounced Nestorianism in 1552 and
was appointed by Pope Julius III as Patriarch of Chaldea with jurisdiction
over all of India,[6]
But in
1597, Mar
Abraham, the last appointee of the Chaldean Patriarch, died. Custom
dictated that his Archdeacon, George of the Cross, would administer the
vacant see, but the Portuguese intervened, imposing Latin rites, laws, and
hierarchy on the Saint Thomas Christians. The Synod of Diampir in 1599
decreed this a permanent state of affairs, creating a multiple schism in the
Indian Church.
The Coonan Cross Oath of January AD 1653 united many of the Saint Thomas
Christians of Kerala in a civil and religious rejection of Portuguese
authority. Pope Alexander VII sent Italian Carmelites in place of the
Portuguese Jesuits in 1661 to organize an East Syrian Rite church hierarchy
in union with the Pope. About seventy percent of the Saint Thomas
Christians joined this Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. The others joined the
Syriac Orthodox Church at roughly the same time. This West Syrian group
employed the Liturgy of Saint James, and are often referred to as Syrian
Jacobites or Malankara Orthodox. The split between Eastern and Western
Syrian Rite Christians would remain permanent.
But in 1926
some of the Malankara Orthodox determined to approach The Congregation for
the Oriental Churches to bring about reunion with Rome. Archbishop,
Geevarghese Mar Ivanios of the Order of the Imitation of Christ was the
chief negotiator.[7]
On 20 September 1930, two bishops, a priest, a deacon, and a layman
professed the Catholic Faith.
On 11 June 1932, Pope
Pius XI established a Catholic Syro-Malankara hierarchy and erected the
Archeparchy of Trivandrum.[8]
In 1933. Mar Ivanios was enthroned as its first Metropolitan Archbishop.
Today, under Pope Benedict XVI, Moran Mor Baselios Cleemis is the present
Catholicos of the Malankara Catholic Church, and Major Archbishop of
Trivandrum. Our visitor, and the celebrant of the August 27th Liturgy at
Our Lady of Good hope is The Most Reverend Dr. Joseph Mar Thomas, Bishop of
Bathery in Kerala and Apostolic Visitor to North America and Europe.[9] Mar
Thomas is Prince of the Langue of India for the Sovereign Order of Saint
John of Jerusalem, with which Order the See of Caer Glow is
associated, and of which Archbishop Humphreys is a member.
The Liturgy is to be celebrated in English, which is common in India,
although the Malayalam, (മലയാളം),
the principal language of the State of Kerala, is often used there.[10]
It will be according to the Rite of Saint James, the Liturgy of the West
Syrians—and originally the rite of Jerusalem, before it spread to Antioch.
The familiar Rites of Saint Basil the Great and Saint John Chrysostom both
derive from that of Saint James, probably the oldest Catholic Rite. The
text of the Rite can be found on the “New Advent” website associated with
the Catholic Encyclopedia.[11]