Negotiations between Rome and the SSPX: Abp. Muller slams the door

The new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- the old Holy Office -- Archbishop Gerhard Muller, should have been a politician. Last week he demonstrated a remarkable gift for saying different things in different languages to different audience.

Katholisches: Magazin für Kirche und Kultur reports on two interviews given by the prelate on the topic of his main challenge, the "negotiations" between the Society of St. Pius X and the Vatican over the readmission of the former to the mainstream modernist Catholic Church.

Speaking in German to Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Muller took a very hard line, saying (not quite in so many words) that the negotiations are at an end. But talking with the (US) National Catholic Register in English, he was all hopeful and prayerful that a "spirit of unity" would prevail... provided of course that the SSPX bends its collective knee to the will of the Holy Father to break with the Traditional Faith once and for all.

Here's what Abp. Muller said in German. (Please don't be nitpicky about the translation. Neither Walt nor Ed. reads/writes German, so we've had to rely on others.)


"Bruderschaft ist für uns kein Verhandlungspartner, weil es über den Glauben keine Verhandlungen gibt." This Society [the SSPX] is for us not a negotiation-partner because there is no negotiation over the Faith.

"Es gibt keine Ermäßigungen was den katholischen Glauben angeht, gerade wie er auch vom Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil gültig formuliert worden ist." No reduction that can be tolerated to the Catholic Faith, exactly as it has been formulated by the Second Vatican Council. [Rather a revealing statement, that last part, since the Council itself never specifically said that its pronouncements were to have the authority of defined dogma.]

"Es gibt jetzt keine neuen Gespräche mehr." There is no more negotiation. [That's what the man said. If the translation is incorrect, please could someone supply the correct interpretation.]

Muller's position sounds pretty clear to me. He has stated once again the Vatican's hard-line policy that the Society of St. Pius X must do two things:
(1) accept the documents of Vatican II as doctrine, with no further debate over their errors and heresies;
(2) accept as valid the Novus Ordo mass, which the Pope now calls the "Ordinary Rite", to distinguish it from the centuries-old Tridentine Mass which we are now told is "Extraordinary".

The truth that Bishop Bernard Fellay, the leader of the SSPX, refuses to recognize is that these two conditions have never been, in the Pope's mind, negotiable. We can see this now through the revelations of the Vatileaks documents, for the release of which the Pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, was this week found guilty.

In trying to reach an accommodation of any sort with Rome, Fellay and his followers -- perhaps a minority within the SSPX -- have been wasting their time. It's not going to happen! As the Society's founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, might have said: no matter how long your spoon, you cannot sup with the Devil!