I am very upset about Dolan meddling with the priests who left the Trento Society. Mexico has preserved the Traditional Faith and True Sacraments longer than in the US. It is wrong for him to go down there and stir up trouble and division.
When I go back to visit, I want to warn the people that Dolan may not be a priest or a bishop so the confirmations he gives may not be valid so they should stay away.
I have read your articles about one-hand ordinations, but can you give a simple explanation that the average person could understand?
We're glad to help, although it seems our correspondent's already mastered the gist of the argument. Someone has to stop Dannie from trying to poach the faithful in other countries. He's no longer welcome in France, so it's time for our good neighbor Mexico to slam the door on his silly face. Were it not for Mexican leadership in the first place, Dannie wouldn't have been able to wrangle a consecration.
Here's the argument in a nutshell, written for easy translation:
1. In 1990, nine American priests sent Dolan a cautionary letter. In it, they wrote, "Since your ordination was done with one hand, we must hold your ordination to be dubious, unless evidence can be brought forth that one-handed ordination is certainly valid." They urged Dolan to "diligently...research the problem" and report his findings.
2. Anthony Cekada researched the problem and claimed that priestly ordination with one hand was valid. In 2000, he privately printed and circulated a pamphlet that contained his defense of one-handed conferral of priestly orders.
3. For a time, most American and foreign clergy uncritically accepted Cekada's "findings."
4. In 2005, a wandering bishop suspected that Cekada had gravely mistranslated Pope Pius XII's definition of the matter of the sacrament of priestly orders for the Latin rite (found in the 1947 apostolic constitution Sacramentum Ordinis, which decreed the imposition of both hands for valid ordination). A subsequent analysis by a trained Latinist confirmed the translation was erroneous.
5. In 2013-14, the blog Pistrina Liturgica published a series of posts refuting and/or rebutting Cekada's "findings." In additiion, the blog exposed many other serious errors of scholarship and Latin.
6. As a result, today no one may use Cekada's pamphlet to uphold the validity of one-handed priestly ordinations: the original positive doubt raised by the 1990 letter of the nine priests remains in force.
7. Since valid priestly orders are generally held to be a requirement for the valid reception of the episcopacy, Dolan may not be a bishop if one-handed imposition invalidates his priestly ordination.
8. Since the Church cannot decide the problem until the Restoration and since, in the case of the sacraments, Catholics are obliged to pursue the safer course, the Catholic attitude in practice towards Dolan's priestly and episcopal orders must be that they enjoy no presumption of validity. Consequently, both his priestly and episcopal orders must therefore be treated "null and void."
9. If Dolan is conditionally re-ordained a priest and re-consecrated a bishop by a valid bishop who correctly follows Pius XII's ruling, then he may be considered a valid bishop.Within a few months Pistrina will publish in English and Spanish a summary of its posts from May 4, 2013, to January 11, 2014, in a simple, reader-friendly format. After that we hope to publish French and German translations. Our goal is to distribute these versions widely so the faithful can be informed of the truth. We also hope that the clergy ordained by "One-Hand" will see how necessary it is that they be conditionally re-ordained, too.
In the meantime, Dubious Dan must be prevented from disturbing the peace in other countries. He needs to stay put in the U.S. anyway and defend his turf in SW Ohio. The new chapel in Lebanon, Ohio, is off to a great start, and it can offer masses where there's no doubt about the validity of the celebrants' orders. On the other hand, the cult center has three priests ordained by "One Hand," so there'll always be some measure of doubt at most Masses celebrated there. Dannie's got an uphill struggle in front of him, so he'll do himself a favor by letting Latin America be governed by Latin Americans, who are both better educated and more responsive to their faithful.
There is one more item in the list of arguments, and that is:
ReplyDelete10. Every expert on theology that anyone has been able to find has said one-handed ordination is not doubtful. The only argument that it IS doubtful is the fact that an anonymous man says so on a blog on the internet. This renders all the foregoing irrelevant.
As we have shown in the past, this statement is wrong: Only some experts have approved one-handed ordination, and even some of those few who have commented (e.g. Regatillo) did not foreclose the possibility of re-ordination. The force of our arguments, therefore, remains: until the Church can decide this issue, we cannot be certain that one-handed conferral of orders is suitable to express the nature of the office to be conferred, i.e.,"an office in the Church, which will, indeed, give grace, but will give it through its primary function of conferring a special status, with special powers, in the Church (Leeming, 371)."
DeleteThe nine points are sufficient.
The son of my sister last year received the confirmation of Bishop Dolan in the province of Córdoba in Argentina, now that I'm reading the allegations that you are making and they are very serious, I told her that should go to confirm it again, because such confirmation is invalid.
ReplyDeletemy English is not good forgiveness and I thank you for the good information that you give us.
Maria Eugenia
That's a very safe decision, and in keeping with the best practices of the Church. In the next few months, we will publish in Spanish a summary of all our arguments. We will make it available on this site. Dolan should follow your good example and seek re-ordination and re-consecration, for a doubtful sacrament is no sacrament at all.
Delete