✣ Highlights from the week online
The SSPX paradox In an interview with the National Catholic Register, the head of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) has said Rome is becoming “more lenient” towards the traditionalist society. It was, Bishop Bernard Fellay noted, “paradoxical” that the Vatican should be friendly while the SSPX continued “to denounce what is happening” during Pope Francis’s pontificate. But Bishop Fellay said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had shifted its view on the SSPX’s criticisms of Vatican II. “That means that the points we defend do not touch the points that would separate the society from the Church … [The CDF] still estimates that something should be clarified on the question of the perception of what is the Magisterium. But we claim they make it confusing.” Bishop Fellay said he sometimes finds Pope Francis baffling. But he said that for the Pope, “what is important is ... the person, and so he tries to look at the person, and there, if I may say, he’s very human. The bishop said the Pope was treating the SSPX “like a rescuer: he unties the rope, which is his security, to put himself in a risky situation to try to get to other people”. Virtue training The Catholic News Agency reported on a priest’s unusual homecoming – to the town where he used to play professional football. Fr Chase Hilgenbrick, an American, spent four seasons at Ñublense, a top-flight Chilean team, and several years playing Major League Soccer in the US, before hearing the call to the priesthood. Returning to Chillán, where Ñublense are based, the priest said: “Everything I learned in sports – such as the sacrifice of training hard, solidarity, working as a team – are things I also have to do in the Christian life. What I experienced in soccer helped me a lot to have all the virtues to lead a good Christian life.” Fr Chase told local media: “If we’re not committed, life has no joy or sacrifice to it.” A taste of heaven At Aleteia, the blogger Sherry Antonetti admitted: “Leisure time isn’t easy for me.” Antonetti said she tends “to measure my days by how much I cross off the to-do list”. But at a recent evening with five of her children, she realised the joy of doing nothing. “We watched a movie. We ate. We talked. We read books. The seven-year-old spent 15 long minutes opening a musical holiday card over and over again, delighting each time the little Valentine’s Day dog barked his jingle.” She discovered that just spending time with people can make a big difference. “Doing nothing with those you love – because with those you love, you can spend hours doing nothing – is time well spent. It pulls down a taste of heaven.”
