PARIS -The leader of a breakaway traditionalist Catholic group has rejected a Vatican offer to rejoin Rome, accusing Pope Benedict of trying to silence dissenting voices.
Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) that broke with Rome 20 years ago, said conditions set by the Vatican amounted to muzzling the traditionalists who claim to be the only true Catholics since church reforms in the 1960s.
Keen to end this schism, the pope agreed last year to their demand to restore the old Latin Mass. But he insists they must accept the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) before he can lift excommunication decrees against them.
"Rome is telling us, okay, we are ready to lift the excommunications, but you cannot continue this way," Bishop Fellay said in a sermon last Friday now posted as an audio file on the US-based Voice of Catholic Radio website.
"So we have no choice . . . we are continuing what we've done," the Swiss-born bishop said at a seminary in Winona, Minnesota. "They just say 'shut up' . . . we are not going . . . to shut up."
The Milan daily Il Giornale reported on Monday that the Vatican had told the SSPX it must pledge to respect the pope and accept him as the Church's final doctrinal authority.
Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi told the Paris Catholic daily La Croix: "The pope wants to extend his hand so they can return, but for that to happen, this offer must be received in an attitude and spirit of charity and communion."
The SSPX claims about a million followers worldwide, many of them in France. It split off when its founder, archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four traditionalist bishops - including Bishop Fellay - in 1988 against orders from Pope John Paul II. - (Reuters)