Pontifical Council for Christian Unity head Cardinal Walter Kasper has said that talks with the Society of Saint Pius X have been difficult and members will have to make concessions if an accord is to be reached. The Society cannot conduct the doctrinal discussions on their terms, but only on those of the Vatican, Cardinal Kasper said according to a Reuters report.
"Dialogue with them is not easy," Kasper, who heads the Vatican department for relations with other Christian churches and with Jews, told a news conference during a visit to Paris.
"The main problem with them is not the Mass in Latin," he said, referring to the SSPX's insistence on the pre-Council liturgy, "but the concept of tradition. Do we want a living tradition or a petrified one?"
"I'm for a dialogue, but on our conditions, not on the traditionalists' conditions," he added. The SSPX had to accept the Council reforms, the "sine qua non" of any accord.
Without an accord, the group will have no official status and its clergy will not be recognised as Catholic priests or allowed to exercise their ministry.
German theologian Wolfgang Beinert, told Der Spiegel magazine last month that the pope had told him the SSPX issue "robs him of his sleep." He did not think Benedict would compromise at any cost with the ultra-traditionalists.
SIC: CTHUS