Traditionalist group faults pope on ecumenical approach

ROME -- The leader of the world's breakaway traditionalist Catholics said yesterday Pope John Paul II's papacy will leave a sad legacy because his openness to other religions has left the Church "like a ship with a hole in it."

Swiss-born Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the million-member group that does not recognize the reforms of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, also said he did not see the possibility of a reconciliation with the Vatican any time soon.

"The Catholic Church is not a ship in a storm, it is a ship with a hole in it," said Fellay, who is one of four bishops excommunicated by the Pope in 1988 when they were ordained without papal permission by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

The traditionalists, called the Fraternity of St. Pius X, oppose the modernization of Catholicism by the Council, which promoted inter-religious dialogue and relegated the Latin Mass to the history books in favor of services in local languages.

Fellay, Lefebvre's successor, spoke at a news conference at a hotel near the Vatican to present a 50-page traditionalist's assessment of John Paul's 25-year papacy.

The booklet said ecumenism, as dialogue and cooperation among Christian churches is known, "has transformed the Holy City that is the Church into a city in ruins."

The booklet accused the pope, who has made improving relations with other Christian religions a hallmark of his papacy, had "overturned the order desired by God."

The traditionalists blame the modernizing Council for a host of problems in the Church, including the vast numbers of men and women who have left the religious life.

One of the best-known traditionalist Catholics is actor Mel Gibson, but it is not clear if he is a member of the Society of St. Pius X.

"We did not provoke the disaster in the Church, we are trying to fix it," Fellay said.

He accused the Vatican of treating those who want to return to traditionalist values "in a tyrannical way." He was also scathing in his attack on Cardinal Walter Kasper, who heads the Vatican's department for Christian Unity.

"The Church is more interested in Christian unity than it is in salvation," he said.

Although the traditionalists are only a fraction of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics, the pope has kept up a dialogue with them, hoping to bring them back into the fold before he dies.

But Fellay told reporters that negotiations with the Vatican were "effectively stalled." Last year, the pope for the first time allowed a leading Vatican cardinal to say the Latin Mass for traditionalists in a Rome basilica, a move seen as an olive branch to the breakaway group.