Posted on 07/16/2026 6:49:19 PM PDT by ebb tide
The condemnation of the SSPX consecrations is a Pharisaical error.
This point might be inflammatory, but I want to make clear that I think most practicing Catholics who condemn the consecrations love Christ and totally desire to uphold the faith. I am not saying that they, as people, are like the Pharisees, only that their position unwittingly endorses the kind of reasoning used by the Pharisees.
One of the clearest recurring faults of the Pharisees was that they painstakingly upheld ceremonial law — comparable to today’s procedural law — while neglecting the law’s underlying purpose and principles.
The SSPX is now condemned by the Vatican, most “mainstream” Catholics, and even many “traditional” Catholics because they consecrated bishops without a papal mandate in violation of Church procedural law (and a recent one at that). But few of these people acknowledge that canon law, in accordance with God’s justice, allows for exceptional violations of its own procedural law in case the letter of the law ever happens to interfere with its underlying goal, primarily the salvation of souls.
Canon 1323 states that “A person is not liable to any canonical penalty if they violated a law or precept because they acted under grave fear (even if only relative), or out of necessity or grave inconvenience, unless the act is intrinsically evil or tends to be harmful to souls.”
I wonder how many of these Catholics have made a meaningful effort to understand why the SSPX performed the episcopal consecrations without papal mandate. The question we need to ask is: Did the SSPX violate procedural law in order to uphold the ultimate purpose of the Church, the salvation of souls? If so, they acted in a clear state of necessity. They do not need to have acted on assumption of a threat to the souls of all Catholics for a state of necessity to apply; even a threat to the souls of some Catholics is sufficient.
In fact, Christ the Good Shepherd would never have allowed a procedural or ceremonial law to get in the way of the salvation of even one soul.
To claim that attempting to save souls does not matter so long as procedural law was violated is to reject the entire purpose of the law, and is a clear, classic example of Pharisaical thinking.
The goals of the SSPX episcopal consecrations
To understand why the SSPX performed the episcopal consecrations, we must first examine the practical effects of these consecrations. SSPX bishops first guarantee that priests will be ordained who offer the Traditional Latin Mass as a matter of principle and cannot be wrongly pressured into saying the Novus Ordo instead (see the permanent, total authorization of the TLM granted by Quo Primum, which warned that whoever should dare to contradict it would “incur the wrath of Almighty God”).
However, the SSPX would argue that as important as this is, its guarantee of the continuation of the TLM is not its primary distinction. What sets the SSPX apart from other traditional priestly societies is that it publicly upholds the fullness of the Catholic faith by clearly rejecting the errors of the Second Vatican Council documents. While the SSPX has clarified that they can accept most of the documents of Vatican II as consistent with magisterial teaching, it insists that the documents contain errors that cannot be reconciled with the perennial magisterium. Some of these errors are ambiguously phrased, and some are quite clear.
“What errors?” you may be asking.
Perhaps the clearest errors are contained in Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian religions. This contains several flat-out false claims about non-Christian religions, including the following:
No. Hindus do not contemplate or do they express “the” divine mystery, which can only have reference to the Catholic, Christian religion. Or do they even express “a” divine mystery. What is divine has relation to God and God alone. Hindus worship idols, and both the Old Testament and New Testament scriptures affirm that the “gods” of pagans are in fact demons. Notice here that this passage does not state that Hindus “claim to contemplate the divine mystery.”
Again, no. Buddhism does not teach a way by which men may be able to “acquire the state of perfect liberation” or “attain supreme illumination.” Only Christ’s Church does this. Again, Nostra Aetate does not say that Buddhism rather claims to teach such things.
Muslims do not “adore the one God” because they reject the Trinity as blasphemous. Or do they “take pains” to “submit” to God’s decrees. They propose false decrees of God and ignore those given through Christ and His Church.
The SSPX has also highlighted problems with Dignitatis Humanae, which states that “This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom,” in apparent contradiction to Pope Pius IX’s Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors, which condemns the idea that “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”
Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, states that “during ecumenical gatherings, it is allowable, indeed desirable that Catholics should join in prayer with their separated brethren.” However, the Councils of the Church have repeatedly made clear that Catholics may not pray with heretics or schismatics:
Despite these glaring inconsistencies and errors, it is the official policy of the Vatican and the practice of the overwhelming majority of the Church to either defend the totality of the Vatican II documents or claim they can be entirely reconciled with the Church’s perennial magisterium. The latter claim, despite its intentions, has the effect of giving free reign to error. Most Catholics who have compared the above Vatican II passages with previous Church teaching on the same topics would acknowledge that the Vatican II passages at least appear to contradict the Church’s teaching.
Doctrine is not something to be dealt with loosely, especially when it concerns what is necessary for salvation and the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, which Vatican II documents deal with ambiguously at the very least.
The SSPX is justified in insisting on clearly calling out Vatican II’s contradictions of perennial Church teaching, and in fact has a duty to do so. For this reason alone — upholding the total fullness of Church teaching — they are justified in violating Church procedural law, because the overwhelming majority of clergy and laity will not do so, and such mass doctrinal error or confusion constitutes a state of necessity in and of itself.
The real reason the Vatican refused to accept the consecration of SSPX bishops
What further strengthens the case of the SSPX is that it is because the SSPX clearly defends the truth by unambiguously calling out the errors of Vatican II that the Vatican under Pope Leo XIV has refused to sanction their episcopal consecrations this year.
How do we know this?
Pope Leo himself stated only weeks before the consecrations that the SSPX “refuses to accept certain fundamental elements of the Church, starting with several points of the Second Vatican Council,” clearly framing this as a stumbling block to their canonical recognition by the Vatican.
He affirmed what was stated in February by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, regarding a condition for agreement with the SSPX. Fernández reportedly told Father Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the SSPX, that documents from the Second Vatican Council cannot “be corrected.” A communiqué from the SSPX General House revealed that the cardinal made clear that Vatican documents must be accepted in full by the SSPX to reach “regular” status.
Confirmation that full acceptance of Vatican II is required for “reconciliation” with the Vatican is contained in a Formula of Adherence proposed by Fernández. He has said that SSPX priests must sign this Formula if they wish to be incardinated into a diocese. It states:
“With regard to certain doctrines taught by the Second Vatican Council, or subsequent reforms in either the Sacred Liturgy or Canon Law, which may appear to some to be difficult to reconcile with previous declarations of the Magisterium, I undertake to follow a positive approach to their interpretation under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium, so that none of these teachings may be separated from the remainder of the Church’s sacred doctrinal patrimony.”
Archbishop Guido Pozzo, the former head of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, also recently admitted that the main obstacle to the Vatican’s canonical recognition of the SSPX is its lack of “acceptance of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and of the subsequent Magisterium.”
While the consecration of bishops without papal approval was the immediate cause of the Vatican’s declared excommunications, we can reasonably say that the meaningful underlying cause of the excommunications is the SSPX’s insistence on clearly upholding Church teaching in its fullness.
This certainly renders the excommunications unjust and additionally shows their deeper degree of necessity. It’s not just that the Vatican itself won’t clarify the Vatican II documents; The Vatican defends the Second Vatican Council documents so vigorously that it treats them as infallible doctrine that must be accepted in full by every Catholic.
Church crisis worse today than in 1988
The problems regarding Vatican II described above, as well as an epidemic of other doctrinal and liturgical problems played out in individual Catholic churches were present in 1988, when SSPX founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre first consecrated bishops without papal approval. Today, the crisis in the Church is significantly worse, and therefore the state of necessity is present to an even greater degree.
The most important signs that this is the case are that the current pope and his predecessor have promoted and endorsed heresy that poses a clear and present danger to the salvation of souls. Pope Francis did this in many ways, but some of the most egregious were through his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which claimed that unrepentant divorced and “remarried” individuals may receive Holy Communion (he later clarified that this is exactly what it meant); and through Fiducia Supplicans, which allows “blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex” in contradiction to the unchangeable Catholic teaching that the Church cannot bless sinful relationships.
Pope Leo XIV has praised both Amoris Laetitia and Fiducia Supplicans, and both under Francis and during his own papacy has appointed many bishops who promote heresy. During the first year of his papacy, Leo appointed:
Leo has additionally appointed a bishop who attended a Masonic lodge opening in Italy and confirmed a priest who supports “women’s ordination” as new bishop of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Leo cannot plead ignorance on these heretical positions, especially when episcopal appointments were his special job under Francis. One doesn’t do this by picking priests at random. Their positions on doctrinal and Church issues must be investigated.
Leo is not just letting heresy run rampant, he is ensuring that it does so through his episcopal appointments. We should not be shocked about this. Leo has promoted error in other ways, such as by alleging that a unity of faith exists with heretics.
When the pope himself is promoting heresy through endorsement and episcopal appointments, cardinals, bishops and priests receive the signal that such heresies are OK. Error, heresy, and danger to souls multiplies. Catholics are in turn given the impression that they may receive Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin, and that they may be blessed together with a homosexual lover and therefore may live a homosexual lifestyle without remorse. Depending on their bishop or priest, they may think contraception is OK or other sexual practices at odds with perennial doctrine are OK.
At Novus Ordo churches, there is roughly at least a 50-50 chance, or greater, that any one of its priests will condone such sin (in the case of contraception I dare say it’s much greater). Anyone who has attended an SSPX church knows the chance that its priest will accept such sin and heresy is virtually zero.
This is a flaming, red-hot state of emergency and necessity. We have an epidemic of clergy up to the highest levels of the Church signaling that mortal sin is OK, and that the Church is not necessary for salvation. This puts souls in danger of the fires of hell. This is an infinitely greater danger than even an immediate physical threat to one’s life.
Remember that when Christ was incarnate, “many of the chief men” believed in Christ, “but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, that they might not be cast out of the synagogue.” (John 12:42)
This clearly shows that our guiding star should not be acceptance by the Church establishment. It should be the truth of Christ.
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