[wideawake]

The authority SSPX asserts regarding annulments is a supplied jurisdiction made necessary because of the invalidity of so many annulments granted by various diocesan tribunals.

Putting aside the difficulty that "supplied jurisdiction" claimed in one's own favor is a very complex and dangerous issue in itself, the fact is the SSPX has absolutely no jurisdiction, supplied or otherwise, to stand in judgment over the validity of annulments granted by ordinaries in their own dioceses. Never in the history of the Church has such a usurpation of the local ordinary's authority ever been countenanced.

I disagree the consecrations were grave breaches of discipline.

Then we need to define grave. We are talking here about meddling with the very means of the Apostolic Succession, not dispensing someone from a fast.

This Pontiff is routinely disobeyed by prelates--in matters of far greater importance.

Surely you recognize the inherent weakness of this argument. Just because someone else does something wrong and gets away with it, one is not justified in one's own transgression by theirs.

One can argue that the Holy See has been capricious in its censure - and one would have a point.

But that does not justify disobedience.

Aquinas and Bellarmine both argue that no Pontiff may command what would harm the Church, insisting that disobedience in the face of such a command would be legitimate.

You are reaching here. One could validly argue that appointing Fr. Jones over Parish X is harmful to the Church and that Fr. Smith is a much better candidate for that parish. Almost any action by any Pope could be interpreted as harmful to the Church in some way. Who is to judge? You?

The fact is that Lefebvre did something objectively wrong and disobedient, but he did it according to the dictates of his conscience.

Abp. Lefebvre would gladly have apologized and spent his life in sackcloth and ashes atoning for his disobedience in this matter if the Pope had required it as a condition for preserving the Church's liturgical and theological traditions.

Williamson is unwilling to even admit that his consecration was disobedient.

It is this attitude of Williamson's which excites a visceral repulsion for the SSPX intransigents among obedient Catholics who labor for the preservation of our cultural traditions within the canonical norms of the Church.

To the extent that individual SSPXers follow Williamson's example they will injure the Body of Christ.

[ultima ratio]

Oh, but the Pontiff was doing something very harmful to the Church by disallowing the consecrations. Without traditional bishops to ordain seminarians, where were traditional priests supposed to come from? And without them, the traditional Mass would die. Do you think the Archbishop didn't know this--or didn't realize that the knives were out to destroy Tradition within the Catholic Church?

The Archbishop was old, in his eighties. He was the only bulwark against the complete destruction of the old Mass. His was the only seminary at that time training traditional seminarians. His was the only one using the old methods, applying the old ascetical disciplines and prescribing classical theological studies. None of this would have survived had he obeyed. And had he obeyed the living memory of the Catholic Church that had existed for the prior two thousand years would have been lost. It would have expired along with himself. So the stakes were enormous.

Had the Archbishop lived in another age, maybe you would have been right. But he saw devastation all around him. He saw the Church lurching from crisis to crisis. He saw heresy and corruptions abound. He saw new theologies challenging even the deposit of faith directly. So of course he had to make a judgment--and he did so on the State of Necessity canon which provided an exception for disobedience. And he did so with a good conscience, for the purpose of saving the Traditional Mass and Traditional Catholicism--not for reasons of malice to defy the Pope.

As for my other argument--that prelates routinely disobey this pope in matters of far greater importance--I refer to the routine subversion of Catholic dogmas. This is done openly and without any remonstrance on the part of the Pontiff. This in itself has been shocking and unprecedented.