A systematic dissection of the Vatican’s legal framework reveals what independent canonists and traditionalists view as a deep-seated crisis of consistency within modern Catholic governance. When the theological and legal arguments used against the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) are laid bare alongside the treatment of the Eastern Orthodox amd protestants, the structural defense provided by Rome (that it is merely maintaining public order and guarding the sacred nature of the sacramental contract) it effectively implodes under the weight of its own internal contradictions. What remains is a system that appears to onlookers not as a defense of immutable...