Not long ago, Bp. Schneider suggested that the SSPX should be canonically recognized and then more fruitful discussions, with the SSPX involved, could be opened up about certain thorny issues.
Now, Card. Müller…
From a substack Per Mariam
Cardinal Gerhard Müller has issued a firm critique of the Society of St. Pius X’s planned episcopal consecrations, while simultaneously proposing a possible canonical solution for the Society – with whom he used to meet while leading the Holy See’s “dialogue” for Pope Francis.
But in the face of this “internal confusion” in the Church, through which “great uncertainties in dogmatic questions and even heresies have also penetrated the Church,” Müller argued that the Society must “submit” to Pope Leo XIV’s “teaching authority and primacy of jurisdiction without preconditions.”
[…]
“The only solution possible in conscience before God is for the Society of St. Pius X, with its bishops, priests, and laity, to recognize our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV as the legitimate Pope, not only in theory but also in practice, and to submit to his teaching authority and primacy of jurisdiction without preconditions,” he wrote.
Having predicated this, the former prefect of the CDF suggested a potential solution for the Society regarding their canonical status:
“Then a just solution can also be found for their canonical status, for example by granting their prelate ordinary jurisdiction over the Society, who would be directly subject to the Pope (perhaps without the mediation of a Curial authority). But these are canonical and practical conclusions that are only valid if they are dogmatically consistent with Catholic ecclesiology.”
[…]
I think this is the best way forward.
Loading ...
I must respectfully disagree that this is a solution. I believe the best solution would be for His Holiness to give permission for the SSPX to consecrate new bishops as titular bishops with the specific right to Confirm Catechumens and Ordain Priests. Pope Francis already gave permission for ordinations…no one should have an issue with welcoming new Catholics into the Church through Confirmation! This would bypass the theological questions and issues that have been ongoing for 55 years…what difference does a few more make with ‘irregular’ status?
Some years ago, I started going to the FSSPX, the only Latin Mass available in my country, once a month (I keep on going to Novus Ordo mass the other Sundays).
It took me a lot of time to take this decision. It was not because of the Latin Mass. It was only because I became convinced that Rome was going to change the faith and keep the faithful as hostages. And the faithful were going to do nothing but vague appeals to pray and God’s will. After a honeymoon phase, I think Pope Leo works for this goal, although he is more diplomatic than Francis.
I don’t stop feeling guilty because of going to the FSSPX mass. So I used to dream about the day when the FSSPX will get regularized. Not anymore.
I have realized that Rome’s strategy is “keep your friends close but your enemies closer”. If you have the FSSPX under your thumb, you can apply all kinds of strategies to try to make their task unhappy and/or subvert them: see the Opus Dei, see the FSSP.
We don’t need another FSSP: we have one and I have the best of wishes for them (they are not present in my country). In the wreckage of the Church, we need somebody to be outside Rome’s manipulation so something keeps the ancient faith until better times. If they devoted the time they spend in manipulation to praying, they would be able to free one billion souls from Purgatory.
I know I’m not qualified to question Cardinal Muller on anything regarding theology, but I don’t really understand what exactly is meant by “to submit to his teaching authority and primacy of jurisdiction without preconditions.”
To my laymen brain, this seems unreasonable, especially after Pope Francis. Wouldn’t “so long as he does not teach heresy” be a reasonable precondition? Or “so long as he does not use that teaching authority to teach that the sacred liturgical tradition of the Latin Rite is harmful and should be suppressed”? It’s this kind of carte blanche, no limit talk that perplexes me. If anything, we live at a time when the legitimate limitations of that teaching authority need to be addressed. Perhaps he is using theological terms with precise meanings which I, being uneducated, fail to grasp. But on the surface it seems like the kind of statement I myself wouldn’t necessarily agree with, but I don’t believe that means I reject Pope Leo as the legitimate pope or only hold him as the pope “in theory but not in practice.”
I wonder about this idea of recognizing and submitting to the current pope’s authority. I also wonder about the idea of obedience. There has to be some set of parameters the delineate what is a permissible policy from one not permissible. Clearly one does not obey an unjust or immoral order and in some cases one might have information that the sovereign pontiff does not have, such as the pastoral needs of a specific group of believers that causes an order or policy to be unjust. And I do believe this last possibility is the real source of the problem, the failure of many in Rome to show any desire to recognize the pastoral needs that many believers find can only be satisfied by sacraments offered in the traditional manner. (Isn’t this the point of the sacraments: to give us the help we need?) That is, there is a lack of Charity.
If recognising and submitting to the authority of the Roman pontiff in theory and practice isn’t a solution, then that there is your problem right there.
I’m not sure what His Eminence is watching to say that there is a problem with the Society recognizing Leo XIV as the Pope or as having teaching jurisdiction. The Society has not yet said “Run to the hills, Rome has fallen”, they are more in the mode of saying that obedience must be first to Christ, then to the timeless dogmas of the Church, then to the current Pope, and to the extent we find contradictions we must pick one and reject the other.
If they denied Leo (or his predecessors) was the Pope or that he had teaching jurisdiction, they would simply ignore him. The fact that they are appealing to every Pope to resolve this is de facto acknowledgement that they see the Pope as the legitimate pope and that he has the authority to resolve this.
This will continue to stutter along for some time, I fear. The message from the Vatican has been, for the last 20 years at least, that of the revolutionaries in political spheres – failure to accept my position 100% means you are a counter-revolutionary to be rejected, airbrushed out of photos, etc. There is a simple question, and the answer to it will start the healing – what specifically makes this council supersede all others – and it may never be asked.
The German episcopate verbally submits to Rome but in practice defies the Holy See in practice. We have all witnessed this sort behavior across an infinity of situations the breath of the Church globally for six decades. Submission with the wink and the nod but with little or no consequence for duplicitousness from the Holy See.
The SSPX provides a strong submission to papal the authority but objects to what it perceives as insufficient guardianship of the perennial Magisterium and lax discipline. They receive the lash.
Cardinal Mueller’s objective would be best facilitated if Pope Leo would engage seriously, even at the cost of other responsibilities, in personal exchange with the appropriate representatives of the SSPX. His personal engagement is absolutely required. He alone can make this reconciliation come to pass. It would be the defining moment of his pontificate.
Cardinal Fernandez, even giving him the highest best benefit of the doubt, is the last person to be given oversight of this endeavor. While respectful of ecclesial court protocol, it is received as inflammatory. His assignment to the task is, unfortunately, regarded as insult to injury.
For a Church wishing to be regarded as pastoral, it appears that “pastoral” is only gifted to the obtuse, those most perceived as loose, fraudulent ascent to the perennial Magisterium and evangelical obedience.
Above all, this is the problem.
The Holy See has inadvertently undermined itself in the eyes of those who most love, respect and long for its guidance and discipline. Until this problem is accurately engaged it cannot be resolved.
It requires humility on the part of both parties.
Who will model humility first?
It must be the Holy See. Even provided with utmost discretion, it could melt the deeply wounded heart of the SSPX.
The full translated article by +Mueller is worth a read. His entire argument and most critical point is below:
“No orthodox Catholic can claim reasons of conscience if he withdraws from the formal authority of the Pope with regard to the visible unity of the sacramental Church in order to establish an ecclesiastical order that is not fully in communion with him in the form of an emergency church, which would correspond to the Protestant argumentation of the 16th century. Such a schismatic attitude cannot invoke an emergency that may only affect the individual salvation of a few or even many.”
It also isn’t really surprising that Mueller published this since the SSPX name dropped him as one of the reasons they need to do the consecrations.
I respect Cd. Mueller greatly, but he makes a couple of important errors here.
1. The issue before Rome is not merely that of “wayward sons”. Even if you suppose that SSPX has been wayward, you can’t go by that ALONE. They also exercise power. They do in fact train up priests and ordain them. They do in fact perform valid sacraments. The do run de facto parishes (even if not in direct subordination to the local bishop in every respect, the people going to them are actually Catholics). This de facto power is part of the equation, pretending it doesn’t exist can’t be the right path to “the solution”. So insisting on what is effectively a complete abnegation of “preconditions” on Leo is simply demanding that they not have the de facto power they have, or pretend they don’t have it. That’s not how you succeed in handling a crisis.
2. Recognition of the pope, his teaching and juridical authority in principle has never been a problem with the Society: they grant it fully. They deny that his insistence on not consecrating new bishops BINDS them in conscience: whether they are right or wrong about this, their argument is that this action is not an actual repudiation of the papacy, its teaching or juridical authority. So, it is neither here nor there to demand their acquiescence to these papal prerogatives.
Regardless: if Lefebvre had done the same thing in 1988 (as Mueller asks now), there wouldn’t BE an SSPX in a position to so much as request a bishop, much less demand / threaten one. They would have been eliminated. That might ultimately have achieved some other good for the Church (we can never know), but in terms of motivating SSPX now, you can’t expect to help them move forward by insisting that their only course of action is to take a step that would have ensured their demise 40 years ago, and then “hope in the good will of the Vatican”. The Vatican has proven, over the past 13 years, (and most of the last 60) to harbor enormous bad will against tradition in most forms, and even if Leo hasn’t been a leading culprit, he selected Fernandez for this activity and HE is a leading culprit.
I don’t see even a personal prelature like Opus Dei or the Ordinariate being enough of a security to make the SSPX willing to change their tactics; making of traditional mass lovers a new eparchy with its own archbishop eparch AND its own right of election of its bishop (like the other eparchies) would do it – with expressly incorporating SSPX into that eparchy from the get go so that they are under said eparch, and expressly constituting the old liturgy as the normative liturgy of the eparchy. (Leo could appoint as eparch someone of HIS choosing, who would (a) corral the flock to remain true to Rome, and (b) be over and demand obedience of Fellay, thus not granting to SSPX complete control over the entirety of the traditional movement.)
It was refreshing to read what Cardinal Muller thinks. He is right and I hope the SSPX takes to heart his words.
The burden of movement falls to the society that has an irregular (whatever that means, but it’s not “normal”) status. Like Fr. Z said elsewhere, you’re either in full union with Rome or not. I agree.
They are not in full union with the church Christ founded, otherwise they would simply be gifted new bishops as needed. No emergency plea necessary. The fact that they need to beg for bishops tells two things: one, they’re not in the structure of the church. And two, those who are in the structure of the Church don’t really know the SSPX.
They are appealing for bishops precisely because of their outside status and this is also why there is not much movement on the Vatican side to rush to give them what they ask for: who are these people anyway? They’re asking for bishops, but we don’t even know who they are. They have no structure set up in the church so it’s weird of them to think they should get automatic attention, let alone exactly what they ask for.
The burden falls to the SSPX to give a little: they are the ones who seek something. They can’t just get bishops and continue on with their shadow hierarchy while confusing Catholics left and right. They need to be incorporated into the church like every other public minister who is not under the Pope.
Unless they really don’t seek full union with Rome. I don’t know. They don’t negotiate like they care. They just complain that Rome doesn’t fulfill their requests. Excuse me? Who are these people?
I could go on with the inconsistencies they seem to have going on, it’s a little surprising so many traditional Catholics are so mesmerized by them.
They talk about saving souls. Last I checked salvation is found in the visible, hierarchical, Catholic Church established by Jesus Christ. Pope Leo is the head of the Catholic church currently. There are four marks of the true Church: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. God wants us to be able to easily recognize His church, not be confused about where it is and who is really “with Rome”. God isn’t confusing and isn’t asking us to solve a puzzle here. It’s the SSPX that is making things confusing. They should stop confusing good, well meaning Catholics and get on with their long awaited regularization process so they can actually save souls and stop talking the talk.
I read a good comment the other day comparing the SSPX to a couple married civilly that is seeking to have a con-validation by the Church. It is the couple that needs to approach the church to go through the steps of having their marriage blessed and recognized by the Church. The Church doesn’t “negotiate” terms with the couple, much like Rome shouldn’t be “negotiating” any terms with the SSPX. It’s completely on the SSPX to wake up one day and realize they need to be under the leadership of a bishop who is in turn under the leadership of the Pope. The Church isn’t going to do that work for them: it can’t, as it’s a personal conversion process much like the con-validation process for a civilly married couple.
Another comment I came across that I want to share is: you can fall off the boat on the left side and on the right side. It reminded me that virtue is the means between the extremes. We have to make sure we know our Catechism because many people are ignorant nowadays and therefore are either deceived themselves or are seeking to deceive others.
@prayfatima (and everyone who is arguing for the “Unity Uber Alles” position
I don’t understand how one can come to such black-and-white thoughts on the SSPX situation unless one truly thinks everything is A-OK in the Church today, and I cannot understand how one reaches such a conclusion. What do you envision would happen if the SSPX “laid down their arms” and said, “We submit to all-things Vatican II and whatever the Pope orders without question.” After what’s happened to bishops under Pope Francis, do you truly believe there are no vindictive souls in the Curia? Do you really think Tucho would welcome them with maximum support? When they are not given any additional bishops, as per their request, and when they are in fact forbidden from having any bishops at all, ala Opus Dei, how will that go? When they are made to be under the jurisdiction of the local bishop, how do you think Bishop Martin in Charlotte will handle them? With charity and generosity? In France, where the FSSP was entirely driven out of a diocese, do you think the bishops there will now bend over backwards to support the SSPX?
When their seminaries are ordered to start teaching about the wonderful “truths” of Nostra Aetate, about how all religions are to be valued and we are to consider Muslims our “brothers” – how will that go? When the SSPX priests are directed to bless individuals in a homosexual union, should they just submit and comply because it would be worse if they dared to not submit to every order from the Vatican? When they are required to start offering the Novus Ordo, to show their unity with the Church, I guess that’s okay because . . . Unity! When they are directed to have altar girls, to use the Gather hymnal, to hold their own synodal listening sessions . . . how many humiliation rituals should they undergo for the sake of Unity, which apparently is the only apostolic mark of the Church that matters anymore?
I’m earnestly curious if you believe that:
1) – there is no crisis in the Church, and
2) – the SSPX would be treated with respect if they meekly submitted.
Because, as one with no ties whatsoever to anything having to do with the SSPX, I have come to the position where I fully support them and believe they are right to hold their ground. I’ve seen how the diocesan Church treats Traditionalists – I’m living it now. I think it’s absolutely unreasonable to demand the SSPX also submit to such horrendous abuse on the hopes that the same people will treat them any better. If they submitted at this point with no “precondition,” it would be to the detriment of the entire Church and to the potential loss of the Sacred Tradition which the current regime in the Vatican hates more than anything else on planet earth. I take your analogy and throw it back at you – the SSPX is like a married couple with children trying to raise them in the Faith, and Tucho is the Child Protection Services demanding they surrender the children in order to teach them about the wonders of transgenderism. To say that the parents have no rights or obligations in the face of government demands is wrong. To say that the SSPX have no rights or obligations in the face of Vatican Curial demands is wrong.
For all the analysis and talk on this point, it all really boils down to what +Mueller and +Sarah have published in the last few days:
The SSPX can either choose formal schism [? You don’t know that.] on their terms or they can choose union with the pope on his terms. Union with the pope on their terms isn’t one of the two options.
RE: The comments about a catholic civily married couple: A Catholic couple who go before a civil magistrate to conduct a civil marriage are not married, do not have a “natural marriage.”
A validly ordained priest raised to the episcopate by a validly ordained bishop is ontologically a bishop independently of whatever Rome says about the matter.
It needs to be clearly understood in this matter that the elements of “needing XYZ’s” approval for ordination are human juridical elements and neither part of the matter nor form of the sacrament of ordination. Violating human juridical elements impacts licitness, not validity. The “needing approval of the pope” for episcopal ordination is something that developed over time and is a function of the juridical nature of the papacy — it flows from the position that the Pope determines who he is in communion with or not, which is a fairly straightforward proposition of the prerogative of sovereigns. I have never seen anyone argue that “the Pope’s decision on who his friends are is an infallible act of the Chair of Peter”.
Further, one of the mistakes that I see being made in this discussion (here and offline) is the erroneous position that a bishop’s episcopate flows from the papacy in the same way as a priest’s presbyterate flows from his bishop. NO. A bishop’s episcopal mandate and authority flows directly from Christ Himself, not the Pope. The pope is not some sort of superbishop with the bishops being his offspring/children.
Further still, there is a misconception on how communion flows. Communion isn’t found by the bishops being united to Peter who then unites them to Christ. It is found by the bishops being united to Christ, who then unites them to Peter.
By virtue of his ordination, a bishop is united to Christ. Period. There is the need to be visibly united to the Pope. How is this actually expressed? It is more essentially and quintessentially expressed through union with the Pope during the Mass/Divine Liturgy. Is the august Sacrifice of the Altar offered in union with the Pope or not? Obvious and easy to check. That is the real test for schism, not whether or not the Pope is returning your phone call or not.
This also solves the problem about the SSPX’s view on the validity of the NO. During the consecration, is the SSPX’s bishop affirming by name that their TLM sacrifice is in union with the sacrifice (the one and the same sacrifice) offered by the Pope? Is the Pope offering his NO sacrifice in union (spiritually) in union with his fellow bishops who offer the TLM sacrifice?
So every SSPX Mass that offers the sacrifice in union with the Pope is a sacramental affirmation of the validity of the NO.
Is every act of consecration of an episcopate an automatic excommunicatable offience if done without a papal mandate? Leaving aside my soapbox on the injustness of automatic excommunications, clearly not. Hisorically there have been plenty of consecrations without a papal mandate that, even after these particular canons were in place, were recognized or backdated without any sort of juridical undoing of that “automatic excommunication.”
Because Reasons: It seams to me that a lot of the argument that the SSPX are outside of the Church is simply “because reasons”– to be fair, their juridical connection to the visible modern Church is precarious, but it is rather difficult to suggest that they are outside of the bounds of the standard traditional definition of One Holy Catholic and Apostolic. Yes, they don’t like a lot of the, or the majority of the, pastoral expression of the faith post Vatican II — but that is a pastoral issue not a doxology one or a praxis one. But do you know who also didn’t like the expression of the faith post Vatican II? My liberal professors during my undergrad. Do you know who also didn’t like the expression of the faith post Vatican II? My more traditional professors during my grad work.
Nobody says “this is great and is exactly as it should be,” unless they are clergy that like comfort, but that is true of any age of the Church. The Church on earth is always undergoing purification and being conformed to Christ.
In moral theology, there is a jesuitical position that one can tell an untruth, if it serves the greater good. It is not a lie nor to be punished as if it were a lie. But if we look at the spiritual masters, “never lying” is lauded as an absolute. But obviously not without some qualifiers to the absoluteness.
When we look at the question of obedience, we find that obedience is the same. Its absoluteness is not without qualifiers. What is a qualifier? When that obedience denies Christ or imperils your immortal soul or the soul of another.
What is a legitimate reason for being disobedient to the Pope? When the Pope is disobedient to Christ or when he commands something outside of his office (ie, all Catholics must not use the longbow Canon 29 of the Second Lateran Council .) This is not a protestant position but a Catholic position. (St. Thomas, St. Newman, St. Bellermine, etc.)
So contrary to so many out there, the question is not “Are the SSPX disobedient?” but “Is the Pope being disobedient or commanding something outside of his office,” because only in answering that can the question involving the SSPX be addressed.
Keep in mind here that when it comes down to the question of “what PRECICELY is it that the Pope requires the SSPX to accept?” is perhaps the largest moving target in history. To me, it reads as an ongoing symptom of the major question going into Vatican II — the loss of the sense of what the Church is (and is not) in the modern period. Vatican II was an attempt to answer that question. Reading VII closely, with footnotes, and historic documents of the Church at hand, one sometimes feels as if one should raise a point akin to Diogenes asking Plato if he really meant that man is a featherless chicken.
Gee, there are a lot of very thoughtful comments here. I hope Father Z is impressed with his supporters. I would like to add that we should remember Archbishop Lefebvre was suspended in the ‘70’s by Pope Paul VI for not teaching his seminarians the NO mass. (I am sure I need to be corrected on the details.) It is clear that then (as now) there was a goal to outlaw the VO. This is what gives (or should give) the FSSPX pause.