The article about the "OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH" referenced the Society of Saint Pius X which has prompted a reader to ask: I understand that as of July 2007 priests are allowed to celebrate the Pre-Vatican II form of the Mass and also that the bishops of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has been freed from the excommunication they incurred. What I do not understand now is if all priests can celebrate this form of Mass, and the bishops of the SSPX are no longer under excommunication, then what exactly is the canonical status of the SSPX? - Gift.
Response:
In short, the canonical status of the SSPX actually remains as it has always been since its inception "Canonically irregular". This was a question that was asked more and more frequently, when Pope Benedict XVI in July 2007 declared, in his Apostolic Letter "Summorum Pontificum", that the traditional Latin Mass (also known as the Tridentine Mass) may be celebrated by all priests without an indult. But before we talk about the lifting of the excommunication imposed by Pope John Paul II on the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), it is necessary to understand the actual reasons behind the imposition of this sanction in the first place. And for the benefit of those readers who may be unfamiliar with this issue, let’s also review very briefly the origins of the Society and the events leading up to the excommunications and their history so far.
The SSPX is a religious institute that was founded in 1970 by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre after the Second Vatican Council. The Archbishop watched with dismay the liturgical upheaval that was then initiated, ostensibly in accord with the “spirit of Vatican II,” and he was determined to found a group of priests who would be faithful, in his understanding to Catholic liturgical traditions. From the start then, the Society eschewed celebration of the Novus Ordo Mass (the way we celebrate Mass today), continuing instead to use all the liturgical rites that were in force before the Council including celebrating Mass in the way Gift watched Pope Francis did yesterday.
Although a detailed description of the origins of the SSPX is beyond the scope of this post; but it should be noted that from its very inception, the Society had a questionable canonical status, as it was not established fully in accord with the canonical norms in force at the time. You cannot just wake up one day and decide to form a religion society without due process whether you a Bishop or not. It attracted, and continues to attract, large numbers of Catholics throughout the world, including many young men who wished to enter the priesthood and celebrate Mass using the traditional rites. For decades, there were sporadic talks between Archbishop Lefebvre and various Vatican officials, in an attempt to straighten out the status of the SSPX within the Church. While occasionally it appeared that some progress was being made, reconciliation always proved illusory. In the meantime, Archbishop Lefebvre continued to function as the head of the SSPX’s seminaries, and to ordain priests in the traditional Latin rite. As the Archbishop grew increasingly older, however, there were concerns about the future of the SSPX after his death. Without a bishop, future SSPX seminarians could not be ordained, and eventually the entire Society might conceivably die out altogether. To prevent this, Archbishop Lefebvre decided in June 1988 to consecrate four priests of his Society as bishops! In this way the future of the SSPX would be safe, as it would be possible for new priests to be ordained for the Society even after the Archbishop’s death.
For those of us who are now thinking "What a brilliant idea from a very wise Bishop". Think again. From a canonical standpoint, this was a very serious matter. Canon 1013 states unequivocally that no bishop is permitted to consecrate anyone else as bishop, without a ponfitical mandate. In other words, the Pope must first determine that there is a need for a new bishop, and he must select the candidate (or approve of a candidate whose name is suggested to him). This requirement touches on a very fundamental element of the Church’s hierarchical structure: the Pope, as successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, chooses men to be elevated to the episcopacy when he finds that there is a particular need. For example, if the Bishop of Diocese X retires or dies, the Pope as a rule chooses someone to replace him. On some other occasion, the Pope might determine that Diocese Y has grown too large and should be divided into two new dioceses, in which case he will approve their official territorial boundaries and select a bishop for each. Conversely, the Pope might decide that for demographic or political reasons, one diocese should be merged with another. The point is that all such decisions ultimately belong to the Pope. We always know that our bishops govern our dioceses because the Pope chose them for that office. And all such bishops maintain hierarchical communion with the Holy Father in Rome. They constitute the College of Bishops, the successors to the Apostles, who were chosen by Christ Himself (c. 336).
This is why consecration of a bishop without first receiving a mandate from the Holy Father to do so carries with it serious consequences. Canon 1382 spells them out: both the bishop who consecrates another bishop without a pontifical mandate, and the one who receives consecration from him, incur excommunication. A bishop may not create new bishops on his own initiative! Only the Pope may decide when a new bishop is to be consecrated, and who he will be. So if a bishop consecrates another bishop without a pontifical mandate, does that mean that the consecration is invalid? Here is where things get a bit tricky. Every bishop possesses the ability to perform an episcopal consecration validly. If he does so without the approval of the Pope, the consecration is valid — assuming that it is done properly, in accord with the prescribed rubrics — but it is illicit i.e., illegal. (To better understand when a sacrament is valid but illicit search my timeline with "ARE THEY REALLY CATHOLICS?"). The candidate really does receive the episcopal consecration, so he truly becomes a bishop, with all the sacramental powers which that entails. But if the Pope did not authorize him to be made a bishop, he is not in communion with the Pope, and so he is in schism with the Catholic Church (c. 751). And as such he is subject to excommunication on that ground as well (c. 1364.1).
This is exactly what happened when Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four SSPX priests as bishops in 1988. Because the Archbishop publicly announced his intention in advance, then Pope John Paul II was aware of it, and exerted tremendous efforts to convince him to change his mind. Since much of their communication was kept private, we will never know the full details. But it is clear that the Pope warned the Archbishop of the grave consequences of such an action but the Archbishop decided to perform the consecrations anyway. As we have seen many times here, if a person commits an excommunicable offense, certain elements must be in place for the penalty actually to be imposed. When, for example, a Catholic is acting from force or fear, or is ignorant of the penalty attached to his action, no sanction is incurred even though he commits the crime. A person must be fully informed and fully free if he is to be held fully accountable for his action. Although we cannot know the intentions and motivations of both Archbishop Lefebvre and the four men whom he consecrated as bishops, it is clear that Pope John Paul II did. For on July 1, 1988, the Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops decreed publicly that the Archbishop and the four new SSPX "bishops" had in fact incurred the penalty of excommunication. Interestingly, the decree is more concerned with the fact that the consecrations constituted a schismatic act than with the absence of a pontifical mandate. It appears that the Vatican wished to emphasize that the SSPX hierarchy had by this action removed itself definitively from full communion with the Catholic Church. Because the Vatican issued this decree, we can safely conclude that the Holy Father had determined that both the Archbishop and the four new bishops had acted with full knowledge that they were committing an excommunicable offense, and with the full freedom to choose not to do it. Otherwise, this announcement to the world would never have been made!
The Pope wished to inform all Catholics, including the many who were affiliated with the SSPX, that the Society’s leadership had removed itself from communion with the Church. The wording of the decree also includes a warning to Catholics, urging them not to support the schism, urging them instead to remain within the Catholic Church. (Note, by the way, that the decree clearly did not excommunicate everyone involved in the SSPX, nor did it state that anyone connected to the Society is ipso facto a schismatic. The Pope recognized that there were and are many well intentioned Catholics who attend Mass and receive the sacraments from SSPX priests, simply because they prefer the traditional rites, without understanding the canonical issues involved. Similarly, there were and are SSPX priests who were and are members of the Society because they wish to celebrate Mass in the traditional Latin rite, and do not wish to be in schism with Rome. It is impossible, therefore, to make any blanket statements about the status of everyone involved with the SSPX and a close reading of any document from the Vatican pertaining to the Society will show that Rome studiously refrains from accusing everyone connected with the SSPX of harboring the same schismatic sentiments as those bishops who incurred excommunication.)
So how did Archbishop Lefebvre and the four newly consecrated SSPX bishops react to the news of the excommunication? In a nutshell, they insisted (and those still living continue to insist today) that although Rome officially declared that they had incurred excommunication, they really hadn’t! In an attempt to justify their action, both the bishops themselves and various supportive members of the SSPX have formulated elaborate explanations, supposedly grounded in canon law! One such justification argues that there was no excommunication because those involved believed that their action was necessary. Simply put, the SSPX asserts that when you believe you should disobey not just the Code of Canon Law but even a personal directive from the Pope himself, you are justified in doing so and incur no sanction! The absurdity of such an interpretation should be obvious. If we Catholics were all permitted to ignore church laws and papal orders whenever we thought they were wrong and we were right, our hierarchy would have no authority, church laws would be meaningless, and church discipline would disappear and we would all turn Protestants overnight. The undeniable fact is that Rome found that the Archbishop and the four new bishops had met all the necessary criteria to incur excommunication. If the Pope says you are excommunicated, it is spiritually dangerous business to claim that he is in error!
For years, the official position of the SSPX toward the excommunications of its four bishops along with the SSPX’s founder was to argue (wrongly) that the sanction had not been incurred, because Lefebvre and the four new bishops believed that they were acting with justification when they disobeyed the Holy Father. Lefebvre himself died in 1991, still under excommunication. But in 2008, the four bishops whom he’d ordained quietly petitioned Pope Benedict XVI, requesting that their excommunications be lifted. Their petition acknowledged the supreme authority of the Holy Father, and noted that “the current situation causes us much suffering.” Gone were the claims that John Paul II’s declaration of their excommunication had had no effect, and that their direct disobedience had been justified. The four men wanted to return to union with Rome.
In January 2009, Pope Benedict agreed. Convinced of their good will, he remitted the penalty incurred by the bishops when they had been consecrated by Lefebvre back in 1988. With this act, the four were restored to communion with the Church. Ironically, Benedict’s action was largely misunderstood, not only by the mainstream media and the Catholic faithful as a whole, but even by some Catholic bishops! It was wrongly thought that by this decree, the Pope had somehow legalized the entire SSPX, or approved of the episcopal consecrations performed by Lefebvre—neither of which is the case. In agreeing to their request, Pope Benedict focused not so much on the SSPX and its status within the Catholic Church, as on the spiritual state of these four men, who had been living in a state of excommunication for over twenty years! In a subsequent papal audience, the Pope described his action as “an act of paternal compassion.” Nowhere in his decree does the Pope make any mention of the status of the SSPX. They essentially asked pardon for what had happened in 1988—and they got it. It was as simple as that. He noted that “the Society [of St. Pius X] has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.” In other words, the four bishops are no longer excommunicated, but that does not mean that they (or any other cleric in the SSPX) can licitly administer sacraments to the Catholic faithful. Before they can engage in Catholic ministry, it is first necessary to straighten out the legal situation of the SSPX within the Catholic Church.
Then came Pope Francis who by-passed this process in his Letter to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, and on 1 September 2015, while saying nothing of the canonical status of the Society itself "establish[ed] that those who during the Holy Year of Mercy approach [priests of the SSPX] to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins." He thus granted them the faculty, which can be given by the law itself or by the competent authority, needed for exercising validly in this sacrament the power of orders. Then on the conclusion of the Holy Year of Mercy, on 20 November 2016, Pope Francis, again without saying anything of the Society as such, but "trusting in the good will of their priests to strive with God's help for the recovery of full communion in the Catholic Church", extended for them this faculty "until further provisions are made". Then again, on 27 March 2017, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith communicated that Pope Francis had decided to grant local ordinaries the right to give to a priest in good standing the faculty to preside at the marriage of followers of the Society, immediately after which they will participate in a Mass celebrated by an SSPX priest, or, if no priest in good standing can receive the consent of the couple, to give the faculty instead to an SSPX priest. This document explicitly states that the Society itself remains irregular. Therefore, from all that has been said, the SSPX can only administer the sacrament of penance and witness marriages as an extraordinary permission/jurisdiction when regular priests who are in good standing with Rome are not to be found.
So to answer Gift's question, while the bishops who lead the SSPX today are no longer under excommunication the society remains canonically irregular but not simply because they wish to say the traditional Latin Mass. Therefore, the fact that all priests are now permitted to say the traditional Mass has in itself no effect whatsoever on the canonical status of the SSPX. No Catholic who wishes to remain in good standing with Rome should therefore willingly attend ANY liturgy being celebrated by the clergy of the SSPX because although they can VALIDLY celebrate these sacraments including the ones Rome has not granted permission (like Mass and ordinations) they remain ILLICT. We can only pray that there be sufficient good will on both sides to enable them to come to an agreement, so that we all may be united under the Vicar of Christ once again.
For the Church. Pray for the Holy Church.
Comments
Post a Comment