I read it differently, I was scribbling this elsewhere: This is the last day before the main event and furious desperate letters are going over and back between Econe and Rome but it looks like it will go ahead without Papal approval. Just to rehash some of the points again: It seems to me that the big picture here is the very Catholic, very old and very holy, doctrine of obedience to proper ecclesiastical authority. The SSPX recognise Pope Leo XIV as the legitimate Pope, he has said they should not appoint these new four bishops but they are doing this anyway. That is the big moral question we have to talk about, forget legalisms and states of emergency etc etc. The point is that there have always been complications in the doctrine of obedience which come in here, e.g.: Never an absolute doctrine of obedience A simple analogy might explain this. Imagine an idealistic guy who is sent to journalism school for two years, where he is taught proper journalism, i.e. always check your sources and get and articulate the alternative point of view etc etc. Then he gets a job on a newspaper and writes an article according to these principles and the editor takes him aside and tells him to rewrite it in a crooked way. He tries to protest about what he is taught but the editor tells him the facts of life, he pays his wages and when he says ‘do this’ you just ‘do it’ alright and to blazes with all that nice theory. If that is how things develop then you can see how absolute obedience will actually destroy ones conscience and one’s own responsibility to do the right thing. Priests for example spend seven years in seminary trying to develop an informed conscience so that they can then strive to tell right from wrong, but if they develop as their only true practical doctrine, obedience in everything to bishops or abbots or Rome, then what actually were they really learning? Another way to look at it is that you have to answer to God for your actions on earth, you have to take responsibility for them, so you cannot just cross your arms before Our Lord and reply thats nothing to do with me, above my pay grade, I just did what the bishop told me to do etc etc. In otherwords you cannot have an ecclesiastical equivalent of the Nuremburg trial, I was only following orders! Obedience means different things at different levels That analogy from the army might also help us further here, an institution with a big sense of obedience. Compare if you will, the different levels of obedience which apply there to the different ranks. Compare a new recruit who is told by his sergeant to peel the potatoes and he goes off on a rant about not giving in to absolute authority etc etc. Do you have any sympathy for him, should he just peel the potatoes and put up with it? But now compare that to a high up general that is asked to move his 100,000s of troops forward in some battle, where he might think they are going to get slaughtered. Does he just follow that order blindly or will he insist on talking to his boss and only when he is satisfied as to the reasons behind the order will he obey it. In practice I think thats how it works in most armies. Now think about the current leaders of the SSPX. They have about a million souls to worry about and I think over a thousand people in religious life (priests, seminarians, brothers and sisters) and countless churches and numerous schools and seminaries. They get down the line, eventually from Rome, don’t do these consecrations, even though they and Rome know that all of that structure of the SSPX will die soon enough for the want of bishops. Are they entitled to know the reasons why they are to get no bishops, is it good enough for Rome to click its fingers and expect everybody to hop without any real effort to explain why in half a century of discussions they couldn’t agree to provide bishops to the order? If you have grave doubts about your superior, that impacts your obedience decision Its well known in theology and in religious orders, that you should obey your superior even where, sometimes anyway, you think its the wrong step or if indeed it actually is the wrong step. So for example I would say a given priest should normally do whatever his bishop asks, but lets throw a serious analogy at that priest, say the bishop has asked him to sell off the parish church, owned by the parish for centuries, and give him all the money from the sale. Thats a big ask and I believe any honest and holy priest would have to pause before such an order. But it seems to me that his view of the bishop should come into it, at an extreme point anyway. So the priest might have a range of possible responses, he might just agree that its the right decision, then he obviously should just do it, he might think its the wrong decision but he knows the bishop is under enormous financial pressure and just sees no other way out, in otherwords he sees his bishop trying to do the right thing and hence maybe he should obey, but picture the scene if he happens to know his bishop is best buddies with all the local building developers who coveted the place where the church is for years. What should he do if he believes his bishop to be a crook like that, does he close his mind to that fact and just obey as he has been taught to do? I think not. So that overall view of where we are in our understanding of the current Vatican, does come into this. The Vatican says to the SSPX “just don’t do these consecrations and we will discuss the matter and we are sure it will work out” and you will get your bishops. Do you believe them? Do you think the Vatican are lying about that? You cannot close your ears to such questions, yes the Catholic Church is owned by Our Lord and He will prevail in the long run, but the Avignon Papacy and Napoleon’s imprisonment of the Pope, just to take two issues, show that in the short term the Vatican can do the wrong thing, and be captured by the crooked political forces of the day. The modern Vatican has shown again and again how much they favour the crooked Globalist/Occult agenda, whether it be the Climate Change hoax, mass immigration, LGBT, Covid, you name it. We cannot close our minds or ears to this, its very hard to believe that they have any real sympathy for the SSPX and, I would suggest, in fact want to destroy them, as is pretty explicitly laid out in the document Traditionis Custodes and its accompanying letter, with respect to the other traditional orders at any rate. So no I don’t believe the modern Vatican is sincere here and I think one’s view of this should come into the question of obedience, at this extreme level in any case. Just a few thoughts anyway, and its why I support these consecrations
The way I see it is do you believe Jesus or not when He says the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church, and that Peter is the rock upon which His Church is built? If you trust that Jesus is with His Church until the end of time, and that His Divine Providence is providing for His Church, then you will stay with its head, the pope. Even if for a while you feel that the Church as a whole is plunging beneath the waves, you will still be clinging to her when she rises back up again, as Jesus promised she always will. Can a body survive without a head? Who is the head of the SSPX? The superior general? Is he Peter? They didn't need to do these consecrations to preserve tradition. They only needed to do it to continue the SSPX. Tradition is being preserved by other orders and individual priests that are managing to still remain faithful to the Pope. God will preserve what He wants preserved. He will protect what He wants protected. And He will not rely upon public disobedience to do so.
If every bishop, priest, or religious order could decide for itself that Rome was no longer trustworthy and therefore ignore the Pope's commands, what principle would keep the Church united?
I think it's all so heartbreaking. It seems that yesterday also a gay couple celebrated their 50 years of being together with a Mass in Westminster with 2 bishops and a cardinal on the altar. It's also reported that the Pope sent a letter of congratulations. One of the men was an ex priest. The church is being eclipsed.
Yes, the most severe form of excommunication. It goes beyond the 1988 decision of John Paul II. Contrast this with the soft treatment given to Communist-appointed bishops in China. We live in strange days. But of course, the instant news of the internet world has changed the importance of perception greatly.
Opinions that might be of interest: "An Explanatory Note Cannot Excommunicate" https://gloria.tv/post/ZNMFbTUwGLbk6c1mYwJJjpqZF Cardinals Muller and Burke's reaction
Thank you for this explanation Woman Clothed WithThe Sun: n.news5 hours agoedited "An Explanatory Note Cannot Excommunicate" On 2 July, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, led by Cardinal Víctor Fernández, issued a decree and an accompanying explanatory note on the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX). InfoVaticana.com notes the two documents carry very different legal weight. The decree declares that the six bishops directly involved in the 1 July illicit episcopal consecrations have incurred latae sententiae excommunication. Canon law permits only a declaratory decree or judicial sentence to declare such penalties, limiting the decree's legal effect to those six bishops. The explanatory note goes further, stating that FSSPX priests are in schism, and that lay faithful who formally adhere to the schism incur excommunication. However, the note has no penal force because it is neither a law, a penal precept, nor a declaratory decree or judicial sentence, but simply a doctrinal explanation. Furthermore, latae sententiae excommunication requires an individual assessment of culpability and cannot be applied through a blanket declaration. According to 1996 Vatican guidance, merely attending FSSPX Masses does not constitute formal adherence to schism.
I see there was thunder and lightening and heavy rain during the event in Switzerland. Many people took it as a sign. I was dismayed that John Henry Western and Bishop Schneider were present. I have such a high opinion of both of them. It reminds me of the prophecy that we will reach a time of confusion that even great saints like St Catherine of Sienna or Padre Pio would be confused and dismayed. But what can any of do but follow the gentle voice of our own consciences? I was always brought up to believe that obedience to the Pope pretty well defined us as Catholics. It is interesting that they are claiming they mass excommunicated lay people. This never happened the last time round. I strongly suspect this is because of the internet. Lay people are very influential on the internet.
Did SSPX Enter SCHISM? Dr. Taylor Marshall Traditionalist Dr. Taylor Marshall sides with Pope Leo on this issue...
Based on this post it seems the excommunications are not legal. Mass excommunication of lay people who want the TLM certainly seems very excessive. Of course modern communication allows everything to be examined. When Padre Pio was being persecuted we didn't have Internet so very few people even knew it. We are in the era of Cardinal against Cardinal and Bishop against Bishop. Of course it doesn't help that we have Cardinal Fernandes seemingly driving this. He seems to go beyond what's legal. The warning is close I think. The church is in chaos.
I think that most of us would agree that a lie is the most dangerous when it contains the highest amount of truth: 95% true and 5% lie .... might be extremely difficult to detect. Obedience to the Pope as the identity of the Catholic seems to be transmitted without major problem for as long as the authority remains faithful to Christ. Recently I read [don't remember where] that the absolute and universal authority of the Pope that cannot be challenged is based on the absolute TRUTH and authority of the Gospel, coming directly from Christ, that he has the responsibility to preserve as successor of Peter. Then the Pope deserves a level of obedience, even apart from declared dogmas, that has no parallel. But we are not living in this kind of fidelity to Christ at the top of the Church. Thus, we CANNOT base our judgment and the responsibility of our conscience on the automatic "obey the Pope" response, no matter what. Because we don't want to get caught into supporting what now is being offered as magisterium even if it contradicts Scripture and the very words of the Gospel. So we have to grow up and exercise our responsibility as Catholics. We need to start paying attention carefully and reading the "signs of the times" as Jesus invites us in the Gospel if we want to remain in the Church that Jesus founded. No matter who has the power to use and abuse its laws and tradition. Regrettably at this time, we need to be able to sift through everything that comes from Rome ... whether words, silences, actions, or omissions. The authority of the Pope is not "personal". It is based ONLY on his obedience to Christ and the Gospel. Obedience is not only for the rest of Catholics. It is FIRST OF ALL, the primary obligation for the Pope -together with the love of Christ [Peter, do you love me?] Over the last number of weeks, an insight has surfaced in my heart -in this context- that I never thought of before: I think that Truth is higher than obedience.
This video has a very helpful analysis of the excommunications versus Cannon Law itself, and shows that even Canon Law is not respected by Cardinal Tucho
That storm swept down to were I live. It was very strong and the temperature dropped a good 15 degrees. Though there were violent winds it wasn't as terrifying as usual, it rained and rained and left an emptiness behind. It hard to explain. As if the rain wasn't meant to relieve the earth, though it naturally did. I am probably thinking too much about this storm! Reading the headlines it did appear lay people were excommunicated but reading the procedure to return released yesterday by the Vatican, it says lay people only searching for the old liturgy cannot necessarily be excommunicated and they need to only approach a priest and no longer attend. What is not addressed are schools and convents that are run by the society. Wonder what will happen to those? https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatic...s-x-ways-to-repent-return-full-communion.html
I have never attended an SSPX Mass or Confession, although I admit I would have been tempted to if there had been one close enough to me. Having read the SSPX's declaration of Faith, I have to admit I was sympathetic to a lot of it, although I would not cross the line of disobedience to the Pope. However, from this standpoint I feel I have been close enough to experience that feeling of looking into the abyss, of the chill wind of what it would be like to be excommunicated. Taylor Marshall describes it too in his video posted above. It has been a chastening and sobering experience, and at the same time there is lingering confusion and nagging questions left hanging. I noted many comments to the effect - if all religions are paths to God, then what does it matter if one is excommunicated. A legitimate question perhaps. I suppose to formally adhere to the SSPX, without even having ever attended an SSPX Mass, I would have to assent to the SSPX Declaration of Faith and reject any statements contradicting it in Vatican II. Like Padraig, I have never read any of the Vatican II documents. That is a project for the future, although I hesitate to place that responsibility upon myself. But if we are the sheep of His flock, the flock that is fed by His hand, then we need to stay with the flock and the Good Shepherd. "Do you love me Peter? Feed My sheep." Pope Benedict XVI gave this as part of his address at the Shrine of Mariazell, Austria in 2007 (Saturday 8th September). "As a result, obedience to God's will, obedience to Jesus Christ, must be, really and practically, humble obedience to the Church. I think that this too is something calling us to a constant and deep examination of conscience. It is all summed up in the prayer of Saint Ignatius of Loyola - a prayer which always seems to me so overwhelming that I am almost afraid to say it, yet one which, for all its difficulty, we should always repeat: 'Take O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will. All that I have and all that I posess you have given me: I surrender it all to You; it is all Yours, dispose of it according to Your will. Give me only Your love and Your grace; with these I will be rich enough and will desire nothing more.'"
These are only the current defiled administrators of The Church. They are not The Church. We are facing a dual assault by the devil, liberal perverts on the one hand (it looks like they’re right to the very top) trying to force disgusted souls into the hands of gnostic schismatics on the other. Difficult as it is, we must plod on with The Church, knowing that under the vile scum growing on the surface lies the Body of Christ.
