I agree that truth is higher than obedience. But I keep coming back to a deeper question: Who safeguards the truth? For me, this isn't really about canon law. Canons can change. Truth can't, because Truth is Christ. If Leo XIV is the valid successor of Peter ( I believe he is) , then my trust isn't first in Leo as a man. It's in Christ's promise to preserve His Church. Popes can make mistakes, and history shows they have. But I don't believe Christ would allow His Church to definitively lead the faithful away from the truth He entrusted to her. That's where I'm struggling with the SSPX. My trust has to be in Christ's promises more than in my own ability to judge when the Church has lost her way.
In my opinion, the biggest problem is that they preserved the tradition and the Latin form of the Mass, but did they preserve their faith in God? Faith is not just about rituals and tradition. If Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, it was because they strictly observed the law and religious regulations, yet failed to truly worship God and care for other people. One cannot exist without the other tradition without God inevitably leads to pride. I know that the Society of Saint Pius X wanted to restore the Church to the path it followed before the Council, but they relied on human resources rather than on God. As a religious community, they continued to grow, attracting more and more members. Even if their bishops, because of old age, were eventually unable to carry out certain responsibilities, their strong growth in this postmodern, increasingly atheistic age—marked by declining faith, fewer believers, and fewer priests would sooner or later have become even more evident. Obedience is essential in the life of faith, yet they showed fear because they focused on human limitations instead of trusting in God's providence. Rather than believing that God would enable them to overcome the crisis and preserve order despite human weaknesses and difficult circumstances, they placed their confidence in what was merely human. In my view, they ended up making the worst possible decision.
I feel like we are in a window looking back on time. When Luther challenged the Catholic Church. When the church was so powerful and entwined with politics and power. Luther’s arguments for splitting made sense. But look what happened. The world revolted against the church, revolutions, persecutions of Catholics. Beheadings, torture. Catholics can not be excummunicated by Rome. The Catholics excommunicate themselves…I can attend any church, but if I participate in it I have excommunicated myself from the Catholic Church. If the flock of the SSPX follows the priests and participate, they have excommunicated themselves. They will no longer be Roman Catholics but SSPX Catholics. Can their leaders be so caught up in themselves they cannot see this? They are not demonstrating humility but ego. Jesus was so against this type of arrogance. A great grief and sadness this week.
Todays first reading i think is helpful as the Church goes through this time: Ephesians 2:19-22 Brothers and sisters: You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
Does Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe not excommunicate himself by performing a clearly blasphemous sodomite mass? In doing so he is in league with the devil.
Jesus told many saints that those in authority in the Church must be obeyed, even when they are wrong. I forget which saint, but He told her that even if her confessor told her to not do what Jesus Himself told her to do, she MUST do what the confessor said.
https://www.google.com/search?clien...ate=ive&vld=cid:329b5a6f,vid:dym2f9RYFPI,st:0 It's funny, I enjoy Taylor Marshall, but it's been some time since listening to one of his clips. In the above, he helps clarify between illicit and schismatic acts. In some inaccurate statements above, I notice misunderstandings. I recommend taking the time to digest Marshall's comments concerning the recent consecrations.
Also, the following accents the necessity of a visible Church: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/...3625fd-e49f2c02f2-387680386&mc_cid=e49f2c02f2
I’d reckon far more people on the ‘liberal’ side of The Church have excommunicated themselves than on the traditional side. However, the perverts are in power and can sustain the illusion of being ‘in good standing’.
Although I think it is more nuanced. If the laiety attend the SSPX Mass now, they are not necessarily excommunicated, i.e., not if it is for spiritual or liturgical reasons. But if the lay people formally adhere to the doctrines of the SSPX (which is difficult to determine ostensibly) or if they are members of the SSPX third order, then they are excommunicated. Michael Matt pointed out isolated communities who have no recourse to the Novus Ordo Mass. They are only served by the SSPX, for example in Kenya and in Japan. In cases like this they may be attending for spiritual reasons. Chris Jackson is of the opinion that the excommunication of the 6 Bishops is legal according to Cannon Law. However, he disputes that the excommunication of the SSPX priests and laiety is legal at all - because it is proclaimed generically in an explanatory note (and therefore not a legal penalty). Jackson says that in order for priests and lay people to be legally excommunicated they would have to be deemed culpable of a schismatic act on a case by case basis and each person named. I don't know if he is right in saying that. However, in admitting that the Bishops of the SSPX are excommunicated, I think Jackson identifies the achillees heel of the SSPX position. Why would priests or laity continue to operate (or minister) under Bishops who have no faculties? Perhaps they (including the Bishops) don't believe any of the excommunications to be valid. I am not sure if an excomnunicated Bishop can legally confect the Eucharist during Mass? They definitely don't have faculties for Confirmations, Confession, Sacrament of the Sick etc. In the following video Bishop Williamson (R.I.P.) says a lot of laudable things but one thing he does is admit that, while the laiety were not excommunicated (in 1988), he himself was excommunicated. Bishop Williamson then went on to do many Confirmations all over the world. But he must have known that he, as an excommunicated Bishop, had no faculties to do that? Perhaps he had some legal get-out clause in mind such as 'supplied jurisdiction'? If the laity were educated enough to realise that whatever about their priests, their Bishops have no faculties, surely they would have to call it a day and return to the fold of the Church.
I am sure the Good God knows how confusing and terrible the times we are living in are and will make allowances for us if we feel lost and no longer know what to do or think. Things have become so bad that I suspect even saints would wonder what to do or think. However the Teachings of the Church remain the Teachings of the Church and no one, not even a Pope, can change them. The bottom line is that the Ten Commandments are still in place and at the End of our Lives we will answer to God if we break them. At that time, I suspect, if we say, 'But the Pope said it was alright!' , will not help us from being sent to hell. That's the bottom line. Matthew 7:21-23 21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. 22 Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many [a]miracles?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; leave Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
The bottom line is the act of disobedience to a superior. Jesus told the Jews to obey the commands of the Pharisees. The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do (Matthew 23). Likewise, Leo sits on the chair of Peter.
Yes. The bottom line is that the Pope sits in the Chair of Peter as the Vicar of Christ. There is no getting around this. I was very saddened to see John Henry Western and Father Muir going to attend these Consecrations in Switzerland. They kind of fall of my radar for doing this. It was very wrong of them. But it really, really saddened me that Bishop Schneider supported this. I had a huge admiration for him. Another one of the Christmas Card list. So sad.
But after telling the Jews to obey the Pharisees, Jesus introduces an interesting caveat. 'but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.' We have lots of examples of hypocrites in the Church (and here I reflect on Christ telling me to look at the beam in my own eye first).
I just feel heartbroken not only by the schism but also the modernist rot that runs deep in the Church right now in its alliance with every modern ISM. --- liberalism, scientism, homosexualism etc. The warning of Garabandal is needed urgently to correct the modernist cancer within the Church.
