Bishop Fellay: SSPX ‘does not seek primarily a canonical recognition’ [CC]

[Don_Ruggero]

I am confused here.
First you say that a priest must possess the faculty to absolve validly.
Then you say that there are exceptions.
If there are exceptions, then it is not true that a priest has to possess the faculty in all cases, such as cases of necessity.

Yes, a priest must possess the faculty to hear confessions in order to absolve validly.
No, there are no exceptions.
Can. 966 §1. The valid absolution of sins requires that the minister have, in addition to the power of orders, the faculty of exercising it for the faithful to whom he imparts absolution.
There are two sources for the faculty to hear confessions: by the law itself and by grant.
§2. A priest can be given this faculty either by the law itself or by a grant made by the competent authority according to the norm of ⇒ can. 969.
There are instances where the law itself supplies the faculty because the faculty is essential to carrying out the office to which a priest has been appointed, as but one example from several scenarios demonstrates:
Can. 968 §1. In virtue of office, a local ordinary, canon penitentiary, a pastor, and those who take the place of a pastor possess the faculty of hearing confessions, each within his jurisdiction.
(The canon penitentiary can hardly function as “the confessor of the diocese” if he does not have the faculty to hear confessions. By virtue of being named as canon penitentiary, the law itself grants him the faculty to hear confession and also to deal with reserved matters that are competent to the canon penitentiary. I should probably add that this is a title well known in Europe but it does not exist in the United States because of the decision of the bishops of that country.)

On the other hand, there are many priests who would not have the faculty by the law itself – that is they are not pastor of a parish, for example – and so the faculty is conceded to them by way of grant.
Can. 969 §1. The local ordinary alone is competent to confer upon any presbyters whatsoever the faculty to hear the confessions of any of the faithful. Presbyters who are members of religious institutes, however, are not to use the faculty without at least the presumed permission of their superior.
In the case of a priest who does not have the faculty to hear confession for whatever reason – a typical example is that the priest has been removed from the clerical state – the law itself supplies to him the faculty to validly and licitly absolve someone who is at the point of death.
Can. 976 Even though a priest lacks the faculty to hear confessions, he absolves validly and licitly any penitents whatsoever in danger of death from any censures and sins, even if an approved priest is present.
At this moment, the salvation of the soul about to leave this life hangs in the balance. All the Church’s solicitude at that moment is that the soul would not be lost eternally. Thus the normal processes of law are in immediate suspension. So, a laicised priest, finding himself present to someone who is dying could at that moment, by grant of the law, lift even an excommunication that is reserved to the Pope…precisely because we are up against the irreversible moment of death.

Death affords no time for recourse to the mechanisms of either canonical due process in the external forum or recourse by a confessor to the Apostolic Penitentiary for resolution in the internal forum; one may literally only have moments or even seconds in which to resolve everything before the penitent expires…and, at that point, they are off to their judgment and there is nothing more to do from the perspective of sacraments once the person has definitively quit this realm for eternity.

Thus the matter is not an exception to the necessity of faculty to validly absolve but rather it acknowledges the necessity – the law supplies directly the faculty precisely in order that the priest who has not the faculty habitually may, in this instance, validly as well as licitly absolve.

As for the SSPX,

• Faculty conferred by the law itself – apart from absolving at the moment of death – would not apply to them. Since they are suspended a divinis and because of their status, they do not receive any office from a competent ecclesiastical authority by which there could be a conferral of the faculty by the law itself.

Their deprivation of status has been reserved by the Holy See to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei to whom recourse must be had if, for example, a priest of the SSPX wishes to regularise his status with the Church. Their decision and their disposition then would have to be complied with by the priest departing the SSPX as well as by the ecclesiastical authority making petition on the priest’s behalf. (Provision would have to be made for the bond of incardination to be effected in order, then, for the suspension to be lifted and so forth.)

• There is no one in the SSPX canonically capable of making the grant of faculty to hear confessions.

The Holy Father, in a magnanimous gesture for The Year of Mercy, has assured that the absolutions that the priests of the SSPX confer during this demarcated time are valid. He is able to do this because he has not only supreme but also immediate power regarding everyone in the Church in a way utterly unique to the Petrine ministry and its exercise.

Does this provide clarification?

 

[commenter]

I agree the SSPX is not focused primarily on canonical recognition. But I see their primary goal as maintaining the SSPX organization.

Bishop Fellay has to plug the leaks from both sides. For years they have been “threatened” from one direction by FSSP and similar groups that offer something similar to SSPX ministry, but within the Church, as well as greater acceptance of TLM among some bishops. This has drawn away some of their support and may draw more, from those more loyal to the Church, itself. There is more recognition among some SSPX laity that the enemies of Christianity are not the Vatican but anti-Catholic secular politicians and media.

To keep** those** sheep from straying back to Rome, SSPX has to keep promoting the tantalizing prospect that canonical recognition might happen soon. ("Don’t swim the Tiber on your own! We will soon cross the Tiber as a group"!)

But more recently there is another challenge, SSPX “Resistance” and other names. These groups claim to represent the true SSPX, denounce the “concilliar” SSPX or “Neo-SSPX” of Bishop Fellay, for insufficient denunciation of Rome. Unlike earlier movements that broke with SSPX, these factions are raiding from within. They identify themselves as the authentic followers of their founder, Archbishop Lefebvre. They are setting up competing chapels, emphasizing they are **still **SSPX - but not under Bishop Fellay. They are competing for seminarians.

SSPX has to counter this group by showing SSPX can be just as rowdy, just as macho, just as rebellious - but only rebellious to the Catholic Church, **not rebellious towards politicians, the media, or anyone else. **

I predict the SSPX will keep evolving and adapting to whatever strategies will preserve the organization, and keep numbers. I also predict there will in a few years be breakoff groups within the Resistance, each claiming to be the “true” Resistance.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I am confused here.
First you say that a priest must possess the faculty to absolve validly.
Then you say that there are exceptions.
If there are exceptions, then it is not true that a priest has to possess the faculty in all cases, such as cases of necessity.

I just came back to the thread and, looking at it with fresh eyes, it suddenly struck me why what I had formulated was confusing to you.

In that earlier post, when I said there was an “exception,” I was not intending to convey that there was an exception to the need for faculty since the law itself (to those of us who work with the law) clearly indicates that is impossible – the faculty is necessary for validity as well as liceity.

Rather, Canon 976 is a distinct exception in that the law itself is supplying the faculty to validly and licitly absolve to a priest who is otherwise unsupervised – and actually even unknown – in regard to conferring the sacrament…and may even be without attachment through incardination to any diocese or institute of consecrated life.

In other words, when the law itself otherwise confers the faculty, it is conferred on a priest who is receiving an appointment from a competent ecclesiastical authority. The competent ecclesiastical authority is charged by the law to assure himself that the priest is canonically regular as well as suitable to the office to which the priest is appointed.

Similarly, when the faculty to hear confessions is given by way of grant, the canon specifically charges that the one conceding the faculty is to assure himself that the priest is suitable for hearing confessions, establishing this by examination or other means of verification.

Canon 976 does not presuppose that vetting or any oversight at all. In fact, no competent ecclesiastical superior may ever even know that Canon 976 was utilised by a laicised priest. Indeed, the man who uses this provision could be a priest forcibly dismissed from the clerical state against his will. All that is very much an extreme exception in the face of how the concession of this faculty is normally quite heavily regulated.

I apologise for the confusion.

When I said “exception,” I assuredly should not have left it baldly unqualified as though a reader would be able to intuit what constitutes the “exception.”