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

[Generic_Name]

The SSPX were guilty of acting against the Church and the very person of the Holy Father in a schismatic act.

As Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in the Apostolic Letter, Ecclesia Dei:
"…this act was one of disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the church, such as is the ordination of bishops whereby the apostolic succession is sacramentally perpetuated. Hence such disobedience - which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy - constitutes a schismatic act."
This must never be lost sight of until they repent of their disobedience and for having rejected the Roman primacy.

And while that act is declared schismatic, the ABC article to which I was referring called the entire society “schismatic,” which is not correct. wdtprs.com/blog/2015/09/sspx-not-in-schism/

wdtprs.com/blog/2015/03/sspx-schism-or-not/

I posted that statement in response to the complaints of another poster that said the Holy Father was mischaracterized. Both “sides” are misrepresented by ABC.

I am not a follower of the Society, and have never stepped foot in a chapel of theirs. I pray for reconciliation, as I think the Society has MUCH to offer the modem Church, the least of which is liturgical - though we desperately need help there, too.

 

[Tomdstone]

What Bishop Fellay says doesn’t really matter, does it?

I thought he was head of the SSPX?

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

What Bishop Fellay says doesn’t really matter, does it?

Actually you are right. Fellay didn’t ask for a dispensation for confession. In fact he found out about it through the media.

The pope is head of the church and of Fellay’s priests.

The SSPX. Has said much recently as has the Vatican.

I think everything is on the table. From full on separation to unilateral recognition. Neither would suprise me.

One things for certain though. If regularization happens my old parish will miss me.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

And while that act is declared schismatic, the ABC article to which I was referring called the entire society “schismatic,” which is not correct. wdtprs.com/blog/2015/09/sspx-not-in-schism/

wdtprs.com/blog/2015/03/sspx-schism-or-not/

I posted that statement in response to the complaints of another poster that said the Holy Father was mischaracterized. Both “sides” are misrepresented by ABC.

I am not a follower of the Society, and have never stepped foot in a chapel of theirs. I pray for reconciliation, as I think the Society has MUCH to offer the modem Church, the least of which is liturgical - though we desperately need help there, too.

I am aware of Father’s thoughts on this matter. They do not agree exactly with my own. We are in perfect agreement, however, when he writes:
*That said, it must be admitted that Pope John Paul II wrote of the 1988 illicit consecration of bishops as a “schismatic act”. The 1983 Code in can. 751 describes schism as “withdrawal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or from communion with the members of the Church subject to him”. And I think that the “duck argument” could apply, at least as a warning of what could come in the future.

Moreover, in 2013 Card. Mueller of the CDF – also the President of the PCED – referred to them as being in schism…*
Personally I think it is crucial to underscore this:

• Their marriages are utterly invalid. Anyone who marries there is not validly married. Two Catholics would be every bit as married if they went to the Justice of the Peace, since the attempted marriage fails in both issues on account of lack of canonical form. They have no jurisdiction.
• Apart from this Year of Mercy and a limited grant given by Saint John Paul II, the absolutions of the priests in the sacrament of reconciliation are utterly invalid – unless they are absolving someone at the moment of death.
• Their baptisms and their confirmations contravene Church law. For canonists and theologians, it is how they handle confirmation that is the most telling of their own self-understanding, actually.
• Every sacrament they celebrate is illicit.
• They are all suspended a divinis – and every priest understands the tragic ramifications of that most grave of disciplinary actions.

May the Lord have mercy upon them for separating themselves from the Successor of Peter. As Saint John Paul II said it so well of Lefebvre and his followers:
[E]specially contradictory is a notion of Tradition which opposes the universal Magisterium of the Church possessed by the Bishop of Rome and the Body of Bishops. It is impossible to remain faithful to the Tradition while breaking the ecclesial bond with him to whom, in the person of the Apostle Peter, Christ himself entrusted the ministry of unity in his Church.

vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_commissions/ecclsdei/documents/hf_jp-ii_motu-proprio_02071988_ecclesia-dei_en.html

 

[Don_Ruggero]

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/i...015_Credit_Bohumil_Petrik_CNA_6_29_15.jpgSion, Switzerland, Jun 29, 2016 / 02:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After indications of progress toward reconciliation earlier this year, the head of the Society of St. Pius X stated Wednesday that canonical recognition is not what the priestly society primarily seeks.

“The Society of Saint Pius X, in the present state of grave necessity which gives it the right and duty to administer spiritual aid to the souls that turn to it, does not seek primarily a canonical recognition,” Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the SSPX, wrote in a June 29 communique.

He added that the SSPX “has a right” to canonical recognition “as a Catholic work.”

The society “has only one desire,” he said: “faithfully to bring the light of the bi-millennial Tradition which shows the only route to follow in this age of darkness in which the cult of man replaces the worship of God, in society as in the Church.”

Bishop Fellay’s statement was issued after a June 25-28 meeting of major superiors of the SSPX.

He stated that “in the great and painful confusion that currently reigns in the Church, the proclamation of Catholic doctrine requires the denunciation of errors that have made their way into it and are unfortunately encouraged by a large number of pastors, including the Pope himself.”

Recalling the motto of St. Pius X, “to restore all things in Christ”, Bishop Fellay said that this “cannot happen without the support of a Pope who concretely favors the return to Sacred Tradition.”

“While waiting for that blessed day, the Society of Saint Pius X intends to redouble its efforts to establish and to spread, with the means that Divine Providence gives to it, the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

He added that the SSPX “prays and does penance for the Pope, that he might have the strength to proclaim Catholic faith and morals in their entirety.”

By doing this, Bishop Fellay stated, the Pope will “hasten the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary that we earnestly desire as we approach the centennial of the apparitions in Fatima.”

The bishop’s statement also recalled that the purpose of the SSPX “is chiefly the formation of priests.”

The SSPX was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 to form priests, as a response to what he described as errors that had crept into the Church after the Second Vatican Council. Its relations with the Holy See became particularly strained in 1988 when Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer consecrated four bishops without the permission of Pope John Paul II.

The illicit consecrations resulted in the excommunication of the bishops involved. The excommunications of the surviving bishops were lifted in 2009 by Benedict XVI and since then negotiations “to rediscover full communion with the Church” have continued between the Society and the Vatican.

In remitting the excommunications, Benedict noted that “doctrinal questions obviously remain and until they are clarified the Society has no canonical status in the Church and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry.”

The biggest obstacles for the Society’s reconciliation have been the statements on religious liberty in Vatican II’s declaration Dignitatis humanae as well as the declaration Nostra aetate, which it claims contradict previous Catholic teaching.

There were indications in recent years of movement towards regularization of the priestly society, which has some 590 priest-members, including a memo apparently meant for circulation among its leadership.

The Feb. 19 memo from Fr. Franz Schmidberger had said it “seems the time to normalize the situation of the Society has come.” The priest is a past superior general of the society who is now rector of its seminary in Germany.

He said the Vatican had been “gradually lowering its demands and recent proposals” regarding the society’s position toward the Second Vatican Council and the Novus Ordo Mass which was implemented after it.

Although the group would be likely to “return from its ‘exile’,” he said, it would expect further discussion and would not be silent in the face of what it considers to be errors.

The priest’s memo noted the society’s need for licit consecration of any future bishops.

/…/

The head of the SSPX certainly appears the spiritual son of his spiritual father.

I found it an interesting way to mark the Solemnity of Peter and Paul this year, which is, of course, the 40th anniversary of the ordinations in Econe that resulted in Lefebvre first being suspended a collatione ordinum. Forty years.

When he refused to submit himself to the head of the College of Bishops, as he was commanded, Lefebvre was subsequently suspended a divinis.

I don’t remember exactly the time lapse off the top of my head after 40 years…but the suspensions followed in short order. It didn’t take that long for the suspension a divinis to follow, once it was clear Lefebvre had utterly defected from the obedience that was his duty and obligation to Peter…insulting a pope who is now raised to the altar and is a beloved Blessed.

 

[Padres1969]

Actually you are right. Fellay didn’t ask for a dispensation for confession. In fact he found out about it through the media.

The pope is head of the church and of Fellay’s priests.

The SSPX. Has said much recently as has the Vatican.

I think everything is on the table. From full on separation to unilateral recognition. Neither would suprise me.

One things for certain though. If regularization happens my old parish will miss me.

Going to switch to an SSPX chapel if they’re regularized?

 

[ProVobis]

One things for certain though. If regularization happens my old parish will miss me.

What if the Vatican recognizes the SSPX Masses as they do their confessions? I think that’s what many if not most of the SSPX chapel goers really care about.

 

[ProVobis]

I thought he was head of the SSPX?

Bishop Fellay is the recognized leader of the FSSPX, though I understand there are two or more factions. Therein lies the problem IMO.

 

[Dmitri77]

For canonists and theologians, it is how they handle confirmation that is the most telling of their own self-understanding, actually.

Explain please?

 

[pnewton]

The pope is head of the church and of Fellay’s priests.

I do not know how he can be called the head of priests when he there is zero submission to his authority. There is no obedience. That to which they agree, they do. That to which they do not agree, they do not do. They are their own authority. In any other context, this would readily be acknowledged as cafeteria Catholicism.

I a very saddened by Bishop Fellay’s entrenchment in this error.

 

[ProVobis]

I do not know how he can be called the head of priests when he there is zero submission to his authority.

Except that they are saving souls by hearing confessions. No small deal.

 

[pnewton]

Except that they are saving souls by hearing confessions. No small deal.

If Protestant pastors are saving souls it does not mean that the Pope is their head. I did not say they are doing any good, though God alone knows whether they save more than they cause to stumble, but whether the Pope is their head in anything but name.

 

[ProVobis]

If Protestant pastors are saving souls it does not mean that the Pope is their head. I did not say they are doing any good, though God alone knows whether they save more than they cause to stumble, but whether the Pope is their head in anything but name.

I think you meant to say “I did not say that are not doing any good…” ?

 

[pnewton]

I think you meant to say “I did not say that are not doing any good…” ?

Yes. It’s been a long day. I am back after a couple of weeks off the grid and still playing catch with my brain.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Except that they are saving souls by hearing confessions. No small deal.

It is no small deal indeed for the penitents who at last are validly absolved of what they confess.

One shudders to think of the incredible number of invalid absolutions that these priests, suspended a divinis, racked up across these forty years since the decree of the Blessed Paul VI in the wake of the 1976 ordinations and the canonical dissolution of the Priestly Fraternity. It is very sad to contemplate the fruit of their rejection of the Successor of Peter – for themselves as priests…and for the lay people who follow them.

 

[Tomdstone]

It is no small deal indeed for the penitents who at last are validly absolved of what they confess.

One shudders to think of the incredible number of invalid absolutions that these priests, suspended a divinis, racked up across these forty years since the decree of the Blessed Paul VI in the wake of the 1976 ordinations and the canonical dissolution of the Priestly Fraternity. It is very sad to contemplate the fruit of their rejection of the Successor of Peter – for themselves as priests…and for the lay people who follow them.

You don’t think that the validity would be supplied to people who confessed to a priest in good faith?

 

[Don_Ruggero]

You don’t think that the validity would be supplied to people who confessed to a priest in good faith?

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.

 

[Tomdstone]

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.

Are you sure that it is required at all times, and there are no exceptions, even at the time very near to death?

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Are you sure that it is required at all times, and there are no exceptions, even at the time very near to death?

The formulation is what it is for a reason. A priest must possess the faculty in order to validly absolve.

There is an exception in danger 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.
This is a grant of solicitude made by the Church – it is not in favour of the priest who has been deprived of the faculty to hear confession but in solicitude for the child of the Church in the moment that they are upon the threshold of eternity.

 

[Tomdstone]

The formulation is what it is for a reason. A priest must possess the faculty in order to validly absolve.

There is an exception in danger 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.
This is a grant of solicitude made by the Church – it is not in favour of the priest who has been deprived of the faculty to hear confession but in solicitude for the child of the Church in the moment that they are upon the threshold of eternity.

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.