Sorry but I’d appreciate a couple of people talking me through this a little, re my faith possibly being shaken if the excommunications are nullified. And I say this as someone who has a lot of sympathy for the SSPX.
I do appreciate what several have said in reponse so far, but can I point out the enormity of such a decision? Just off the top of my head,
- It could make anti-Rome sentiment even worse among some SSPX affiliates, not to mention sedevacantists, because it’s authority could be seen as faulty, changeable etc
The underlined part should have already crossed your mind when the Pope and virtually every single Bishop in union with him began to promote - as a good - what had been explicitly condemned by the Church (in the Syllabus of errors and many other documents).
Even though that happened, it is not reason to have your faith shaken. Our faith is not in every action of a Pope. Popes are not infallible in all they do and say. We have had heretical Popes in the past. It is the exception, but it is theoretically possible.
- It could cause many of the worst elements among liberals etc to argue that it proves that being in Rome’s favour is not important (as many already believe)
The difference is that the Liberals depart from what the Church has always taught, while the SSPX was simply holding fast to it, while lies and deceptions were coming from all direction The SSPX understood that in such a crisis, the thing to do was to hold fast to tradition, as St. Vincent Lerins taught so many years ago. And since the Pope was taking no effecting actions to protect the faith, the SSPX took the extraordinary actions of consecrating Bishops who would be able to ordain the Priests who were taught the true faith in their seminaries. The Archbishop called it “operations survival”.
- It could cause many without strong faith in the Church or non-Catholics to question the authority of a Church that can so severely cut off and alienate some members for 20 years and then say that it had been wrong to do so in the first place
But that is not reason to withhold justice. The SSPX has been right all along. An admission of the truth should never be withheld simply because it might scandalize those in error.
- It may feed unbalanced views among some SSPX adherents that they alone hold all Catholic truth and that it is their God-given role to bring the Church back to truth. In some cases it would go so far as seemingly “proving” that the SSPX has been the only remaining “remnant” etc, who now have to win all other nominal Catholics to their “true faith”.
The SSPX has never said that they alone held the faith. They were one of the very few who held to the true faith, but they have never claimed that no one outside of their fold kept the faith. Just because one or two individuals might draw an erroneous conclusion is no reason to withhold the truth.
- It may undermine the wisdom, if not the authority, of John Paul II, who was in many ways very wise in the way he directed the Church.
Was it wise to take no effective actions while the Seminaries became cesspools of heresy and immorality, thereby reslting in a generation of bad priests (with a few exceptions)? Was it wise to invite members of assorted false religions to Assisi - including African Witch Doctors - and, with full approval of the Pope, have them commit a mortal sin against the first commandment (false worship) in the hope that God would be so please with this mortal sin encouraged by the Pope himself, that He would grant world peac?. That is what John Paul II did. He provided members of false religions a special room where they could commit a mortal sin against the first commandment. John Paul II believed that this mortal sin would be pleasing to God.
I know for sure that in both the bigger and smaller pictures, a declaration that the excommunications were null and void would have consequences so huge that it’s just plain silly to write it off simply as a “good thing”.
Acknowledging the truth is never a bad thing.
It would affect Church history in the bigger picture, and individual members of the Body of Christ in the smaller picture, more than many could imagine.
But that is not the fault of the SSPX. They have been right all along. Place the blame where it belongs - with those wolves who corrupted the faith and with those in authority who did nothing about it. The SSPX simply took the necessary action to protect the faith and the Mass.
There’s also a (bigger) part of me that worries about the affect on the faithful.
Interesting because there was always a part of me that wondered how a generation of heretical Priests (formed in corrupt Seminaries) and a Protestantized mass - with the wrong words of consecration (as Rome now admits) - would affect the faith of the average Catholic.
On that note, one of the few good Priests in my diocese recently read the Syllabus of errors of Pope Pius IX and said that in the Seminary, he was taught - as true - every single one of the errors.
Thank God the SSPX had seminaries that taught the true faith, and preserved the Traditional Mass, for the past 40 years.
Indeed God does not abandon His Church. Just as He raised up St Athanasius to preserved the faith during the 4th century, so too He raised up Archbishop Lefebvre to preserve the faith in the 20th century.
