FSSP -- politics?

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Loud-living-dogma

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Do the FSSP bishops make political pronouncements? I don’t think I have ever seen any statements from the – if they even have their own group? I don’t actually know how many bishops there are for the FSSP.
 
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Okay - - thanks! I guess I don’t know too much about the FSSP. I imagined they would have their own bishop’s conference - - guess I need to read a little more!
 
It’s part of the way that the FSSP was set up. They will never have any bishop, except by some extraordinary change of the rules upon which their order was created.
 
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This is a key element to the FSSP. They have their own charism, but they are totally loyal to the Church and their bishops. They only go to a diocese where the bishop has invited them, they only ordain men approved by their bishop. Contrast FSSP with those running their own parallel churches with their own agendas.
 
The only way I see the FSSP getting a bishop of their own is if one of their superiors retires. That retired superior might be ordained bishop just to make ordinations easier. Right now they have to schedule ordinations around existing bishops that like the Latin Mass and are not busy.

But of course, there are perks to being Jesuit-like in their organization.
 
That would be a radical reformation of the FSSP, which if memory serves are a society of diocesan right, which means, under the diocesan bishop.

To have their own bishop would make them an ordinariate, that is with a bishop with specific jurisdiction for the society (such as the military ordinariate for military chaplains, or the Anglican-use ordinariate). I can’t really see the need to do this for the FSSP or any other community of diocesan right.

Ordinations are always by a local bishop AFAIK for non-ordinariate societies. For the Benedictines, for instance, even though they are of pontifical right, and the abbot is not under the jurisdiction of the local bishop, he will call on the local bishop to ordain any man he desires to have ordained to the diaconate or the priesthood. The abbot is in fact the ordinary of an abbey, with nearly the same faculties of a bishop except for the most important one, he cannot ordain. Hence the appeal to the local bishop for ordinations.
 
Probably all religious orders have an official, or unwritten, policy against having bishops. Ambition is considered dangerous, either for an individual or a religious order itself. It tends to make harder the kind of religious life a man originally set out for.

However, there is a shortage of qualified candidates for bishop in many places. Thus, if the needs of the Church demand it, the religious order may consent and a given individual may consent to an exception to the rule.

I think many religious orders have reluctantly accepted parishes, because of the desperate straits of some dioceses, which lack clergy to staff them. But they likely turn down other requests by dioceses.

So there is kind of balance needed here, between maintaining the charism of the order, and changing conditions in the places they serve.

Even if religious becomes a bishop, that would not be so men in his order could be ordained easier. (I won’t give the obvious example here).
 
They are a society of apostolic life of pontifical right. A society of apostolic life is defined by the Church as follows (“pontifical right” means they were established by a decree of the Holy See rather than a diocesan bishop, but they still must operate subject to the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese in which they live):
Societies of apostolic life, called in the 1917 Code of Canon Law “societies of men or women who live in common without vows,” are defined by can. 731.1 and 731.2 in the 1983 Code of Canon Law as follows:

"Comparable to institutes of consecrated life are societies of apostolic life whose members without religious vows pursue the particular apostolic purpose of the society, and leading a life as brothers or sisters in common according to a particular manner of life, strive for the perfection of charity through the observance of the constitutions. Among these there are societies in which the members embrace the evangelical counsels by some bond defined in the constitutions.

St. Philip Neri can be considered the father of men’s Societies of Apostolic Life, as we now know them, and St. Vincent de Paul of women’s Societies.

Societies of Apostolic Life can be clerical or lay, male or female.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccscrlife/documents/rc_con_ccscrlife_profile_en.html
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Conferences of Bishops are institutions organized by the bishops of a particular region to help them coordinate their efforts in various areas. Canon Law specifically defines them as follows:
“The Conference of Bishops, a permanent institution, is a grouping of Bishops of a given country or territory whereby, according to the norm of law, they jointly exercise certain pastoral functions on behalf of the Christian faithful of their territory in view of promoting that greater good which the Church offers humankind, especially through forms and programs of the apostolate which are fittingly adapted to the circumstances of the time and place”.
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For an in depth explanation of them by the Church, see here:

Apostolos Suos
 
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I’m pretty sure they were promised their own Bishop when they separated from the SSPX. Does anyone know anything about this?
 
I thought they were of diocesan right but they are in fact of pontifical right.
 
The FSSP are of pontifical right, meaning that while they rely on bishops for ordinations, they have the right to make their own decisions about who gets ordained. They can have it done by any bishop.
 
Saxum said:
I’m pretty sure they were promised their own Bishop when they separated from the SSPX. Does anyone know anything about this?
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This kind of urban legend is not helpful.

No religious order is “owed” a bishop. When a religious becomes a bishop, he is mostly detached from the order anyway, he reports to the Vatican then (and to his ordinary, if he is not an ordinary). He would keep up the community’s rule in his personal spiritual life, but his responsibility is to his diocese, and to the Church as a whole, not to any religious order.

So if a FSSP is ordained a bishop, they would somewhat “lose” him after the reception.
 
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Arkansan said:
The FSSP are of pontifical right, meaning that while they rely on bishops for ordinations, they have the right to make their own decisions about who gets ordained. They can have it done by any bishop.
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They are still subject to canon law in terms of formation and selection process. No bishop will ordain if a candidate is not appropriate, nor will a bishop ordinary invite FSSP into a diocese if they were not generally confident in their priests. This is especially true for all newer religious orders, they are still establishing their place.
 
Saxum said:
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commenter:
This kind of urban legend is not helpful.
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I didn’t perpetuate any legend. It’s just a rumour I’ve heard and was wondering if there’s any truth to it. Someone here is bound to know the score.
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Ok, perpetuating urban rumours is not helpful, since there is no way of proving or disproving decades old stuff. Anyone here can say whatever they want, we have no way of knowing what “the score” is. A typical rumour confirmation goes like this:
“I know for a fact that Our Lady of Fatima denounced Vatican II as a masonic conspiracy. I learned this from my hairdresser, whose niece has a friend who lives in Rome, and the friend’s brother delivers pasta to the secretary in a CURIA office which is in same building as Cardinal Conspiratora, who she witnessed opening a letter, reading and tearing it up, and the return address was in Portugal. She thinks he mumbled something about ‘saving the Council for my lodge brothers’”

😀

Why look to “rumours” when we can look at 30 years of history?

People on the internet regularly confirm, because they know the score, lots of rumours, most of them contradictory. Rumours do not have a charitable or informative history on CAF.
 
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Archbishop Lefevbre wanted a bishop for the SSPX–chosen by him, of course–but Rome didn’t want this. Part of the formation of the FSSP was the fact that they did not have a bishop, but would be a society of pontifical right.
 
Well obviously. My point was simply that they are not dependent on the local bishop for ordinations.
 
dshix said:
It’s part of the way that the FSSP was set up. They will never have any bishop, except by some extraordinary change of the rules upon which their order was created.
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But, this doesn’t mean an FSSP priest cannot become a bishop, no?

For example, the OFM does not have its own bishops, but OFM priests can be called to become bishops (Boston’s O’Malley comes to mind).
 
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