Alex V: RE: Papolatry
You mean the way “traditionalists” go on about Saints Pius V and X and the Servant of God Pius XII? Yeah, papolatry can be a HUGE problem.
However, in this instance of the SSPX, the Pope simply confirmed what was already fact (and fact in the face of the agreement reneged upon by the late Archbishop): they excommunicated themselves.
As for disciplines imposed by the popes, here’s what pre-Vatican II popes had to say about obidience to the legitmate authority. They seemed not to believe it was “sick” and “not Catholic.”
Pius VI condemned the proposition that the approved ecclesiastical discipline of the Church can be “harmful” or “dangerous” to the faithful. The 18th century condemnation by Pius VI reads…The prescription of the synod [of Pistoia] … adds, “in this itself (discipline) there is to be distinguished what is necessary or useful to retain the faithful in spirit, from that which is useless or too burdensome for the liberty of the sons of the new Covenant to endure, but more so, from that which is dangerous or harmful, namely, leading to superstituion and materialism”; in so far as by the generality of the words it includes and submits to a prescribed examination even the discipline established and approved by the Church, as if the Church which is ruled by the Spirit of God could have established discipline which is not only useless and burdensome for Christian liberty to endure, but which is even dangerous and harmful and leading to superstition and materialism,–false, rash, scandalous, dangerous, offensive to pious ears, injurious to the Church and to the Spirit of God by whom it is guided, at least erroneous.
(Pius VI, Auctorem fidei, 78, cited in Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, translated by Roy F. Deferari from the 13th ed. Of Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolorum, 1954, Loreto Publications, 2nd printing, 2004, pg. 393)]
Gregory XVI also affirmed that those that propose that the discipline of the Church is harmful fall under the condemnation of Pius VI…
“…[they] state categorically that there are many things in the discipline of the Church … [which] are harmful for the growth and prosperity of the Catholic religion… While these men were shamefully straying in their thoughts, they proposed to fall upon the errors condemned by the Church in proposition 78 of the constitution Auctorem fidei (published by Our predecessor, Pius VI on August 28, 1794). … do they not try to make the Church human by taking away from the infallible and divine authority, by which divine will it is governed? And does it not produce the same effect to think that the present discipline of the Church rests on failures, obscurities, and other inconveniences of this kind? And to feign that this discipline contains many things which are not useless but which are against the safety of the Catholic religion? Why is it that private individuals appropriate for themselves the right which is proper only for the pope (Encyclical Quo Graviora, October 4, 1833).The Council of Trent similarly declared:“If anyone says that the ceremonies, vestments and outward signs, which the Catholic Church uses in the celebration of Masses, are incentives to impiety rather than the services of piety: let him be anathema.” (Session XXII, canon 7, Denz. 954.).
Pope Pius IX likewise taught:“It would beyond any doubt be blameworthy and entirely contrary to the respect with which the laws of the Church should be received by a senseless aberration to find fault with the discipline which she has established, and which includes the administration of holy things, the regulation of morals, and the laws of the Church and her ministers; or to speak of this discipline as opposed to certain principles of the natural law, or to present it as defective, imperfect, and subject to civil authority.” (Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)
Vatican I likewise affirmed:
“We teach and declare that, by divine ordinance, the Roman Church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other Church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff is both episcopal and immediate. Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world.” (Pastor Aeternus , ch. 3, par. 2)