Pope Francis and the SSPX: An Opportunity

[TRH1292]

The author said:

“So here is what I am asking. I ask the Pope to apply that wide generosity to the SSPX and to normalize relations and their standing within the Church. I am asking the Pope to do this even without the total agreement on the Second Vatican Council. Whatever their disagreements, surely this can be worked out over time with the SSPX firmly implanted in the Church. I think that the Church needs to be more generous toward unity than to insist upon dogmatic adherence to the interpretation of a non-dogmatic council. The issues are real, but they must be worked out with our brothers at home and not with a locked door.”

So I think the question the article raises is not so much whether the SSPX will successfully negotiate with the Church, but whether the Pope might (in a grand gesture of “mercy” and “unity”) just snap his fingers and bring them in, regardless of disagreements.

I think the chances of hell freezing over are greater than that. As long as they reject ecumenical councils and call the Pope a heretic, there is no place for them within the Church. The only solution is a softening of hearts on there part. The Church cannot compromise it’s teaching for anybody, even so called “traditionalists”.

 

[ProVobis]

I think the chances of hell freezing over are greater than that. As long as they reject ecumenical councils …

CouncilS?

 

[Brooklyn]

I find this blog post extremely worrisome, and I’m actually pretty amazed that CAF is even allowing it to be discussed here. The author, Pat Archbold, is arguing that Pope Francis allow the SSPX into full communion with the the Church despite the fact that they reject Catholic teaching, e.g. the Mass and religious freedom, and other parts of the Vatican II council. If Pope Francis would do such a thing, this could actually lead to the destruction of the Catholic Church.

To allow the SSPX into the church while they are in disagreement with the Church would open the door to anyone else who disagrees with Church teachings . You don’t like the teaching on homosexuality? No problem. You think contraception is a good thing? That’s okay, we will work with you.

To allow the SSPX back into the Church when they are fighting with Rome would completely undermine the authority of the Pope and the entire Magesterium. They would lose their authority to dictate the teachings of the Church. There would, in effect, be no Catholic Church.

We know that the Church will never die, so we know this will never happen. But people like Pat Archbold need to be reprimanded for writing such scandalous things. He certainly should not be praised, as they are doing over at Rorate, one of the most dangerous blogs on the internet, IMHO.

 

[Thomas_Casey]

MODERATOR NOTICE

You have a good discussion going. There is a tendency to go south very quickly when the SSPX or the mass come up in discussions. Thus far, you’re all doing well. Keep it up. To do so, follow these guidelines

1. Stay on topic.
2. Don’t throw mud at anyone.
3. Criticism and critiques should be at situations, not individuals.
4. Remember, hold on to your sense of humor.

 

[PJD1987]

I find this blog post extremely worrisome

After reflection I tend to agree with most of the points you’ve made. I just don’t like the idea, I suppose, of having it pulled from the Register. I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right to not allow a long time contributor to posit an idea, however off-base it may have been. In charity, I tend to think that Mr. Archbold did not fully think out his idea here or make it as clear as he wished he would have and I’m sure his intentions are only to foster Christian unity. I don’t know, but I don’t think he is someone out to cause such a stir as this did. And again, I’m not sure how I feel about the article being pulled, I just think it could have been handled better.

According to him it had already been cleared, then it was posted, then taken down. Why all of that if there was an issue with its content to begin with, it should have never passed and should have been dealth with privately. I fear the Register caused their own problem here.

God bless,
Paul

 

[RPRPsych]

I find this blog post extremely worrisome, and I’m actually pretty amazed that CAF is even allowing it to be discussed here. The author, Pat Archbold, is arguing that Pope Francis allow the SSPX into full communion with the the Church despite the fact that they reject Catholic teaching, e.g. the Mass and religious freedom, and other parts of the Vatican II council. If Pope Francis would do such a thing, this could actually lead to the destruction of the Catholic Church.

I agree with you, but I think this was triggered by the message the Pope sent to a Protestant group recently. Note that in this message, there was an appeal for unity (which we’ve been making for donkeys’ years); there was no mention of any sort of formal reunion or full communion. To go from there to granting the SSPX full communion is a leap longer than Bob Beamon’s.*

To allow the SSPX into the church while they are in disagreement with the Church would open the door to anyone else who disagrees with Church teachings . You don’t like the teaching on homosexuality? No problem. You think contraception is a good thing? That’s okay, we will work with you.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say this. As far as dogma and theology go, I think the SSPX are fairly faithful to what the Church has taught - at least until 1958 (or 1962, if you will.) However, they are a house divided themselves - look at Williamson-gate (to coin a phrase ) and their flip-flopping on the peace treaty offered by Pope Benedict. True, they have far less flaws in their theology than any Protestant group (most of whom embrace contraception, divorce and tawdry eschatology at alarmingly high rates) - it’s their attitude that is the problem. So far, they haven’t gone down Luther’s rabbit hole of “We don’t like the teachings, so we’ll change them”; they’ve only gone down the rabbit hole of “We love the Church, but we resist the Pope because we somehow have a truth that he and the current Church lack.”

To allow the SSPX back into the Church when they are fighting with Rome would completely undermine the authority of the Pope and the entire Magesterium. They would lose their authority to dictate the teachings of the Church. There would, in effect, be no Catholic Church.

True. It would be an act of abject capitulation. A compromise, not a unilateral surrender, is what is required. Pope Benedict offered them this, and they slapped his hands away.

We know that the Church will never die, so we know this will never happen. But people like Pat Archbold need to be reprimanded for writing such scandalous things.

He’s a journalist. Journalists are paid (or believe they are paid) to speculate and stir up hornets’ nests. It may have been scandalous for some, but at least we know where he stands.

He certainly should not be praised, as they are doing over at Rorate, one of the most dangerous blogs on the internet, IMHO.

Oh, there are worse. Rorate has a lot of good material on Traditional Masses. However, their passive-aggressive attitude is insufferable (“We love Benedict, but we’ll keep kicking the ‘reform of the refom’”). If you want awful and dangerous blogs, though, look at Rorate’s blog roll. Here are some sample links:

lamentablysane.blogspot.com/
(Traditional Catholicism meets Pick-Up Artistes. Everybody wants to be a macho, macho man. Yuck.)

catholictradition.org/main-index.htm
(Conspiracy theories and links to Sedevacantist sites. Double yuck.)

As the ancients say, you can judge a man by the company that he keeps. I wouldn’t trust my daughter** around some of that company.

• an image borrowed from Indian cricketing legend Sunil Gavaskar when talking about - wait for it - the speculations of journalists. Some things never change.

** rhetorical image. The only daughter I have is hopefully in Heaven, thank God, and won’t have to listen to all this guff.

 

[Cojuanco]

The author said:

“So here is what I am asking. I ask the Pope to apply that wide generosity to the SSPX and to normalize relations and their standing within the Church. I am asking the Pope to do this even without the total agreement on the Second Vatican Council. Whatever their disagreements, surely this can be worked out over time with the SSPX firmly implanted in the Church. I think that the Church needs to be more generous toward unity than to insist upon dogmatic adherence to the interpretation of a non-dogmatic council. The issues are real, but they must be worked out with our brothers at home and not with a locked door.”

So I think the question the article raises is not so much whether the SSPX will successfully negotiate with the Church, but whether the Pope might (in a grand gesture of “mercy” and “unity”) just snap his fingers and bring them in, regardless of disagreements.

Yeah… notice how the Holy Father did not do this in the precedent they erroneously cite? And while perhaps not dogma (I do not know if it is), should we not give due deference to the teachings of the Pope?

And the door has been open for some time. They can admit that the Council is compatible with Tradition, sign the requisite professions of faith, and they can then proceed from there. Benedict offered this to them, which is the most he could have done without doing the unthinkable. The door opens from their end. They slammed the door in Holy Mother Church’s face.

 

[otjm]

Blog wars. It’s like watching two children fight over nothing in the school playground at recess.

It would be sad if it wasn’t a completely irrelevant waste of time, electricity, internet bandwidth, webserver clock cycles and disk storage space.

-Tim-

Not to mention the indignity visited upon innocent electrons.

 

[giuseppeTO]

I don’t think the Pope would be inclined to do what the OP suggests. In general, I don’t see the evidence that he believes that it is a matter significant enough for him to be personally involved in. His two immediate predecessors were involved in the previous attempts to come to an agreement. Both, I believe, wanted to see the rift healed from a personal perspective.

Pope Francis doesn’t have the same emotional investment, for lack of a better term, and has an agenda where perhaps the SSPX situation is not at the top of his concerns.

I have,coincidentally, heard it spoken in SSPX circles that such a thing could happen, given this particular Pope.

If you accept the premise that the SSPX is not outside of the Catholic church and is a Catholic entity without a canonical mission, a position which I believe most of the hierarchy holds, and you accept for the sake of argument that there are inconsistencies in the implementation of the Council, which Pope Benedict wrote quite extensively about, then supplying a canonical mission to the SSPX by the Pope would indeed solve a significant difficulty internal to the SSPX. As for the New Mass, it has already undergone reforms in the last decade that have taken it in a direction that appears to be more consistent with what the council fathers initially intended.

Bottom line is, though, I do not expect that the Pope is thinking along the lines of getting personally involved in the matter and I do not think that such a suggestion would freely come from the current CDF leadership.

 

[RPRPsych]

I don’t think the Pope would be inclined to do what the OP suggests. In general, I don’t see the evidence that he believes that it is a matter significant enough for him to be personally involved in. His two immediate predecessors were involved in the previous attempts to come to an agreement. Both, I believe, wanted to see the rift healed from a personal perspective.

Pope Francis doesn’t have the same emotional investment, for lack of a better term, and has an agenda where perhaps the SSPX situation is not at the top of his concerns.

I have,coincidentally, heard it spoken in SSPX circles that such a thing could happen, given this particular Pope.

If you accept the premise that the SSPX is not outside of the Catholic church and is a Catholic entity without a canonical mission, a position which I believe most of the hierarchy holds, and you accept for the sake of argument that there are inconsistencies in the implementation of the Council, which Pope Benedict wrote quite extensively about, then supplying a canonical mission to the SSPX by the Pope would indeed solve a significant difficulty internal to the SSPX. As for the New Mass, it has already undergone reforms in the last decade that have taken it in a direction that appears to be more consistent with what the council fathers initially intended.

Bottom line is, though, I do not expect that the Pope is thinking along the lines of getting personally involved in the matter and I do not think that such a suggestion would freely come from the current CDF leadership.

This is quite an interesting (and balanced) perspective.

 

[digitalpapist]

I find this blog post extremely worrisome, and I’m actually pretty amazed that CAF is even allowing it to be discussed here. The author, Pat Archbold, is arguing that Pope Francis allow the SSPX into full communion with the the Church despite the fact that they reject Catholic teaching, e.g**. the Mass and religious freedom**, and other parts of the Vatican II council. If Pope Francis would do such a thing, this could actually lead to the destruction of the Catholic Church.

To allow the SSPX into the church while they are in disagreement with the Church would open the door to anyone else who disagrees with Church teachings . You don’t like the teaching on homosexuality? No problem. You think contraception is a good thing? That’s okay, we will work with you.

To allow the SSPX back into the Church when they are fighting with Rome would completely undermine the authority of the Pope and the entire Magesterium. They would lose their authority to dictate the teachings of the Church. There would, in effect, be no Catholic Church.

We know that the Church will never die, so we know this will never happen. But people like Pat Archbold need to be reprimanded for writing such scandalous things. He certainly should not be praised, as they are doing over at Rorate, one of the most dangerous blogs on the internet, IMHO.

Belief in American style religious freedom is not a doctrine of the Catholic Church. Neither is attachment and fidelity to the ancient Mass a heresy.

The SSPX does not deny any dogma of the Church; they are disobedient, certainly, but to call them dissenters from the Faith of the Church… that’s a bit much. Go back to 1960 and none of the positions the SSPX hold to would be problematic.

 

[TRH1292]

Belief in American style religious freedom is not a doctrine of the Catholic Church. Neither is attachment and fidelity to the ancient Mass a heresy.

The SSPX does not deny any dogma of the Church; they are disobedient, certainly, but to call them dissenters from the Faith of the Church… that’s a bit much. Go back to 1960 and none of the positions the SSPX hold to would be problematic.

Go back to 1950 and some would say it would be acceptable to deny the Assumption of Mary. The faith develops over time as the Teaching Authority of the Church speaks more. To either reject an ecumenical council out right or to dispute its main teachings is dissent of the highest order.

 

[digitalpapist]

Go back to 1950 and some would say it would be acceptable to deny the Assumption of Mary. The faith develops over time as the Teaching Authority of the Church speaks more. To either reject an ecumenical council out right or to dispute its main teachings is dissent of the highest order.

Except the Assumption of Mary was already universally believed and held to; religious freedom in the American style was not (and still should not be).

The problem comes down to Vatican II: what is dogmatic about Vatican II, what is not, and what is in between. Something like Athanasius Schneider’s idea of a Syllabus of Errors for Vatican II is very much needed.

That’s pretty much the precondition here.

So the question becomes: what are the main dogmatic teachings of Vatican II? You will find no single clear answer, in either Magisterial or pastoral form, to that question.

But that is precisely the question that needs to be answered.

 

[TMC]

Are we going to turn this into another thread on which teachings the SSPX dissents from? I would rather not. I don’t think there is (or at least should be) any serious contention that SSPX dissents from Church doctrine. But we have already had many threads on that topic.

 

[steymard]

I find this blog post extremely worrisome, and I’m actually pretty amazed that CAF is even allowing it to be discussed here. The author, Pat Archbold, is arguing that Pope Francis allow the SSPX into full communion with the the Church despite the fact that they reject Catholic teaching, e.g. the Mass and religious freedom, and other parts of the Vatican II council. If Pope Francis would do such a thing, this could actually lead to the destruction of the Catholic Church.

To allow the SSPX into the church while they are in disagreement with the Church would open the door to anyone else who disagrees with Church teachings . You don’t like the teaching on homosexuality? No problem. You think contraception is a good thing? That’s okay, we will work with you.

To allow the SSPX back into the Church when they are fighting with Rome would completely undermine the authority of the Pope and the entire Magesterium. They would lose their authority to dictate the teachings of the Church. There would, in effect, be no Catholic Church.

We know that the Church will never die, so we know this will never happen. But people like Pat Archbold need to be reprimanded for writing such scandalous things. He certainly should not be praised, as they are doing over at Rorate, one of the most dangerous blogs on the internet, IMHO.

I personally think the differences are much smaller than one might think, and that Pat Archbold’s suggestion remains a legitimate one - it is a matter of prudence to disagree.

The reason I say this is due to the example of the formerly SSPX-connected order, the traditional Transalpine Redemptorists (now the F.SS.R.), who, after Summorum Pontificum, requested regularization and lifting of priestly suspensions from Rome in 2008 and got what they asked. In 2012 they were formally recognized as an institute of diocesan right. I don’t know what they had to discuss (or if they had to discuss anything at all) in regard to doctrine for the formal diocesan recognition, but I don’t think they had to do anything of that sort to initially get their priestly suspensions lifted and to have full canonical faculties in their own monastery - they had merely to petition Rome. This was a wonderful and joyous event.

I only bring these awesome monks up because it shows how close the S.S.P.X. truly could be to being regularized. I think the F.SS.R. continues to acknowledge that there are doctrinal clarifications needed (a perspective shared by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, for example), but they choose to await these clarifications within the canonical structures of the Church, and so are being completely faithful. I think the S.S.P.X. wishes to see these issues clarified before making a request for regularization like the F.SS.R. made, which is where the problem arises. That said, it’s much easier for a group of 25 monks to do that (they paid a price, though - most of their supporters left them) than a 500-priest-strong society. Now I think they absolutely should make that request. Unfortunately, I don’t think most of them will. This is where Mr. Archbold makes his point - what if Pope Francis simply regularized them, saying, “do not wait for clarifications. You are endangering souls by lacking regular faculties for confession. Out of concern for the souls of hundreds of thousands of faithful who attend your chapels, we will grant you jurisdiction.” I think it is a legitimate move, but that is up to the Holy Father’s judgement. However, SSPX should humbly petition Rome for regularization in any case. We can hope against hope!

 

[otjm]

I personally think the differences are much smaller than one might think, and that Pat Archbold’s suggestion remains a legitimate one - it is a matter of prudence to disagree.

The reason I say this is due to the example of the formerly SSPX-connected order, the traditional Transalpine Redemptorists (now the F.SS.R.), who, after Summorum Pontificum, requested regularization and lifting of priestly suspensions from Rome in 2008 and got what they asked. In 2012 they were formally recognized as an institute of diocesan right. I don’t know what they had to discuss (or if they had to discuss anything at all) in regard to doctrine for the formal diocesan recognition, but I don’t think they had to do anything of that sort to initially get their priestly suspensions lifted and to have full canonical faculties in their own monastery - they had merely to petition Rome. This was a wonderful and joyous event.

I sincerely doubt that all they had to do was petition Rome. That is tanatmount to saying that Rome’s response was the equivalent of “Sure! No Problem! It was all a misunderstanding on our part; please forgive us!”

I only bring these awesome monks up because it shows how close the S.S.P.X. truly could be to being regularized. I think the F.SS.R. continues to acknowledge that there are doctrinal clarifications needed (a perspective shared by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, for example), but they choose to await these clarifications within the canonical structures of the Church, and so are being completely faithful. I think the S.S.P.X. wishes to see these issues clarified before making a request for regularization like the F.SS.R. made, which is where the problem arises.

The SSPX are a whole lot closer to saying, if they have not used the exact words, that the documents they dispute cannot be reconciled with prior statements of the Church. Slight differenbce in position, it would seem.

However, SSPX should humbly petition Rome for regularization in any case. We can hope against hope!

That effectively has already occurred; and they have rejected reconciliation. All the wishing and hoping is not going to change Rome
s stance. It is the equivalent of saying to the Lutherans "We recognize your positions; we accept you back into the Church without working out our differences, and I am sure we can do that in a matter of a short time. Welcome back!

Ain’t gonna happen. Truth is not malleable.

 

[RPRPsych]

Belief in American style religious freedom is not a doctrine of the Catholic Church.

So Dignitatis Humanae and Nostra Aetate were drafted by Jefferson and not the Council Fathers? That’s a new one.

Neither is attachment and fidelity to the ancient Mass a heresy.

Agreed.

The SSPX does not deny any dogma of the Church; they are disobedient, certainly, but to call them dissenters from the Faith of the Church… that’s a bit much. Go back to 1960 and none of the positions the SSPX hold to would be problematic.

Well, try calling the Pope a “Modernist” in 1960 and you’d probably find yourself deprived of your teaching / publishing faculties.

 

[RPRPsych]

Go back to 1950 and some would say it would be acceptable to deny the Assumption of Mary. The faith develops over time as the Teaching Authority of the Church speaks more. To either reject an ecumenical council out right or to dispute its main teachings is dissent of the highest order.

“No dogmas, so it’s not binding” is the battle-cry of the rebellious.

The fact is that the documents of a Council - even if they do not define any new dogma, but merely clarify it - are among the highest forms of the Church’s teaching authority, and deserve obedience and intellectual assent.

Besides, didn’t +Lefebvre actually sign most, if not all, of those documents?

Flip, flop. Barack Obama would be proud.

 

[Thomas_Casey]

So far so good folks. Keep it up and keep it civil.

 

[steymard]

I sincerely doubt that all they had to do was petition Rome. That is tanatmount to saying that Rome’s response was the equivalent of “Sure! No Problem! It was all a misunderstanding on our part; please forgive us!”

According to their own blog, petitioning Rome is, in fact, all they had to do.

I mentioned “hope”, but perhaps I should have said “pray”. The S.S.P.X. is such low-hanging fruit. I pray for reconciliation.