Q&A with the Pont. Comm. Ecclesia Dei about SSPX, schism and sacraments

[GerardP]

Are you suggesting that the Church grants the SSPX faculties to hear confession outside of Canon Law, the Hierarchy, etc.? It would seem you are suggestion that God bypasses his agents to directly grant them faculties?

Objectively certain circumstances exist in which the Church Herself supplies jurisdiction for the validity of specific sacraments and priestly functions.

There is a code of Canon law that describes those circumstances.

Either the circumstances exist and the Church supplies the jurisdiction or not.

The Pope decides what goes in the record books.

The Pope gives his opinion/judgement of what happened in those circumstances.

Either he is right or he is wrong. The books will just record his judgement.

The circumstances still exist and the jurisdiction exists if the circumstances warrant it.

The Pope does not change the circumstances or the supplied jurisdiction with his ruling.

The Pope or his successor can correct the incorrect judgement of the Pope that made the original ruling.

The validity never changed. It was always either valid or invalid.

If a Pope is deliberately playing Catch 22 with his rulings. He is providing no service to the Church and he is damaging his own office and his capacity to serve.

Since he is Pope, no one can overule him except himself or his equal.

But the case can be appealed again and again ad infinitum till the correct ruling is given.

Outside of ex cathedra teaching the Pope has no monopoly on recognizing the truth. And the truth is unbending to any human law. If the Pope is against the truth, the Pope must bend.

Since the agency appointed by the Head of the Church–chief Legislator, Executive, and Judge–has stated that they do not have faculties to hear confessions, that would seem to be the thing you’re driving at.

No. I’m saying that the agency didn’t tell the truth.

Else, what is “the Church” you are referring to? The one not headed by the Pope on earth?

Yes. But not everything in that Church is controlled by the Pope or his agents.

You will say the Church is headed by Christ. Very good, that’s true. Are you suggesting that Christ directly grants them faculties to absolve sin?

It’s the same Church that supplies jurisdiction. It’s “the Church” not “the Pope” that supplies jurisdiction in irrregular circumstances. The Pope is normal granter of jurisdiction, from him to the bishops, to the priests. When circumstances prevent it, Holy Mother Church supplies what the normal cannot or in this case will not.

One thing is for sure. You have no basis in canon law for arguing that the SSPX can validly hear confessions in their current irregular standing, with suspended priests.

That’s not true. The laws are there. The circumstances fit the laws. The Church supplies the jurisdiction. Whether a Pope or an agency of the Pope wants to admit it or not is their problem.

The PCED has stated that the Church grants faculties in situations of true emergency (don’t forget the Pope decides what can be interpreted as an emergency and what can’t, according to Canon Law of the Latin Rite of the Church) and in cases of ignorance.

I remember in a sculpture class in college, a girl asked one of the assistant instructors in the woodshop. “Okay and after that I decide the angles that I need to cut the wood at?” He answered, “No. You don’t decide the angles. You calculate the angles.” The wood and design dictates the angles that the wood must be cut at.

When you have an emergency, the emergency is a thing outside of the Pope. It is incumbent on him to recognize the emergency, not “decide” if it is an emergency or not.

If you confess to an SSPX Priest I would urge you to run to a diocesan or religious priest who has a regular standing with Rome. In all seriousness, this would be a grave situation. Don’t take your soul into your hands.

Actually, I go to diocesan priests most of the time because of convenience and my efforts to find priests that actually believe the faith. I go to SSPX priests when it is for a just spiritual reason such as needing their counsel on how to increase in sanctity or shake recitivism in sins.

Multiple diocesan and religious priests have actually told me to continue with SSPX priests because the SSPX does such a good job of formation and they are not prevented from giving solid Catholic advice.

One priest questioned me deeply for fear of schism and then concluded that I wasn’t schismatic and that the SSPX were doing better in terms of loyalty to the faith and the Pope than the local parishes.

Other diocesan priests sneak down to the SSPX chapel and learn the mass, hear confessions and obtain other helps.

One local priest who wanted to implement Summorum Pontificum was quickly transferred.

No state of necessity here!

This whole issue of invalid sacraments is a buggaboo issued to try and frighten people away from the SSPX. It’s just a political salvo in a multi-faceted attack. Church politics differ very little from secular politics.

 

[consumedconvert]

What does protect the faithful from the Pope then? Do you think Popes are irresistible?

The Papacy was never intended to persecute faithful Catholics, but lookee at what we have had. Popes persecuting faithful Catholics and Canon Laws serendipitously providing the jurisdictional missing ingredient that the faithful needed.

I am very sorry you feel that way. The liberation of the TLM–first under Pope John Paul II, who allowed the Bishops to grant its use in their dioceses, then under Pope Benedict II, who allows every preist to celebrate the TLM (now the EF)–is hardly persecution. The idea that Canon Law provides the “missing ingredient” for a suspended Priest to grant absolution is plainly incorrect.

What if he abrogates it for an evil purpose? Just to make up an example, if the Pope legalizes committing sacrilege against the Blessed Sacrament, do you think that is binding in any way?

I think you mean to say what if the Pope requires sacralige against the Blessed Sacrament. No Pope ever has, no Pope ever will.

You keep presenting this gnostic idea that laws must be “interpreted” beyond what they actually say. What exactly is required to “interpret” a law? The Pope’s rank just gives him carte blanche to lie or tell the truth and wait for a future Pope to straighten out the mess. He’s not smarter or more honest because he’s the Pope. It just means the books will say what he tells them to say. It doesn’t give the Pope any monopoly on the truth.

The idea that laws must be interpreted authoritatively is no more gnostic than the very Catholic idea that Scripture must be interpreted authoritatively. The Commandment said “Thou Shalt Not Kill”; Christ interpreted that to mean that it also forbids hatred; and the Church defines what hatred is for us. In the same way, Canon Law is a confusing morass without an authoritative interpreter. All governments have a judiciary somewhere in the system, who interprets the laws and makes them clear, and clears up contraversy about the laws. HMC does too, except her Judiciary is the Pope himself and his delegated agencies.

Is Ecclesia Supplet merely a Canon Law that can be used as a plaything of a Pope or does it touch on Sacramental Theology?

And next, do the Canon Laws envision every possibility for Ecclesia Supplet or merely certain circumstances that those that wrote the legislations could think of in which jurisdiction is definitely supplied?

I think you are forgetting that the Pope holds the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, given to Peter by Christ. That would include the authority to regulate the Sacrament of Penance.

His governance, his personal teachings on faith and morals are not protected. Just as he may make prudential “mistakes” he may sin grievously in the exercise of his duties. He may endanger souls and persecute the innocent. He may also be legitimately resisted for doing so.

In matters of faith and morals it depends on how he presents his position. Pope Benedict specifically said that his book “Jesus of Nazareth” is not to be treated as magisterial. It is only his personal opinions as a private theologian. It may be solid, or it may be way off base. But it is not protected by the Holy Ghost.

But it’s still sold under the name Pope Benedict and not Josef Ratzinger.

Actually the book is sold under the names Pope Benedict and Josef Ratzinger, which I suppose is meant to underline that it is indeed his own private–which is to say unofficial–teaching. He emphasizes that this work is not a magisterial document in the introduction.

Notice his encyclicals do not carry that notice.

That does not give the Pope the right to play Catch 22 with his own laws.

On the one hand, he binds the faithful with his Canon Laws. When the Canon Laws favor and protect the faithful. He declares them unlawful.

When a Pope says that a state of emergency doesn’t exist when the city is burning around him, he is either lying or mad. In either case, moral law and Divine Law supercede Canon Law in those cases.

The Pope has the right to do with his laws whatever his wishes to do, whether or not we agree with him. He is the Vicar of Christ, and as you said, it is his law–meaning it came about through the agency of the Papacy, and it may be abrogated by the agency of the Papacy.

How do you know when moral and Divine Law supercede Canon Law? How do you even know when they conflict? Do you rely on your own interpretation? Or perhaps the interpretation of others who present a “rival Magisterium” to the Pope, what the document last month was speaking of?

The Pope is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the Church. Luckily God is ultimately in charge of things.

Indeed, God is, though I cannot see how the Papacy is a weakness.

Someone already did that for me. God raised Archbishop LeFebvre and the SSPX and supplied what his Vicars were refusing to do.

So in a sense Archbishop Lefebvre became a rival Pope–since he supposedly did what the Pope refused to do, a rival Magisterium besides. But can an excommunicated Bishop provide faculties to hear confessions? No.

The recent Popes promulgated laws and bound them to the faithful that unbeknownst to them, helped save the Church faithful from a persecution from within. The legislators wound up hoisted on their own petard.

There is no defence against the Pope in Canon Law. He is the chief Legislator and Judge and Executor. There is no defence for the actions of the SSPX in Canon Law, since Canon Law itself proclaims that the authoritative interpreter is the Legislator and the agencies to whom the Legislator delegates his authority (such as PCED).

The fact that Pope JPII decided to commit malfeasance and play Catch 22 with what the laws actually said is Pope JPII’s fault and he had to stand there in front of the judgement seat of God Himself and say, “hummana…hummana…hummana…” and hopefully he was absolved before he took that trip.

I am very sorry you collumniate His Holiness John Paul II. May he and God forgive you for it.

I am in need of prayer. I ask you to pray for me, and I promise to pray for you.

 

[Just_Lurking]

John Paul II had some interesting things to say about the connection between canon law and Church doctrine (see here):

1. The judge must then abide by canonical laws, correctly interpreted. Hence, he must never lose sight of the intrinsic connection of juridical norms with Church doctrine. Indeed, people sometimes presume to separate Church law from the Church’s magisterial teaching as though they belonged to two separate spheres; they suppose the former alone to have juridically binding force, whereas they value the latter merely as a directive or an exhortation.

Such an approach basically reveals a positivist mindset which is in contradiction with the best of the classical and Christian juridical tradition concerning the law. In fact, the authentic interpretation of God’s Word, exercised by the Magisterium of the Church (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, n. 10 2), has juridical value to the extent that it concerns the context of law, without requiring any further formal procedure in order to become juridically and morally binding.

For a healthy juridical interpretation, it is indispensable to understand the whole body of the Church’s teachings, and to place every affirmation systematically in the flow of tradition. It will thus be possible to avoid selective and distorted interpretations and useless criticisms at every step.

 

[piojunbabia]

In November 1970, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre officially founded the Society of Saint Pius X, in order to train traditional priests and keep the traditions of the Church. The Society was officially blessed and approved by the Church. An American, Cardinal Wright, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, wrote of the Society of Saint Pius X: “This Association has already exceeded the frontiers of Switzerland, and several ordinaries, in different parts of the world, praise and approve it. All of this, and especially the wisdom of the norms which direct and govern this Association, give much reason to hope for its success… the Society will certainly be able to conform to the end… for the distribution of the clergy in the world.”

Eighteen years later, in June of 1988, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops in order to guarantee the continuation of a work blessed and approved by the Church. Rome had agreed in principle on the point of Episcopal consecration, but did not agree on the Archbishop’s choice of candidates. He, nevertheless, went ahead with the consecrations, despite Rome’s disapproval. As a consequence…

CARDINAL GANTIN,
the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops, wrongly declared the Archbishop Lefebvre had performed a “schismatic act” by ordaining four bishops in 1988 without papal permission and warned “the priests and the faithful…not to support the schism of Monsignor Lefebvre, otherwise they shall incur the very grave penalty of excommunication.” Cardinal Gantin erroneously quoted the Church’s Law (Canon 1364 & 1): “a schismatic act incurs automatic excommunication,” but since act incurs automatic excommunication,” but since there was no schism, there could be no excommunication.

POPE JOHN PAUL II
On the following day, the Pope made a similar, but non-juridical statement. “Everyone should be ware that formal adherence to the schism is a grave offense against God and carried the penalty of excommunication decreed by the Church’s law (Canon 1364).” Yet, as his experts later provided: there was no schism in the first place and so there could be no excommunication.

CARDINAL CASTILLO LARA, J.C.D.
President of the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of Canon Law, explained that, “The act of consecrating a bishop (without the Pope’s permission) is no in itself a schismatic act” and so no excommunication applies. (La Reppublica, October 7, 1988).

COUNT NERI CAPPONI, D.CN.L., LL.D
The retired Professor of Canon Law at the University of Florence, well-known in Vatican legal circles and accredited to argue cases before Rome’s highest juridical body, the Apostolic Signatura, explains that for a schismatic act, it is not enough to merely consecrate a bishop without papal permission. “He must do something more, for instance, had he set up a hierarchy of his own, then it would have been a schismatic act. The fact is that Msgr. Lefebvre simply said: ‘I am consecrating bishops in order that my priestly order can continue. They don not tale the place of other bishops. I am not creating a parallel church’ Therefore this act was not, per se, schismatic” and so he is not excommunicated. (Latin Mass Magazine, May-June 1993)

CARDINAL ALFONSE STICKLER
Former Prefect of the Vatican Archives and Library, served as an expert to four Vatican II commissions. Now living at the Vatican, he says: “Pope John Paul II, in 1986, asked a commission of nine cardinals two question. Firstly, did Pope Paul VI, or any other competent authority, legally forbid the widespread celebration of the Tridentine [Latin] Mass in the present day?’ The answer given by eight of the cardinals in ’86 was that, no, the Mass of Saint Pius V has never been suppressed. I can say this; I was one of the cardinals. There was another question very interesting. ‘Can any bishop forbid any priest in good standing from celebrating a Tridentine Mass again?’ The nine cardinals unanimously agreed that no bishop may forbid a Catholic priest from saying he Tridentine Mass. We have no official prohibition and I think that the Pope would never establish an Official prohibition… because of the words of Pope St. Pius V, who said this is the Mass forever.” (Latin Mass Magazine, May 5, 1995)

PROFESSOR GERINGER, J.C.D
Canon Lawyer at the University of Munich: “With the Episcopal consecrations, Archbishop Lefebvre was by no means creating a schism.”

CARDINAL EDWARD CASSIDY
The president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity wrote the following reply, o May 3, 1994, to an inquiry about the status of the Society of Saint Pius X:
“ Dear Sir… regarding your inquiry (March 25, 1994), I would point out at once that the Directory on Ecumenism is not concerned with the Society of Saint Pius X. the situation of the members of this Society is as internal matter of the Catholic Church. The Society is not another Church or Ecclesial Community in the meaning used in the Directory. Of course the Mass and Sacraments administered by the priests of the Society are Valid. The Bishops are validly, but not lawfully consecrated… I hope that this answers your letter satisfactorily.” Yours sincerely in the Lord Edward Cardinal Cassidy – President

FR GERALD E. MURRAY, J.C.L.
Of the Archdiocese of New York, received his Licentiate in Canon Law at Rome’s famous Gregorian University, probably the Church’s most prestigious institution of higher learning, in June, 1995, after a successful defense of the lengthy thesis entitled, The Canonical Status of the Lay Faithful Associated with the Late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the Society of Saint Pius X: Are they Excommunicated as Schismatic?

“I have received a license in Canon Law and I’ve studied this topic, the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre, for my license thesis… They’re not excommunicated as schismatic, because the Vatican has never said they are… I come to the conclusion that, canonically speaking, he’s not guilty of a schismatic act punishable by Canon Law. He’s guilty of an act of disobedience to the Pope, but he did it in such a way that he could avail himself of a provision of the law that would prevent him from being automatically excommunicated (latae sententiae) for this act.” Therefore, neither Archbishop Lefebvre, nor any of the bishops he consecrated, is excommunicated. “In the case of the Society of Saint Pius X, the Vatican never declared any priest or lay person to have become a schismatic.” Therefore the priest and faithful are not excommunicated.

“As far as I can see, the Holy See has never stated that mere attendance at a Mass said by a priest in the Society of Saint Pius X constitutes a schismatic act” (N.B. This assertion has just been verified by Rome in a letter of the Ecclesia Dei Commission dated September 24, 1996, N. 126/96, stating that “the faithful who assist at Masses celebrated by the priest of the Society of Saint Pius X are not necessarily excommunicated and we can well understand hoe a person in your situation would be attracted to their dignified ad reverent celebrations.”) “Let’s say that you knew that the priest at your parish was teaching contrary to the moral law or Catholic doctrine. Let’s say he denied the existence of Hell, or taught that divorced and remarried people could receive Communion. Could you go to a Society of Saint Pius X chapel to receive good doctrine? That seems better to me than hearing truly heretical sermons.” (Latin Mass Magazine, Fall, 1995)

FR PATRICK VALDINI, J.C.D.
Dean of the Faculty of Canon Law at the Catholic Institute of Paris explained that Archbishop Lefebvre did not commit a schismatic act by the consecrations, for he didn’t deny the Pope’s primacy. “It is not the consecrations of a bishop which created schism. What makes the schisms to give the bishop an apostolic mission.” This is something Archbishop Lefebvre never did (Question de Driot ou de Confiance, L’Homme Nouveau, 17 February, 1988).

The Experts in the Church Law and several high-ranking cardinals are in agreement that Archbishop Lefebvre did not perform a schismatic act and, consequently, is neither excommunicated on the grounds of schism or on any other grounds. The label of “Schismatic & Excommunicated” cannot be applied to Archbishop Lefebvre, nor any of his followers, for is lacks foundation and validity, which is what the Church’s experts have been saying since 1988 – the year of Archbishop Lefebvre’s four Episcopal consecrations.

Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict),
Cardinal Stickler,
Cardinal Lara,
Cardinal Cassidy,
Eminent Canon Lawyers,
The Church’s Gregorian University in Rome
And many more say that the Society of Saint Pius X is neither in Schism, nor is it excommunicated… and that anyone can fulfill their Sunday obligation by attending the Society’s Mass.

-quotation from different sources

Ave Maria!

 

[Joe_5859]

So no formal schism, because formal schism is not declared (rightly or wrongly).

What I’m still trying to understand is how statements like this (not statements like this particular post I am quoting, but statements like that from the OP’s link) jive with Ecclesia Dei. (I started a thread on it but it quickly went off topic and was closed). Sure, in paragraphs 3 & 4 of Ecclesia
Dei, it refers to Lefebvre as having committed a “schismatic act” rather than being in formal schism. But paragraph 5c clearly says that “formal adherence to the schism” automatically excommunicates a person. How can someone “formally adhere” to a “schism”, if they are not in formal schism?