SSPX on Vatican II

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thinkandmull

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Does anyone have the quotes from Vatican on collegiality and Tradition which the SSPX have such a problem with?
 
I suggest that it’s probably best to go to the SSPX website and read up on it. Threads like this on CAF are generally deleted, or at best, closed.
 
Well good then.
I will continue to pray for the SSPX situation to be resolved.
 
It’s a joke, son!

No I’m not trying to start anything. SSPX is 4 letters. A joke. Which one person got a kick out of anyway…
 
NiceMarmot said:
It’s a joke, son!

No I’m not trying to start anything. SSPX is 4 letters. A joke. Which one person got a kick out of anyway…
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Actually their official acronym is FSSPX (Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X),

but that might be confused with FSSP (Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri). Different community but the OP’s question is a good one.
 
I agree with the poster that suggested that you go to the SSPX website: sspx.org/en/faq-page. You may find the answers you’re looking for there.

I also pray for them to join us in FULL Communion once again. I believe it was very close to happening before Pope Benedict retired, and I pray that Pope Francis continues dialogue with them.
 
Please speak respectfully about every society, religious community and diocese. Some forms of humor are not appropriate in this context.
 
thinkandmull said:
Does anyone have the quotes from Vatican on collegiality and Tradition which the SSPX have such a problem with?
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The documents themselves are readily available.

I would discourage anyone from going to an SSPX site to see what they have to say, unless you are very well grounded in what the Church says, as they contradict the Magisterium. Reading their site without a firm foundation is a sure road to problems. We all have enough problems in life, without going out of our way to create more.

The Church is the one true authority in the interpretation of its documents. The SSPX is in a position where the Church insists that they reconcile with the Church; you can take that for whatever it is worth; but the bottom line is that their interpretation of the documents of the Church is at significant variance with the one, holy, catholic (universal) and apostolic Church, and as my high school principal would say to us, “A word to the wise should be sufficient”.
 
thinkandmull said:
Why doesn’t CAF like us to discuss these matters?
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The SSPX is in irregular status with the Vatican, and CAF does not allow the promotion of anything in opposition to the Magisterium. All of the SSPX members I have known on here have been banned for articulating the SSPX positions, so any answer you get about the SSPX on CAF will be from non-SSPX members.

Thus, if you truly want to know what the SSPX teaches, it’s best to hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. I disagree with a lot of their conclusions, but they do a good job articulating their positions. There are other traditional Catholic fora that allow SSPX discussion as well, so you can either PM me to find those or just search for them on Google. Hope this helps!
 
Thinkandmull #1
Does anyone have the quotes from Vatican on collegiality and Tradition
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On the genuine doctrinal development of collegiality, *Lumen Gentium *(Dogmatic Constitution of the Church), 25, teaches clearly: “But Episcopal consecration, together with the office of sanctifying, also confers the office of teaching and of governing, which, however, of its very nature, can be exercised only in hierarchical communion with the head and the members of the college.”

……“collegial infallibility…marks a turning point in doctrinal history.” [See Fr John A Hardon, S.J., *The Catholic Catechism, 1975, Doubleday, p 232-233]. This refers to the bishops around the world when teaching in accord with the Pope; when reflecting historical continuity of teaching; and in an Ecumenical Council when approved by a Pope.

The Second Vatican Council, in turn, reaffirmed and completed the teaching of Vatican I,19, addressing primarily the theme of its purpose, with particular attention to the mystery of the Church as Corpus Ecclesiarum. This consideration allowed for a clearer exposition of how the primatial office of the Bishop of Rome and the office of the other Bishops are not in opposition but in fundamental and essential harmony.
Lumen Gentium, 18, 23].

Therefore, “when the Catholic Church affirms that the office of the Bishop of Rome corresponds to the will of Christ, she does not separate this office from the mission entrusted to the whole body of Bishops, who are also ‘vicars and ambassadors of Christ’ (Lumen gentium, n. 27). The Bishop of Rome is a member of the ‘College’, and the Bishops are his brothers in the ministry”. It should also be said, reciprocally, that episcopal collegiality does not stand in opposition to the personal exercise of the primacy nor should it relativize it.

The Roman Pontiff’s episcopal responsibility for transmission of the Word of God also extends within the whole Church. As such, it is a supreme and universal magisterial office; it is an office that involves a charism: the Holy Spirit’s special assistance to the Successor of Peter, which also involves., in certain cases, the prerogative of infallibility. Just as “all the Churches are in full and visible communion, because all the Pastors are in communion with Peter and therefore united in Christ”, in the same way the Bishops are witnesses of divine and Catholic truth when they teach in communion with the Roman Pontiff.
See: tinyurl.com/ms5hgvj
L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 18 November 1998, page 5-6]
 
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, places Vatican II in its rightful place
"I am convinced that the damage that we have incurred in these twenty years is due, not to the ‘true’ Council, but to the unleashing within the Church of latent polemical and centrifugal forces; and outside the Church it is due to the confrontation with a cultural revolution in the West: the success of the upper middle class, the new ‘tertiary bourgeoisie’, with its liberal-radical ideology of individualistic, rationalistic and hedonistic stamp. The cardinal exhorts all Catholics who wish to remain such “to return to the authentic texts of the original Vatican II.” The Ratzinger Report, Vittorio Messori, Ignatius, 1985, p 28-31].

Cardinal Ratzinger expressed the required fidelity to Vatican II as: “to defend the true tradition of the Church today is to defend the Council…And this today of the Church is the documents of Vatican II, without reservations that amputate them and without arbitrariness that distorts them.” (The Ratzinger Report, Ignatius Press, 1985, p 31).

Fr William Most examined ten legitimate changes at Vatican II and found not one was a reverse of doctrine. All gave answers to previously debated points. Fr Most concludes: “It is obvious then that Vatican II did not create a revolution in theology. There are no reversals of teaching at all, and some…are only a little different or stronger than previous teachings, but all are in the same direction.” Catholic Apologetics Today: Answers To Modern Critics, Fr William G Most, TAN, 1986 (p 200)].
 
From what I’ve read, they object to collegiality because it gives supreme authority to the entire body of bishops (including its head) as well as to the Pope alone. They argue that only the Pope alone has supreme authority and that to say the college does too is to create two such authorities–two heads, as it were.

This opinion of their is false and is a distortion of the teaching of the First Vatican Council. This is an unfortunate consequence of that Council be cut short by the invasion of Rome–it had planned to teach this same doctrine as well. At that Council, the relatio for Pastor Aeternus on the supreme authority of the Pope answered this very objection–except it was coming from the other angle (a relatio is an official explanation given to the bishops at a Council):
relatio for Pastor Aeternus:
The bishops gathered with their head in an ecumenical council—and in that case they represent the whole Church—or dispersed but in union with their head—in which case they are the Church itself—truly have full power (vere plenam potestatem habent). There would be confusion if we were to admit two full and supreme powers separate and distinct from each other. But we admit that the truly full and supreme power is in the sovereign pontiff as in the head (veluti capite) and that the same power, truly both full and supreme, is also in the head united to the members, that is to say, in the pontiff united to the bishops.
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As I mentioned, this was planned to be taught in another document at Vatican I, but the Council got cut short when Rome was invaded. Vatican II cites and pretty much just quotes from the preparatory documents of Vatican I on this topic.

Just to show that this was the common teaching, even prior to the First Vatican Council, the future Pope Gregory XVI taught this same doctrine in the early 19th century:
Mauro Cappellari (the future Gregory XVI):
Each bishop enters into membership in the episcopal body, and consequently enters into the right to govern and teach the entire Church, when he is in union with all the others, and forms a body with them.
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The infallibility of the episcopal college spread throughout the world was also planned to be taught at the First Vatican Council as well. It is a logical deduction from the idea that the Church hands on the truth without error and that the bishops exercise the teaching function of the Church–how can the Church be said to hand on the truth without error if every single one of her teachers could teach an error as definitively true?
 
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