A
Andreas_Hofer
Guest
You’re now verging dangerously close to special pleading. You’re saying that, well, we know one when we see one. There are no general cases or norms we can use to determine whether one exists, you are just crazy if you disagree with me about this particular case. The weird thing is, though, that I’m not even averse to using the term “emergency” to describe some of what was going on in the Church. For example, I think there were probably lots of heretical bishops who needed to be resisted (although canonically we must act as if they have jurisdiction until they are officially censured, lest quasi-Protestant personal judgments of bishops create ecclesiastical anarchy). What I’m saying is not that Abp. Lefebvre could not point to *some *emergency in the Church at the time, I’m saying that at the end of the day, he has failed to prove to the competent authorities (the pope) that the emergency to which he pointed justified his particular actions. Abps. Lefebvre and Milingo both acted in the midst of many of the same emergency conditions (we’re making slow progress, but I think L.A. and her cardinal metropolitan are proof enough that times are still bad indeed). That emergency obviously did not justify the African’s actions. So you’re going to have to do more for the Spiritan than simply point to the emergency.
The problem with claiming emergency as justification for disobedience is that you have to defend not only the existence of an emergency but also that the emergency justified the particular action for which you were punished. A fire on my neighbor’s property may justify my trespassing to put it out but it does not justify my stealing his television. A genocide would justify me in concealing “fugitives of justice” but it would not obliterate my obligation to observe traffic signals.
In similar fashion, you would be hard pressed to claim that the elevation of heretics to the college of cardinals excuses me from the communion fast or that the apostasy even of all Eastern Europe somehow creates a reason for an Australian to marry a Protestant without dispensation. Instead, an emergency justifies actions that are closely related to the nature of the emergency, usually to the effect of allowing breach of form when it cannot actually be realized. Having no reasonable opportunity to assist at Mass dispenses one from the Sunday obligation. No available church building would excuse a celebration in neutral or outdoor space for the good of the faithful (a military unit cannot be expected to build and consecrate a church every time a priest makes it to the unit). Those are direct relations.
The SSPX has failed, in the minds of most, to show that ordaining bishops without papal mandate (the bishops, after all, were not excommunicated for running an illicit society of common life or criticizing the formulations of Vatican II or even for celebrating the TLM) was directly excused by an extenuating circumstance. This especially because the authority they resisted was not, by their accounts, heretical or enjoining heresy or immorality upon them. Which leaves them with the defense that, even if the consecrations were not objectively justified the excommunications would still be invalid because of interior dispositions. A defense that leaves them resting on the same inaccessible evidence upon which Abp. Milingo could make his appeal - while acting as if the excommunication were valid.