J
JReducation
Guest
While I understand the thinking of many Traditionalists and don’t see anything wrong with having the SSPX come home, I believe that many Traditionalists are not being realistic. I equate it to the person who is getting married and can only foresee happily ever after . . . until the first crisis hits.We’re long overdue a return to rigour which I hope the regularisation of the SSPX will help.
Let’s look at some facts.
The SSPX is being offered a prelature. A prelature gives it the autonomy that the SSPX wants, but it also restricts because its activities must follow a constitution given to it from the Vatican. It cannot write its own constitution, because it’s a prelature, not community. There can be a constitution for the priests and religious, but those constitutions cannot contradict the constitution of the prelature.
A prelature has a defined apostolic mission that must be approved by the pope himself, not by a general chapter alone and not by one of the sacred congregations. We don’t know how broadly or how narrowly Pope Benedict will define the apostolic mission of the prelature.
Then we must look at size. The SSPX has about 500 secular priests, which is a very nice number. The average diocese has less than 300. Maybe the megadioceses have more. That looks good. However, those 500 priests are limited to working inside the prelature, not with diocesan structures. Therefore, they will not be allowed to participate in deanery meetings, diocesan synods, clergy councils or conferences of bishops where pastoral decisions are made. They will not be allowed to contradict those decisions made by the host diocese or the conferences of bishops. In other words, the SSPX can have its own pastoral practices within its jurisdiction, but it cannot tell the people of Diocese X that such and such a pastoral decision is a bad thing. They belong to the prelature.
Let’s remember that 500 secular priests are a large number for a diocese, not for an international organization. The Salesians and the Franciscans each have more than one million members. How many Salesians or Franciscans are in the average diocese? My point is that we’re thinking that the influence of these 500 men is going to turn the Church around. That’s not realistic.
The Church will turn around and problems will be solved. New ones will replace the old ones. The SSPX will bring a much needed charism into the Church, but it will stand side by side with the many other charisms that exist in the Church, as it should be. The SSPX is not being regularized to compete with other secular priests or with religious communities. They are being regularized for their own good and for the unity of the Church.
We truly need to keep this in focus. Let’s forget about ourselves and let’s think about these men and the unity of the Church. My biggest problem with this whole process is the selfish attitude of some people. They’re all excited because what they want and what they like is finally being regularized.
It is nice to get what we want and what we like. Make no mistake about that. But at the end of the day, the Church does provide for our spiritual and sacramental life, without the SSPX. What is of greater value here is that we have almost 1,000 men and women (clergy and religious) who are living outside the fence, but on the same side of the street. They are our brothers and sisters and we should love them enough to want them on our side of the fence where they will be safe and where we can share what each of us has to offer.
Finally, it is a great insult to the more than five million male religious and diocesan clergy to say to us that the SSPX are going to fix the Church, as if we had made no contribution for the good of the Church.
There has to be a balance in our thinking and a greater concern for the good of our brothers and sisters in the SSPX rather than our personal wants and wishes. As St. Francis said to our brothers, “The man who has not detached from his wants and wishes is like the man who cannot pass through the eye of the needle. He is still rich.”
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV