Would I be sinning by being ordained SSPX

  • Thread starter Thread starter AllenSmith
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Thanks. It appears that this is relatively recent news. The article is from 2017 and refers to the letter Fellay received “last year”, so it looks like this is as of 2016. Between this and the allowing faculties for hearing Confession, Pope Francis seems to be inching them towards regularization.
 
Last edited:
I honestly think the Church creates nothing but division and confusion by deferring from regularisation…
 
TheMortenBay said:
I honestly think the Church creates nothing but division and confusion by deferring from regularisation…
Click to expand...
I guess I understand the need for time to pass. Considering how things started out with illicit episcopal consecrations and excommunications, it makes sense that the Holy See might refrain from rushing to welcome them back with open arms. But it does seem that the time is close to being at hand. The obstacles keep getting removed one-by-one.
 
Joe_5859 said:
But it does seem that the time is close to being at hand. The obstacles keep getting removed one-by-one.
Click to expand...
But it seems like the “obstacles” are removed by the Vatican and not by the SSPX. It appears like the Vatican is slowly coming around to the idea that the SSPX might not have been too far out all along…
 
Will the mortal sin confessed by the SSPX faithful be confessed again?
 
TheMortenBay said:
It appears like the Vatican is slowly coming around to the idea that the SSPX might not have been too far out all along…
Click to expand...
🙂 I guess it depends on your perspective. I see it as the Vatican being the “bigger man” and making concessions in the interest of reconciliation. 😉
 
Joe_5859 said:
But it does seem that the time is close to being at hand. The obstacles keep getting removed one-by-one.
Click to expand...
Exactly. I think what we see here is a variation on romanitas — “doing things the Roman way”. Oftentimes this is characterized by deliberate slowness and moving forward gradually. Romanitas is not the way to go when you have a situation such as the priestly sex abuse crisis — that is a case of “the house burning down around you” (i.e., children being victimized and scarred for life “as we speak”, with charges going back decades), and Rome was ill-equipped to handle it. They didn’t have a template for an onslaught of mass media, people being able to network and publicize the matter online (databases of priestly sex offenders and the like), and personal injury lawyers, working from an Anglo-Saxon common law standpoint, beating the doors down and demanding justice. In a case like that, romanitas is “a dog that won’t hunt”. I just use this as an example.

However, where it is a case of taking a situation that has many positive attributes, and working patiently towards resolution, “slow and careful” might be better. The SSPX rapprochement is a perfect example of this.


In our own era, I think Jimmy Carter can be seen as a modern-day Cincinnatus. His country called him to service, and when that was over, he returned to his small town, his farms, and a quiet life as a peace advocate, author, and humanitarian.
 
jesusmademe said:
Will the mortal sin confessed by the SSPX faithful be confessed again?
Click to expand...
I would ultimately defer to the final judgment of the Church on this, but I would say probably not. There’s a loophole of sorts that allows penitents to approach priests where they have publicly set themselves up as being able to hear confessions, “common error of the faithful” or something like that. It’s not at all far-fetched to think that a simple layperson, one not schooled in these nuances, would go to an SSPX chapel, not comprehend that there is even such a thing as “faculties”, and go to confession in good faith. There is also the matter of faithful being convinced (though in error) that an emergency, a “crisis of faith”, exists, and that they are justified in going to priests without faculties because (as they see it) that is the only way they can be assured of receiving faithful, assuredly orthodox spiritual counsel. And in cases of imminent death, the Church supplies faculties anyway.

If the Church saw fit to do so, I would imagine that she could declare retroactively that all past SSPX confessions were valid — “binding and loosing”, as it were. Is there any reason she could not? In any case, an SSPX penitent troubled in conscience by having confessed to priests in the past who lacked faculties could always make a general confession ad cautelam and “wipe the slate clean”.

I would also think that a priest, if approached by a penitent who had made SSPX confessions before they had explicit faculties, could always tell the penitent “no, you confessed these sins to a priest, you did so in good faith, they have already been confessed, you don’t have to go back to ‘square one’ and do all of your confessions over — my absolution here today will cover any sins that might not have been absolved back then, even though you confessed them”. Would this be a licit course of action for a priest to take? (I will welcome answers from a priest or layperson educated in this sort of thing, e.g., a canon lawyer.)
 
Last edited:
Joe_5859 said:
I see it as the Vatican being the “bigger man” and making concessions in the interest of reconciliation.
Click to expand...
I also see it this way. I was around in the 70s when their defiance of the Pope was big news in the Catholic newspapers. Of course the Church will always do whatever it can to get those who break away back into the fold, often after the ringleaders have aged out or died. That doesn’t mean it was perfectly okay what they did in the first place.
 
Last edited:
There’s been bad decisions on both sides, I think. A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. And a lot of water under the bridge.
 
Why pursue ordination with the SSPX, and why not with a fully recognized group like the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter?

As for whether things are close to full resolution with the Vatican, keep in mind that the Polish National Catholic Church has been working with the Vatican toward reconciliation since the 1970s and it still hasn’t come about. This might be a useful comparison for the SSPX.


 
nunsuch said:
Why pursue ordination with the SSPX, and why not with a fully recognized group like the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter?

As for whether things are close to full resolution with the Vatican, keep in mind that the Polish National Catholic Church has been working with the Vatican toward reconciliation since the 1970s and it still hasn’t come about. This might be a useful comparison for the SSPX.

http://www.pncc.org/

en.wikipedia.org

Polish National Catholic Church​

The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) is a Christian church based in the United States and founded by Polish-Americans. The PNCC is not in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church; it seeks full communion with the Holy See, although it differs theologically in several important respects. A sister church in Poland, the Polish Catholic Church, is a member of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht and is also not in communion with the Holy See; at the same time, the PNCC is neither in communion…
Click to expand...
I don’t think the PNCC is the best example to use, though I would welcome their reconciliation as well. The PNCC has deviated doctrinally from Rome (they do not recognize original sin, they do not accept papal infallibility, and they leave contraception up to the conscience of the married couple — there may be other deviations). I have attended their Mass once, almost 30 years ago, and I don’t remember much about it — I just happened to be at Washington’s National Cathedral and kind of stumbled upon it in one of their chapels, thought as long as I was there, I might as well attend.

They seem to be similar in concept to the Old Catholics of Utrecht. There is no doubt as to the validity of their sacraments.
 
TheMortenBay said:
I’d argue it’s substantially different.
Imagine two scenarios:
  1. You’re an underage kid who’s living at home. Now your father says: “listen to your mother.” Now, the rest of your siblings have all gone along with what their mother tells them, she’s always been in a position of authority over you in practice, but now that your father has made it an order, you disagree in principle. You dissent from the teaching that you should listen to your mother.
  2. In this example, you’re still a kid living at home. Now, your father has always told you that you should not have sex before marriage. But today he tells you that you should go out and get some sexual experience. The sooner the better.
    When you say “I think the original teaching was better, with all respect father, I believe you are wrong.” he responds with: “pre-marital sex or you are no longer my son.”
What would be the right thing to do in scenario 1? How about scenario 2?
If you think the two scenarios are comparable, I’m inclined to agree. If you think the answer to the two scenarios should be the same, I wholeheartedly disagree.
Click to expand...
You’re not seriously comparing the Church to a parent who commands their child to commit mortal sin, are you?
 
LilyM said:
You’re not seriously comparing the Church to a parent who commands their child to commit mortal sin, are you?
Click to expand...
I seriously did that, but the sin aspect was not the point and I see how that gives the wrong idea. The point is that the Church went 180 on several teachings (ecumenism, for example) compared to before the council. Then the SSPX was asked to stop doing what the Church had always done and taught…
 
So avoiding the authority of the Vatican and the Holy Father is a good thing? Isn’t this the basic premise behind Protestantism? Honestly, I’m really blown away by some of these arguments.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top