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Time for another news from the original culture war, the religious war. The affair might seem weird and obscure to normies, even well learned and informed normies, but might well turn to be of more importance than any other current habbenings.
The long awaited event, unauthorized conscecration of new bishops by Society of Saint Pius X finally happened, despite papal final warning.
And so did the inevitable response.
Yes, the big holy hammer fell as expected, the most trad catholics that ever tradded are catholic no more. Not only the leadership, but the lay followers too.
No surprise, there are few red lines remaining in today's catholic church, but unauthorized ordination of bishops without papal approval is one of them, and had always been so.
The church always wanted to prevent proliferation of vagrant priests and hobo bishops with no official position just wandering around the countryside and making trouble.
See Code of Canon Law, article 1387
Analogy from the secular world: Imagine army general one day walks into military base, meets private Billy Bob, is impressed and promotes him on the spot. "Billy Bob, you are now general too!"
You would not expect the general getting away with this in any organized military force of the world.
Where is no analogy with secular world is that the ordinations are illicit but valid.
The four new bishops are bishops, with all spiritual powers of bishops, and no one can take them away. They can do anything that bishop can do, including making more bishops, nothing can stop them.
This event can end with reconciliation like the first illicit consecrations in 1988, but this can also be beginning of full counter church arising from SSPX.
There were attempts in modern time, all flopped, even the most successful true trad church is not so important in grand scale of things. But the Vatican has still good reasons to be worried.
https://kansasreflector.com/2024/07/11/in-this-kansas-town-an-insular-catholic-sect-leaves-some-residents-feeling-left-out/
This seems awfully close to authentic post-Apostolic Western Christianity. The church fathers are unanimous that women should be clothed and veiled, that genders should be separated, and that there should be no communal pool usage. This latter thing is funny because it’s like straight out of patristic writing. Romans would attend baths that acted as community leisure, and the Christian authorities forbade attendance because of gender mingling and opportunity for lust.
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Sorry to see this happen, but yeah. Consecrating bishops is crossing the line.
And in a few years the "we are the real Catholics, Vatican II was a Satanic plot" set will be ordaining gay and women priests. Happened with other splinters before them, will happen to them.
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The lay faithful are only excommunicated if they adhere formally to the schism, which the Vatican defines in a 1996 note(cited in the current decree of excommunication) as referring to those who only attend SSPX masses.
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“They’re like heretics, and I excommunicated them like heretics. I hate them!”
—Pope Anakin I
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I can only assume, in protest of Leo, they donned Android watches instead of Apple watches at the event.
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The chutzpah of these guys. In the Roman rite of episcopal consecration, there is a colloquy involving the formal authorization letter from the pope.
Here is what happened instead:
The SSPX has gone mask-off since Leo was elected. They had a decent amount of support during the last pontificate from “mainstream” conservative Catholics who were dismayed with Francis, but that’s all gone now.
That is a pretty major level of chutzpah. Have they considered getting angry about the filioque or nailing some theses about Vatican II to a church door?
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With all due respect to the SSPX and the Roman Catholic Church, I don’t think this affair will turn out to be nearly as important as you seem to think it is.
One thing that did surprise me about Rome’s response was how all-encompassing it was. Not only are the bishops and priests excommunicated, but so are the laity (“As regards the lay faithful, those who formally adhere to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X are to be considered schismatics and excommunicated”). I’m not sure anyone predicted that. It’ll be interesting to see if the laity are as willing to openly defy the pope as the SSPX clergy are.
ETA: If this event ends up marking the final break between the SSPX and Rome, it’ll be interesting to see if the SSPX remains just as committed to its über traditional beliefs in 100–200 years, or if they’ll end up like the Old Catholic Churches that split off after the First Vatican Council, many of which now ordain women and bless same-sex marriages. Not that anyone alive today will ever see any such progression, of course, though the SSPX could end up in communion with some of the more traditional Old Catholics within our lifetimes.
Thé SSPX would tear itself to shreds and then die out before it got to that. They’re already walking a tightrope on being conservative enough to prevent an exodus from their own right wing hardliners and near associates; Williamson’s band of merry men is not something that they are eager to repeat(even if they did just consecrate Fr Goldade a bishop). Liberalizing churches also tend to go downhill very fast in this world. Add them up, and we might see some sort of tiny old calendarist equivalent jurisdiction, we might see them crack apart, we might see some sort of ROCOR equivalent where they merge into regular structures in such a way that allows them to have bishops, but we are very unlikely to see an old Catholic equivalent.
It’s helpful to look at the history; old Catholics did originate with a handful of individuals who disagreed with papal infallibility, one of whom was a bishop. But it grew mostly not by recruiting likeminded individuals but rather by convincing people who wanted to start their own Catholic Church for other reasons of their position. Most old Catholics are descended from essentially mercenary projects- even if it was often unrelated political reasons rather than straight money that motivated them. The SSPX does not have mercenary origins. It continues to deny Mel Gibson communion for adultery despite his fame and large donations. It does not endorse whatever is fashionable on the political right(much to the chagrin of some members), and only cooperates with secular politics when it thinks it needs something.
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I think it could go either way long term in terms of social teachings. Look at Palmarians.
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It seems clear that the Vatican wanted SSPX to die out as a movement, with its people folded into the mainstream Roman Catholic Church over time. The pope kept appealing to SSPX to avoid these consecrations in the name of unity; but, if unity had been his highest priority, Leo could have simply authorized the consecrations in the first place and avoided the problem. Given a choice between division and dying out, SSPX chose division; I think that they would quibble with the word “schism” for subtle canonical reasons that I am too evangelical to understand.
But, as someone whose understanding of the sacraments does not resemble Rome’s in the slightest, I am curious about this part:
How, in Roman Catholic theology, does that work? I could sort of guess at a logic for penance, although I have zero confidence that I could predict Rome’s reasoning. But the rules for the validity of sacramental marriage have never made much sense to me. Rome recognizes the marriage of two baptized Protestants as sacramental, right? So why do the extra rules for Catholics affect the validity of the marriage instead of just its lawfulness? I know that rules added in the Counter-Reformation era were said to affect validity, even though they were new, and I find that difficult to explain.
No, he could not have. Bishops are bishops of dioceses and are consecrated as part of their appointment to a specific job. The job they are being appointed to doesn’t, officially, exist. Bishops are not just sacrament machines.
The ‘they’re not being appointed to a job’ is both the SSPX’s main defense against schism and thé reason these consecrations would never be authorized.
The Vatican’s preference was, from a well placed trad perspective, to wait for Bp Galaretta to die, then watch while Bp Fellay pushes the rest of the SSPX into accepting a deal(before the consecrations Fellay led the pro-regularization faction in thé SSPX and Galaretta was affiliated with the anti, and this is likely why Galaretta was the principal consecrator. Fellay on his lonesome was very very unlikely to agree to additional consecrations without permission), and creating some sort of job necessitating a bishop would probably have been part of that deal.
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Oookay. We're getting into the weeds here, but let's take a shot at it (to mix all the metaphors). Basically, it divides into two questions:
(1) Are Protestant marriages valid? Yes
(2) Are Protestant marriages sacramental? Well, does the denomination in question consider marriage to be a sacrament? Luther, for one, did not (the Reformation in general reduced down the seven sacraments to two or three).
The Church may indeed consider that marriage sacramental under certain conditions:
I don't know enough about the different views in different Protestant denominations to say "marriages in denomination X are sacramental in their view and marriages in denomination Y are not".
The thorny question of "is this marriage between two Catholics licit, valid, both, neither, one or the other?" depends in part on the status of the minister. Marriage is the sacrament that spouses administer but if the priest assisting at the ceremony is not properly ordained, or if the couple are doing what they know is forbidden (as would be the case in defying the Pope and getting SSPX married) then they are breaking the rules (and rules came in due to a lot of confusion during the mediaeval period over "is this person/this couple truly married or not?" If you look at cases during the Tudor period, and not just in England but on the Continent, nobility and royalty were making and breaking marriage alliances based on 'were X and Y pre-contracted or not?').
Break the rules = break the law = illicit.
The "local ordinary" is the bishop of the diocese where the parish in which the marriage is taking place is located. Clearly, if it is being performed by an SSPX priest (who are now excommunicated) then it's not happening with the permission of the bishop and the priest has not been delegated by him.
You can totally do this. You're golfing: you've got the ball in the weeds, now you're standing over it to make your shot :)
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The reasoning is that the function of penance, in addition to being a sacrament of God's forgiveness, is also about re-uniting someone who's 'excommunicated' from the Church, which mortal sin brings about, into communion. Committing a sin (except one of the really bad ones) isn't an "excommunication" in the legal sense, but it does mean that taking communion without absolution would be another mortal sin. The point is that a priest who's schismatic or cannot licitly confect the Eucharist (which is a statement of unity with the Church as well as with God) cannot admit people to the table that he can't legally prepare. The legal term is "faculty," which is something that the Pope delegates through the hierarchy. The view is that giving absolution to people is an act of "binding and loosing" delegated by Christ to Peter first and then to the other apostles, along with the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and therefore that the Pope as the successor of Peter is the ultimate arbiter of sins being forgiven.
Of course, I should be clear that while penance is the main way in which Catholicism promises to re-unite sinners with God, it's not necessarily the only way (just the only way in which it can be done formally in order to admit people to communion). If you confess your sins accurately to a priest and do your penance, God promises forgiveness, even if you're not sure how bad you feel about your sins or if your only reason is that you're afraid of the possibility of Hell or you just don't want to be seen by Betty from the parish council asking for a blessing from Father instead of taking communion. God meets people at whatever motive gets them into the confessional.
However, my understanding is that canon law says that even a schismatic priest can provide absolution if someone is dying, because the principle of giving people an avenue for sacramental forgiveness before God is more important in that case than Church law. But someone in danger of death, if there's no priest available, can also make an "act of perfect contrition", which is essentially a personal prayer of repentence for your sins based on love for God in his goodness, and not any self-interested reason, which is obviously a high bar.
I think you could say a lot of the Protestant sinner's prayers are essentially a means of aiming to state perfect contrition -- "Lord, I admit I am a sinner. I need and want Your forgiveness. Your mercy and grace is a gift You offer to me because of Your great love, not based on anything I have done," which is a segment of a sinner's prayer I found in 5 minutes on Google, is not too shabby as a statement of perfect contrition, especially because it talks about the love of God as the ultimate source of divine grace. Ultimately Catholicism doesn't make judgments about who's contrition is perfect and whose is self-interested, because parish priest #3462 can't read minds, so the confessional procedure is the way in which it promises people can both receive God's forgiveness and be re-admitted to the table.
In terms of marriage, the point is that going to a Catholic priest who's not in communion to validate your marriage as a Catholic is an explicit step of having a marriage outside the Catholic Church. Catholics who have Protestant or "we got married in Vegas" weddings also fall under that. Protestants and non-Christians aren't held to the same standard, because they aren't Catholic. Catholics are required to marry under the requirements of canon law, like how a state can declare an unlicensed marriage void because they set the law. Protestants aren't bound because they were never subject to the canon law in the first place; California can't declare your marriage invalid because you got married in Vegas.
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My understanding is that "schism" in the Catholic usage means 'breaking away from the church'. It's not division, you don't get two churches. You just get the Church and Not!The!Church.
SSPX, who consider themselves to be defending the true Tradition against unlegitimate encroachment, would never see themselves as a breakaway sect.
The Schism of 1054 begs to differ.
Well, the old school way in which both sides of the east-west schism saw each other was very much, "we are the Church, those schismatics are Not!The!Church."
Things have gotten more relaxed, especially on the Catholic side, but the formal view of Catholicism is "Catholicism is the True Church and the Orthodox should be in communion with us" and the formal view of Orthodoxy, which is much more muddled, is fairly close in most circles to "The Pope is a heretic and a schismatic who altered the creed that Must Not Be Altered and we are the True Church which holds to the true doctrine of the ecumenical councils."
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Fair point. And notably the Eastern church is the only one that the Catholics (at least now) consider a real, proper church on a near-peer level. But I don't think it's representative and certainly SSPX isn't on that level.
The mainstream estimate for the SSPX’s numbers is between a half a million and a million(arguments that this is an overestimate are far more plausible than underestimate arguments). This is bigger than several of the eastern churches considered near-peer by Rome, notably the Church of the East.
Really? Mea culpa, I thought it was maybe 10,000 at the absolute max.
Wiki lists 600,000, and that seems to be a reasonable middle of the road estimate. It’s possible that this is a large overcount, but not by a factor of 60- thé arguments that they’re far smaller than that tend to cluster around 100-200 thousand, not 10k. They have individual Sunday congregations getting quite close to that number.
Well, thanks. It's interesting to learn.
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On a near-peer level, that's true, because they're both Chalcedonian. But there are more than one eastern churches.
The "real, proper church" thing (I assume you're referring to the "Church" vs "ecclesial community" split) has to do with the sacramental priesthood and episcopacy rather than doctrine specifically, and generally most of the Eastern churches are considered to be on the same side of that line. Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Church of the East, despite their Christological differences, all have a general sense that priests are performing a liturgical sacrifice of the Eucharist to God, which is the requirement Catholicism sets for being a "Church-Church."
Anglicanism is in an interesting category because there are priests and bishops, and the Eastern Churches are relatively warm to them on that basis, but the longstanding view of Catholicism is that Anglican orders are null and void because the Church of England, especially in the 15-1800s, relativized its understanding of what the priesthood was to more of a ministry in the Protestant sense than a sacrificial office, while the Eucharistic sacrifice was described as a "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" (added to the first BCP communion rite by Cranmer). Both of these I know are described by modern Anglicans (except Anglo-Catholics, who've always jumped through hoops to try and make Anglican theology more Catholic than it ever was) as explicit steps of separation from Catholic theology and alignment with the continental reformation.
There's an alternate universe perhaps where Edward's minority didn't give Cranmer an in to push his agenda, or Elizabeth had a desire to impose more of her own liturgical conservatism and insisted on maintaining sacrificial priesthood as a pillar of the English establishment, and in that universe the Church of England would probably be called a "Church" by Catholic doctrine. Henry VIII was extremely Catholic in theology, and if his six articles had survived the test of time, the world may well be quite different.
Historians who study the history of Anglican sacramental theology agree fairly strongly that the CoE genuinely developed a different understanding of these elements, and so I think Apostolicae curae was a solid interpretation, even if the subsequent "we're not going to call protestant churches "churches" thing just annoyed people.
The main reason SSPX isn't on the same level is they don't want to be -- they want the "we are doing things without the Pope because the Pope is doing heretical things" without the "we are the True Church" baggage, which is obviously rather unstable. Technically speaking, the SSPX also doesn't have "lay members" or even "parishes" -- they have chapels and "people who come to mass here."
If they were to start appointing metropolitan bishops and naming a patriarch, both their self-understanding and the way in which mainstream Catholic doctrine sees them would change dramatically. The Old Catholic Churches are considered to be "Churches," though the woman-bishop thing is a problem. I should also note that the Polish National Catholic Church in the US, formed because of some ethnic tensions between Polish Catholics who felt excluded by other Catholic ethnicities -- the cardinals' desire to elect the Polish Wojtyła as Pope to connect with Polish Catholics didn't come from nowhere -- is considered a Church as well, and they also have a problem with the Old Catholics' woman thing.
That's the one without the wife in a box, yes?
I'm kind of sorry for Cranmer, and kind of not, so I can't resist laughing at him. I think he was honest in his beliefs, but man was he ever a doormat for Henry. Granted, it was 'bow or have your head chopped off' but the speed at which he went 'whatever the king says' is amazing. See his letter about Anne Boleyn where he's 'I'm astonished to hear this story but if the king says it, then okay, it must be so!' and he trots off to the Tower to dissolve the marriage that a just few years back he had worked so hard to legitimate, never mind that he owed his rise to the influence of the Boleyns:
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