Thoughts on the SSPX Consecrations

As I write this, the consecrations of four new bishops of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X have now taken place in Econe, Switzerland, and the Vatican has issued its decree of excommunication against the Society. I have no training in theology or canon law and I only produce my podcast to shed light on the historical aspects of Catholicism, so I am loathe to make statements about public controversies in the present. But since I have put myself out there as some kind of authority, I figure I at least owe my listeners my (fairly disorganized) thoughts on the matter, so there they are.

My sympathies are with the SSPX by and large, though this does not mean I agree with every statement their leaders make or have made. I am aware that legally and canonically they are in the wrong, but I simply don’t care that much about the legal niceties of the case. The reason is that I do not trust the Vatican to apply canonical penalties fairly at this point. The legal chicanery of the Franciscan pontificate, where litigants who lost their cases before the Apostolica Signatura (the Vatican’s “Supreme Court”) routinely ran to pope Francis and had judgments reversed in his reign, among other abuses, is still too fresh in my mind. These types of shenanigans led Christopher Altieri, a canon lawyer and journalist, to dub Francis’ Vatican as the “Buenos Aires on the Tiber,” a reference to its disregard for the rule of law.

But even worse are the Vatican’s handling of sexual abuse cases regarding persons who were close to Francis, which was appalling. I have not trusted the Vatican as an institution since the news about Theodore McCarrick broke, and I am stunned so many Catholics act as if it never happened. We still do not know what is happening with the canonical trial of Marko Rupnik nor the whereabouts of Gustavo Zanchetta, who was whisked away from Argentina to Rome after being convicted in a court law for assaulting one of his seminarians. And the fact that progressive theologians and Churchmen who are currently the dominant faction in the Vatican at the moment have spent fifty plus years decrying “legalism” now find it convenient to use canon law to excommunicate a group of people they hate stinks to high heaven.

Especially when set against the Vatican’s inability (or refusal?) to discipline clergy and groups promoting a whole host of things (homosexuality, women’s ordination) which are completely incompatible with the Catholic faith. And yes, I am aware that “two wrongs don’t make a right” but that does not mean they are equally wrong, and I cannot for the life of me find what the SSPX is doing nearly as harmful to the Catholic faith as say what James Martin does on a regular basis, often with Vatican approval.

But what about obedience? Shouldn’t disobeying the pope be punished? Disobedience isn’t a virtue, and things being equal, I wouldn’t have much sympathy with the SSPX. But they are decidedly not equal. I’ve written on this in Crisis, but I’ll just say here that you can’t violate people’s trust repeatedly and then demand obedience from them. I do not think people in the Vatican realize how much the last pontificate damaged the trust many Catholics have in that institution. Either that, or they just don’t care.

I also believe that the extremely exaggerated veneration of the papacy that has become common since Vatican I has been gravely damaging to the faith and the reactions I have seen from many Catholics (at least online) to the consecrations only confirm me in that belief. Many act as if every single thing a pope does must be treated as “infallible” until further notice, that the pope is the center of the faith all by himself. I found these two cards at a basilica gift shop near where I live, and they are symptomatic of the exaggerated sense of veneration Catholics have for the pope.

I doubt these are meant to be “Holy Cards,” since they do not portray a stylized image of the pontiff, but merely reproduce his photograph. But they are so close in shape and form to devotional items meant to aid veneration of canonized saints that they ought to at least give one pause, because I highly doubt many Catholics are making such fine distinctions when they buy these items. For many it seems that the present pope and his will are the beginning and end of their faith, and this state of affairs is not healthy or sustainable over the long term.

I am aware of the issues involved and the charge that consecrating bishops without papal mandate is a “schismatic act” but I just don’t think the SSPX really wants to start “another church.” They and the laity who attend their chapels merely want to continue practicing the faith as their ancestors did, free from the madness that is currently gripping the Church. You can quibble with certain things in the declarations of faith they have promoted, but nothing I have seen makes me thing that they have deviated from the Catholic faith in any meaningful sense, unlike, I don’t know, nearly the entire German episcopate. The real scandal is that there already is “another church” inside the Church, for all practical purposes, promulgating beliefs that are anathema to the “faith once delivered to the saints” without contradiction.

And all those very charitable people gloating over the excommunication of those involved in the consecrations and confidently predicting it will quickly fade away are badly mistaken. The SSPX isn’t going anywhere. It will continue to grow, because, as I’ve also written elsewhere, they practice a recognizably Catholic form of the faith, one without all of the very serious internal contradictions that plague the Roman Church at this hour. The Church by trying to adapt so much of its teaching and practice to contemporary society has called into question much of what it once taught and insisted the faithful believe to be unquestionable. This has resulted in confusions and contradictions which feed the steep and ongoing decline in attendance and membership since the 1960s. The SSPX is a product of this state of affairs, not its cause. And neither the decline nor attempts of the faithful to escape it outside of “official channels” will cease until the Church ceases to embrace doctrines and practices that contradict divine Revelation for the purpose of currying favor with modern society.

One last thought. Everything I’ve said above is pretty much what I thought several months ago when the SSPX announced they were going to consecrate new bishops, and for all the hand wringing on all sides, I don’t think the consecrations actually change very much one way or the other. The problems the Church faces would not disappear if the SSPX suddenly vanished, and until its leaders are willing to make some very difficult choices to address them, the crisis (yes, there is one) and decline it faces will continue unabated.